LAND AND RIVER ROUTES TO WEST CHINA
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Although British commercial shipping operations on the Yangtze and on the China coast came to an end in 1940, the official death knell came in 1943. On the 11th January of that year China concluded new treaties, on a basis of equality and reciprocity, with Britain and the United States. This ended the period of the 'Unequal Treaties', the 'treaty port' era which had started with the 1842 Treaty of Nanking between Britain and China. Not only British shipping in Chinese waters, but significant British and Western influence in China on the former pattern came to an end with the treaties of 1943.
Looking back, and with some measure of hindsight, it is evident that there was no solid commercial basis for West China providing an expanding market for British industry during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. All the Western countries concerned with the China trade failed to appreciate the self-sufficiency and poverty of China's predominantly peasant population. Although Szechwan was considered a prosperous province, neighbouring Yunnan was sparsely populated and poverty-stricken, and much of its reputed mineral wealth was nearing exhaustion when Europeans first heard of it. As on the coast, and on the Lower Yangtze, the success of British shipping depended on established domestic trades, some of which it stimulated further. Two economic activities which expanded greatly on the Upper Yangtze during the latter years of the treaty port era were the Chinese passenger trade between the treaty ports, and the import of kerosene; while an important export from Szechwan was tung oil, a valuable wood oil used in the manufacture of high-quality paints and varnishes.
The motives of the British effort to open up West China to British trade may be questioned by some today; but the courage, determination, and ingenuity displayed by British merchants and sailors are still worthy of admiration.