Century of humiliation

The century of humiliation (simplified Chinese: 百年国耻; traditional Chinese: 百年國恥; pinyin: bǎinián guóchǐ) is a Chinese historiographical concept for a period in history beginning with the end of the First Opium War (1839–1842), and terminating with the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949 under the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The century-long period is typified by the decline, defeat and political fragmentation of the Qing dynasty and the subsequent Republic of China, which led to demoralizing foreign intervention, annexation and subjugation of China by Western powers, Russia, and Japan.

The characterization of the period as a "humiliation" arose with an atmosphere of Chinese nationalism following China's defeat in the First Sino-Japanese War of 1894–1895 and the subsequent events including the scramble for concessions in the late 1890s. Since then the idea of national humiliation became a focus of discussions among many Chinese writers and scholars, although they differed somewhat in their understandings of national humiliation; ordinary scholars and constitutionalists also had different understanding of their home country from the anti-Qing revolutionaries in the late Qing period. The idea of national humiliation was also mentioned in late Qing textbooks.

After the establishment of the Republic of China, the national humiliation idea grew further in opposition to the Twenty-One Demands made by the Japanese government in 1915, and with protests against China's poor treatment in the Treaty of Versailles in 1919. Both the Kuomintang and Chinese Communist Party popularized the characterization in the 1920s, protesting the unequal treaties and loss of Chinese territory to foreign empires. During the 1930s and 1940s, the term became common due to the Japanese invasion of China proper. In 1943, the major western Allied nations of World War II, at the direction of the United States, agreed to revoke all unequal treaties they signed with the Qing government, officially ending the Treaty System along with foreign extraterritoriality, political and trade privileges, making foreign nationals subject to Chinese laws. Although formal treaty provisions were ended, the epoch remains central to concepts of Chinese nationalism, and the term is widely used in both political rhetoric and popular culture.