Ch 19 - The Western Foothold in Asia

An Asian Legacy

The disastrous Taiping Rebellion shook China's social fabric to its core and helped trigger a major shift in political power. Dowager Empress Zi Xi, the new power behind the Dragon Throne, initiated a "Self-Strengthening Movement" to graft Western technology, scientific knowledge and government onto Chinese institutions.

After Taiping rebels captured Nanjing in March 1853, Hong Xiuquan declared the city and surrounding territory to be the heart of his "Heavenly Kingdom" until such time as all "foreign devil dogs" - the Manchus, not the Europeans - could be driven from Beijing. They nearly were. In May 1853, the Taipings sent an expedition to northern China with the ultimate goal of taking Beijing. By the time the rebels reached the city of Tianjin, their terrifying reputation had already spawned rumors that swept through 's every nook and cranny, from the emperor's palace to the lowest beggar beneath the city walls. Among the many rumors was the tale of the "paper soldiers." Many people firmly believed,

"All that the rebels had to do on their way to Beijing, was to cut out as many paper soldiers as they wanted, put them in boxes, and breathe upon them when they met the imperial troops, and they were transformed into such fierce warriors that no one was able to withstand them. Then when the battle was over and they had come off victors they only needed to breathe upon them again, when they were changed into paper images and packed in their boxes, requiring neither food nor clothing. Indeed the spirits of the rebels were everywhere, and no matter who cut out paper troops they could change them into real soldiers."

Such superstitions were taken as fact by nearly everyone, including many in China's educated upper class. Any woman seen with paper and scissors risked being arrested as an enemy sympathizer.

The Taipings marched to within one hundred miles of Beijing before their northern campaign finally collapsed in the spring of 1855. After conquering everything before them and leaving devastation and destruction in their wake, they failed to establish a stable base of operations in the area and could not hold their ground. The Taipings settled in Nanjing and began appointing local village officials and planning for the redistribution of farmland in a manner not unlike a primitive form of communism. Their land reforms proved to be impracticable however, since they never completely replaced the old established order in the countryside. Worse, Hong Xiuquan's idle army began raiding local farms loyal to the Manchu throne for food and supplies. The Western powers tried to maintain a position of neutrality during the early stages of the rebellion, but events soon forced a dramatic change in their stance.

The foreign powers in Shanghai sent their consuls to Nanjing to seek a possible relationship with Hong Xiuquan's emerging Taiping regime, only to discover the movement's leaders were enmeshed in a web of internal feuds, defections and corruption. After the Reverend Issachar Roberts, Hong's former tutor in Canton, visited him in 1861, he concluded, "I believe he is crazy ... a wicked despot." Hong's distorted interpretation of Christianity turned a potential dream come true for Christian missionaries into a nightmare. Had the Taiping theology had been a bit less heretical, the initial European enthusiasm for a Christian Chinese movement might have resulted in European military aid and the successful overthrow of the Qing dynasty. Instead, British and French forces shifted their support to the Imperial Army, preferring to deal with a weak Manchu Government than contend with the uncertainties of a radical Taiping regime. The Qing Government needed more than help from the Western powers to quell the Taiping Rebellion however, it needed an army far stronger and more popular than its already demoralized imperial troops.

In 1860, Emperor Wenzong appointed Zeng Guofan as the new Imperial War Commissioner and Governor-General of Anhui, Zhejiang, Jiangxi and Jiangsu provinces. Zeng had already earned high honors from the Court for his military prowess, including the personal gift from Emperor Wenzong of a prestigious yellow riding jacket. Zeng controlled the military affairs of the Taiping-controlled territories around Henan Province and took command of the war against the rebels. The appointment marked a growing power shift in China's political landscape. In the early and middle periods of the Qing Dynasty, the highly-centralized Manchu Imperial Court decided all provincial policies. The rude realities of the Opium Wars, the Tianjin treaties and the widespread rebellions of the mid-nineteenth century seriously weakened the Manchu's central power in China and gave rise to increased local power in China's fifteen provinces .

In the years after 1855, the provinces surrounding the Yangtze River valley became the primary theater of operations in the war against the Taipings. Among the Qing Imperial armies, the Chinese troops were too undisciplined to be of any use and the Manchu bannermen were little better. The Imperial Court had no choice left but to put its faith in the great provincial armies commanded by eminent scholar-generals. Zeng Guofan's Henan Army, organized in 1852, and Li Hongzhang's Huai Army, organized in 1862, became the forerunners of large private armies that characterized the powerful, adventurous warlords of later years. They recruited their commanding officers from among relatives, friends, teachers, and students from their own province, selecting men with a common educational background in a process that accelerated a growing shift of power from Beijing to the provinces. The soldiers, organized and financed by local taxes, were trained by officers to whom they owed undivided allegiance and inspired with a strong sense of duty to protect the Confucian orthodoxy.

Military assistance against the Taipings soon came from another, quite unexpected quarter. On August 17, 1860, Taiping rebels attacked the city of Shanghai. British and French forces, supported by naval gunfire from warships anchored nearby, stoutly defended the city and prevented the rebels from reaching the foreign settlements. While the Western powers were still trying to maintain neutrality in China's raging civil war, an American soldier-of-fortune named Frederick Townsend Ward organized and led a small force of Western-trained mercenaries in the service of the Qing government that helped save Shanghai from the Taiping threat. The British arrested Ward and brought him before the American Consul on charges he had induced the desertion of British and American sailors to join his "army." Ward responded by renouncing his American citizenship, presumably to avoid a trial, and becoming a subject of the Qing emperor.

Less than a year after taking command of the Henan Army, Zeng Guofan started wearing down the rebels in a series of bloody engagements that recaptured a number of Taiping strongholds, including the Yangtze River city of Anqing, the capital of Anhui Province. In October 1861, Zeng Guofan established his new headquarters at Anqing and began planning the siege against the Taiping capital at Nanjing.

After Emperor Wenzong died at Chengde in 1861, his five-year-old son ascended the Dragon Throne as Emperor Muzong. Dowager Empress Zi Xi , the "Empress of the Western Palace" and the widowed mother of the new emperor was one of eight regents named by Emperor Wenzong to rule during his son's youth. Two Imperial Princes belonging to an anti-foreign faction in Beijing seized power and quickly organized their own regency council for the young ruler, one that excluded Prince Gong, Zi Xi and the Dowager Empress Zi An. Acting on the advice of his father-in-law, Prince Gong met the two Empresses as soon as they returned to Beijing from Chengde and described in detail the creation of the illegally-constituted regency council. Zi Xi was not a woman to let such an affront go challenged and the two princes soon learned she had powerful allies. She had always kept the court eunuchs happy, usually by bribing them, and used their support to help eliminate her enemies. She also had the strong support of the Imperial Banner Corps, who liked her because she was the daughter of a Manchu officer. Finally, garrison commander Jung Lu, her young lover and former fiance, remained loyal to her throughout his life.

Dowager Empress Zi Xi was not so overcome with sorrow she neglected the affairs of state. With the help of Jung Lu and his bannermen, she seized control of the government in October 1861 and ordered the immediate arrest of the illegal regency council. Their leader was beheaded and the others were condemned to either exile or suicide. She quickly formed a new joint regency consisting of herself, Zi An and Prince Gong, and changed the young emperor's reign title to Tong Zhi, or "joint government."

The pampered daughter of a wealthy family, the emperor's mother, Dowager Empress Zi An cared more about life's comforts and luxuries than political power. The Dowager Empress Zi Xi, on the other hand, was "a tall, erect, fine-looking woman of distinguished and imperious bearing," with pronounced Manchu features and a "voice of determined authority and absolute command." Zi Xi, literally the power behind the throne, could not rule openly. In all official receptions of the Imperial Court, only Prince Gong met face to face with the Empresses, who were compelled to remain behind a bamboo screen set up behind the young emperor's throne. Whenever government officials submitted memorials or reports to the throne, Zi Xi listened to the deliberations and regularly offered "suggestions" to the emperor who dutifully repeated her words. It is strong testimony to her greatness that she lived within the Imperial Palace for thirty years with the former emperor's mother without arousing envy, jealousy, anger, or enmity between them. Despite their stark differences, the two women remained the strongest of friends, equal in rank and, in the eyes of the world, equal in power.

Dowager Empress Zi Xi was fully aware she ruled over a decaying imperial house and knew that a stronger ruler than Emperor Wenzong was needed if the Manchu dynasty was to survive. She was also very likely the first Manchu to recognize China's problems in its relations with the outside world. Foreign encroachments and the Tianjin treaties opened the floodgates to Western merchants and their foreign goods;  higher-quality cheaper textiles, kerosene and lamps, cigarettes and, of course, opium. Consequently, the old Chinese economic system collapsed and the village economy that had sustained Chinese civilization for millennia as the backbone of China's agricultural society lay in ruin. Foreign settlements established in each of the treaty ports became sovereign extraterritorial enclaves over which China had no jurisdiction and whose safety was guaranteed by the menacing presence of warships and gunboats.

Beijing's elite mandarins proved to be utterly useless in helping Zi Xi strengthen her dynasty and promote material progress in China. Steeped in the old Chinese classics and deeply influenced by Neo-Confucian orthodoxy, they remained entirely ignorant of the new forces pressuring China and nothing in their past experience prepared them to meet the new challenge. They were no more capable of dealing with the ravages of the Taiping Rebellion than the eunuchs who served in the Forbidden City.

Modern-thinking Han Chinese officials had been examining and translating "Western Learning" since the 1840s. When reformers in the Qing court suggested the best way to stop foreigners from taking over completely was to strengthen China with modern inventions and technology, the conservative Zi Xi and her advisors resisted. In 1861, Zeng Guofan, Li Hongzhang, and Zuo Zongdang convinced the Qing Court to initiate a 30-year program designed to restore China's traditional order. Zi Xi had a remarkable ability to select great statesmen, wise advisers, safe leaders, and the best consultants from among the great mass of Chinese officials. Through her "Self-Strengthening Movement," known as the Tong Zhi Restoration, a new class of scholar-administrators set out to graft Western technology, scientific knowledge and government onto Chinese institutions. They studied Western science and languages, opened special schools in the larger cities to train translators and improve communications and transportation. They made efforts to modernize China's armed forces and develop basic industries by importing Western military technology and building new arsenals, factories and shipyards based on Western models. Even new government institutions were introduced.

The management of China's foreign affairs were moved from the Imperial Court to a new Office of Foreign Affairs established in Tianjin in 1861. The Zongli Yamen , known among foreigners as the Foreign Office, existed as a makeshift government agency created out of expediency. It had no real statutory basis and, theoretically at least, had no power to make foreign policy, only the authority to execute existing policies determined by the emperor and the Grand Council of the Imperial Court. Prince Gong, the Zongli Yamen's first president, expressed the core of China's new foreign policy as, "overt peace with the Western nations in order to gain time for recovering the exhausted power of the state."

As president of the Zongli Yamen, Prince Gong slowly grew in stature and power. He began to assume an air of importance which, consciously or not, he carried into the presence of the two ruling Empresses. One morning he found himself suddenly stripped of all his rank and power by a joint decree from the two women that accused him of "lack of respect for their Majesties." Dowager Empress Zi Xi, who controlled the throne during Emperor Muzong's joint regency, began to believe the Manchu prince was rapidly "becoming the government," pushing her and Zi An into the background. After being confined in his palace as a prisoner under close guard, Prince Gong begged their forgiveness. The two Empresses restored all his honors and titles and, to show they bore him no ill will, adopted his daughter as their own and raised her to the rank of an Imperial Princess. They refused to return him to the status of a joint regent. In the process, Zi Xi eliminated the first obstacle to her reestablishment of the Manchu Dynasty.

The Taiping Rebellion had nearly brought foreign trade in China to a standstill when, in early 1862, Frederick Ward organized another army comprised of Western officers and weapons along with a motley crowd of Chinese, many of whom were attracted by the promise of adventure, high pay and loot. Regular Chinese forces resented the arrogance of Ward's troops, but his tactics produced results. A long string of victories over Taiping rebels earned Ward's mercenary force the colorful title of "Ever Victorious Army." The Qing Imperial Court, now willing to employ foreign mercenaries and Chinese units trained and led by foreign military officers, subsidized Ward's expenses to keep his small army in the fight. The Allies, having decided to clear the Taipings from within a 30-mile radius around Shanghai, welcomed Ward's army and hailed him as a hero. Frederick Ward died at Songjiang on September 21, 1862, in the battle to retake the city from Taiping rebels.

In the spring of 1863, British authorities offered the command of Ward's 3,500-man Ever Victorious Army to Major Charles George Gordon. The weakened and undisciplined Ever Victorious Army lost much of its fighting ability and suffered numerous defeats after Frederick Ward's death. Gordon's inspired leadership, not to mention his insistence on regular pay, so imbued his Chinese troops with confidence in his honor and ability that he quickly earned their respect and admiration. The once ragtag army recovered its spirit and former reputation by inflicting a string of disastrous defeats on the increasingly desperate Taiping rebels.

Zeng Guofan and Major Gordon gradually pushed Hong Xiuquan's Taipings toward their last major stronghold behind Nanjing's thick defensive walls. By the summer of 1864, the Henan Army completed surrounded the city and began the final siege against the fanatic rebels. In July, heavy artillery pounded the city as the Henan Army launched its final assault to crush the Taipings once and for all. The fall of Nanjing marked the end of one of the greatest and bloodiest civil wars in world history. In his report to the emperor, Zeng wrote,

"Not one of the 100,000 rebels in the city was taken, but in many cases gathered together and burned themselves. ... Such a formidable band of rebels has been rarely known from ancient times to the present."

Hong Xiuquan was never captured. He killed committed suicide on June 1, 1864. Hong's sixteen-year-old son and heir went into hiding with the last surviving Taiping "prince," but the two were soon caught and executed. The Taiping Rebellion was over.

The Taiping Rebellion collapsed as much from internal strife among the Nanjing leadership as from the superior military strength arrayed against it. Living in a twisted world of their own making, the Taiping's religious fanaticism, though useful for inspiring rebels to fight, ultimately handicapped their ability to deal with complex military and administrative affairs. Their intolerance toward traditional Confucian culture alienated aristocrats and peasants alike. The fierce fighting and wanton destruction that lasted from 1850 to 1865, savaged nearly 600 cities across China and caused 20,000,000 deaths, made the Taiping Rebellion one of the deadliest and most horrifying periods in world history.

The Taiping Rebellion shook China's social fabric to its core and helped trigger a major shift in Chinese political. The battlefield successes of men like Zeng Guofan, Li Hongzhang and Zuo Zongdang brought new political power to an emerging elite of Han Chinese officials, a shift that further demonstrated the weakness of Manchu rule and contributed to the continued erosion of Qing authority. Chinese military officers from the Henan and Huai armies received important assignments in the post-Taiping era, taking posts as governors and governors-general formerly occupied by Manchus alone. Finally, the Taiping Rebellion inspired new generations of revolutionaries. Surviving remnants of the Taiping movement went underground and joined secret societies to keep alive the twisted and tragic ideas of racial and nationalistic revolution unleashed by Hong Xiuquan.

Over the years, Dowager Empress Zi Xi came to believe that China needed a strong, well-balanced, broad-minded central figure capable of inspiring confidence. She wanted to ensure the emperor's successor would come from her family should her own son die without a male heir, and she proposed to furnish one. Her success was uncertain, but she arranged a marriage between her younger sister and her husband's younger brother in hopes their union might produce a son worthy enough to occupy the Dragon Throne. She felt compelled to ready a successor worthy enough to meet manage the problems which had been too new, too sweeping and too complex for her or her predecessors to solve.

In 1868, Beijing dispatched an inspection mission to the United States to get a first hand look at western life. The mission proved to be a great success, but it adversely affected the Tong Zhi Restoration by encouraging conservatives to believe that Westerners were easily manipulated. Looking to the past, Chinese scholars discovered precedents for the existence of treaty ports and foreign enclaves, even for employing foreigners at the Imperial Court. This helped convince them the Western impact was simply an extension of China's own historic traditions instead of a totally new situation that demanded totally new adjustments. As a result, they never loosened their grip on the old ways and ended up trapped between two incompatible worlds.

China's attempt to "modernize" while simultaneously reaffirming its old mentality was not a genuine modernization, which would have been difficult under the best of circumstances. The Qing Government remained totally withdrawn behind China's wall of tradition up to at least 1860. Despite the credentials and accomplishments of its leaders, the Tong Zhi Restoration was too little, too late. Its greatest weakness was the underlying assumption that China could successfully adapt to itself Western advances and innovations in technology, science and government without a deep understanding of the underlying social theories and political institutions. The Chinese still viewed Westerners as "foreign devils" from whom they could learn nothing.