Ch. 2: Crouching Tiger Serialization

China’s Century of Humiliation and Its Homeland Protection Imperative

Enjoy the read! The entire book is available on Amazon.

Question: Which countries have invaded China over the past 200 years?

1.     France

2.     Germany

3.     Great Britain

4.     Japan

5.     Russia

6.     The United States

7.     All of the above

If you are not Chinese or a student of Asian history, you may be surprised to learn that the correct answer to this question is actually “all of the above.”[i]  In fact, China’s fear of being dominated by foreign powers and its pursuit of homeland protection is the most obvious reason why China is seeking to build up its military; and its concerns in this dimension are both fully justified and deeply rooted in its so-called “century of humiliation.” 

This century began in 1839 with Britain’s first “opium war” against China.  It then ran through the end of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1945 and featured everything China fears today – from military domination and naval blockades to massive land grabs, equally massive war reparations, repeated assaults on Chinese sovereignty, and the slaughter of millions of Chinese citizens.   

Prior to 1839, dating back to the 1600s, an imperial China, through a succession of emperors, was the undisputed superpower in Asia; and vassal states which regularly paid tribute to China’s dynastic rulers included Burma and Vietnam in Southeast Asia, Nepal on China’s western flanks, and Korea and Japan in East Asia.   By 1683, a dynastic China had also conquered a critical gateway to the Pacific Ocean – the island of Taiwan.

China’s undisputed regional hegemony would, however, come to an abrupt and inglorious end in 1839 once Britain and its powerful navy forced China’s emperor to cede the territories of Hong Kong and Kowloon – along with effective control of all of China’s major ports. 

Over time, the British Empire would also wrest Nepal from China’s sphere of influence and colonize Burma.   Czarist Russia would militarily coerce China into surrendering a large chunk of its northeast territory – along with its strategic access to the Sea of Japan.  And Imperial French forces would use, among other tactics, a naval blockade of Taiwan to force China to turn over control of all of northern Vietnam to France – thus paving the way for French hegemony in Indochina.