{"id":12704,"date":"2023-07-12T06:30:55","date_gmt":"2023-07-12T06:30:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/focus.cbbc.org\/?p=12704"},"modified":"2025-04-23T09:08:00","modified_gmt":"2025-04-23T09:08:00","slug":"doing-business-in-chinas-hidden-century","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/focus.cbbc.org\/doing-business-in-chinas-hidden-century\/","title":{"rendered":"Doing Business in China\u2019s Hidden Century"},"content":{"rendered":"

A new exhibition at the British Museum encompasses China’s transformation as it suffered through two Opium Wars, the colonial occupation of Hong Kong, a disastrous war with Japan and more \u2013 and yet it was also when the country began opening up to the outside world. Paul French<\/strong> went along to find out more<\/h2>\n

The current blockbuster British Museum exhibition, China\u2019s Hidden Century <\/em><\/a>(1796-1912), runs till 8 October. For anyone with even the slightest interest in Chinese history, it\u2019s a must, and indeed the numbers filing through the galleries indicate there\u2019s a healthy appetite for the topic among Londoners and visitors to the city this summer. But what insights might those engaged in the often fraught and tricky world of doing business with China gain from the exhibition?<\/p>\n

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First off, the exhibition title. For those who know their Chinese history, the 19th century stretches from the elevation of the Jiaqing Emperor through to the fall of the 267-year-old dynasty and the establishment of the Chinese Republic in 1912. But those two seminal events, and all that came between \u2013 two Opium Wars, the colonial occupation of Hong Kong and the treaty port system, a 15-year-long civil war with the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, a disastrous war with Japan, the Boxer Uprising, the reign of the Empress Dowager, and finally the Xinhai Revolution \u2013 are, by and large, not taught in UK schools. So, it\u2019s a \u201chidden century\u201d to the British, if not to the Chinese themselves.<\/p>\n

The exhibition tells multiple stories of that long century for China. It was often one of waning prestige, military defeat, foreign interference and disruption, bringing hard times for many. But it was also a period of innovation and new technology, an encroaching modernity and, amid the negative interactions with the outside world, a time of cultural and technological transfer, too. There\u2019s no avoiding Britain\u2019s role in these processes. The single exhibit that has perhaps excited most interest among Chinese visitors features two pages, embossed with a black wax seal, the red chops of the emperor, and the signature of the British plenipotentiary in China, Henry Pottinger. This is the actual Treaty of Nanking, signed on board HMS Cornwallis<\/em> on 29 August 1842, at the conclusion of the First Opium War which, among other onerous conditions, ceded control of the island of Hong Kong to the British for 155 years until 1997.<\/p>\n