Imperialism: a note on the unequal treaties of modern China and Japan

With the perspective of The Other Canon economics, this chapter provides a brief history of what in modern China and Japan is called 'the unfair treaties'. During the century from the 1840s to 1940s, unfair (or unequal) treaties were the main tools employed by the West to exploit contemporary China and Japan and to block their industrialisation. The basic colonial methodology was like that of Africa but carried through in much more advanced contexts. From the perspective of Other Canon economics, the essence of the unfair treaties was to prematurely impose free trade on China and Japan depriving these economies of their protective shields around their infant national industries - their tariff autonomy - so that they were unable to industrialise. For a while they were locked in the world system of Western imperialism as suppliers of raw materials and low value-added manufactures. The history of unfair treaties of modern China and Japan serves as typical examples of the practice of the Western imperialist economic strategy which has existed for centuries and intends to deprive underdeveloped nations of their opportunities of development and industrialisation in the name of 'free trade'. Both China and Japan have overthrown the oppression of the unfair treaties, but the relevant histories have become national memories of these nations to alert them to the vigilance against the practices of Western imperialism.