The aggression of the capital-imperialist powers against China is, first and foremost, military aggression. They rely on advanced weapons and military technology, or threaten force, or launch wars of aggression, or intervene in China's internal affairs by force, or even directly send troops to suppress the Chinese revolution. This military strategy has escalated gradually, from harassing and encroaching on China's coastal and frontier areas to seizing large swathes of China's territory and even attempting to divide China.
Unleashing Wars of Aggression and Slaughtering Chinese People Since the Opium War in 1840, the capitalist-imperialist powers have waged war of aggression against China again and again. In previous wars of aggression against China, foreign invaders massacred a large number of Chinese people. For example, in November 1894, the Japanese army caused the Lushun Massacre in the Sino-Japanese War, slaughtering more than 20,000 Chinese residents in four days. When the Russians invaded northeast China in July 1900, they successively caused the Hailan Bubble Massacre and the Jiangdong 64 Tun Massacre. Russian military and police burned down villages where Chinese lived, shot thousands of residents, or drove people to drown alive in the Heilongjiang River. In August of the same year, after the eight-nation coalition army invaded Beijing, it burned and killed more than 1,700 Boxer Rebellion members and civilians in Zhuangwangfu alone.
Lushun massacre
Invading and Occupying China's Territory and Dividing Spheres of Influence After each war, the capitalist-imperialist powers forced the Qing government to sign unequal treaties, seize economic and political privileges in China, plunder China's wealth, and undermine China's sovereignty and territorial integrity.
In 1842, Britain forced the Qing government to sign the Treaty of Nanjing, ceding Hong Kong Island to Britain. In 1860, the Sino-British Treaty of Beijing was adopted, cutting off the southern tip of the Kowloon Peninsula and Stonecutters Island on the other side of Hong Kong Island.
In 1849, the Portuguese occupied the Macau Peninsula by force (the Portuguese had begun fraudulently living in Macau in the late Ming Dynasty). In 1887, he coerced the Qing government into concluding the Sino-Portuguese Treaty of Peace and Commerce, allowing Portugal to "reside permanently to administer Macau."
Taking advantage of the Second Opium War launched by Britain and France, Russia coerced the Heilongjiang general Yishan to sign the Treaty of Warmth with him in 1858, cutting off 600,000 square kilometers of territory north of Heilongjiang. In 1860, by signing the Sino-Russian Treaty of Beijing, 400,000 square kilometers of territory east of the Ussuri River were ceded, and in 1864, the Qing government was forced to sign the "Treaty on the Survey and Demarcation of the Northwest Boundary", cutting off 440,000 square kilometers of territory in northwest China. In 1881, through the "Ili Revision Treaty" and five boundary demarcation protocols, more than 70,000 square kilometers of territory in northwest China were ceded. Through this series of unequal treaties, Russia invaded and occupied more than 1.5 million square kilometers of Chinese territory.
In 1895, Japan forced the Qing government to sign the Treaty of Shimonoseki, which ceded all of Taiwan and all affiliated islands and the Penghu Islands.
Treaty of Shimonoseki
In 1898, Germany forcibly leased Jiaozhou Bay in Shandong and designated Shandong as its sphere of influence. Russia forcibly leased Lushunkou and Dalian Bay and the nearby sea on the Liaodong Peninsula, with the north of the Great Wall as its sphere of influence. The British forcibly leased Weihaiwei in Shandong and the islands north of Boundary Street on the Kowloon Peninsula on the other side of Hong Kong Island, south of the Shenzhen River and nearby islands (New Territories), with the Yangtze River basin as its sphere of influence. In 1899, France forcibly leased Canton Bay and its nearby waters in Guangdong, using Guangdong, Guangxi, and Yunnan as its sphere of influence. Japan has also declared Fujian as its sphere of influence.
The capitalist-imperialist powers have also used force or fraud to seize land in China's trade ports and set up concessions that are completely under direct control and domination by foreign countries. In 1845, the British could lease 837 acres of land near the Bund in Shanghai and established the British Concession in Shanghai. From then until 1911, Britain, France, the United States, Japan, Russia, Italy, Belgium, Austria and other countries successively established more than 30 concessions in 16 cities including Shanghai, Tianjin, Hankou, Guangzhou, Fuzhou and Chongqing. Everything in the concession was managed by foreign colonizers, and Chinese laws were not in force here, like a "state within a state." The concession became a "paradise for adventurers" and a stronghold for aggression against China.
Through the war of aggression against China, the imperialist powers also gained the privilege of stationing troops on Chinese territory. The 1901 Xinxiu Treaty stipulated that foreign troops had the right to "stay and garrison" in the Beijing embassy area and 12 places from Beijing to Dagushan Customs, including Tianjin and Tangshan. After the Russo-Japanese War, Japan seized from Russia the railways leased from China to Lushunkou and Dalian Bay, Changchun to Lushunkou and other related rights, set up the "Kwantung Governor's Office" in Lushun, and sent troops to garrison the above areas and along the "South Manchuria Railway". This army, later known as the "Kwantung Army," became a commando force for Japanese aggression against China.
Extort Claims and Plunder Wealth The capital-imperialist powers launched wars to invade China, slaughter Chinese people, and extort huge reparations from China, causing a serious financial crisis in China and directly undermining and hindering China's economic development. For example, during the Opium War, the British invaders forced the local government of the Qing Dynasty to pay 6 million yuan (silver yuan) for the redemption of Guangzhou. Later, through the Treaty of Nanjing, he wanted to obtain 21 million yuan (silver yuan) in compensation. After the Second Opium War, Britain and France each received reparations of 8 million taels of silver. After the Sino-Japanese War, Japan forced China to pay 200 million taels of silver through the Treaty of Shimonoseki, plus 30 million taels of "ransom fees" and 1.5 million taels of "garrison fees" of the Japanese army in Weihaiwei, a total of 231.5 million taels of silver, equivalent to the Qing government's financial revenue for three years. Japan continued to expand its armaments with China's huge reparations, and the expenses for naval and army expansion and munitions industry accounted for 85 percent of the total reparations, which caused Japan's militarist forces to expand rapidly and soon squeeze into the ranks of the imperialist powers. The "Xinxiu Treaty" signed during the Eight-Power Alliance's war of aggression against China stipulated that China should pay as much as 450 million taels of silver, to be repaid in 39 years, with a total principal and interest of nearly 1 billion taels. These reparations are the open plundering of China by the imperialist aggressors.
Not only that, in the war of aggression against China, the great powers also openly robbed China's wealth and wantonly destroyed China's cultural relics and monuments. In October 1860, before the Anglo-French army entered the city of Beijing, they first robbed the Qing emperor's official Old Summer Palace of gold, silver jewelry, porcelain and satin, cultural relics and ancient books, and destroyed what could not be obtained; and finally set fire to the Old Summer Palace and the palace buildings of nearby Xiangshan, Wanshou Mountain, and Yuquan Mountain, and the British officer Gordon who participated in the robbery admitted: "In this way, we destroyed the most precious wealth in the world in the most barbaric way."
In August 1900, after the eight-nation coalition invaded and occupied Beijing, countless gold and silver treasures, precious cultural relics and ancient books in the imperial palace and the forbidden gardens such as Beihai, Zhongnanhai and Summer Palace were wantonly plundered by them. The Japanese invading army also looted 3 million taels of silver from the Hubu silver treasury. German Field Marshal Wadesi, commander-in-chief of the Eight-Nation Coalition, admitted: "The details of all the damage and looting suffered by China this time will never be ascertained, but the number will be extremely significant."
Eight-Nation Coalition War of Aggression against China
The actions of these self-proclaimed "propagators of Western civilization" in China have fully exposed the barbaric nature of imperialist and colonial forces trampling on civilization.