The Cambridge History of China. Vol. 13: Republican China 1912-1949, Part 2
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STATE AND SOCIETY IN THE REVOLUTIONARY PROCESS 71
Another part
of
the difficulty
in
reconsolidating state power
lay in the
activism
and
politicization
of
the
elite populace that
had
begun
in
the
nineteenth century. Would-be governments during
the
Republic
had
to
expand their power
in the
face
of
elites
who had
already organized
to
advance their
own
interests
or had
their
own
agenda
for
national policy.
Entrenched rural elites, city businessmen
and
professionals,
and
intel-
lectuals
all
provided some support
for the
Nationalist government,
but
many were never fully committed.
141
Repression
of
dissidence,
by
alienating more
and
more observers, created precisely
the
distrust
and
opposition that was feared. Intent upon expanding
and
protecting
its own
power,
the
Nationalist state
of the KMT
still
did not
effectively control
local affairs
and
became incapable
of
devising institutions that might have
broadened popular participation
in
government. Cycles
of
violence
and
counter-violence
fed
upon
one
another,
and
those
who
neither condoned
the government
nor
wished
to
risk opposing
it
withdrew
to
private
pursuits
or
local activities.
There were
at
least three spheres
of
politics. First,
a
limited circle
in
which factions within governments
or
parties competed
for
power,
and
people
on the
outside acceptable
to the
regime established contacts with
officials
to
protect
or
further their interests.
142
Second, urban oppositional
politics, encompassing mass demonstrations
and
other expressions
of
dissent through organization
and the
press. These sometimes violent
mobilizations
of
elites
(and
some allies
in the
labour movement) shaded
off into
the
clandestine organizations
of
Communists
and
other leftists
in
the
cities.
The
third sphere
was the
politics
of
the countryside, which
included such diverse elements
as the
struggles
of
local military leaders
with autonomous ambitions, efforts
of
governments
to
collect taxes
and
141
Theories
of
the relations between the Kuomintang and social elites fall into three categories.
Marxist historians and
a
variety
of
contemporary writers have called the Kuomintang the party
of
the
urban bourgeoisie and rural landlords (e.g. Harold Isaacs,
The
tragedy
of
the
Chinese
revolution,
31,
i8z). Other authors have stressed
the
personal dictatorship
of
Chiang Kai-shek (Ch'ien
Tuan-sheng,
Government
and politics
of
China,
123, 132,
137);
or
suggested that
the
Nanking
government was a dictatorial regime, which pursued its own interests unresponsive to any social
class (Eastman, Abortive
revolution,
240, 286);
or
characterized
it as an
authoritarian military
regime, which ruled by controlling, suppressing, and arbitrating between weak social forces (Parks
Coble,
Jr.
The Shanghai capitalists and the Nationalist
government,
1927-19)7, 341-2).
A
more
complex picture is suggested by historians who argue that neither the Kuomintang nor the elites
were monolithic. Through complicated, shifting political interactions, elements in the party and
government and various rural and urban elites sought to advance their power and interests. The
Kuomintang was thus more pre-authoritarian than authoritarian, for
it
was too militarily and
financially over-extended
to
effectively control social groups. See Bradley Geisert, 'Toward
a
pluralistic model of KMT rule',
Chinese
Republican
Studies
Newsletter, 7.2 (Feb. 1982) 1—10; Geisert,
'Power and society', 1-10
and
passim;
Richard Bush,' Industry and politics in Kuomintang China:
the Nationalist regime and Lower Yangtze Chinese cotton mill owners, 1927-1937', 18—24,307-8,
3 3
*-4-
142
Bush, 'Industry and polities', 308-13.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
72 INTRODUCTION: HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES
of taxpayers to avoid them, and landlord suppression of apolitical peasant
social protest. Political relationships followed patterns of patronage and
brokerage, and violence was common when these mechanisms broke
down.
143
Pushed out of the cities controlled by the KMT, the Communist Party
advanced its revolutionary programme and competed with local power
holders in remote rural base areas under wartime conditions.
144
As yet
unburdened with many of the administrative problems weighing down
the Nationalist government, CCP members devised flexible policies to
advance their cause by appealing to the most pressing social grievances
in any area where they were trying to establish a base. In Shantung and
Hopei, for instance, 'class struggle' to politicize peasant discontent was
directed at 'local bullies' and tax-collectors, whom peasants considered
more oppressive than landlords.
145
The moderate redistributeve policies
and inclusive assemblies promising non-party elites some political voice
facilitated the goal of bringing a broader spectrum of villagers into local
governments under party control. By giving political direction to social
discontent the Communists began a process of building power from the
bottom up.
146
The full potential for expanding state power would not
be realized until after 1949.
These twentieth-century changes raised again
the
issue
of the relationship
of the individual to the state. Throughout history Chinese writers have
generally stressed the duties and obligations of individuals to rulers,
peasants, or others with little regard for any doctrine of human rights.
147
On the other hand, conceptions of justice and concern over injustice were
always present in China. More specific concern over the rule of law and
civil liberties inspired nineteenth-century Westerners to insist upon
143
See
below,
ch.
6
(Bianco).
144
See below, ch.
12
(Van Slyke) and ch. 13 (Pepper). Detailed historical studies
of
Communist base
areas written during the 1970s and early 1980s provide information
on
Communist organizational
efforts, relations with local power holders, and the leadership they gave
to
'
spontaneous' peasant
demands. See David Paulson,' Leadership and spontaneity: recent approaches
to
communist base
area studies', Chinese Republican Studies Newsletter,
7.1
(Oct. 1981) 13—18. Major base area studies
include Stephen
C.
Averill, 'Revolution
in the
highlands:
the
rise
of
the Communist movement
in Jiangxi province'; Kathleen Hartford, 'Step-by-step: reform, resistance and revolution
in the
Chin-Ch'a-Chi border region'; David Paulson,
'War
and
revolution
in
North China:
the
Shandong base area, 1937-194;'; Linda Grove, 'Rural society in revolution: the Gaoyang district,
1910-1947'. Ch'en Yung-fa, "The making
of
a revolution:
the
Communist movement
in
eastern
and central China, 1937-194;'
is
the
most comprehensive study
of
Communist Party strategies.
145
Suzanne Pepper, Civil war
in
China:
the
political
struggle
ipjj-iyjf, 282,
286-9; Ch'en Yung-fa,
243
and ch. 3 passim.
146
Perry, Rebels, chs. 6—7 contrasts Communist social-political restructuring with rebel violence that
did
not
rearrange local society.
On the
representational aspects
of
Communist base area policy,
the
realigned community consensus
in
base areas during wartime, and the potential
of
Communist
policies
for
building state power and control,
see
Ch'en Yung-fa,
351—3,
412-14, 541, 795-803.
147
See
Donald
J.
Munro,
The
concept
ofman
in
early
China,
and The
concept
of
man
in
contemporary
China.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
STATE AND SOCIETY IN THE REVOLUTIONARY PROCESS 73
extraterritoriality (foreign consular jurisdiction over foreigners), which
lay at the heart of the unequal treaty system and impaired the sovereignty
of the Chinese state from 1842 to 1943. Thus human rights, as they are
now called, were part and parcel of imperialism. In recent times there has
been persistent questioning as to the prospects for the rule of law and
civil liberties within the new state framework of China.
How far to give primacy to the individual citizen and how far to give
it to the collectivity to which the individual belongs has been a choice
resting on a recognized cultural difference between Chinese and Western
value systems. It may be seen as a crucial matter of emphasis, yet it still
lies within the larger question of the role of the people, elites and
commoners of all sorts, in Chinese political life. Put in such broad terms,
the question of 'democracy', however defined, was a key issue on the
agenda of the Chinese Revolution. Cognate trends toward state penetration
of society and social mobilization in political activity were inherited from
the late Ch'ing. The Chinese Republic confronted a vexed relationship
between rebuilding a strong state and broadening popular participation
in it.
148
This tension was increased by the young republic's international
environment.
148
This issue may be viewed as part of a modernization process. Thus developments in material
technology
—
roads, radio, aircraft, guns and books - brought Chinese governmental influence
to bear in the remotest village. Yet the non-quantifiable influence of immaterial beliefs, customs
and values often determined the balance between national and local interests, between official
autocracy and non-official activism, between dictatorship and democracy. Granted that processes
subsumed under the term modernization were plainly occurring, we find the concept lacking in
capacity to evaluate and discriminate among the various results. For a stimulating application
of the concept, see Gilbert Rozman, ed. Tie
modernisation
of
China;
also the review by Susan
Mann in JAS 42.1 (Nov. 1982) 146—53.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
CHAPTER
2
CHINA'S INTERNATIONAL
RELATIONS 1911-1931
Modern China's fate has been intricately intertwined with
the
foreign
policies of the powers, in particular Japan. Although historians nowadays
may shun the detailed chronicling
of
wars and treaties relating
to
China
(as
in
H. B. Morse's International
relations
of the
Chinese
Empire), this aspect
of Chinese history
is
becoming more important
in
retrospect. After all,
as Mary Wright pointed
out in
China
in
revolution,
the
presence
of
foreigners and their various activities
on
Chinese soil provided part
of
the milieu
in
which Chinese politics evolved
in the
twentieth century.
Moreover,
not
only
the
maritime
and
'foreign presence' described
in
volume 12
of
this series, but also the contradictions and conflicts among
the foreign powers, affected developments within Republican China. This
chapter, and chapter
io
below, therefore look
at
the external context
of
twentieth-century Chinese history, beginning naturally with the collapse
of the old order.'
CONTEXT: DECLINE AND FALL
OF
THE CH'lNG EMPIRE
AS AN
EAST ASIAN REGIONAL ORDER
The Ch'ing emperors' great achievement had been to assert their central
power over the arid peripheral regions of Manchuria, Mongolia, Sinkiang
and Tibet as well as over the heartland so densely populated by the Han
Chinese. Military force, feudalism, religion and trade had all served
the
Ch'ing politics
of
empire,
in
mixtures that varied
for
each region
and
people.
In all
these regions
of
Inner Asia, Ch'ing rule had been
set up
by warfare and was maintained by garrisons. In Manchuria and Mongolia
the emperor made the tribal chieftains his personal vassals.
In
Tibet and
Mongolia
he
patronized the heads
of
the Lamaist church.
In
Kashgaria
(southern Sinkiang)
he
appointed
as
rulers
the
local Islamic officials
('begs')
and
also accepted
the
Muslim
law and the
Islamic religious
establishment. This use of Lamaist Buddhism and
of
Islam
in
governing
1
The author
is
gratefully indebted
to
Douglas Reynolds, Marius Jansen and Akira Iriye
for
assistance in completing the English version of this chapter.
74
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
DECLINE AND FALL OF THE CH'lNG EMPIRE 75
parts of Inner Asia, like the Manchus' use of Confucianism in governing
China, showed a high order of skill.
2
Foreign trade was similarly subordinated to imperial needs. Peking
failed to protect the Mongol princes and monasteries from becoming
disastrously indebted to Chinese local merchants. But trade with Japan via
Liu-ch
'iu,
with Russia at Kiakhta, with Central Asia (Kokand) at Kashgar,
and with the British, Americans and Europeans at Canton was successfully
restricted and controlled. Only the trade from South-East Asia to Canton
and Amoy was left outside the tribute system, for the simple reason that
by the nineteenth century this trade was in Chinese, not foreign, hands.
The Ch'ing empire, like Ch'ing rule over China, was sustained by an
intricate and sophisticated system of checks and balances between, for
example, the local chieftains, ecclesiastics and tribal princes on the one
hand and the central government generals and administrators on the other,
between religious and civil elites within the local scene, between the
military and civilian officials of the Ch'ing central government, and
between local trade revenues and military expenditures. The empire began
to fall apart only when international trade, backed by foreign military
power, increased on the frontiers. The commercial, political and military
advance of the tsarist Russian empire on China's north and west, and of
the French and British empires on China's south and south-east is one
of the best-known sagas of imperialism in the nineteenth century.
3
Soon
Japan encroached upon the east and north-east.
Certain patterns of Ch'ing response to encroachment may be seen all
around the periphery of the empire. First, the Ch'ing subordinated
frontier trade to strategic interests because historically the central govern-
ment's control of the Inner Asian periphery had been essential to the
security of the Chinese core area. As long as possible the foreign powers'
traders were confined to emporia on the frontier. Thus the Russians were
ejected from Manchuria in the 1690s and confined to the Kiakhta trade
after 1727, with occasional caravans allowed at Peking.
4
Meanwhile, as
the British Canton trade increased in the early nineteenth century, the
Ch'ing dealt with it along lines that they had found effective a bit earlier
in Central Asia. The trade at Kashgar of the foreign state of Kokand had
given rise to foreign traders' demands and a holy war led by rebel religious
leaders. The upshot was that after suppressing the Kokandian invasion
of Kashgar, the Ch'ing sought stability; they paid an indemnity to the
foreign merchants and accepted a kind of extraterritorial jurisdiction on
2
See Joseph Fletcher, 'Ch'ing Inner Asia c. 1800', CHOC 10.35—106.
3
The classic survey is still W. L. Langer, Tbe diplomacy ofimperialism: itf 0—1902.
4
Mark Mancall, Russia and China: tbeir diplomatic relations to 172S.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
76 CHINA'S INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
the part
of
Kokand's representatives,
who
superintended
the
activity
of
their merchants
in
Kashgar, whereupon
the
trade continued
on a
stable
basis.
The
similarity
of
this settlement
in
Central Asia
in 1835 to the
eventual settlement
at
Canton
in the
1840s
is too
striking
to be a
pure
coincidence.
5
Second,
as the
Ch'ing dynasty's structure
of
power began
to
crumble
around
its
periphery both
in
Inner Asia
and
along
the
eastern sea-coast,
the dynasty found
its
defensive military capacity quite inadequate
and so
the foreigners
had to be
appeased
by
concessions
of
residence
and
further
trade. This again
was
reminiscent
of the
well-developed methods
for
barbarian-taming. After
the
Opium
War the
Ch'ing followed
the
early
Ming policy
of
being ready, first,
to
admit
all
foreign states
to
contact
with China
and,
second,
to
treat
all
such foreign states impartially.
6
Egalitarian foreign relations
had
indeed been customary
in
times
of
weak
central power
in
China.
7
This long-time policy
lay
behind Peking's
acceptance
of the
most-favoured-nation clause
in the
British Supple-
mentary Treaty
of
1843.
The emperor's claim
to
ritual supremacy, i.e.
the
tribute system, was left unresolved; as the emperor was a minor after
1860
the issue
of
foreign envoys performing
the
kotow before
him
could
be
deferred until
1873.
This
was of
course
not the
first time that Chinese foreign policy
had
had
to be
conducted from a position
of
weakness.
The
inveterate strategy
in such
a
situation
had
been the playing off of one invader against another.
Almost before
the
geographical whereabouts
of the
United States
and
France were clearly ascertained,
the
barbarian-managers
at
Canton sought
their help
to
check
the
British aggression. Subsequently
Li
Hung-chang,
for example, made repeated efforts
to
secure American mediation
and
diplomatic help
in his
various efforts
to
check Japanese, Russian
and
French encroachments. After Britain failed
to
help against Japan
in 1894,
Li turned
to
Russia.
'
Using barbarians
to
control barbarians'
(/-/
chih-i)
was
a
principal strategy throughout
the
modern era.
8
Although Chinese
thinking
had to
give
up
Sinocentrism,
the
idea of using one foreign power
against another easily continued.
It
fitted rather neatly
the
Western
concept
of
the balance
of
power.
During this transition Sino-foreign relations after i860 were briefly
characterized
by the
age-old device
of
synarchy
- a
non-Chinese dynasty's
»
See
CHOC 10.360-95 (Joseph Fletcher).
6
Wang
Gungwu,'
Early
Ming
relations
with Southeast
Asia",
in John
K.
Fairbank,
ed.
The
Chinese
world order: traditional China's foreign relations, 50-60.
7
Morris Rossabi,
ed.
China
among
equals:
the
Middle Kingdom
and its
neighbors
lotb-iph centuries.
8
Michael
H.
Hunt,
The
making
of a
special relationship:
the
United States
and
China
to 1914; see
ch.
4,
"The United States
in Li
Hung-chang's foreign policy, 1879-1895'.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
DECLINE AND FALL OF THE CH ING EMPIRE 77
use of other non-Chinese in joint administration over China. Synarchy
in the late Ch'ing was first exemplified by the Chinese use of foreign-
officered gun corps to defend Shanghai and Ningpo, and then by the
growth of the Imperial Maritime Customs Service under Robert Hart,
but Hart was only the most prominent of many foreign employees and
advisers after mid-century. After all, the borrowing of foreign technology
naturally brought foreign experts along with it. All this was achieved by
taking Britain into a sort of
entente.
But the tendency to achieve stability
by adding the British to the Mongols in the synarchic Ch'ing power
structure at Peking and in the treaty ports was feasible only under
sinocentrism. Like the Mongols, the Manchus' skill at using Westerners
to help govern China prolonged their alien rule; but it proved unavailing
as soon as China began in the 1890s to see herself as a nation among
nations.
9
The fact that Manchu rulers could not lead a movement of Han Chinese
nationalism was one principal impediment postponing China's adjustment
to the international world. The Sinocentric empire of East Asia under
the Ch'ing had institutionalized the relations between China's pre-
ponderant central culture and material power and the lesser peoples
around her landward periphery. But when the republic succeeded the
empire it confronted
a
profound dilemma. The emperor's former suzerainty
over local rulers among the Inner Asian peoples could hardly be claimed
by the president of a republic founded on the principle of nationalism.
The concepts of nation and empire were compatible only if one accepted
the Western type of colonial imperialism, against which Chinese patriots
were most incensed. The traditional imperative that a new regime must
unify the Chinese realm put the Chinese Republic under the burden of
maintaining its central authority over the diverse peoples and sprawling
terrain that had formerly comprised the Ch'ing empire. Yet the ideology
of national liberation from imperialism provided little sanction for it. In
fact, by the time the extinction of the Ch'ing monarchy in February 1912
shattered the multi-ethnic and supra-national empire that it had created,
the new principle of nationalism had already undermined it.
Nationalism, in short, was among the 'maritime' influences that were
eclipsing the old continental order.
10
The late Ch'ing regime had presided
uneasily over the continuing expansion of the Han Chinese economy.
Increasingly the Mongol princes and lamasaries had become debtors in
the grip of Chinese merchants. Chinese settlers also had pressed into Inner
• Richard J. Smith,
Mercenaries
and mandarins; the Ever-Victorious Army in
nineteenth
century China;
J. K. Fairbank, 'Synarchy under the treaties' in
ibid.,
ed. The Chinese world order.
10
See CHOC 12, ch. 1.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
78 CHINA'S INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
Mongolia and eastern Tibet as well as into Manchuria. This penetration
into Inner Asia of a Chinese ' secondary imperialism', to use Lattimore's
phrase,
11
had its counterpart in the commercial inroads and ambitions
emanating from Russia into Mongolia and Central Asia and from British
India into Tibet. The outlying non-Han parts of the Ch'ing empire thus
found themselves caught in the middle between the expanding continental
empires of Russia and Britain and the growth of the Chinese Han nation.
As a result the Inner Asian peoples began to look two ways and nurture
their own national identities while playing off Europeans against the
Chinese. In the decade before 1911 anti-Ch'ing movements for indepen-
dence had arisen in both Mongolia and Tibet, provoked by late Ch'ing
reformist policies there.
12
In Mongolia, the encroachment of an expanding China had ended the
Ch'ing policy of abstention and indirect rule through the tribal princes
and Lamaist prelates. As the pastoral economy was drawn into trade, both
the ruling classes and the common people became impoverished and
indebted to Chinese moneylenders, while Ch'ing subsidies were diminished
and taxes increased.
I3
The New Policies (or New Administration:
hsin-cheng)
of the last Ch'ing decade (1901—11) opened Mongolia to Chinese
colonization and agricultural settlement, permitted intermarriage and
Mongol use of the Chinese language, and so threatened to sinify the
Mongols' previously preserved homeland. Projects for provincial govern-
ments,
military conscription, railways and other reforms increased the
Ch'ing demand for taxes, alienated the Mongol elites and roused a
sentiment of nationalism. By July 1911 a group of leaders decided to seek
independence and sent a delegation to Russia seeking help.
Tsarist Russia's aim for Mongolia, which bordered Siberia for 1,700
miles,
had been worked out during the mid-nineteenth century: Russia
secured from Peking more and more trading privileges and aspired to a
dominant influence, as over a protectorate, but for this purpose St
Petersburg favoured Mongolian autonomy under continued Ch'ing
suzerainty, not independence. The reason was simple: independence would
open Mongolia to contact with all the other powers, whose prospective
trading rights would compete with those Russia already enjoyed; an
independent country could not be taken over as a protectorate without
diplomatic conflict with other powers such as Japan, whereas actual
Russian predominance could be achieved under the cloak of the nominal
suzerainty of China, whose nationalists loudly claimed Mongolia as part
"
See
Owen
Lattimore,
Inner Asian frontiers
of
China,
143-5.
12
On
these trends
see
Morris
Rossabi,
China and Inner
Asia:
from
i)6i
to the present
day.
13
On
this process
see
Joseph
Fletcher,
'Mongolia's nomadic society
in
decline',
CHOC
10.352-60.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
DECLINE AND FALL OF THE CH'lNG EMPIRE 79
of China. By 1911 Russian trade was less than Chinese, and there were
only about 800 Russians in the area. Russia therefore assumed a dual
posture - against independence but for autonomy - and sent two squad-
rons of cossacks to reinforce its consular guard in Urga.
The outbreak of the Chinese Revolution in October 1911 quickly
inspired an Outer Mongolian declaration of independence. On 29 Decem-
ber the Living Buddha at Urga, the Jebtsundamba Khutughtu, was
enthroned in a rather Chinese style as theocratic ruler of a new state, and
debts to China were repudiated. However, instead of recognizing Outer
Mongolia as a sovereign state open to international relations, Russia
continued to recognize Chinese suzerainty. While beginning to arm and
train the Mongol army, Russia in January 1912 issued a disclaimer of any
territorial ambitions while urging Peking to give up direct rule,
colonization or stationing of troops. By 3 November 1912 a Russo-
Mongolian treaty recognized Outer Mongolia's autonomy and confirmed
Russia's trade privileges. But Russia refused to recognize Mongolian
independence or Urga's leadership of a pan-Mongol movement includ-
ing the western tribes that were still under Chinese rule. It only remained
for a Russo-Chinese treaty of 5 November 1913 to acknowledge the
formula of Mongolian autonomy under Chinese suzerainty; and after long
and acrimonious negotiations at Kiakhta, a tripartite Chinese-Russian-
Mongolian agreement of 7 June 1915 reconfirmed this formula as well
as Russia's economic rights. In effect Russia had set up an informal
protectorate which the Chinese Republic was powerless to oppose.
The new government of the Living Buddha (or Bogdo Khan) at Urga,
however, upset the balance that the Ch'ing had maintained between the
lay princes of the Mongol tribes and the Lamaist church. Once in power,
the church '
came
increasingly to compete with the lay princes for people,
livestock, and pastures' and began to divert resources to purely religious
purposes. The conservatism of this theocracy was matched at Peking,
where the Chinese Republic tried to preserve the appearances of the
ancient tribute system and uphold at least on paper the interests of the
Mongol princes. But within a decade the Mongolian People's Revolu-
tionary Party, under Soviet inspiration and the leadership in succession
of Sukebator and Choibalsang, set up a new government in 1921, and
after the Living Buddha died in 1924 declared it to be a republic no longer
under Chinese suzerainty.
14
14
Thomas E. Ewing,
Between
the hammer and the anvil? Chinese and Russian policies in Outer Mongolia
ip/i—rfii, 39 and passim. See the full account in Peter S. Tang, Russian and Soviet policy in
Manchuria and Outer Mongolia rpu-ifn, chs. 7-15; also the more recent survey by Rossabi, China
and
Inner
Asia, ch. 9. Events from 1917 are covered in an official History of
the
Mongolian People's
Republic, vol. }, The
contemporary
period, ed. B. Shirendev and M. Sanjdorj.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
80 CHINA'S INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
A comparable process occurred
in
Tibet
but
with
a
different ending.
British India's concern
for the
trade
and
strategic security
of
the
hill states
of Ladakh, Nepal, Sikkim, Bhutan
and
Assam
on the
southern slope
of
the Himalayas created
a
British resolve
to
keep Russian influence
out of
Tibet,
to
which
the
hill states were culturally
and
sometimes politically
tributary. Ch'ing suzerainty over Tibet
and
also Nepal
had
been
established
by
arms
in the
eighteenth century
and as
late
as 1886
Britain
acknowledged
it in a
Sino-British 'Burma-Tibet convention'.
By 1904,
however, Britain felt obliged
to
forestall Russian influence
by
sending
the
Younghusband expedition
to
fight
its
way
to
Lhasa and negotiate a British
protectorate over Tibet. London, however, backed away from this
commitment
on the
inaccessible roof
of
the world;
in
1906 Britain,
in an
Anglo-Chinese agreement, once again acknowledged Peking's suzerainty
over Tibet as the best way to safeguard British interests there. The British,
aiming
to
keep Russian influence
out of
Tibet, disregarded
the
Tibetans'
interest
in
establishing their independence from China.
This
set the
stage
for a
vigorous Ch'ing reassertion
of
control over
eastern Tibet
in
1908; eventually
in 1910
modern-armed Chinese troops
entered Lhasa, where
a
Chinese administration attempted
to
rule. This
ruptured
the
ancient patron-client relationship between
the
rulers
in
Peking and Lhasa. The Dalai Lama, traditional ruler of the theocratic state,
fled to India. Soon
the
Revolution
of
1911
and
collapse
of
the Ch'ing
led
to
the
expulsion
of
Chinese troops
and
officials.
The
young Chinese
Republic could
not
reassert control,
and in
January 1913
the
Dalai Lama
declared
the
independence
of
Tibet
and is
said
to
have made
a
treaty with
the Living Buddha
at
Urga (number three
in the
Lamaist hierarchy) which
mutually recognized their independences. This
led to
prolonged Anglo-
Chinese-Tibetan negotiations
in 1914 at
Simla, where British India tried
to recognize Tibet's independence
but
China refused
to do so. A
British
protectorate
or
suzerainty
was
never asserted, though trade
and
cultural
relations with India were carried
on
independently.
The
Chinese Republic
maintained
its
claim
to
Tibet
as
part
of
China, while
the
British settled
for
the
formula
of
Chinese suzerainty
(not
sovereignty)
and
Tibetan
autonomy
(not
independence). This meant
no
direct Chinese control over
Tibet,
and a
growth
of
British Indian-Tibetan relations,
but
only
as
long
as the British stayed in India and China remained weak and non-assertive.
IS
Sinkiang, like Tibet, lacking railway access
to the
outside world, also
remained
on the
periphery
of
international politics during
the
early
ls
H. E.
Richardson,
A
short
bistory
of
Tibet,
ch. 7,
"The Simla convention,
1914';
Clive Christie,
'Great
Britain, China
and the
status
of
Tibet,
1914-21',
Modem
Asian
Studies,
10.4
(Oct.
1976)
481-508; Alastair Lamb,
The
China-India border: the origins
of
the
disputed
boundaries.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008