Again I would like to convince others that I or other Chinese do not feel negatively about Muslims or any non-Chinese in a hateful way, its just that the Chinese consciousness have been deeply affected (you can say scarred) by events of recent history (our recent means last 200 years) from foreign forces, has nothing to do with modern wars in Middle east or other things.
I understand my posts can provoke strong emotions, and deeply apologise for offensive posts. Please let me elaborate where this is coming from as I want to share with all my friends here.
Century of humiliation was a pivotal time for the foundation of modern Chinese thinking. It is slowly subsiding into our subconscious but still very evident today. It is something I must explain to others to understand why China thinks and acts the way it does today.
Century of Humiliation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Century_of_humiliation
My short description or wiki pages cannot do it justice but provides and insight into only the major and pivotal points.
China had engaged in trade with Europe for centuries. The trade was pretty straightforward; Europe wanted tea, silk, and porcelain, China only wants silver in payment. China only wanted silver because it thought Europeans goods were of no use to China (Chinese leader's hubris) and rejected science. Europe had an addiction to those Chinese goods and its treasuries were running low on silver so it sought silver from heavily taxing its colonies, possibly causing the American war of independence. Realising this is not a sustainable model, UK merchants found a brilliant solution; sell opium. Get the Chinese addicted so we can get our silver back. This kicked off a series of events.
The Qing court realised this was destroying the harmony of society with addicts/opium dens everywhere and acted by destroying the opium being shipped in from British India. This event triggered the East India Company to approach the crown back in UK to request forces to teach the Chinese a lesson in messing with their business. UK sent an armada to China to punish and reopen the opium trade.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destruction_of_opium_at_Humen
Destruction of Opium in Humen
This triggered the First Opium war between UK and China, along with the second opium war and countless other conflicts. It was China's first taste of defeat from a European power. To keep the opium trade open UK needed a base of operations in China, forcing China to hand over Hong Kong in a series of "unequal treaties" to come. At the time the public in America and UK were outraged that they were conducting such practices but money was good for capitalists.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Opium_War
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Opium_War
In fact some of the most powerful families and universities in America today were founded by opium traders selling opium to China, they were drug lords. They include the Franklin Roosevelt's grandfather, most of Ivy league schools, Princeton, Colombia, Yale (Skulls and Bones society),Bell telephone company to name a few. When Chinese go to America to study in Ivy league they the reminder of the past stares them in the face, they don't complain but they know. Most of the "establishment" politicians in America today had ancestors selling opium in China. At the same time the Anglo-American cartel forces the opium trade, Chinese people were treated like dogs literally within China by European imperialists, without human dignity but we live on. To rid themselves of the dirty work, the law enforcement was done by guards from British India, namely Sikhs thus giving Indians a bad historical reputation in Southern China like Hong Kong.
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2012/09...f-conflict-anglo-american-and-chinesehistory/
https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-bush-family-saga-airbrushed-out-of-history/5512738
Bruce Lee incorporated many elements of the struggle of the Century of Humiliation into his movies. He grew up during that time and experienced it first hand.
During the early-mid 19th century discontent within the Chinese people were brewing, not focused on the Europeans but the incompetent Qing government. This anger manifested itself in a series of uprisings against the Qing government such as Taiping rebellion (20-30 million dead) and Boxer rebellion.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Chinese_wars_and_battles#Qing_dynasty_.281644.E2.80.931912.29
By the late 19th century Qing government realised its overwhelming incompetence in the face of foreign powers and wanted to reform and modernise. There were industry started along the Yangtze River in Wuhan and Shanghai. China adopted western firearms and uniforms in hopes of building a strong modern military. The Chinese government bought the best naval ships on the global market paying a heavy price, but China still had a decentralised military in charge of their own region that wont help each other. None the less China built the largest navy by tonnage in Asia, the Northern Fleet or Beiyang fleet (China had 4 fleets in total) alone was the largest in Asia (8th in the world, other 7 were all European powers) formed of European ships. Dispite the ships, corruption was rampant within the navy and lacked discipline. The sailors would travel around East Asia, pawning military hardware for cash to gamble.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beiyang_Fleet
Rise of Japan and the War of Jiawu
To the East is a rising power, Japan. Having been intimidated by the overwhelming firepower of American gun boats during the Perry expeditions to Japan, they finally opened up and started the Meji restoration in 1867 to transform Japan into a modern country. It started to rapidly modernise, not by buying European machines but understanding science and building their own industry. Seeing the backwardness and weakness of China it unleashed Japan's realisation that it had a historic opportunity to conquer Asia. Japan's relationship with China is complicated, it sees China has the origin of its traditional culture but wants to prove its superiority over China through humiliation, so the Chinese will bow down and submit.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matth...dition:_Opening_of_Japan.2C_1852.E2.80.931854
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meiji_Restoration
Tanaka Memorial, Japan's plan to conquer the world:
In order to take over the world, you need to take over Asia;
In order to take over Asia, you need to take over China;
In order to take over China, you need to take over Manchuria and Mongolia.
If we succeed in conquering China, the rest of the Asiatic countries and the South Sea countries will fear us and surrender to us.
Then the world will realize that Eastern Asia is ours.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanaka_Memorial
By 1894 Japan was a power that could rival the Europeans, it was ready for action. It started the invasion of Korea, North East China and Taiwan to kick off its ambitious plans. When China was defeated during the first Jiawu war, aka first sino-japanese war in 1894 it made the backwardness of China evident and boosted Japan's sense of superiority over China and the Chinese race as they put it. China had lost Korea an ally/protectorate, its province of Taiwan, its own dignity, the best navy it can possibly come up with through buying advanced European ships (bigger than Japanese ships) was entirely destroyed, and lost modernisation of the nation. It was also forced to sign the Treaty of Shimonoseki. It confirmed the previous fear of backwardness starting when China lost concessions to European imperialism. This unleashed a wave of sons of Chinese elites studying in those very countries that have caused China this pain, with a large amount going to Japan to study. The thinking was "where we got defeated was where we should pick ourselves up". It awakened a group of civilians to the reality they must face or meet the death of their reality.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Sino-Japanese_War
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Shimonoseki
Japan was victorious, defeating China was not enough, it must be humiliated. China must pay for the cost of war and more.
"After the war, according to the Chinese scholar Jin Xide, the Qing government paid a total of 340,000,000 taels (13,600 tons) of silver to Japan in both war reparations and trophies. This was equivalent to about 510,000,000 Japanese yen at the time, about 6.4 times the Japanese government's revenue."
Awakening of the Intellectual Elite
Dr. Sun Zhongshan (left) founding father of Republic of China, Chiang Kai Shek (right) KMT, president of ROC.
Deng Xiaoping, President of People's Republic of China. In 1979 opened up China's market to the world.
Those that had the means to study abroad did, they saw the death of their civilisation flash before their eyes. Some prominent people that did were Chiang Kai Shek and Deng Xiaoping. Chiang Kai Shek studied in Japan while Deng Xiaoping in France. While in Japan Chiang studied in the Imperial Japanese Army Academy and served in the Japanese army from 1909-1911, forcing himself to overcome the humiliation put on him by the Japanese officers to toughen his spirit to fulfil his destiny of restoring a broken China.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiang_Kai-shek
After the First Sino-Japanese war China was exhausted, broken, demoralised and on the edge of collapse. The Qing court tries at another attempt to modernise the nation through sweeping reforms of the nation but it was too late.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Policies
This triggered the Boxer rebellion. The rebellion consisted of united militias in the goal of removing foreign influence from China. This alerted the imperial powers and created the "8-nation alliance" a military coalition to coerce the Qing government to fight the rebellion and fight the militias themselves.
Soldiers of the 8 Nation alliance in China.
Execution (beheading) of boxer rebels after a failed rebellion. Chinese beheading Chinese as the 8-nation alliance watches.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boxer_Rebellion
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-Nation_Alliance
After this China goes into a state of perpetual civil conflict till 1949, starting with the fall of Qing Dynasty (1912), Xinhai Revolution, Warlord era, Republican ear, Second Sino-Japanese war, Civil war (ROC vs PRC). The darkness of Chinese civilization has yet to end.
End of Perpetual Civil conflict
In 1949 the Chinese civil war ended, the ROC government retreats to the island of Taiwan, setting up the Taipei government. Chiang Kai Shek even after loosing the mainland refuses to give up the dream of an united China, dispite his disagreement with Mao, there is only one China in his mind. He cannot answer to his humiliated ancestors if he had given up that dream of a restored China. This culminates the hundred years of wars on Chinese soil since the first opium war with UK. In 1949 Mao said, "The Chinese people had stood up". What does he mean? China was a backwards, dirt poor, industrialised civilisation composed of mostly peasants.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Civil_War
The Korean war
In 1950 one year after the end of the Chinese civil war on the mainland. China had a ruined intrastructure, starving people, empty treasury (government assets were moved to taiwan with the KMT), scientific and intellectual elites left for Taiwan but moral was at a historic high. Every Chinese person at that time knows this is the end and the beginning.
From China's point of view, the North Koreans have just invaded the south to unify Korea with Soviet help. China was too crippled for this war but Americans saw this as communism spreading. Utilising their mobility and firepower they quickly pushed back from Busan and to the Yalu River on the Chinese-Korean border. To China this had very little to do with spreading communist beliefs, we are very defensive in nature. When the American forces were closing in, every Chinese knows in their hearts this was not a war with America or capitalism, this was a war with the entire western global system and western civilisation that had caused China pain and suffering, if Chinese were to look their ancestors in the face and respect them, this is a war they must fight and win. North Korean forces were destroyed, Soviets don't want to trigger an nuclear war, China must face USA and the UN forces. The PLA didn't have the luxury of industrial production as the US, but it had high moral. To the Chinese the Korean war was the culmination of the century of humiliation, it proved to themselves they are not inferior to western civilisation and can restore order to a destroyed civilisation. Death was better than losing this opportunity to fulfil a historic destiny.
In the American recall of the war, they could not understand why the Chinese soldiers were so relentless, fearless, and fanatical, they were not crazy about communism or spreading it but a sense of historic destiny. In the battle of triangle hill the granite hilltop was shaved down 2 meters and turned to a meter thick layer of ash from constant bombardment by the US. The Chinese soldiers have dug in and prepared for a final stand. Eventually stopping the US 8th Army group. Peace talks ensued.
Empty US artillery shells, battle of Triangle Hill
Chinese soldiers throwing rocks at attackers after running out of ammunition.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_War
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Triangle_Hill
Korean war and the impact on the Chinese mindset
This was not just a war for China, Chinese all around the world was watching, they understood what was happening in a historical sense. Lee Kwan Yew the founder of Singapore initially rejected learning the Chinese language calling it useless. What use is a language used by useless people? But the Korean war changed his world view forever, at that time he starting to learn Mandarin. No longer are Chinese a useless people, a useless civilisation that cannot contribute to the world. Through that he foresaw China's rise, China has escaped the 200 year trap. The Korean was symbolic in that Chinese were no longer a useless, helpless people that couldn't fend for themselves and the discovery was that the key to the Chinese civilisation was its spirit and soul. Through the turmoils it has faced through the century of humiliation it has finally found it again.
The Chinese today, learn and study this history all their lives and realise our ancestors have sacrificed immensely to enable us to live in this precious era. It is irresponsible and defacing to our ancestors and future generations if we spoil this opportunity.
China officially rejects all unequal treaties which causes all the territory disputes we see today.
I feel honoured. Just like to add that I personally have many close Pakistani friends and we openly talk about issues on life, culture, and politics all the time and would like to have similar conversations here.
