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points
Expert opinions on
historical issues that
touch today’s world or nearly 100 years, from
the mid-19th to the
mid-20th centuries, China
was not free to trade. In
1839, the first war with the British began
over opium sales (for more, see page 20).
China lost and, in 1842, had to sign the
first of a century of ‘unequal treaties’ by
which favourable territorial and trading
rights were given to the British, the
French, the Americans and, eventually,
the Japanese, who became Asia’s most
powerful imperialists.
In 1854, the British established the
Maritime Customs Service, an unusual
hybrid organisation that provided tariff
revenue for the Chinese government,
but was run at the top level by foreign,
mostly British, officials. For nearly half
a century, till 1911, its most prominent
figure was its Inspector-General,
the Ulsterman Robert Hart, and the
institution itself survived until 1952.Yet from the early 20th century, it
caused increasing resentment among
Chinese nationalists, who argued that
a system run by foreigners, however
efficient, was humiliating for a country
that should be able to set its own tariffs.
It was only in 1930 that China’s then
Nationalist (Guomindang) government,
led by Chiang Kai-shek, was able to
reclaim autonomy over import taxes.
Even today, that experience is remem-
bered in China as part of a ‘century of
humiliation’ when the world was able
to order China around.
When the Communists came to
power in 1949, Mao Zedong declared
that “the Chinese people have stood up”,
not least by building on the Nationalists’
achievements in restoring China’s
freedom to trade. Yet China was then
isolated from the capitalist world.
Diplomatic and trade relations with the
United States were limited until theF
Trading blows
The US–China trade war feels as if it’s blown
up very suddenly, but a long and unhappy
history of trade between China and the west
is still well remembered in Beijing
BY RANA MITTERИЗП
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