"Strength is always the foundation of justice, and national defense is the real backing of diplomacy. Dignity is only above the edge of the sword, and truth is only within the range of the cannon. This sentence comes from a speech given by Professor Ai Yuejin of Nankai University after the successful launch of Shenzhou-4. It's deafening and alarming.
Yes, looking back at the suffering of the Chinese nation more than 100 years ago, we know the weight of this sentence. Since 1840, Britain, a self-proclaimed gentleman, has opened the door to China with an almost barbaric method, and the mediocre and incompetent late Qing government signed the "Treaty of Nanjing" with which it lost its power and humiliated the country, ceded land and paid reparations, and separated Hong Kong, China from the motherland for a hundred years.
Seeing that the Qing government was actually a soft bone, countries came to China one after another to reap some benefits. Of course, France was also moved, and the hypocritical and shameless French people found an excellent excuse for the aggression and began to invade China. In 1899, the weak and incompetent Qing government signed the Treaty of Concession of Guangzhou Bay with France, "renting" Zhanjiang to the French for 99 years. What kind of humiliating history is this?
1. The White Watt entered Southeast Asia and requested to dock in Guangzhou Bay on the grounds of rest
France, as an old imperialist country, could not sit still when they saw that the various powers had carved up the benefits in China one after another. They have long been optimistic about Guangzhou Bay, a Chinese port in China. Therefore, in 1897, France sent a battleship named the White Watt to approach the coast of China in the name of scientific investigation and measuring the depth of the sea in Southeast Asia.
After staying off the coast of Southeast Asia for more than half a month, the Baiwatt claimed that the ship's equipment was damaged and the food supply was insufficient, and asked the Qing government to dock in Guangzhou Bay, now Zhanjiang, to rest. Although the Qing government was weak and corrupt, they were not stupid. The heart of Sima Zhao in France is well known to the Qing government. The Qing government directly rejected the request of the French White Watt.
Ironically, the news of the Qing government's refusal to dock had not yet arrived, and the White Watt had already sailed into Guangzhou Bay. Unlike the great powers of several other countries, the Baiwat did not fire shells at the Guangzhou Bay area after entering Guangzhou Bay, and it seemed that it did not have the intention of fighting, which made the Qing government a little confused!
Also in a state of confusion were the French aboard the French White Watt, who broke into Guangzhou Bay without encountering resistance from the Qing government. For a while, the French were also a little confused. So, a strange scene appeared, both sides pretended to be deaf and dumb and turned a blind eye to each other. However, the wolf ambition of the French invasion could not be concealed after all.
Seeing that there was no resistance. In 1898, the French government sent Commodore Fude Duki Turuying to China with hundreds of people to try to occupy Guangzhou Bay by force.
Second, the people rose up to fight, the Qing government was weak and incompetent, and signed a treaty of loss of power and humiliation of the country
Seeing the French invasion, the people who had lived in Guangzhou Bay for generations no longer wanted to swallow their anger and began to fight against the French army. The common people joined the militia one after another, and in the face of the sophisticated weapons and equipment of the French army, the people of Guangzhou Bay were not afraid.
Picking up the weapons at hand, he rushed forward and fought the French army with loaded guns.
The militiamen used knives and guns when they had knives and guns, and those who really had no weapons took up iron hoes, sickles, wooden sticks, etc. as weapons, and forcibly repelled the French attack several times. The French army no longer underestimated the enemy, and they formulated a professional battle plan, with a small group of people feintting to attack the village golden bridge, but most of them detoured to the rear of the militia team and flanked the militia in the village golden bridge park.
The militia suffered heavy casualties. However, the militia's spirit of defending the country has infected more people to join. For a time, on the land of Guangzhou Bay, men, women, and children copied the agricultural tools they could use and joined the war. Most of them don't know anything about their family and country, but they know that the land where their ancestors have lived for generations must not be taken away by outsiders.
After the loss of the Cunjin Bridge, the militia set up a four-kilometer defensive line at the Wannian Bridge, and the French army had a limited number of people, and there was no way to encircle and suppress the militia like the Cunjin Bridge. And just like that, the war lasted for a year. The Qing government never sent troops to reinforce it, but constantly measured the gap in national strength between China and France.
In the end, the Qing government, which was afraid of being beaten by others, decided to settle the matter after thinking about it again. And this so-called method of calming things down is to sign the "Sino-French Treaty on the Mutual Determination of the Guangzhou Bay Concession". The first sentence of the treaty reads: "For the sake of peace, the Qing Dynasty government leased Guangzhou Bay to the French state as a place to stop ships and barge coal, and the term was ...... for 99 years."
A word of "harmony", how funny and dazzling, it is obviously a shameless aggression, but it should be crowned with the title of harmony and friendship, the French really vividly interpret hypocrisy and shamelessness, and the Qing government has achieved the ultimate in incompetence. Since then, the land of Guangzhou Bay and the people on this land have been ceded by the Qing government in the name of lease.
Under the terms of the treaty, the French had independent administrative power in the Canton Bay area, where they built forts and military bases on some of the surrounding islands, but ironically, most of this cost was paid for by the Qing government. After signing the treaty, the French wantonly burned, killed, looted, and did all the evil things against the local people.
The people of Canton Bay, who lived in dire straits, were outraged, and they lamented that their homeland had been taken over by shameless thieves, and that the government had abandoned the land and the people on it. The people of Guangzhou Bay carried out a fierce resistance struggle, but the Qing government at this time became arrogant and dispersed the ranks of the people, and Guangzhou Bay completely became an important base for the French to plunder wealth.
3. After the end of World War II, due to the convergence of interests, France returned Guangzhou Bay to the Nationalist Government ahead of schedule
After the outbreak of the Xinhai Revolution, the rule of the Qing government was overthrown. Guangzhou became the mecca of the Chinese revolution, and the rebels from all sides joined the ranks of the Western powers, and the French concession in the Guangzhou Bay area received a major shock. After the Canton Uprising, the French Concession Legation was forced to move 3 times.
After the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War, Guangzhou Bay, a city located at the southern tip of China, was also not spared, and in 1943, the Japanese army invaded Guangzhou and established a Japanese puppet government. Under the blows of the Japanese army, the French army was quickly defeated, and had to hand over the Guangzhou Bay, which they had occupied for many years, to the Japanese for the high-sounding reason of joint defense. How similar the history is.
In 1945, under the heavy impact of two atomic bombs by the United States, Japan finally had to clamp its tail and sign the surrender like a lost dog. France was also devastated in World War II. The French government is well aware that in the future, neither the Kuomintang nor the Communist Party will allow them to continue to occupy Guangzhou Bay in Chinese mainland.
France could no longer afford to wage war against China, so it took the initiative to return Guangzhou Bay to the Nationalist Government. This land, which had been forcibly occupied by France for nearly half a century, finally returned to the embrace of the motherland once again. The Guangzhou government changed Guangzhou Bay into a provincial municipality and named it "Zhanjiang".