PART Two A : The age of Western European rampage and invasions.
The Portuguese and Spanish adventurists and sea marauders
Before the Middle Age of the 15th Century the barbaric European tribes were living in the Dark Age when they were always fighting and killing against each other. Then the Mongol invasions of Europe and Russia from the 12th Century to the 15th Century brought stories of the great Civilization of China. The European tribes learnt from the Mongols the many Chinese scientific inventions some of which were making of gun powder, guns and cannons, Later the stories of Marco Polo about the grandeur of China fired their imaginations and that was the catalyst that stirred and created the great renaissance of Europe.
With the Renaissance and the newly acquired knowledge of making gun powder, guns and cannons the savage European tribes went on a rampage to ravage the non-white people of Africa, Asia and the Americas.
These early Western aggressions have strong and sinister bearings on present day Western aggressions worldwide. The psyche of aggressions is the same only the modus operandi varies and the killings and genocide more massive, intensive and violent. The white people especially the Anglo-Saxons and the Teutonics Christians do not have even an iota of remorse for killing innocent non-white people. Former American Secretary of State Albright arrogantly and proudly declared that "the killings of 500,000 Iraqi children is worth it because they are non-white muslims, and also because it is necessary in order to secure the United States and Western power and dominance around the world."
In the 16th Century the bandit-like colonialists, merchants and adventurists of Europe appeared in China one after another.
In 1517 eight Portuguese warships intruded into the Zhujiang estuary, Guangzhou and opened fire. Then under the leadership of Fernao Perez de Andrade they started to build batteries and fortification in Tunmen at the mouth of Zhujiang estuary. These Portuguese colonialist bandits and raiders were doing the same thing in Africa, America and other parts of Asia. Chinese historical records labelled them as barbaric robbing travellers who kidnapped small children for food, rounded up innocent citizens to be sold as slaves and built fortifications for the purpose of attack. They killed innocent people and pirated ships. They were extremely rampant and wild. They were so wicked that the Ming government in 1521 had to send troops to expel them from Tunmen.
Later other Portuguese bandits arrived at the Fujian and Zhejiang coasts and conducted similar piratical activities. In 1546 the Ming forces in Ningbo launched a punitive campaign against these pirates in which more than 500 Portuguese were killed. The Ming forces destroyed a Portuguese military base in Shuangyu Harbour along the Zhejiang coast. In 1547 the Ming forces also attacked and drove away the Portuguese pirates from the Fujian coast.
As the result of Ming actions the Portuguese were unable to do in China what they did with their military superiority in other parts of the world. However through treachery and bribery of local Ming officials they succeeded in 1561 to obtain the right of residence in Macao.
The Spaniards occupied the Philippines in1571 during the Ming Dynasty. Through subterfuge they managed to get Ming approval for some kind of trade relationship with China. In 1584 the Spanish governor-general of the Philippines made known Spain's intention of conquering China. He arrogantly claimed that he would only need 10,000 Spanish soldiers to conquer the whole of China. It was a mad ambition typical of the Spanish colonialists at the time.
PART Two B : The Russian invaders
In the middle of the 17th Century Tsarist Russia was encroaching on China's northern and northeastern border. Russia was a feudal empire bent on aggression against China. In the beginning of the 17th Century the Tsarist government supported and funded Russian adventurists, merchants and bandits to venture eastward to seize Chinese lands for Russia. They extorted furs, hides and other wealth from the nomads that lived in the vast lands from Lake Baikal to the Sea of Okhotsk facing the Pacific Ocean. They enslaved the natives and mercilessly slaughtered those who dared to resist.In the 1640s when they reached the Heilongjiang valley they were resisted by Chinese forces. But the Tsarist aggressors did not give up their ambition easily. They invaded and occupied the town of Nerchinsk in the Heilongjiang region and built a fortress in an attempt to expand further downstream .
In 1685 and 1686 the Chinese government sent troops to destroy the fortress. In 1689 under the Treaty of Nerchinsk Russia had to abandon Nerchinsk to China. The Russians were allowed to trade at the Outer Xingan Mountains that extended all the way to the Sea of Okhotsk, opposite Sakhalin Island and Japan. South of the Outer Xingan Mountain range and territories north and south of the Heilonjiang River were Chinese territories which the Russians were forbidden to encroach. However, the Russians never give up their sinister motive of conquering the region.
For more than a hundred years the Russians respected and observed the Treaty of Nerchinsk. Peace prevailed in the north. But in 1805 Russian ships landed in Macao. The Chinese government would not allow Russia to trade in any of China's seaports since they were already allowed to carry on land trade in the north.
Dutch intruders in China
In the 17th Century Portuguese and Spanish hegemonic power on the high seas was seized by the Dutch and the British. Holland was very aggressive in attacking Indonesia. It took over all the major islands of Indonesia where it imposed the most barbarous and cruelest colonialist rule. In 1601 the Dutch ships landed in Guangzhou and later proceeded to occupy the Penghu Islands which they built a fortress and a military to attack Xiamen and other areas along the coast. Like their Portuguese predecessors the Dutch built fortifications and practised piracy, kidnapped innocent Chinese to perform forced labour or sent to Java, Indonesia as slaves. In 1624 the Ming government recaptured the Penghu Islands from the Dutch invaders.
Later the Dutch attacked and invaded Taiwan. However in 1661 a Chinese hero Zheng Chenggong drove the Dutch from Taiwan and thus the Dutch ambition of conquering China finally came to an end.
England's first arrival in China.
By the end of the 16th Century England had succeeded in destroying Spain's power on the high seas. In the 17th Century, England competed with Portugal to attain hegemony in India and other places in the orient. In 1637 four British ships stormed into the Zhujiang estuary and bombarded the Humen batteries.But the British ships also suffered heavy damages and were forced to beat a hasty retreat. However, like the other savage European invaders, England never give up hope of occupying China and the benefit of the profitable China trade.
China's encounters with the Westerners at her seaports in the 16th and 17th centuries were anything but peaceful traders. In fact they came as capitalist colonialist adventurists of plunder. They held aloft the Holy Bible but were actually plunderers engaged in piracy, robbing, killing and genocide of natives wherever they landed. Karl Marx had described the Western capitalist Christian colonial system as evil and wicked in no uncertain terms: "The barbarities and desperate outrages of the so-called Christian race, throughout every region, and upon every people they have been able to subdue, are not to be parallel by those of any other race, however fierce, however untaught, and however reckless of mercy and of shame, in any age of the earth."
To prove the correctness of Karl Marx conclusive observation of the evil Western barbaric colonial system we can cite countless facts showing how the Portuguese, the Spaniards, the Dutch, the British and the French mistreated Indians in America, blacks in Africa and Asians in India, Indonesia and the Philippines during the 16th, 17th , 18th and 19th centuries as well as the illtreatment and genocide of natives in Australia and New Zealand. They cheated, plundered and enslaved all the natives who had the misfortune of meeting with them. They seized and took over the land on which the natives had lived for many, many generations. They even committed genocide and wiped out entire natiionalities.
The Westerners did not come to China with goodwill or good intentions. They came to China with full of diabolical plots and evil intentions. One America writer, Chester Holcombe who once served as an envoy to China said in 1910 of his observations of Westerners who arrived in China from the 16th to the 19th centuries. The following is what he said,
"The conduct of all these pioneers of the so-called peaceful commerce was such as befitted pirates rather than amiably disposed and civilized men, and they well deserved not merely exclusion from the Empire [China], but extermination by the hands of the Chinese authorities. They harried the southern coasts of China, plundered and destroyed towns and cities, killed inoffensive men, women and children by scores and hundreds, and then sailed peacefully away. As they landed, they forced the native Chinese to construct fofrtifications for them, by the most outrageous brutalities , seized and carried away women, robbed the natives of whatever valuables they possessed, and violated every principle of humanity and decency."
Before the 19th century the Chinese had no idea of what the Christian European countries did in the various parts of the world. But they showed themselves to be barbaric by their behaviour the moment they arrived in China. Thus the Chinese government was compelled to take certain measures to protect the Chinese people and the country from their wanton misbehaviour and diabolical activities.
Throughout China's long history, the Chinese people and government had always been open minded and most hospitable and fair-minded toward foreign traders without showing any bias or prejudice. After the 16th century the Ming government strictly enforced certain preventive and protective measures with regard to these "uninvited guests" from Western Europe. They had to do so because the wild ravaging uninvited guests from Western Europe did not give them much choice.
An American diplomat and author, John W. Foster regretted the brute behaviour of the uninvited guests of Western European Christian marauders and said the following in 1903:
"In the sixteenth century ---- the rulers of China did not fail to note the aggressive spirit of the Portuguese, Dutch and Spaniards, who had taken possession by force the Philippines, Java and other islands and had acquired a foothold in India and the Malay Peninsula. The early intercourse in its own ports with these nationalities and the English and French , so marked by violence and bloodshed , led the Chinese authorities to stringent measures in the seventeenth century, which resulted in the closing of all ports except that of Canton [ Guangzhou ], and even at that port foreign intercourse was conducted under very onerous conditions."
It must be said that as far as the Tang Dynasty [ 618 - 906 ] AD and Song Dynasty [ 960 - 1279 ] AD, Guangzhou, Chuanzhou and Xiamen in the Fujian province were ports of international trade where foreign ships mostly from the Arabs were free to anchor. Due to the violent behaviour of the Portuguese, the Dutch and the British especially after the British in 1637 destroyed the Chinese Humen batteries in Guangzhou that the Ming government ordered that from then on foreign ships were not allowed to sail up the Zhujiang estuary and other Chinese rivers and ports. The Chinese government only recognized Macao as the only legitimate place for foreign trade and for foreigners to take temporary residence. The validity of the order was reconfirmed by the Qing Dynasty.
The present violent, savage and banditry behaviour and diabolical plots of the United States and the West toward China reflect those of the previous centuries of the Western European adventurists, buccaneers and sea marauders. Only now China and the Chinese people are well armed and equipped, confident and more than ready to repulse them and smashed them to complete destruction. Thus it can be seen the present US and Western aggressions against China is but the continuation of their previous centuries of aggressive attacks and wars on China. Only this time a mighty well armed China with full state of the art of the latest most modern weaponeries and nuclear arms will definitely prevail in victory over the unruly savage banditry Western countries led by the senseless lunatic madness and illogical bellicosity of the ungodly Anglo-Saxon United States.
Southernglory1
Sunday, 5th June, 2022
