Yesterday, the twenty fourth day of the seventh month in the twenty second year of Taou Kwang (1), the Treaty of Nanjing was signed by the plenipotentiaries of our country and Britain. This treaty was constructed by the British to fulfill their demands and to end the horrific fighting that has gone on in our country for the three years.

The treaty contains many articles, listing the demands of the British. The first provision is that there be peace between our countries. This is quickly followed by a call for five cities to be open to British traders, not only to pursue their trade, but to live there with their families. The British subjects are also entitled to their own superintendents, and so are under their own police and law. The British also will receive Hong Kong, a valuable trading island, to be their port and military base, in the heart of our land and area of the world. (2)

The next articles of the treaty concern the payment of war dues. Not only must our esteemed Emperor pay twelve million dollars for war damages, but also six million for the value of the lost opium and three million for allegedly corrupt and cheating Cohong traders in the Canton peninsula. These payments, totaling a crippling twenty-one million, must be paid over the next three years as follows: six million immediately, six million next year, five million following that, and four million in the year after that. The English also had the audacity to charge interest on any late payments, and claim that their military bases on the islands of Koolansoo and Chusan will not return to their own land until all the money is paid. Thus the foreigners will stay in our country even after we have acquiesced to their demands. "We have orders not to deport until all money has been paid to us in full," said a British Colonel yesterday, "we must make sure that all the money is transferred to us as it is rightly owed." If that does not sound like a subtle threat, I do not know what does. (3)

The British also demand that we free all British prisoners from the war, but not only that; we must free the treasonous Chinese citizens who betrayed our Holy Country and sympathized with the enemy. (4)

This treaty will have many effects on China, long and short term. We will be thrown down from our thrones by these invading foreigners, as they take our money and land. The poor farmer on his rice patty will have to pay heavy taxes, for a cause that will not help him at all: no one in China will see a return on this money. It is gone already, before we have even paid it over because it will not help our country in the least. All it will do is to show others how we have been humiliated and thrust into poverty by people who should have been subordinate to us. We were the greatest country in the world and now we have been embarrassed before the entire cosmos.

The British now have access to our country like never before. They can live here, under their own laws, and we cannot do anything about it. The regulations are only enforced by their own superintendents, who can easily turn a blind eye at the right moment. Xiang Li, a silk trader in Canton, says, "They were not fair traders before, bringing that nasty opium into our country. But we had no choice but to trade with them, there were others willing to deal in the drug, and we all must make a living. But now that they are controlling the trade, we cannot even make sure that we charge high prices for the drug. They will always have the upper hand." The treaty says that there will be a basis of equality for all communications (5), but with the British superintendents controlling and determining what is equal, who knows what may happen? Their idea of equal may be strongly in their own favor.

Dealing with the opium will be another problem. The treaty did not say anything about the trade, one way or the other. However, it did surreptitiously recognize it by demanding our money for the lost opium. This recognition shows that British sovereignty accepts and condones the trade of the drug (6).

We must come together to stop this brutal treatment of out mother country. We are being taken advantage of, and there is only one way to stop it. We must show that we truly are superior by rising above and become even more modern than our oppressors are. We must industrialize and educate. We must let our children know of the awful humiliations that we have suffered at the hands of these foreigners and must not let them happen again. By becoming one nation, unified and strong, we will show them that we really are the greatest power in the world and can overcome their treaty and their drug to be the greatest power in the world.

Sources

1. East Asian Studies Documents: Treaty of Nanjing (1842). [http://www.isop.ucla.edu/eas/

documents/nanjing.htm]. 31 January 2002.

2. Ibid.

3. Ibid.

4. Ibid.

5. Conrad Schirokauer. A Brief History of Chinese and Japanese Civilizations. (Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich College Publishers, 1989), 393-394.

6. Frank Ching. Ancestors: 900 Years in the Life of a Chinese Family. (New York: William Morrow and Co, Inc, 1988), 356.

Images

1. East Asian Studies Documents: Treaty of Nanjing (1842). [http://www.isop.ucla.edu/eas/images/

nanjingtreaty.htm] 01 February 2002.

2. http://www.index-china.com/index-english/people-invasion.html

3. Schirokauer, 392.

4. http://www.index-china.com/index-english/people-invasion.html