Second Opium War (1856-1860)
Modern Navy
Archaeological records reveal that the Chinese began building rafts and dugouts approximately 5000 b.c. and created organized navies around 500 b.c. These early fleets were designed to fight in China’s inland rivers and lakes, and were propelled by oars. The flagships (yuhuang) were surrounded by secondary craft, including 100-foot warships (dayi) that could hold almost 50 men, small and highly maneuverable craft (xiandeng), and an armored battleship (mengchong) that used raw ox hide as armor. Finally, castle-boats (louchuan) were the capital ships of the Qin and Han navies. One battle involved some 2,000 louchuan and 200,000 men.
During the Song and Yuan dynasties these ships were outfitted with gunpowder weapons, and the Chinese invention of the compass greatly aided navigation. Large Chinese fleets explored southward into the Indian Ocean and even landed on the shores of southern Africa.
After 1840 the Chinese navy began to take shape as a permanent branch of the modern Chinese military. During the first Opium War (1839–1842), the first naval battle occurred between a modern European ship and a Chinese junk. China’s war junks, cannon, and military organization were relatively advanced, and later in the war the Chinese tried to adopt western techniques—a new pivot mount for cannon and gunboats driven by hand-propelled paddle wheels—but these were no match for the British ships.
Following its defeat in the Opium War, China began to build a modern navy. Credit for this largely goes to Li Hongzhang, who during 1870–1895 was governor-general of the northern province of Zhili and a primary sponsor of China’s modernization. Not only was Li head of the Anhui army, but he soon became responsible for forming the Beiyang navy in China’s northern waters. The Chinese government ordered the development of three other modern fleets, which were based at Guangzhou, the Fuzhou Naval Yard in southeast China, and along the Yangtze River.
Li had a particularly difficult time deciding whether China should itself build ships or purchase them from British, French, and German shipmakers. As a result of this indecision, by the early 1880s the various Chinese fleets numbered some 50 steamships but were far from standardized. While half of these ships had been built in China at either the Shanghai or Fuzhou shipyards, the other half were purchased from abroad. Six warships were ordered from Britain and three from Germany.
While by the early 1880s China possessed the rudiments of a modern navy, it still did not have a sufficiently large pool of qualified sailors. One of the major training grounds during the early 1870s was the Fuzhou shipyards, which hired foreign experts to conduct training classes. But by the late 1870s many of the foreigners had left Fuzhou, and a new naval academy opened at Tianjin in northern China. The academy lured many of the best-trained Chinese sailors away from southern China. By 1883, at the outset of the Sino-French War, however, China’s navy, especially in the south, was poorly trained. In addition, there was little, if any, coordination between fleets in north and south China. This meant that at any one time France came up against only a fraction of China’s navy.
The 1883–1884 Sino-French War ended in a Chinese defeat, and in 1885 the Chinese were forced to cede their tributary state of Annam to France. Spurred on by France’s success, Japan made similar intrusions into China’s Korean tributary during the early 1890s.
By the early 1890s, China’s navy was ranked eighth in the world, with 65 ships, compared to Japan’s navy, which was ranked eleventh with only 32 ships. But perhaps remembering the Beiyang fleet’s neutrality in the Sino-French War, the Nanyang fleet and the two smaller squadrons at Guangzhou and Fuzhou quickly declared their neutrality in the 1894–1895 Sino-Japanese War. According to one account, except for some chance assistance by these fleets that was “largely inadvertent” and “regretted,” the only ships dispatched northward were sent after the Beiyang fleet’s defeat in February 1895, almost four months after their help was requested.
The decision of the other Chinese fleets not to become involved in the Sino-Japanese War forced Li’s Beiyang fleet to fight the Japanese alone. The Beiyang fleet was originally organized in 1888 with 25 ships. Li planned to use the Beiyang navy mainly for coastal defense, and so unlike the Japanese did not intend to extend naval power to the high seas. In any case, Li had to work through a corrupt and factionalized government bureaucracy to build his modern navy; it was beyond China’s means at the time to support this navy technologically.
China lost the 17 September 1894 Battle of the Yalu River (also known as the Battle of the Yellow Sea). Although the Beiyang fleet still existed in name, its reputation had been severely damaged. The Japanese now controlled the sea routes between China and Korea and had virtually a free hand to conduct further land operations during the remaining months of the war. As a result, the Japanese defeated the Chinese at Port Arthur on 21 November 1894. China’s Beiyang fleet escaped destruction only by retreating to Weihaiwei in Shandong province, but Beijing was powerless to prevent the loss of its best naval dockyard.
The final Japanese offensive in Shandong province proved a spectacular conclusion to the Sino-Japanese War. With Shandong under Japanese control, the way was now open for a two-pronged pincer attack against Beijing, the Chinese capital. This threat forced China to sue for peace and the war ended in mid-April 1895.
Following China’s defeat in the Sino-Japanese War and its failure to oust foreigners from China in the 1900 Boxer Uprising, new reform-minded officials adopted government and social reforms based on western history and politics, and western science and technology. They also encouraged travel and study abroad by Chinese officials, merchants, and intellectuals.
Military reforms were adopted beginning in August 1901, and in 1907 the Ministry of War added a Navy Department and planned four squadrons for the Gulf of Zhili, the Yellow Sea, Korea, and the South China Sea. Twenty-eight officers went to Great Britain to further their naval education. Plans were also made to reopen the naval college in Tianjin and establish other naval schools throughout China. In September 1909 the navy was withdrawn from the Ministry of War and a special Navy Bureau was created. Later, on 4 December 1910, an imperial edict expanded this bureau into a separate Ministry of the Navy
Following the Qing dynasty’s collapse in 1911–1912, the Chinese navy dissolved and individual admirals took direct charge of their own fleets. Some of these fleets moved south and supported the Nationalist government under Sun Yat-sen and, later, Jiang Jieshi (Chiang Kai-shek), while others remained loyal to Beijing. China’s naval forces were concentrated at Fuzhou and Shanghai. During the 1926 Northern Expedition, the Fuzhou navy suddenly switched sides and trapped Jiang’s opponents on the Min River. Following this defection, the navy was the first to take and occupy Fuzhou on 3 December 1926. This chaotic period continued through 1928 when the Nationalist government unified China and reconstituted the Chinese navy.
