The Anglo-Chinese Treaty

An editorial article by Marx on the impact of the Treaty of Nanking on Sino-British trade and British economic aggression against China. Written on September 10, 1858, published in the New-York Daily Tribune, No. 5446, October 5, 1858.

In 1856, the Second Opium War broke out. In 1858, the joint Anglo-French navy forces arrived in Tianjin and forced the Qing government to sign the unequal Treaty of Tianjin on June 18. According to the opinion British authorities, the signing of the new treaty would expand the share of Western goods in the Chinese market. But in Marx’s view, this was unrealistic. For this reason, Marx made a consistent analysis of this incident with his proficient knowledge of economics.

In The Anglo-Chinese Treaty, Marx pointed out that from an economic point of view, the Treaty of Nanking signed in 1842 would not bring the expected results. Although the official statistics of the UK showed that the value of British exports to China increased continuously between 1843-1846, instead by 1846, the value of British exports had dropped below the level of its 1836 exports. The values given in the official statistics did not correspond at all to the truly realized values. “Since its opening by the treaty of 1842, the export to Great Britain of tea and silk, of Chinese produce, has continually been expanding, while the import trade into China of British manufactures has, on the whole, remained stationary.” Marx argued that the reasons were: Firstly, British traders did not know what the Chinese market needed, they blindly carried out trade with China, and goods exported to China, such as tableware and piano, had become unsalable. Secondly, British traders overestimated the consumption and payment capacity of the Chinese consumers, which was a common phenomenon in the world market. The economic structure of Chinese society, depending upon the combination of minute agriculture with domestic industry, made it difficult for the western industrial goods to find a demand in the Chinese market. Thirdly, China suffered from the colonial wars and the revolution of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, which put this country in a state of turmoil which increased the obstacles for the import of Western goods. In response to the British media’s view that foreign competition has led to the stagnation of British exports to China, Marx cited the data of the large trade deficit between the U.S. and China and that the proportion of U.S. goods in the Chinese market was far less than that of the UK, pointing out that this view was wrong, and he put forth although China has a trade surplus in Sino-British trade, the opium trade had put China’s finance and monetary circulation in a serious state of chaos. In addition, Marx pointed out to the contradiction of external capitalist expansion, he said: “if the “Carthaginian” method (normal trade way) and “Roman method” (militarist trade way) of making foreign people pay, are, if combined in the same hands, are bound to clash with and destroy each other.”

Through economic analysis, The Anglo-Chinese Treaty Marx expounded the negative influence of this Treaty on Sino-British trade, the article not only exposed the greed of British colonists, but also analyzed the economic development trend of both countries, Britain and China.