I. To understand China's vulnerability to imperialism in the 19th century, it is necessary to appreciate Chinese geography, demography, ruling institutions, Sino-centrism, as well as the impact European and U.S. power had before and after the tumultuous Taiping Revolution from 1850-1865.

A. China's geography

1. It is geographically bordered by the Himalayas and Tibet Plateau in the southwest, by the Pacific in the east, and the Gobi Desert in the north.
2. Only 12% of Chinese territory is suitable for cultivation, the rest being mountainous or too arid for farming
3. Colder north China grows mainly wheat, while warm south China grows rice
4. The two main rivers, flowing from west to east into the Pacific, are the Yellow River in the north and the Yangzi River in the south, which are connected by the Grand Canal.
5. Several large cities have existed for centuries mainly along the coast and inland along China's main rivers

B. China's demography

1. Over 20% of the entire world's population lives in China, with the number exceeding a billion people in 2000.
2. From 1400 to 1600, China's population more than doubled to 150 million, dropped in the 1600s because of weather and wars, but then grew steadily until the mid-1800s, when 20-30 million perished in the Taiping Revolution
3. Some 90% of the population are Han Chinese, the other 10% is comprised of nine main ethnic groups located mostly on the periphery.
4. The philosophy of Confucius (551-449 BCE) has been adapted to social hierarchy (ruler and subject; father and son, husband and wife; older and younger brother, with the former superior to the latter), with Chinese women for centuries long subordinated to men

C. China's ruling institutions

1. Since 250 BCE, the imperial state has gone through several dynasties that are grouped together as the "Early empire", 200s BCE to 200s CE, the "Middle empire", to the 1300s, and the "Late empire", to 1911.
2. China for centuries has maintained a million-man army, positioned mostly in the north, which with the Great Wall, resisted invasions from the north.
3. One of the keys to imperial continuity was the Chinese bureaucracy, whose members were determined not by birth or wealth, but by competitive exams for positions in  the 18 regions on up to the highest positions serving the emperor; the posts were open to everyone, but required so many years of schooling and study that peasants could not compete.
4. When dynasties rose, they relied on the military and the bureaucracy, but as the Chinese centralized state weakened, power was asserted locally by the gentry, who collected the taxes rather than remitting them to the capital.
5. Qing or "Manchu" China from 1644 to 1911 remained very powerful through the 1700s, but the local gentry dominated the central state in the 1800s.

D.  China's having been such a powerhouse for centuries lead  to Sino-centric closed-mindedness.

1. Chinese goods had long been sought out in the overland trade with Isalmic and Christian civilizations, which enabled the Chinese to amass lots of silver as Europe had  little China wanted.
2. A huge Chinese flotilla for trading in the Indian Ocean and to East Africa was abandoned in the 14002 just as Portugal and Spain in the 1500s,, followed by Holland, Britain, and France in the 1600s and 1700s, entered the region's trade
3. Europeans traded on Chinese terms through the 1700s, with Asians trading more with Asians than with Europeans  trading until the 1800s. All Chinese trade with foreigners had to be done through Chinese intermediaries, called Hongs.

E. The Taiping Revolution, 1851-1865

1. Led by an individual, Hong Wiuquan (1814-1864), son of a wealthy farmer, but whose ambitions for the civil service were frustrated by repeated failures, read some Baptist literature and convinced himself that he was the younger brother of Christ.
2. Hong formed a society and in 1851 proclaimed a new heavenly kingdom from which the Taipings derived their name, challenging Confucian gentry views, favoring modernization, women, communal rights, and organizing his large number followers locally for communal and military purposes as they advanced from the south to Nanjing, on the Yangzi River.
3. After several years of civil war, the Taiping Rebellion was crushed by the forces of the Manchu emperor, who depended mainly on the local gentry and their armies.
4. With 20 to 30 million people killed in the Taiping Rebellion,, Manchu China was obviously in a vulnerable position by the mid-19th century.

F. . The British led the way in breaking down Chinese trade barriers.

1. In the 1820s and 1830s, traders of the British East India Company began to sell opium to China, where it had been used only for medicinal purposes, but the British traders and their Chinese collaborators encouraged opium addiction
2. Backed by British superior naval technology and hard-line diplomacy, the Chinese surrendered after the First Opium War to the British in the 1840s, paying a large indemnity to Britain and opening five Chinese ports to British trade, granting "extra-territoriality" to foreign traders who were beyond Chinese law and control.
3. In the late 1850s, after the Second Opium War and the British bombarding Bejing, China in defeat agreed to open eleven more treaty ports, gave Western vessels and gunboats the run of China, and legalized the opium trade.

G. Chinese weakness was noted by the Europeans and Americans

1. In the 1880s, the French invaded Vietnam, which they turned into French Indochina
2. In the 1890s, the Japanese invaded Korea, which they annexed after defeating the Chinese
3. In the 1890s, the United States, after defeating Spain and acquiring the Phillippines, called for an "open door" policy, publicly sought to make sure that China was not partitioned into different European imperialist spheres and, thereby to protect China's territorial integrity, but was actually intended to secure equal economic advantages for the United States

H.  Angry Chinese formed a secret society, the Order of Literary Patriotic Harmonious Fists, dubbed "the Boxers" by amused Westereners. The Boxer Rebellion in 1899 led to attacks on railways, Christians, foreign legations and killed 300 foreigners. European powers, Japan, United States joined to put down the rebellion and imposed a $330 million fine on the Chinese government.