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Among sovereign states, extraterritoriality normally means the inapplicability of the judicial system of the host country to representatives of foreign states, in particular the complete or partial immunity of diplomatic personnel. In the case of China, this judicial privilege was extended to all citizens of the foreign treaty powers. Therefore, a large part of the foreigners who stayed on Chinese territory were beyond Chinese jurisdiction from 1844 to 1943. This form of extraterritoriality was …

By international comparison, it was a peculiarity of China that the great powers secured territorial control mainly in the legal form of a limited-period lease. The unlimited and unconditional cessions of Hong Kong (in the Treaty of Nanjing 1842) and of Taiwan (in the Treaty of Shimonoseki 1895) remained exceptions. The main reasons for this restraint - at least by international law - were, on the one hand, the attempt by the powers to avoid the appearance of a definitive colonial division of Ch…

1. Overview Territory controlled by foreign powers in China took various forms. A Treaty Port was not considered an urban colony until it possessed closed foreign residential areas in which the local population came into contact with foreign rulers. In contrast to the leased territories, they were small inner-city districts. In 1935, the International Settlement in Shanghai reached its largest expanse of 22 km²; the British leased territory of Weihaiwei, on the other hand, encompassed 735 km². Con…

Ever since China "opened up" to the outside world, it was perceived by the great powers as having a population from which a particularly high degree of resistance to imperialistic advances had to be expected. This permanent willingness to protest played its part in making European powers less ready to intervene militarily in China than in other parts of Asia. Anti-imperialism in a form ready to strike developed as early as the Opium Wars with the Sanyuanli Incident of May 1841 when Cantonese mil…

1. Origin and Concept During the approximately eight centuries preceding the First Opium War of 1840-42 (Opium Wars), European trade with China was only allowed in two forms: as Russian caravan trade in Beijing, and as maritime trade in Guangzhou (with Macau as an additional base). The countryside remained closed to Western merchants. However, in the Sino-British Treaty of Nanjing from 1842, the Qing dynasty allowed "British citizens and their families and households" to live in (at first) five Ch…