There were three key points in Xu’s program. First, foreign traders were allowed to trade opium for Chinese goods after paying the medicine tax. Second, imperial officials, candidates for the imperial examination and soldiers who were found to have smoked opium should be dismissed but not subject to criminal punishment. Commoners who smoked opium were also to be exempt from investigation. Third, growing poppies would not be banned in China. The Canton Register, a Guangzhou-based English newspaper managed by opium traffickers, printed the full text of Xu’s memorandum. William Jardine, a notorious opium trafficker, even believed that the publication heralded the legalization of the opium trade in China. Emperor Daoguang asked his ministers to discuss Xu’s memorandum and while some agreed with Xu,11 others harshly rejected Xu’s program.12 Some ministers advocated for a strong anti-smuggling approach and persuaded the Emperor to impose a strict ban on the opium trade. However, no conclusion was reached on the opium trade.
Among the regulationists, Huang Juezi was the most vocal. In 1838, he proposed that the central government take harsh measures to combat opium, including executing dependent users of opium who were unable to give up smoking in one year.13 Huang’s proposal won the support of many local governors and some agreed that opium smokers should be more severely punished while others focused on more effective anti-smuggling measures in coastal areas.14
Lin Zexu’s memorandum is particularly worthy of mention. Not only did Lin analyze how the flood of opium into Chinese society would destroy the social economy but would also how it would make the country economically and militarily incompetent.15 Then, in the summer of 1839, the Qing government promulgated The Anti-Opium Ordinance, resolving to eradicate opium smoking and the opium trade. According to this law, those who traded or smoked opium would be subject to severe punishments including the death penalty. It is generally believed that the Ordinance was based on the ideas proposed by Huang and Xu.
Then Lin Zexu, the Governor General of Hunan and Hubei, was summoned to the Forbidden City, where he was appointed Inspector General leading the fight against opium smoking and the opium trade in Guangdong. As soon as he arrived in Guangzhou, Lin, in collaboration with Deng Tingzhen, the General Governor of Guangdong and Guangxi and Guan Tianpei, the provincial Commander-in-Chief of the Navy in Guangdong, immediately consolidated coastal defenses and began arresting opium traffickers and punishing naval officers who had taken bribes. Lin sternly ordered the smugglers to turn over all their opium in three days and formally guarantee that they would not continue to smuggle anymore. Lin also made a public statement at this time, firmly stating that he would only leave Guangdong when the opium trade was completely eliminated.16 He carried out his work to eliminate opium with vigor. By the early summer of 1839, more than 19,000 chests of opium—that is, approximately 1,180,000 kilograms of opium—were confiscated from the Anglo-American traders. The confiscated opium was destroyed publicly in Hu’men, a beach town not far from Guangzhou, a process which took place over twenty days. The Hu’men Act expressed the Chinese people’s strong will to resist foreign aggression. The towering monument of People’s Heroes in Tiananmen Square is a memorial of this heroic act.
The Treaty of Nanjing and Its Aftermath
Once the British discovered that Qing was going to confiscate the British smugglers’ opium, the Anglo-American capitalists and groups with an interest in opium began to rise up against China. On October 1, 1839, Queen Victoria in Britain decided to send troops to China. Five months later, George Elliot, a naval officer, was appointed to lead the invading British forces. More than forty British warships and four thousand British men-at-arms entered Chinese waters south of Macao. The British war of aggression against China had begun. After failing to capture Guangzhou due to strong resistance from Qing’s army, the British headed north. In July, British troops attacked Dinghai in Zhejiang and, in August, arrived at Dagukou, Tianjin, the gateway to Beijing, continuing their attempt to force Qing into submission. At this time, Emperor Daoguang’s resolution to combat opium began to falter. He sent Qishan, a leading imperial official and the Governor of Zhili, to negotiate with the British. Qishan made a promise that the imperial court would punish the hardline anti-opium officials such as Lin Zexu. Convinced by Qishan, the British withdrew to Guangdong. The Qing government then immediately removed Lin and Deng Tingzhen from office and appointed Qishan as the Imperial Envoy to further negotiate with the British. Despite Qishan almost submitting to the British demands, British troops unexpectedly occupied Qing’s two strategic garrisons at the estuary of the Pearl River. Without the imperial court’s consent, the frightened Qishan agreed to cede Hong Kong to Britain, paying six million silver dollars for the losses suffered by opium traders, and to open Guangzhou to foreigners. The first phase of the Opium War ended with Britain’s capture of Hong Kong.
Qing declared war against Britain. Yishan, a high general in the royal family, was sent to Guangzhou. However, before he arrived, British troops seized garrisons in Hu’men and southern Guangzhou. After trying to fight against the British in May, 1841, Yishan and his army withdrew to the inner city of Guangzhou. Yishan then signed an agreement with the British and a ransom of six million silver dollars was paid for the complete withdrawal of Qing troops. marking the end of the second phase of the Opium War. Britain, however, was insatiable and sent more troops, led by Henry Pottinger, to China. In August, 1841, the reinforcements reached the South Sea and then captured Xiamen, Dinghai, Zhenhai and Ningbo. One year later, British warships entered the waters of the Yangtze River near Nanjing. Qiying, one of Qing’s top generals, was commissioned to launch peace talks with the British. On August 29, 1842, the Treaty of Nanjing was signed on board HMS Cornwallis signalling the end of the Opium War.
In October of 1843, China and Britain signed the Hu’men Treaty. The United States and France then later coerced Qing into signing the Wangxia Treaty and Huangpu Treaty. The result was that China was drawn into the British colonial system. The British gained huge profits from colonizing China, which included the cession of Hong Kong to the British empire; 21,000,000 silver dollars; five treaty ports (providing the justification for foreign settlements); direct interference in Chinese customs; extraterritorial jurisdiction; the right to navigate in China’s waters; unilateral most-favored-nation treatment; freedom to carry out missionary work (in treaty ports); and so on. The Western powers had made their way into China, pushing China into an abyss of semi-colonialism and semi-feudalism.
The Chinese Intellectuals’ Reaction and Solution
It is inconceivable that, even though Qing lost the war and signed a treaty, Emperor Daoguang was unaware of Britain. Therein lay the shortsightedness of Qing’s ruling elites. However, some officials, scholars and thinkers began to rewrite history and find feasible solutions for what had taken place in China. Take Lin Zexu, for example. He traveled to Guangzhou, where he would lead the work combating the opium trade, though he did not have much knowledge about the world. When he arrived in Guangzhou, he tried to gain more knowledge about the West. He set up a translation office, where information about the West and China was translated into readable Chinese. Some of the informative journals included Selected Reports of Macao Newspapers (澳门新闻报), Reports on China (华事译言), Foreign Laws (各国律例), Reports on the World (洋事杂录), The World (四洲志). Once equipped with sufficient information, Lin successfully launched a campaign against the Anglo-American opium traffickers. Furthermore, Lin and Qing’s generals strengthened Guangdong’s war preparedness. It is worth mentioning