South China in the Imperial Era

One constant factor in Chinese history – at least until the coming of Western colonialism in the 19th century – has been the southern expansion of the Han Chinese people. Historically, China has been driven by a southward territorial imperative that would eventually see all the territories between the Yangzi and the current frontiers of mainland Southeast Asia and India gradually conquered and settled by Han Chinese, the indigenous peoples either being absorbed, surrounded and marginalised, or migrating south ahead of the Chinese to avoid subjugation.

Territories of Dynasties in China. Click for animated version

In this way Chinese control was extended over Fujian, Jiangxi, Hainan and Guangxi for the first time under the Three Kingdoms (220-265AD), while Yunnan was not properly absorbed until the Yuan Dynasty (1279-1368), and Taiwan as recently as under the Qing in 1683. South China as we know it today, then, did not come fully into existence until about seven centuries ago – almost three millennia after Chinese civilisation first emerged in the Yellow River valley.

Early Chinese Perceptions of the South

For Han Chinese right up to Tang Dynasty times (618-907) and even beyond, the far south – as it then was – remained a little-known land of dangers and temptations, a place of exile where, nevertheless, it was always summer. A place to dream about, but not necessarily to visit, home to strange but delicious fruits, exotic but dangerous animals, and tempting but wanton women. The culture of the Chinese heartland, centred on the Yellow River in the north, was strongly patriarchal, but further south women wielded more influence and authority – a phenomenon both appealing and worrying to the men of Han, who desired yet felt threatened by such confident and assertive females.

The American Sinologist Edward Schafer believed that ‘respectable Chinese opinion’ saw something unnatural in the prevalence of the female spirit in the south, citing the 1st century AD Han Shu: ‘The land of Viet abounds in women. Male and female share the same river. The wanton female is dominant’. A legend popular in China for many centuries tells how the King of Viet educated a beautiful country girl, Xi Shi, in the ‘feminine arts’ then sent her north to corrupt his rival, the – Han Chinese – King of Wu. The 8th century poet Li Po celebrates her as: ‘Xi Shi, a woman of the streams of Viet, luminous, ravishing, a light on the sea of clouds’. Given such precedents and viewed from the perspective of Chinese men of the time, southern women seemed dangerous and wanton creatures indeed.

And yet this very lustfulness clearly exercised a strong appeal. By Tang times Chinese control had been asserted over the entire coast as far south as Tonkin, but not over the interior, and the south was generally represented as a land of seductive women and gorgeous landscapes where it was never cold and flowers were always in bloom. Chinese men who had visited or lived there waxed lyrical about the beauty of the women. One Tang poet, Wang Changling, links the ‘enchantress of Viet’ with ‘a playful tussle in the lotus boat, water dampening her dress’. Just as evocative is his near contemporary Han Yu: ‘a Viet woman’s single laugh – a three year stay’.

The Chinese were also distinctly superior in their attitude towards the ‘southern barbarians’ they were slowly conquering and attempting to absorb. Like the French in the 19th century, they saw themselves with a ‘civilising mission’ that was reflected in their march to the tropics. In 939 the Vietnamese drove the occupying Han forces out of Tonkin, prompting the furious Sung Emperor Taizong to demand of the ‘ingrate Viets’:

You fly and leap like savages, we have horse-drawn carriages. You drink through your noses, we have rice and wine. Let us change your customs. You cut your hair, we wear hats; when you talk, you sound like birds. We have examinations and books. Let us teach you the knowledge of the proper laws… Do you not want to escape from the savagery of the outer islands and gaze upon the house of civilisation? Do you not want to discard your garments of leaves and grass and wear flowered robes embroidered with mountains and dragons?

In fact only Vietnam would manage to throw off the Chinese yoke, with the rest of the south gradually succumbing to Chinese rule and subsequently Chinese customs over a long period of many centuries.

The Southern Expansion of the Chinese People

Han Chinese troops had been active on and off along the coastal strip around Guangzhou since Qin Shi Huangdi’s conquest of the area in 211 BC. Three years later, in 208 BC, Chinese troops conquered Tonkin and began their long, 1,000 year occupation of An Nam, the ‘pacified south’. As we have seen, Vietnam would eventually break away from Chinese tutelage, but not before becoming so thoroughly Sinicised as to become a satellite of the Chinese cultural constellation. Meanwhile Guangdong was emerging as the main centre of Chinese power in the south. When Qin Shi Huangdi’s troops first arrived in the region, it was populated by Yue people thought to have been related to the Zhuang people of modern Guangxi. The Chinese, however, set up their military headquarters – the Nanhai, or ‘South Seas’ Commandery – at Panyu near present-day Guangzhou. The Han Dynasty (BC206-220AD) then administered the three provinces of Guangdong, Guangxi and Tonkin as the Province of Jiao.

In 226 Guangdong was made into a separate province called Guang, or ‘broad’. Meanwhile the ethnic balance in Guangdong shifted slowly but inexorably in favour of the Han Chinese invaders as more and more moved south into warmer and more fertile climes, often escaping political troubles further to the north. For example, dynastic records suggest that, as a result of the political turmoil caused by the rebellion of An Lushan (755-63), the Han population of Guangzhou Prefecture increased by about 75 percent. Inevitably, as more migrants moved in, the indigenous Yue population either assimilated through marriage, or moved away further south and inland.

Nearby Hainan Island, known as Qiongzhou or ‘Agate Region’ perhaps because of its green forests and azure waters, was first settled by a Chinese garrison in 110BC, but in the circumstances at the time was considered a ‘bridge too far’ for ordinary Han settlement and became instead a place for exiles. During the Three Kingdoms Period (220-265AD), Hainan was home to the Zhuya Commandery, but it wasn’t until the Song Dynasty (960-1279) that the remote tropic island would come fully under Chinese control and Han Chinese emigration to the island would begin to assimilate or displace the local Li people.

Further to the north, Chinese troops had bypassed the difficult terrain of present-day Jiangxi, Fujian and southern Zhejiang, large parts of which were inhabited by indigenous Austronesian peoples known to the Han Chinese as Min or Minyue. Minyue remained a de facto independent state until Han Dynasty times. In 111BC the Han Emperor Wudi (141-87BC) invaded Minyue simultaneously with land and sea forces, obliging the Minyue capital, Fuzhou, to surrender. From this time a process of Sinicisation began in the area, though it is noteworthy that the people of northern Fujian still honour their early Minyue monarchs in their temples today.

During the Three Kingdoms period (220-265AD), the entire southern coastal region, including Fujian, Guangdong, Hainan Island and Tonkin, passed under the control of the Kingdom of Wu. Meanwhile, to the north, the original Han Chinese heartland around the Yellow River and stretching west towards Mongolia came under the rule of the rival Kingdom of Wei. Finally the inland Kingdom of Shu emerged, extending Han Chinese control and influence westwards, for the first time, through Guizhou and Sichuan into eastern Yunnan.

For all this expansion, Han Chinese control over the south and, in particular, the southwest, remained relatively tenuous under the Sui and Tang Dynasties (581-906) and under the Song (960-1279). During this long period internal conflicts and foreign invasions from central Asia and Manchuria continued to destabilise the north on a regular basis, causing increased migration to the south. By the time of the Southern Song (1127-1279) the south-eastern frontier had, to a large extent, solidified along ethnic lines that more-or-less match today’s borders. Fujian, Guangdong, Jiangxi, Hunan and Guangxi were all increasingly assimilated and part of ‘China Proper’, while Han settlement proceeded apace in northern Hainan Island, causing the indigenous Li people to withdraw into the southern highlands where some of their descendants continue to live today. To the south, Vietnam had broken away decisively from the Chinese Empire, and to the west, in Guizhou and Yunnan, Chinese influence and control remained limited.

Mongol Conquests in the Southwest

China came much closer to attaining its current territorial limits under the Mongol or Yuan Dynasty (1279-1368). During the declining years of the Song, China was increasingly harassed by the powerful Mongol tribes to the northwest. In 1223 Genghiz Khan seized control of all Chinese territory north of the Huang He, and although the great Mongol warrior died in 1227 before he could further extend his Chinese conquests, his grandson, Kublai Khan (1271-94) completed the conquest of China and established the writ of the Yuan Dynasty as far west as Yunnan, Burma and Tibet.

In 1253, when his elder brother Mongke was Khan (1251-59), Kublai Khan was ordered to invade Yunnan. He did so, successfully capturing the ancient walled city of Dali. In 1258 Kublai was once again active on the Yunnan and Sichuan fronts, this time as Commander of the Army of the East. One year later, in 1259, Mongke was dead and Kublai claimed the throne. In 1271 Kublai Khan officially proclaimed the establishment of the Yuan Dynasty with its capital at Dadu (Beijing), finally destroying the last of the Southern Song Dynasty in 1279 and unifying China, from Manchuria and Mongolia in the north to Hainan Island in the south. Kublai would attempt to extend China’s frontiers to the east and south, attacking Japan by sea in 1274 and again in 1281, but without success. He was similarly unsuccessful in Vietnam, which he attacked 1257, 1284 and 1287, taking and sacking Hanoi, but being ignominiously defeated and driven out by the great Vietnamese general Tran Hung Dao (1228-1300).

But in the west Kublai Khan was more successful. Like any major empire, the Mongols used mercenary and conscript troops. In remote frontier areas – such as southern Yunnan – they also borrowed from Chinese tradition, ‘using barbarians to control barbarians’. In suppressing the remnants of the Southern Sung and extending their control over Yunnan, they employed professional Uzbek fighters from the Khanate of Bukhara in Central Asia. By the late 13th century Yunnan had been successfully incorporated into the Mongol realm, and Kublai Khan turned his attention further afield. Some of his Turkic mercenaries were sent to attack Burma – the likenesses of two are still recorded in frescoes at Pagan, one officer supporting a fierce hunting falcon on his wrist. Others were ordered to settle in newly-conquered Yunnan to ensure the continued pacification of the province. They were given Chinese wives, and one – Sayyid Ajall Shams al-Din al-Bukhari – was made governor. As a further reward, the faithful Muslims were given control over roads and communications. From that time, their grip on the trade of Yunnan has rarely slackened. Even today most out-of-the-way hostelries are Muslim-run, and truck drivers, as much as muleteers, are likely to be followers of the Prophet Muhammad.

During the centuries after their settlement in Yunnan the Uzbek followers of Shams al-Din gradually became assimilated through intermarriage into the local population – a process which continues today. They became increasingly Chinese in appearance (though some are still noticeably more hirsute, with longer noses than their Han neighbours), and they adopted Yunnanese Chinese as their language, retaining Arabic only for religious instruction, and forgetting Turkish completely. To their Han neighbours they became known as Hui, or Chinese-speaking Muslims. Relations weren't always good, but they got along fairly well until the mid-19th century, when oppression by the Qing authorities would spark a major Muslim rebellion.

South China under the Ming

After Kublai Khan’s death in 1297, Yuan power rapidly disintegrated and the Mongols were replaced, in 1368, by the Han Chinese Ming Dynasty. The Ming consolidated China’s hold over Yunnan and Sichuan provinces, also making an attempt in 1407 to reconquer Vietnam – though ultimately they failed, and were driven out in 1428. The Ming also secured China’s control over Guizhou, making it a Chinese province for the first time and encouraging Han Chinese emigration into the area from Sichuan and Hunan to the north. The pressure of migration and increasing Han control over the region prompted numerous revolts by the indigenous Miao people, some of whom were captured and sent to Hainan Island to compete with the indigenous Li for control over the southern hills in another case of the Chinese ‘using barbarians to control barbarians’. Under the Ming Guangdong, too, was given its current provincial name, ‘broad east’, to distinguish it from Guangxi or ‘broad west’.

Emperor Yongle (r 1402-24)

Admiral Zheng He (1371-1433)

Zheng He's treasure ship

The third Ming Emperor Yongle (1402-1424) was both ambitious and far-sighted. In 1403 he transferred the imperial capital from Nanjing back to Beijing, ordering the construction of the Forbidden City (1406-20) and the Temple of Heaven (1420). But Yongle wasn’t only interested in promoting Beijing and the north. He consolidated China’s hold across the south, from Guangdong to Yunnan, setting up military bases at Tengchong and Yongchang (Baoshan), close to the Burmese frontier in the far southwest of the province, in 1403. He also developed the city of Quanzhou in Fujian as a major port. Yongle was unique in the annals of Imperial China in that he pursued an active maritime policy – a thing previously unheard of in this very continental, land-based empire – sending his favourite admiral, the Yunnanese Muslim eunuch Zheng He (1371-1433), to explore Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean as far as the Red Sea and the Swahili Coast.

Starting in 1405, Emperor Yongle sent Zheng He on six major naval expeditions at the head of a fleet of hundreds of ‘treasure ships’. Yongle’s purpose was to extend Chinese control over Nan Yang, the ‘southern seas’, by imposing imperial control over trade and overawing the peoples of the littoral into paying tribute to the Ming throne at Beijing. Zheng He developed Quanzhou into the main base for his ‘treasure fleets’, bringing wealth and development to the Fujian coast. Significantly, Zheng He also visited Taiwan on at least one occasion, signalling developing Chinese interest in that island – which, ultimately, would be the last piece of territory absorbed into emerging southern China as late as 1683, under the Qing Dynasty.

Yongle died in 1424 and was succeeded by his son, Emperor Hongxi (1424-25) who was both more traditional and more inward-looking. Hongxi stopped Zheng He’s great maritime expeditions, and also stopped sending missions to Yunnan and Vietnam in search of pearls and gold. He was succeeded by his son, Xuande (1425-35) who allowed Admiral Zheng He to make one more overseas voyage, though the era of Ming maritime explorations ended definitively in 1434, when Xuande ordered the Ming navy disbanded and the dynasty turned decisively in on itself, outlawing overseas voyages.

But the world was changing, and even though the Ming had decided to turn China’s back on the outside world, there was little Beijing could do to prevent the outside world beating a path to China’s door. To begin with, this threat was regional, in the form of raids carried out by Japanese pirates known as wako (woukou in Chinese) who had been raiding the coast of Korea and China as far south as Hainan Island from the 13th century, and whose activities grew bolder and more destructive in the 15th and 16th centuries.

Nor was it any longer just a regional threat. The first Portuguese ships, under Fernão Peres de Andrade, anchored off Guangzhou in 1514, signalling the arrival for the first time of European ships in Chinese waters. In 1535, Portugal obtained the right to anchor shipping in Macau harbour and to trade there, making Macau another enclave in the string of forts and harbours established to gain control of the trade of the Indies by Afonso de Albuquerque. By 1557 the Portuguese were permitted to start a settlement in recognition of their services in fighting wako pirates – the first and by far the earliest of numerous European settlements to be established in China. At this early stage, Portuguese administration was limited to Macau Peninsula, with neighbouring Taipa and Coloane Islands remaining under Chinese administration.

In 1544 Portuguese mariners also sighted the island of Taiwan, which they named ‘Ilha Formosa’ or ‘beautiful island’, although they made no attempt to settle there. At this time China did not control Taiwan, which remained independent under its various indigenous tribes, being visited occasionally by Chinese and Japanese adventurers and fishermen. In 1624, however, the Dutch East India Company, operating from its headquarters at Batavia in Java, set up an administration at Tainan in the south of the island. Three years later their Spanish rivals set up a fort at Keelung in the northeast of the island where they remained until they were driven out by the Dutch in 1642. During this period, and with Dutch encouragement, Han Chinese from the mainland began to settle on the island in serious numbers for the first time. It is interesting that an island so close to the Chinese mainland – and today so vigorously claimed by Beijing as an integral part of the Chinese motherland – should have been settled by Dutch and even Spanish colonialists before any Chinese administration was set up. Certainly the Straits of Taiwan are both wider and more difficult to navigate than the narrow Qiongzhou Straits separating Hainan from the Guangdong coast, and it seems that Taiwan had an evil reputation with Chinese traders and sailors, who sometimes referred to the island as the ‘Gate of Hell’. Even so, with the fall of the Ming Dynasty in 1644, all this was about to change.

South China under the Qing to 1800

In 1644 a Tungusic people known as the Manchus sacked the Ming capital at Beijing and the last Ming Emperor, Chongzhen (1627-44) hanged himself in despair from a tree on Jing Shan or ‘Prospect Hill’ overlooking the Forbidden City. Shortly thereafter the Ming General Wu Sangui (1612-78), who commanded 100,000 troops at the strategic garrison of Shanhaiguan on the Great Wall, threw in his lot with the invading Manchus and opened the gates to their forces. The Mandate of Heaven had passed from the Ming, and in 1644 the Shunzhi Emperor (1644-61) proclaimed the Qing Dynasty as the natural succcessors to the Ming, becoming the first Manchu emperor to rule over China.

The last Ming pretender, Prince Gui (1623-62) fled south to Guangzhou where he was crowned king in 1646, but he was closely pursued by Qing troops and soon fled west, crossing to seek sanctuary at Sagaing in Burma. Under Qing pressure, the Burmese handed Prince Gui over to that implacable enemy of the Ming, General Wu Sangui, who executed him personally in Yunnan by strangling him with a bow string in April, 1662. Under the Qing, the Chinese Empire would reach its greatest extent ever, controlling not just the whole of southern China (with the important exception of Taiwan), but also Tibet, Xinjiang, all of Mongolia and a large slice of Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. In the mould of its Han Chinese and Mongol predecessors, however, it would develop as and remain very much a continental, land-based power exercising little influence at sea.

By the time of the first great Qing Emperor, Kangxi (1662-1722) the Qing Empire had been fully consolidated across the south, and all southern provinces, from Yunnan to Fujian, were firmly under Qing administration. One exception was Taiwan, which remained under Dutch control in the north and west of the island, while the aboriginal tribes of the mountainous interior and remote east coast remained independent. Strangely, it was the defeat of the Ming – who had ignored Taiwan during their 276 years in power – that would at last bring Taiwan into the Chinese fold.

Zheng Chenggong, better known in the West as 'Koxinga' (1624-1662)

In 1624, at Nagasaki, Japan, a male child was born to a Chinese merchant and pirate called Zheng Zhilong, and his Japanese wife, Tagawa Matsu. He was given the Japanese name Tei Seiko and the Chinese name Zheng Chenggong, though he is better known to history by the name Koxinga – apparently an unlikely Portuguese Romanization of the Taiwanese pronunciation of his Chinese name. The young Koxinga moved to Quanzhou in Fujian at the age of seven, before going on to study at Nanjing Imperial University and becoming a Ming official. Following the collapse of the Ming Dynasty in 1644, Koxinga’s father, Zheng Zhilong, surrendered to the invading Qing. Soon after, Qing armies seized Quanzhou as part of their conquest of southern China, and Koxinga’s mother either committed suicide or was raped and killed by the Manchu troops.

Koxinga’s response was to swear continuing fealty to the Ming. He raised new forces and fought against the Qing for a number of years, on one occasion reaching Nanjing – but his resources were no match for those of the Qing, and in 1661 he led a fleet of warships to invade Taiwan and drive out the Dutch. Koxinga was successful in this, capturing the Dutch fort of Zeelandia in Tainan after a nine months siege on February 1, 1662. The Ming loyalist went on to establish his Kingdom of Tungning (1662-83) on the island, with its capital at Tainan.

Koxinga then devoted himself to making Taiwan into an effective base for anti-Qing sympathizers who wanted to restore the Ming Dynasty to power, but he died unexpectedly of malaria in 1662 at the young age of 38 years. He was succeeded by his son, Zheng Jing (1662-81) and then by his grandson, Zheng Keshuang (1681-83), both of whom continued to launch maritime raids against the Qing Empire in a futile attempt to retake the mainland for the Ming. In 1683 the Qing admiral Shi Lang responded by invading Taiwan and deposing Zheng Keshuang, making Taiwan – for the first time in history – a part of China, and more specifically part of Fujian Province. The island would eventually become a province of China in its own right in 1887. Koxinga remains honoured as a Chinese patriot today, both in Taiwan and on the mainland, but his greatest achievement was not his unsuccessful struggle to ‘overthrow the Qing, restore the Ming’, but rather to unify Taiwan with the mainland and complete the socio-political map of southern China more or less as it is today.

After Qing Emperor Kangxi died in 1722, he was succeeded by his son, Emperor Yongzhen (1722-35), and he in turn by his son, Emperor Qianlong (1735-96). Both were strong-willed, hard-working rulers, and during their reigns – especially that of Qianlong – the Qing Empire was at its peak, ruling virtually unchallenged over an area in excess of 13 million square kilometres, an area almost 40 percent larger than that currently ruled by the Chinese People’s Republic. The south was, by-and-large, peaceful, and both Yongzhen and Qianlong relied on trusted Han Chinese soldiers and administrators to govern the area. And yet the writing was on the wall. When Qianlong came to the throne in 1735, he inherited a treasury with 30 million taels from his father, Yongzhen. At the peak of his prosperity, Qianlong’s treasury held around 74 million taels. And yet, at the end of his reign in 1796, the imperial treasury was virtually bankrupt as a result of military campaigns, palace building, and the growing problem of paying for imported opium with silver specie, which was impoverishing China at about the same rate as it enriched British East India Company coffers in India.

Emperor Qianlong (r 1735-96)

In 1760 Qianlong, disturbed by the rising tide of opium arriving on Western shipping and the corresponding depletion of the national treasury, especially in silver coinage, had attempted to limit further overseas commerce by issuing an edict restricting all foreign trade to Canton (Guangzhou). In fact it proved all but impossible to restrict the trading activities of either his own subjects or of the foreign merchants. Meanwhile Qianlong came under increasing pressure from the British to rescind this legislation and open China fully to overseas trade. Qianglong famously resisted, refusing the requests of the Macartney Embassy in 1793, while informing King George III by imperial decree that: ‘As your ambassador can see for himself, we possess all things. I set no value on objects strange or ingenious, and have no use for your country’s manufactures’. Qianlong made it quite clear that he regarded the Macartney Embassy as a tributary mission, and sent a message to King George III warning that British vessels putting ashore at any point other than Guangzhou would be immediately expelled. The Emperor concluded: ‘Do not say that you were not warned in due time! Tremblingly obey and show no negligence!’

This was a magnificently imperial response, no doubt. But it was also quite unrealistic, and showed that the Qing Dynasty, having largely barred its gates to the outside world, was rapidly losing touch with reality. And in the 19th century, that reality would be one of internal rebellion and external invasion, growing opium addiction and colonial interference. With the death of Qianlong in 1799 (three years after he abdicated in favour of his son, Emperor Jiaqing, 1796-1820), the Qing Empire had already started on a long but inexorable decline that would lead, eventually, to the establishment of the Chinese Republic in 1912.

South China from 1800 to the fall of the Qing in 1911

Meanwhile the traffic in opium, mostly shipped by the British from their colonies in Bengal, continued massively to expand. By the end of Qianlong’s reign, imports had reached around 1,000 chests annually. By the time Emperor Daoguang ascended the imperial throne in 1820 this figure had grown to 30,000 chests annually. Each chest held 140 pounds (64kg) of opium, making a total of almost 2,000 tons. By the beginning of the 19th century there were already millions of addicts in China, and the country was paying for its spiraling drug habit with silver specie, disastrously depleting the national treasury. Clearly, from a Qing perspective, something had to be done.

In 1799 Emperor Jiaqing (1796-1820) reaffirmed the ban on opium promulgated by his father, Qianlong, but without noticeable effect. In 1810 Jiaqing went further, announcing that: ‘Opium is a poison, undermining our good customs and morality. Its use is prohibited by law’. His son, Emperor Daoguang, continued to issue edicts after he came to the dragon throne in 1820, but to no avail – the British weren’t listening, and nor apparently were the opium addicts. Accordingly, in 1838 Daoguang sent Lin Zexu, the formidable Governor-General of Henan and Hubei, as his commissioner to impose Qing anti-opium legislation on the unruly foreign traders in Guangzhou. To the fury of the Westerners – at whose head stood the British – Lin confiscated and destroyed more than 20,000 chests of opium and blockaded the port to foreign shipping. Lin also wrote to Queen Victoria, asking why the British prohibited opium imports into their own country, but forced it on China. Was this a morally correct position, the commissioner asked rhetorically?

Lin’s letter was never delivered to Queen Victoria, though it was published in The Times. And while it may have given liberal anti-opium campaigners in Great Britain pause for thought, it raised no sympathy at all with the opium merchants of India and Canton, who loudly demanded compensation for their lost opium, and pressed for military retaliation. This came in 1840, with the arrival of warships and soldiers from India. European military superiority ensured the First Opium War (1840-42) was short, sharp and one-sided. The British seized control of Guangzhou and sailed up the Yangzi to interdict tax barges carrying grain to the Imperial Court at Beijing. In June, 1842, they also sailed up the Huagnpu, storming and capturing the walled city of Shanghai in a single night.

Shortly after the fall of Shanghai, the Qing authorities sued for peace and the Treaty of Nanking was signed in August, transferring Hong Kong Island to the British ‘in perpetuity’, awarding Britain 21 million ounces of silver in compensation for the seized opium, and opening five ‘Treaty Ports’ to foreign shipping and residence including Guangzhou, Xiamen and Fuzhou in the south, as well as Ningbo and Shanghai. Suddenly southern China was exposed to a new and troublesome ‘enemy at the gate’, and the Portuguese settlement at Macau was joined by a British colony at Hong Kong.

This decline in Qing fortunes led to an increase is nostalgic and patriotic memories of the former, Han Chinese Ming Dynasty, sparking a series of increasingly violent uprisings across China, and especially in the south. In 1851 a rising broke out at Jintian (today’s Guiping) in Guangxi Province, when a 10,000 strong rebel force led by Hong Xiuquan defeated the Qing garrison forces. This was the beginning of the great Taiping Rebellion (1851-64), a rising that would rack southern and central China, causing at least 20 million deaths, and up to 50 million according to some estimates – the bloodiest conflict in the history of the world up to this time, and since superceded only by World War II. The supreme leader and Heavenly King of the Taipings was Hong Xiuquan (1814-1864) who received revelations causing him to believe he was the younger brother of Jesus Christ. In 1851 Hong set out to overthrow the despised Qing, who as Manchus were considered foreign invaders, and replace their dynasty with the Han Chinese Taiping Tianguo or ‘Heavenly Kingdom of Great Peace’.

The rising had begun in Guangxi Province in January, 1851, but rapidly spread northwards. In March, 1853, a force of more than half a million Taiping soldiers captured Nanjing, killing an estimated 30,000 Qing defenders and making the city the rebel capital, in earnest of which it was renamed Tianjing or ‘Heavenly Capital’. At its height, the Taiping controlled much of China’s territory south of the Yangzi River. Attempts to extend Taiping control north of the Yangzi were less successful, with a rebel thrust against the Qing capital, Beijing, being repelled.

From 1853, Hong Xiuquan became increasingly introverted, devoting more time to sensual pursuits, including his harem and delegating power to various subsidiary kings and princes. An attack against Shanghai in August, 1860, brought disaster down on the Taiping forces in the form of the ‘Ever Victorious Army’ fighting for the Qing but led by General Charles ‘Chinese’ Gordon, who would later die fighting at Khartoum in 1885. Gordon’s army was later reorganized under two Qing officers of military genius, Zeng Guofan (1811-1872) and Li Hongzhang (1823-1901). Hong Xiuquan declared that he would defend Tianjing (Nanjing), but died – possibly from taking poison, possibly from food-poisoning – in 1864. By this time the Qing reconquest was assured, and the once mighty Taiping forces were rapidly rolled up by the imperial armies. Hong’s body was cremated at the former Ming Imperial Palace in Nanjing; the ashes were subsequently fired from a cannon by the victorious Qing so that the spirit of the deceased would find no resting place, but wander as a ‘restless ghost’ in an eternal punishment for leading the rising.

The Qing may have defeated the Taipings, but it was at a terrible cost in human life, silver specie, and increasing Western involvement in Chinese affairs. Up to 1842, only Portuguese Macau and the Qing port of Guangzhou (Canton) had been open to foreigners, but after the First Opium War and the cession of Hong Kong Island to the British, ‘treaty ports’ opened along the southern coast in a rash. In addition to Guangzhou, Xiamen and Fuzhou (1842), these included Kowloon (Jiulong, Guangdong Province, 1860); Swatow (Shantou, Guangdong Province, 1860); Qiongzhou (Hainan Island, 1876); Beihai (Guangdong Province, 1876); Sanshui (Foshan, Guangdong Province, 1897); Wuzhou (Guangxi Province, 1897); Santuo (Fujian Province, 1898); and Jiangmen (Guangdong Province, 1904). In addition, the Portuguese took advantage of Qing weakness to occupy Taipa Island (1851) and Coloane Island (1864), as well as signing the Beijing Treaty with the Qing in 1887 by which China ceded to Portugal ‘the right to perpetual occupation and government of Macau’.

As if this were not enough, the Qing faced a series of continuing rebellions elsewhere across the empire. These included the Nien Rebellion in north China (1851-68); a series of Hui Muslim rebellions across the northwest and especially in Shaanxi and Gansu (1862-73); and the Xinjiang Muslim Rebellion of Yaqub Beg (1867-78). Nor was south China immune. Reference has already been made to Kublai Khan’s decision in the 13th century to settle Uzbek mercenaries in their newly conquered Yunnanese territories, and to make their leader, Sayyid Ajall, Governor of the province. During the centuries after their settlement, the Uzbek followers of Shams al-Din gradually became assimilated through intermarriage into the local population – a process which continues today. They became increasingly Chinese in appearance (though some are still noticeably more hirsute, with longer noses than their Han neighbours), and they adopted Yunnanese Chinese as their language, retaining Arabic only for religious instruction, and forgetting Turkish completely. To their Han neighbours they became known as Hui, or Chinese-speaking Muslims. Relations weren't always good, but they got along fairly well until the mid-19th century, when oppression by the Qing authorities sparked a major Muslim rebellion.

Between 1855 and 1873 a large part of Western Yunnan broke away from the Qing Empire as local Hui Muslims set up their own state, Ping Nan Guo, or ‘Kingdom of the Peaceful South’. Their leader, Du Wenxiu, also styled himself Sultan Sulayman and –tellingly – donned Ming Dynasty costume, indicating loyalty to the Qing's predecessors rather than to some distant Middle Eastern potentate. In the end the more powerful Qing armies triumphed, massacring innocent Hui, as well as rebels, as they advanced. Du is thought to have committed suicide at Dali in 1872. His body was later beheaded by the Qing after they took the town, but was later reburied at nearby Xiadui Village, where his tomb is today.

Many Hui, amongst them the most hardened supporters of Du Wenxiu, fled into the hills of the Golden Triangle with their horses and arms. This was no new territory to them – their trade routes had criss-crossed the region for centuries – and because of their influence Yunnanese Chinese was already the lingua franca of the area. They were soon joined by bands of defeated anti-Qing rebels including former Taipings and members of anti-Qing secret societies, destabilising China’s southern frontier and worrying the neighbouring states. These were the so-called ‘Flag Gangs’, named for the different coloured distinguishing flags the different groups carried. These outlaws and freebooters, fleeing the reassertion of Qing rule, first entered Tonkin in 1865, when bands of ‘Black Flags’ and rival ‘Yellow Flags’, harassed by Qing armies, crossed the Sino-Vietnamese frontier and set up bases in the upper reaches of the Red River Valley.

Over the next twenty years the Black Flags and their leader, Liu Yung-fu, were to acquire a certain dubious legitimacy and fame in the service both of the Vietnamese king, Tu Duc, and of the latter's Qing suzerains in their struggle against French imperialism in Tonkin. By contrast the Yellow Flags, under the leadership of Huang Chung-ying failed to acquire any legitimacy and, pursued by a combination of Vietnamese, Black Flag and Qing forces, were broken up and defeated. In 1875–76, following the capture and execution of Huang by Qing-Vietnamese forces, the surviving Yellow Flag remnants fled westwards, into the upper part of the Black River Valley, whence they harassed the townships of the semi-independent Tai-speaking federation of Sipsongchuthai (today part of north-western Vietnam) and north-eastern Laos.

Meanwhile, further to the west, from about 1872 onwards bands of defeated rebels fleeing the Qing reconquest of Yunnan also began drifting southwards across the frontier into Laos. These new bands, distinguished by ‘Red Flag’ and ‘Striped Flag’ banners, moved southwards to occupy nearly all of northern Laos, with the Red Flags sacking Dien Bien Phu in 1873, and the Striped Flags seizing control of Phuan and the Plain of Jars in the same year. The disintegrating Qing Empire was haemorrhaging across its southern frontiers, and in doing so providing France with an excuse for further colonial dismemberment of the Chinese body politic.

France had been dabbling in Vietnamese politics for well over a century. In 1858-59, ostensibly responding to the execution of Christian missionaries, France briefly occupied the port city of Danang. Two years later, in 1861, they seized Saigon, and in 1865 they forced the enfeebled Vietnamese King Tu Duc to make Cochinchina a French colony. By 1883 France had extended its control over the whole country, making Annam and Tonkin into protectorates. In the same year an embittered Tu Duc died. His successors were to rule the country in name only, reduced to hapless puppets of the French, from the Imperial Court at Hue. Meanwhile, having also occupied Laos and Cambodia, in 1887 France created the Indochinese Union, with its administrative capital at Hanoi.

Foreign troops with various national flags during the 'Boxer Rebellion' (1899-1901)

By 1887, then, France had established itself as China’s new southern neighbour along the Vietnamese and Lao borders. Further to the west, the British were similarly established in Burma. This was China’s traditional backyard – but by late Qing times, it was no longer so. Both France and Britain extended new demands on China, with the former forcing open ‘frontier ports’ – the inland equivalent of maritime ‘treaty ports’ – at Mengzi in Yunnan Province (1887), Simao in Yunnan Province (1895), Longzhou in Guangxi Province (1899), and Nanning in Guangxi province (1899). For their part the British made similar demands on Simao in 1897, as well as at Tengyue on the Burma-Yunnan frontier in 1902. In 1898 the French also forced China to lease them the port of Zhanjiang on Guangdong’s Leizhou Peninsula for a (theoretical) period of 99 years. As ‘Fort Bayard’ this port would be administered by the French as part of their Indochinese Empire until it was formally returned to China by President Charles de Gaulle in 1946.

Empress Dowager Cixi (1835-1908)

Meanwhile, further to the east, Imperial Japan was also flexing its muscles and detaching bits of Qing territory. The First Sino-Japanese War (1894-95) was fought mainly for control over Korea and ended in victory for Japan at the Treaty of Shimonoseki (April 17, 1895), by which Japan gained primacy in Korea, part of the Liaodung Peninsula, and considerable war reparations from China. In south China, the Japanese fleet also seized control of the Penghu Islands in the Straits of Formosa, as well as of Taiwan itself, making both into Japanese colonies.

In 1899 the stumbling Qing Dynasty, now ruled by Empress Dowager Cixi (who exercised effective control over the empire from 1861 to her death in 1908), suffered another near-fatal blow when the ‘Boxers’ – Yihetuan Qiyi or ‘Harmony of Righteous Fists Society’ – started a rising against foreign influences in China. In 1900 the Boxers seized Beijing, killing some 230 foreigners and thousands of Chinese Christians. The remainder of the foreigners, together with many Chinese Christians, withdrew to the Foreign Legations where they held out for 55 days until a multi-national coalition of some 20,000 troops could be sent to the rescue, eventually crushing the rising by September 7, 1901. Once again, China was forced to pay a huge indemnity, while Empress Dowager Cixi was outmanoeuvred and humiliated. She died in 1908, leaving the 2-year-old heir, Puyi, to become the last Qing Emperor (1908-1911).

An extended version of this text may be found in APA Insight Guide South China (2007).

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