Chinese Nationalism Essay

After a long time of peace and success the Qing dynasty was the highest point of its power. However, as time passes they were harassed and humiliated by western powers, quickly the Qing dynasty collapsed. But the Qing collapsed due to the tremendous external pressures of modernization that the west implemented. Extraterritoriality was a huge contributing factor to the fall of the Qing dynasty. China set aside five coastal ports for the British to use in the southern part of the country. From the start this was a bad idea, basically China was giving them a part of their land for them to save and make money off of. This caused a limit on their taxes for imported goods. Essentially, the British were saving and making so much money from this that their army prospered. The British army grew because now that they had an outstanding amount of money they were able to cover the costs of war and spend the money on their own country. But it didn’t stop there; China also gave the British the island of Hong Kong. This meant that they were able to obtain even more wealth by taking advantage of the land. The action that China made which allowed the British to use a part of their country was set up to fail, nothing good could have came out of this to help China which is why external pressures were such a big factor in the fall of the Qing dynasty. Similar to extraterritoriality, an international economy also caused a decline in the Qing dynasty. During the time European traders moved into China, China’s trade and industry were doing extremely in large cities. At this time, westerners forced China to join the international economy; this was huge for China’s economy because it would reach its utmost height; but in the long run was not beneficial for China at all. Imperialism started to become a problem in China. Many of the Chinese were being used, and it caused a state of dependence on China. Also due to imperialism China was in a period of underdevelopment. This meant that