China 's Abolition Of Unequal Treaty Diplomacy And Its Positive Influence

The defeat in the Opium War and the signing of Sino-British “Nanjing Treaty” marked China’s entry into the era of humiliating unequal treaties. The world major powers had continually plundered China through those unequal treaties. China’s sovereignty was thus undermined and economic interests severely damaged. As the negative impact of these unequal treaties become unbearable, with the modern concepts of international law and international relations spreading to China, the wish to abolish these unequal treaties gradually came into being in the late Qing Dynasty. After the founding of the Republic of China, especially after the First World War, China as one of the victors had an advantage to abolish those treaties. The failure of the Northern Government(1912-1928, the central government of the Republic of China) in the Paris Peace Conference and the Washington meeting stimulated the strong will of Chinese people to abolish unequal treaties. After the victory of the Northern Expedition(1926-1927), the Nanjing National Government(1927-1948) worked on the efforts of the previous governments and recovered the tariff autonomy of China. When the Pacific War broke out, as an important member of the world anti-fascist camp, the equal status as a sovereignty of China was firstly recognized by the United Kingdom and the United States. China finally broke the hundred-year-long yoke and stood equally among other states in the world.The abolition of unequal treaties is the most important diplomatic movement of the Republic of China. As a diplomatic movement, it has tremendous impact on China’s domestic affairs. After the recovery of the tariff autonomy, the implementation of national tax regulation protected national industry and commerce and made China’s import and export trade more reasonable as well. In order to abolish consular jurisdiction, China started to learn from the legal system of Western countries and carried out judicial reforms. During the several decades of diplomatic movement to revise or abolish those unequal treaties, the participation of Chinese people had been the most powerful weapon against the world powers of the government. From the Yihetuan Movement(1899-1901) to the Movement of Recovering the Rights of Mining and railways, from the May 4th Movement(1919) to the May 30 th Movement(1925), the political participation of Chinese people gradually matured and became much more influential.