Unequal treaty

A French political cartoon in 1898, China – the cake of Kings and Emperors, showing Queen Victoria of Britain, Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany, Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, Marianne of France and Japanese Emperor Meiji dividing China ruled by Emperor Guangxu. "Kiao-Tchéou" and "Port-Arthur," written on slices of the cake, represent those locations in China; a stereotyped mandarin reacts with horror in the background.

The Eight-Nation Alliance inside the Chinese imperial palace, the Forbidden City, during a celebration ceremony after the signing of the Boxer Protocol, 1901.

In China, the term "unequal treaty" first came into use in the early 1920s to describe the historical treaties, still imposed on the then-Republic of China, that were signed through the period of time which the American sinologist John K. Fairbank characterized as the "treaty century" which began in the 1840s.[3]

In assessing the term's usage in rhetorical discourse since the early 20th century, American historian Dong Wang notes that "while the phrase has long been widely used, it nevertheless lacks a clear and unambiguous meaning" and that there is "no agreement about the actual number of treaties signed between China and foreign countries that should be counted as unequal."[3] However, within the scope of Chinese historiographical scholarship, the phrase has typically been defined to refer to the many cases in which China was effectively forced to pay large amounts of financial reparations, open up ports for trade, cede or lease territories (such as Outer Manchuria and Outer Northwest China (including Zhetysu) to the Russian Empire, Hong Kong and Weihaiwei to the United Kingdom, Guangzhouwan to France, Kwantung Leased Territory and Taiwan to the Empire of Japan, the Jiaozhou Bay concession to the German Empire and concession territory in Tientsin, Shamian, Hankou, Shanghai etc.), and make various other concessions of sovereignty to foreign spheres of influence, following military threats.[4]

The Chinese-American sinologist Immanuel Hsu states that the Chinese viewed the treaties they signed with Western powers and Russia as unequal "because they were not negotiated by nations treating each other as equals but were imposed on China after a war, and because they encroached upon China's sovereign rights ... which reduced her to semicolonial status".[5]

The earliest treaty later referred to as "unequal" was the 1841 Convention of Chuenpi negotiations during the First Opium War. The first treaty between China and the United Kingdom termed "unequal" was the Treaty of Nanjing in 1842.[4]

Following Qing China's defeat, treaties with Britain opened up five ports to foreign trade, while also allowing foreign missionaries, at least in theory, to reside within China. Foreign residents in the port cities were afforded trials by their own consular authorities rather than the Chinese legal system, a concept termed extraterritoriality.[4] Under the treaties, the UK and the US established the British Supreme Court for China and Japan and United States Court for China in Shanghai.

When the US expeditionary fleet led by Matthew Perry reached Japan in 1854 to force open the island nation for American trade, the country was compelled to sign the Convention of Kanagawa under the threat of violence by the American warships.[13] Although its historical importance has been argued by some to be limited, this event abruptly terminated Japan's 220 years of seclusion under the Sakoku policy of 1633 under unilateral foreign pressure and consequentially, the convention has been seen in a similar light as an unequal treaty.[14]

Another significant incident was the Tokugawa Shogunate's capitulation to the Harris Treaty of 1858, negotiated by the eponymous U.S. envoy Townsend Harris, which, among other concessions, established a system of extraterritoriality for foreign residents. This agreement would then serve as a model for similar treaties to be further signed by Japan with other foreign Western powers in the weeks to follow.[15]

The enforcement of these unequal treaties were a tremendous national shock for Japan's leadership as they both curtailed Japanese sovereignty for the first time in its history and also revealed the nation's growing weakness relative to the West through the latter's successful imposition of such agreements upon the island nation. An objective towards the recovery of national status and strength would become an overarching priority for Japan, with the treaty's domestic consequences being the end of the Bakufu, the 700 years of shogunate rule over Japan, and the establishment of a new imperial government.[16]

The unequal treaties ended at various times for the countries involved and Japan's victories in the 1894–95 First Sino-Japanese War convinced many in the West that unequal treaties could no longer be enforced on Japan.

Korea's first unequal treaty was not with the West, but instead with Japan. The Ganghwa Island incident in 1875 saw Japan send the warship Un'yō led by Captain Inoue Yoshika with the implied threat of military action to coerce the Korean kingdom of Joseon through the show of force. After an armed clash ensued around Ganghwa Island where the Japanese force was sent, which resulted in its victory, the incident subsequently forced Korea to open its doors to Japan by signing the Treaty of Ganghwa Island, also known as the Japan–Korea Treaty of 1876.[17]

During this period Korea also signed treaties with Qing China and the West powers (such as the United Kingdom and the United States). In the case of Qing China, it signed the China–Korea Treaty of 1882 with Korea stipulating that Korea was a dependency of China and granted the Chinese extraterritoriality and other privileges,[18] and in subsequent treaties China also obtained concessions in Korea, notably the Chinese concession of Incheon.[19][20] However, Qing China lost its influence over Korea following the First Sino-Japanese War in 1895.

As Japanese dominance over the Korean peninsula grew in the following decades, with respect to the unequal treaties imposed upon the kingdom by the West powers, Korea's diplomatic concessions with those states became largely null and void in 1910, when it was annexed by Japan.[21]

In 2018, Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad criticized the terms of the bilateral infrastructure projects under the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative in Malaysia and urged the Chinese negotiators to reassess them through invoking the historical memory of China's unequal treaties.[53][54] Stating that "they know that when they lend big sums of money to a poor country, in the end they may have to take the project for themselves". He appealed by stating that "China knows very well that it had to deal with unequal treaties in the past imposed upon China by Western powers. So China should be sympathetic toward us. They know we cannot afford this."[55]

• Century of humiliation
• China Centenary Missionary Conference
• Client state
• Concessions in China
• List of Chinese treaty ports
• Most favoured nation
• Normanton incident
• Puppet state
• Sick man of Asia
• Western imperialism in Asia

• Auslin, Michael R. (2004). Negotiating with Imperialism: The Unequal Treaties and the Culture of Japanese Diplomacy. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-01521-0; OCLC 56493769
• Hsü, Immanuel Chung-yueh (1970). The Rise of Modern China. New York: Oxford University Press. OCLC 300287988
• Nish, I. H (1975). "Japan Reverses the Unequal Treaties: The Anglo-Japanese Commercial Treaty of 1894". Journal of Oriental Studies. 13 (2): 137–146.
• Perez, Louis G (1999). Japan Comes of Age: Mutsu Munemitsu & the Revision of the Unequal Treaties. p. 244.
• Ringmar, Erik (2013). Liberal Barbarism: The European Destruction of the Palace of the Emperor of China. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
• Wang, Dong (2003). "The Discourse of Unequal Treaties in Modern China". Pacific Affairs. 76 (3): 399–425.
• Wang, Dong. (2005). China's Unequal Treaties: Narrating National History. Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books. ISBN 9780739112083.
• Fravel, M. Taylor (2008). Strong Borders, Secure Nation: Cooperation and Conflict in China's Territorial Disputes. Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-1-4008-2887-6
• Halleck, Henry Wager. (1861). International law: or, Rules regulating the intercourse of states in peace and war. New York: D. Van Nostrand. OCLC 852699
• Korean Mission to the Conference on the Limitation of Armament, Washington, D.C., 1921–1922. (1922). Korea's Appeal to the Conference on Limitation of Armament. Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office. OCLC 12923609
• Fravel, M. Taylor (2005). Regime Insecurity and International Cooperation: Explaining China's Compromises in Territorial Disputes. International Security. 30 (2): 46–83. doi:10.1162/016228805775124534. ISSN 0162-2889.