‘Winning the Peace’: The Chinese Maritime Customs Service, foreign technocrats, and planning the rehabilitation of post-war China, 1943–1945

Through the lens of the multinational staff of the Chinese Maritime Customs Service (CMCS), this article argues that a technocratic programme of reconstruction evolved in the Nationalist government's wartime efforts on post-war planning, which refashioned a cadre of foreign (semi-)colonial-era experts into technocrats serving a sovereign state. This episode, in which the weakened Customs Service reclaimed its significance for the Chinese state, occurred in China's wartime capital, Chongqing. After the abrogation of the so-called ‘unequal treaties’ with foreign powers in January 1943, China entered a post-treaty era, and the question of retaining long-serving foreign Customs Service employees perplexed Nationalist leaders. Eventually, China's huge post-war need for foreign expertise, networks, and imports led to a moderate staff reorganization of the CMCS, with foreign technocrats being kept on and other bureaucrats either shifted to advisory positions or being forced to retire. Technical expertise provided a new guise for the European and American presence in post-imperialist China. Taking the rehabilitation of coastal lighthouses as an example, this article demonstrates the significance of foreign technocrats to the Chinese state during the last phase of the Sino-Japanese War and in its immediate aftermath. In showing the ambition and preparations of the Nationalist government for a post-war era, this article corrects a narrative of an all-out collapse of the Nationalist government from the mid-1940s. The wartime evolution of the Customs Service further highlights the growing importance of technocrats in the decolonizing world.

Neutrality is Impossible: Nationalism, Unequal Treaties and the National Christian Council of China 1925-1926

"This article takes the National Christian Council of China (NCC) as a ease study. By examining the responses from various stakeholder both mainline Chinese Protestants and western mission within the NCC to the campaigns for the abrogation of the unequal treaties during the period of 1925——1926, it aims to reveal the tension and interaction between Christian missions? Chinese churches and the nationalist discourse. This article argues that although both Protestant missions and Chinese churches were in general the beneficiaries of the utoleration clauses“ of the unequal treaties and were aware of the necessity of drawing a clear borderline with the treaties > the two parties viewed the matter from different standpoints. To the majority of the missionary societies associated with the NCC > it was a diplomatic matter to be solved through formal negotiation between the governments. Whereas to most of the mainline Chinese Protestants> it had developed into a fundamental factor causing not only Christianity's unfavourable position in Chinese society, but also China's backwardness and uhumiliation. Considerably influenced by the nationalist discourse? they ardently engaged themselves in the campaigns to abrogate the unequal treaties > individually or as a group. Specific Chinese socio-political context and the nationalist discourse contributed significantly to the divergence of views. The NCC, incorporating both sides?was obliged to make a prompt response to the treaty issue and struggled to find common ground among the cooperating bodies.

Matters Not That Trivial: Damage to the “Safety-Valve” Mechanism in Civil Justice and the Rise of the Boxer Movement in the Late Qing Period

Litigation in rural China under the Qing involved “trivial matters” 细事 over marriage, land transactions, debt, theft, and so on. “Going to court” 打官司, as a regular means of resolving such disputes, functioned as a “safety valve” in maintaining social order, while the mishandling of civil disputes by local magistrates and prefects often had severe consequences. After 1860, Western missionaries became increasingly active in rural North China under the system of unequal treaties. Their arrogance and interference with lawsuits by providing local converts with judicial protection caused damage to the safety valve and disgruntlement among the victims of their abuses. It was the growing enmity toward the missionaries that led to rampant violence by the Boxers around 1900.

Ottoman Turkey and Qing China

The late Ottoman Empire and Qing China were both imperial states that were weakened by their relationship with the changing Western world. In 1839, the Ottoman Empire embarked on the Tanzimat reforms which sought to change ideas about education, technology, and government structure. In the same year, China experienced the first Opium War, and its defeat led to the signing of “unequal treaties” which would force China to deal on unfavorable terms with the West for the best part of a century. In the end, the empires met different fates. Qing China was replaced by a republic in 1912, but its territory remained mostly intact. The Ottoman Empire was split up after World War I. One reason for the split of the Ottoman Empire was the variegated nature of its population, compared even to the multiethnic Qing. Another was Turkey’s relative closeness to the other European powers, which made it easier for them to divide it up.

Research on the Development of Cities and Architecture in the Open Ports (International Settlements and Foreign Concessions) of East Asia

In the past, to get from one country to another, a long journey on a ship was required. Trade between countries was also done using ships, which transported cargo via shipping routes across the globe. Ports in specific countries accommodated trade, including in East Asia where many were opened as a result of unequal treaties with western powers. Treaty ports were often agreed after western powers such as the UK and nUS defeated military powers in China, Japan and Korea and terms favouring the successful nations were agreed. Foreigners would arrive into the treaty ports, and commodities such as restaurants, foreigners clubs, churches and racecourses were built for these new citizens. Ultimately, colonisation occurred, with areas in China, Japan and Korea being commandeered by Western ways of life. A team of researchers led by Professor An-Suk Son, Research Center for Non Written Cultural Materials, Kanagawa University, Japan, is looking at the open ports of East Asia, investigating the history and architecture of the Japanese consulate, banks, schools, hospitals and spinning companies. A key focus for the researchers is on buildings that were developed during the time of foreign settlement. Previous studies that have been done in this area have tended to focus on Shanghai in China, Yokohama in Japan and Incheon in Korea, and Son's research is innovative in that it uses new materials that have emerged in the years since, such as English newspapers, magazines, pictures, leaflets and photo books. The team also plants to build on previous studies to include places such as Qingdao and Guangzhou.

Japanese Princesses in Chicago: Representations of Japanese Women in the San Francisco Chronicle and Chicago Tribune (1872)

In December 1871, the Iwakura Mission was sent by the Meiji government to the US and Europe. One of the aims of the mission was the observation of foreign practices and technologies. If Japan wanted to suppress the Unequal Treaties and be considered a “first rank nation”, it had to adopt the “civilized” manners and rules of North America and Europe (Nish, 1998). Five Japanese girls, aged six to sixteen accompanied the Mission to be educated in the US for a ten-year period. Their presence didn’t go unnoticed by the American Press, and the articles reporting on their stay provided an opportunity to bring up broader themes on Japanese women and Japan. The five girls were the first women to officially represent Japan in the US. Identified by the American media as “Japanese Princesses”, their reception was confronted with the American image and understanding of Japan. This article analyses the representations of the five girls, and of Japanese women in general, in the San Francisco Chronicle and the Chicago Tribune during the two months that the Iwakura Mission travelled eastward from San Francisco to Washington, via Chicago. I identify and analyse the recurring tropes: the girls’ social position, the craze they created among the Americans, their beauty, the exoticism of their kimono, the education they will receive in America. The newspapers’ representation of the girls are full of inaccuracies and mistakes, myths and exoticism. Nonetheless, the representations are overwhelmingly positive and the girls – as well as the whole of the Mission’s members – are warmly welcomed by the American press.

China’s and Japan’s Divergent Institutions

China and Japan share some historical affinities, and they faced similar challenges of foreign threats and unequal treaties in the nineteenth century. Their subsequent paths were very different, however. As a late developer, Japan experienced industrialization in two movements, the more recent being the postwar period under the strong influence of the United States and its New Deal institutions. After its 1949 revolution, China also underwent late-developer industrialization, but under the initial influence of the Soviet model. China’s rapprochement with the United States and subsequent opening led to massive institutional change and rapid growth as a compressed developer, with significant foreign direct investment and global-value-chain engagement. A comparison of education and skill development highlights just how different these paths were.

The Best of the Chinese and of the Western

Chapter 4 introduces the conflicts arising in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries between the Qing dynasty and Western powers over Chinese law and justice that contributed to the Opium Wars and the resultant unequal treaties. It explains how, compelled by Western pressure and modeled after Western systems, the Qing dynasty, not foreseeing its own demise in ten years, began a far-reaching legal-judicial reform to modernize law codes and judicial institutions and practices. Guided by the principles of the rule of law, judicial independence, and due process, the reformers set out ambitious reform goals that would result in some concrete changes in laws and institutions, and more importantly, the goals would outlive the Qing dynasty to be pursued and implemented in the Republican era (1912–1949).

Protestant Entrance and Christian Expansion (1840–1950)

Beginning in the 1840s, Anglo-French gunboat diplomacy and “unequal treaties” forcibly opened China to European economic interests and, in so doing, introduced unprecedented opportunities for Christian expansion. Catholic missionaries and priests returned to nurture “Old Catholics” and plant new missions, and for the first time Protestants appeared on the scene with millennial hopes of reaching “China’s millions.” This chapter begins by giving general attention to reasons for the Chinese to reject or accept the Christian message. It then turns to specific discussions of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, the China Inland Mission, “Pastor Xi” (Xi Liaozhi), and first-generation Fuzhou Protestants. It concludes with an examination of the views of American theological liberals who, beginning in the late nineteenth century, rejected the traditional Christian emphasis on the necessity of conversion.

European Imperialism and China’s Response in the 19th Century

During the 19th century, the great powers imposed a series of unequal treaties on China that violated the country’s sovereignty. These agreements guaranteed Europeans, Americans, and later the Japanese rights of extraterritoriality, opened an increasing number of treaty ports to international commerce, and fixed import tariffs at 5 percent to facilitate foreign penetration of Chinese markets. Qing officials launched an important reform movement called “Self-Strengthening” in the 1860s to enhance state power and combat foreign influence, and these efforts continued until China’s defeat in the First Sino-Japanese War of 1894–1895. Although the imperial court in Beijing placed its imprimatur on this political program, the principal impetus for these changes came from high-ranking provincial authorities of Han Chinese ethnic extraction such as Li Hongzhang, Zhang Zhidong, and Ding Richang. Despite the partial political decentralization of the period, these reforms had a lasting impact. Over the course of a half century, the Self-Strengthening Movement and the subsequent New Policies (1901–1911) laid the foundation of a powerful military-fiscal state in China, a polity organized around the imperative of war-making. This form of political organization combined money, guns, and bureaucracy in new ways and replicated certain institutional features of European states without, however, transforming China into a poor imitation of “the West.” Officials augmented these core reforms with a series of state-sponsored enterprises in shipping, telegraphy, mining, and banking to develop a small modern sector within the economy. At an intellectual level, authorities such as Li Hongzhang formulated a new conception of statecraft focused on the pursuit of wealth and power to protect the empire’s sovereignty. Meanings of this term remained fluid prior to 1895, but together with ideas such as rights, independence, and commercial warfare it served as part of the basic vocabulary for this new philosophy of governance. In sum, the late Qing state amassed the sinews of power with considerable success, particularly in urban areas, and strengthened itself beyond the minimal threshold necessary to retain its independence during the height of European imperialism.