Diplomacy and enterprise

In China before the Opium wars, property lacked the protections found in the capitalist West. In order to ensure, among other things, the safety and property of their citizens, the Western powers forced China to accept a series of unequal treaty settlements. The first series of treaties, signed between 1842 and 1844, abolished the Chinese government's right to regulate trade, saddled it with indemnities, deprived it of territory, opened five ports to foreign trade and residence, and guaranteed foreigners protection under their own laws. During the second half of the 19th century, the treaty powers extended their trade and investments in China under the protection of Chinese governments when possible, and their own gunboats when necessary. In the late 1920s rising nationalism of the Chinese masses propelled the Guomindang to national power as it called for an end to the semi-colonial relationship in which the foreign powers deprived China of the greater part of its sovereignty. The British and American governments tended to vacillate between recognizing China as an independent and sovereign state and continuing to treat it as an unorganized, dependent territory. The Japanese, on the other hand, responded to nationalist demands by increasing the frequency and amount of force they used to protect their China interests

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