Qing colonial administration (original) (raw)
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How did the Chinese state become what it was before 1949? How did China maintain continuities in its territorial, demographic, and administrative patterns throughout the Qing, Republican, and Chinese Communist Party (CCP) eras? Addressing all these questions, Huaiyin Li's The Making of the Modern Chinese State: 1600-1950 offers a systematic account of the making of the modern Chinese state from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries. Drawing on studies of late imperial and modern China, as well as archival records, memoirs, and officials' works, Li traces the mechanics of the Chinese state's geopolitical setting, fiscal constitution, and identity building. He argues that the distinctive formation of the Qing state was essential to the continuity of China's territoriality and ethnic composition. Challenging the perception that China's transformation from the Qing to the Republican era was a disruptive transition from an empire to a nation-state, Li contends that this painstaking process should be viewed as a transformation from a territorial state into a sovereign state (pp. xi, 48-50). The Qing, to Li, was not an "empire" because it was "neither a typical expansionist empire nor an emerging fiscal-military state resembling its counterparts in early modern Europe and beyond." Instead, it was an "early-modern territorial state," as it "had stable frontiers and effectively controlled its territory that had fixed borders clearly demarcated with the neighboring states" (p. 11). While the Qing departed from the preceding Chinese dynasties by creating a large state encompassing both the Han population and the frontiers of the Inner Asian nomads, its military expeditions beginning in the late seventeenth century were primarily defensive, and its geopolitical goal was to safeguard its strategic security instead of demanding taxes or tributes from the frontiers (p. 9-10). Chapter 2 analyzes the dynamics and limits of the Qing's territorial expansion. As Li demonstrates, it was driven primarily by the imperial rulers' pursuit of geopolitical security (pp. 23-29). The Qing rulers considered the ideological, social, and geopolitical contexts of both the frontier and interior regions and developed different policies and strategies to govern the diverse populations (pp. 31-44). Chapter 3 further reveals how the Qing's "low-level equilibrium"-a static and rigid structure of regular revenues and routine expenditures-helped fulfill the state's geopolitical goals and maintain its military operation. Yet, as Li argues, when this equilibrium lost balance and became increasingly unfavorable to the state in the late eighteenth century, it also determined the limits of the Qing's war efforts and caused a decrease in the government's capacity of handling interior and frontier crisis (pp. 53-69, 77-79). Chapter 4 examines how the Qing managed to survive the devastating wars and even doubled its officially reported revenues in the three decades following the Taiping
The problem of statehood with regard to relations between China, Yuan and Qing states and dynasties is analyzed in comparative historical context. It is hard to accept the concept of one China (single or divided), during many centuries ruled by different dynasties and never incorporated in other states. Self-names of states and declarations of their succession, as such, do not create historical succession. The concept of China under different circumstances has been used for different purposes: national liberation of the Chinese people from enslaving by foreigners, justifying of internecine fights and/or centralization of the state, the right of a foreign state to conquered China, the right of creation of a world empire or subjection of other states and peoples. Liao, Jin, Yuan and Qing should be considered not as "dynasties of China established by minority nationalities", but as multinational empires established by non-Chinese peoples: Khitans, Jurchens, Mongols and Manchus, to whom the conquered China or its part was joined. The Song and Ming empires, ROC and PRC represent the state of China in different historical times. However, the formation, structure, sociocultural concepts, ways of legitimization, governing, and national policy differ the Yuan and Qing empires from China, which was only a part of them. Declarations of the Manchus and the Chinese, that their empire is the main state in the world, Zhongguo, are analogous to declarations of German, Ottoman, Russian and some other monarchs about their succession to the Roman Empire. The Chinese worldview underwent serious changes in the course of history. These changes can be better explained as occurring in different (Chinese and non-Chinese) states with different understanding of the Zhongguo principle, than in one state led by Chinese and conquest dynasties.
The Qing Empire (China), Imperialism, and the Modern World
History Compass, 2011
China has become the subject of increasing attention in the study of world history. However, many world history texts still place the last Chinese dynasty, the Qing, in the category of the 'losers': victims of Western imperialism whose inability to adjust to the times led to their demise. A re-examination of the Qing Empire reveals a dynamic, expansionistic empire worthy of comparison with the largest empires of the West. The Qing Empire's experiences in the nineteenth century shed light on the practice of informal imperialism or semi-colonialism. The treaty-port system established in China became the template for similar practices of informal imperialism in Japan and Korea; it also demonstrated similarities to imperialist practices across the world. Despite being a victim of Western (and later) Japanese imperialism, the Qing Empire was also an able practitioner of both informal imperialism (in Korea) and the extension and consolidation and its formal imperialism in places such as Turkestan (Xinjiang) and Tibet. Unlike many of the empires to which it is often compared (including the Ottoman, Hapsburg, Mughal Empires), China successfully made the transition from empire to nation-state in the early twentieth century. Chinese leaders, both Republican and Communist, successfully worked to dismantle Western informal imperialism in China and maintain the borders claimed by the Qing Empire. Looking back from the perspective of the twentieth century, the Qing Empire ⁄ China is easily among the ranks of the most successful and durable empires of the modern period.
This lecture seeks to contribute to the integration of the Chinese past into global history by examining the basis upon which we think of China as an “empire.” It begins with a discursive analysis, drawing attention to the profound disjuncture between internal and external perceptions of “China” as “empire”: after 1600 most of the world was in the habit of describing China as “imperial,” but in China itself, explicit recognition of this status did not come until 1895. Even today, a conceptual impasse persists that hinders comparative study at a time when empire as a political and cultural formation attracts ever more attention. To remedy this aporia, the second part of the lecture offers an analysis of the historical processes and institutions that underlay the building of the Qing state in the 17th and 18th centuries, and the degree to which these might be considered to be “imperial” in nature.