China's Foreign Relations Essay

Foreign relations throughout much of China’s history have been dominated by the idea among many Chinese intellectuals and government officials that China was culturally superior to other nations and that China was a self- sufficient state with no need to trade for resources. This attitude led rise to the tributary system when dealing with foreign nations that put China as the superior and the foreign states that it interacted with as the inferior. This system had dictated China’s foreign relations for decades and led to China acquiring tributary states such as Korea and Vietnam, who would send tribute missions with gifts every few years to China, where they would be toured around the country and after observing various rituals representing …show more content…
After taking control of Mainland China, the Qing, looking to profit from trade, opened up four ports for trade with the western powers. In the early 18th century most of the trade went through just one port city, Canton, and led to the development of the Canton system for interacting with foreign merchants. The system imposed various restrictions on the foreign merchants and limited their interactions with Chinese and exposure to Chinese culture, with the punishment for breaking one of the regulations being to stop all trade with the …show more content…
The Chinese military was thoroughly unprepared for the war and was unable to defeat the technologically superior British forces and was forced to surrender in 1842. The Qing was forced to sign the Treaty of Nanjing, which marked the beginning of the treaty system as the Chinese had to negotiate with a foreign power in a situation in which they were not the superior as they had been in the tributary system. The Treaty of Nanjing was the first of the unequal treaties that were forced upon the Chinese by European powers and would control Qing foreign relations for the rest of the 19th century and early 20th