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A failure—— Macartney’s visit to China According to our history text book, the result of Macartney’s visit to China is a completely failure. It is an important foreign event happened in 18th century between the Qing Dynasty and the Great Britain. When George III sent the Macartney Mission to visit the Qing Dynasty, with his letter, gifts of industry, great interest to trade with China and to establish a friendly and equitable diplomatic relationship, they were generously treated by China, however, because of a series of courtesy disputes, the English gentlemen were told that China needn’t their gifts or the trade relationship, and failed to achieve their diplomatic goals. Neither of them feel satisfied with each other. Finally, the visit was like a farce ending in a hurry. For English, they lost a trading friend, but for China, they lost the last opportunity to get on the car of industry. So what was it the reason that result in this diplomatic failure? And what influence does it make? The first reason for the failure is communication. The most important aspect in communication is translator. According to “Reconstructing the Translation Process of Macartney’s Visit to China” from CNIK, in England, when the decision to visit China is made, British Foreign Secretary Dundas commanded Macartney to recruit Chinese translators. After a lot of effort, deputy ambassador George Leonard Staunton found 2 Chinese priests in Naples Chinese Academy. They were Paolo Cho and Jacob Ly. The 2 priests can’t speak English, but they can speak Italian and Latin. In George Leonard Staunton’s opinion, they can translate Latin into English themselves, however, when a sentence was translated several times, the real meaning behind it will be inaccurate. What’s worse, when they arrived Macao, afraid of being punished by Chinese government because of working for other country, Paolo Cho insisted on resignation. Jacob Ly became the only professional translator. However, he left China when he was very young, so he was not familiar with official discourse and instrumental norms. Sometimes he could not distinguish between courtesy and commitment. In the letter from French Jesuit missionary Jean-Baptiste-Joseph to Spain Office in Macau, he said, “Jacob Ly should be blame for the failure, he knew China even less then his English masters.” However, there was another person, 12-year-old son of deputy ambassador George Leonard Staunton, George Thomas Staunton. He began to learn Chinese after he joined the mission, and made great progress. According to British official Perefiite” When necessary, he (George Thomas Staunton) can indeed act as a considerable translator.” The responsibility of translation fell on Jacob Ly and a 12-year-old child’s shoulders. In China, Emperor Qianlong paid much attention to Macartney’s visit. According to First Historical Archives of China, Emperor Qianlong commanded, “the translator should be rewarded and they should be promoted. “Driven by tempting reward, the translation team was soon set up. It consisted of 7 missionaries, and the Portuguese Joseph-Bernard d’Almeida was the head of them. However, none of them knew English very well. What was more, the Portuguese would distort the meanings and damaged English reputation considering of their own country’s benefit. Neither of the 2 countries had a strong group of translators, so it is proper to regard the visitation as a dialogue of the 2 deaf. The second reason for the failure is psychology. In the Britain’s view, when it was 18th century, the Glorious Revolution had just been finished, and it became an independent capitalist country. They were proud of their productions from industrial revolution. They viewed the visitation as an attempt for independent and equal cooperation. In China’s view, they were going through Kang Qian powerful age. And because of the long history of power in the world, Chinese emperors thought all other countries on the world as China’s dependency, which could never be equal to others. Whether their relationship was equal or not was the root of all conflicts in communication. According to” A Study of Sino - British Psychology During Macartney 's Visit to China” from CNKI, because the visitation was during Qianlong’s eighty birthday celebration, all the officers of the court praised the emperor by congratulating him that his prestige and majestic reputation had spread so widely that such a far-distance country would come to pay tribute. In that way of thinking, when the foreign mission met Qianlong, they were required to kneel down and kowtow to his majesty, which just like Qianlong’s officers or envoys of a dependent State. As an independent country of industry power, the Macartney’s mission refused the requirement, because they didn’t want to make their own country be humiliated. In China’s view, the visitors were impolite and they were disrespectful to the emperor. The first meeting ended in failure and this became an obstacle to all subsequent negotiations. The third reason consists in the differences in the demands between Feudalism and Capitalism. When we take the background into consideration, we can find that the diplomatic failure is inevitable. According to Macartney 's Diary to Visit China,” our trade should be improved, as it now seems to promise, that is to say, that the value of exports and imports between England and China should become nearly equal…”and according to George III’s letter to Qianlong, they longed for trading, tax preference and an island for traders to live on. However, Qianlong replied, “we are super power country and we have anything we need domestic. Many countries from a far distance come to pay tribute each year, so any wander in the world has been in China. Trade is not necessary for us.” It was such a pity that China refused all the demands from England. Did China refuse all the demands only because of the courtesy conflicts? The answer was absolutely not. As you can see from Qianlong’s letter, the real reason is that China didn’t have the demand for trading and England had an enthusiastic expectation for trading with China. They didn’t have the same interest, so there was no doubt that their negotiation would fail. So why they had different demands? The different backgrounds told us the reasons. China, endowed with vast plains and abundant resources, Chinese could satisfy themselves with the wonderful natural conditions. From generation to generation, they relied on the land and kept the feudalism. In political aspect, the despot considered trading with foreign countries and frequent population movement to be difficult to govern and it was dangerous. On the contrary, England was surrounded by the endless sea and barren islands. They had no choice but to trade with others and to gather wealth by trading. After the Glorious Revolution, the country became more capitalist and the aspire to trade was stronger. The two different background and demands were the main reason for the failure of the visitation. The visitation was ended by failure, but it’s influence didn’t stop. In Macartney’s letter to George III, “Their armament was abolished and corruption was considered as normal…” After several days in China, Macartney gathered much important information. When the information was carried to England, a member of parliament said,” China is just a colossus with feet of clay, as long as a lightly stamp it will collapse to the ground.” No longer afraid of the previous powerful country, they launched the Opium War soon after and grabbed much wealth from China. However, for China, it ignored others advanced technology and was proud of its historical glory blindly. It showed no interest in the English gifts, which included the most developed armament. It had no competition consciousness and satisfied with steady and peaceful life. It stopped when others were moving forward. With other countries invading, China began losing its glory and was pressed by a series of treaties of humiliation. These are the influences on China and England by Macartney’s visitation. From the event, we can come to the conclusion that, whenever others want to cooperate with you, you should be modest and equal to others. Too much proud will ruin the way of development and even let the opportunity slip away, finally, being a loser in the history.
