China–France relations, also known as Franco-Chinese relations or Sino-French relations, are the interstate relations between China and France (Kingdom or later).
The meaning of both "China" and "France" as entities has changed throughout history; this article discusses what was commonly considered 'France' and 'China' at the time of the relationships in question. There have been many political, cultural and economic relationships between the two countries since the Middle Ages. Rabban Bar Sauma from China visited France and met with King Philip IV of France. William of Rubruck encountered the French silversmith Guillaume Bouchier in the Mongol city of Karakorum.
Present-day relations are marked by both countries' respective regional powers stature (in the EU for France and Asia for China), as well as their shared status as G20 economies, permanent members of the UN Security Council, and internationally recognized nuclear-weapon states. Key differences include questions of trade, democracy, and human rights.
History 17th and 18th centuries
In 1698-1700 CE first French embassy to China took place via sea route.Translated by S. Bannister, 1859, A journal of the first French embassy to China, 1698-1700 Numerous French Jesuits were active in China during the 17th and 18th centuries: Nicolas Trigault (1577–1629), Alexander de Rhodes (1591–1660, active in Vietnam), Jean-Baptiste Régis (1663–1738), Jean Denis Attiret (1702–1768), Michel Benoist (1715–1774), Joseph-Marie Amiot (1718–1793).
French Jesuits pressured the French king to send them to China with the aims of counterbalancing the influence of Ottoman Empire in Europe. The Jesuits sent by Louis XIV were: Jean de Fontaney (1643–1710), Joachim Bouvet (1656–1730), Jean-François Gerbillon (1654–1707), Louis Le Comte (1655–1728) and Claude de Visdelou (1656–1737).Eastern Magnificence and European Ingenuity: Clocks of Late Imperial China - p. 182 by Catherine Pagani (2001) Returning to France, they noticed the similarity between Louis XIV of France and the Kangxi Emperor of China. Both were said to be servants of God, and to control their respective areas: France being the strongest country of Europe, and China being the strongest power in East Asia. Other biographical factors lead commentators to proclaim that Louis XIV and the Kangxi Emperor were protected by the same angel. (In childhood, they overcame the same illness; both reigned for a long time, with many conquests.)
Under Louis XIV's reign, the work of these French researchers sent by the King had a notable influence on Chinese sciences, but continued to be mere intellectual games, and not tools to improve the power of man over nature. Conversely, Chinese culture and style became fashionable in France, exemplified by the Chinoiserie fashion, and Louis XIV had the Trianon de Porcelaine built in Chinese style in 1670.Shapely Bodies: The Image of Porcelain in Eighteenth-Century France - p. 44-52 by Christine A. Jones (2013) France became the European center for Chinese porcelains, silks and lacquers and European imitations of these goods.
At the same time, the first ever known Chinese people came to France. Michel Sin arrived in Versailles in 1684 before continuing on to England. More notable was Arcadio Huang, who crossed France in 1702, spent some time in Rome (as a result of the Chinese Rites controversy), and returned to Paris in 1704, where he was the "Chinese interpreter of the King" before he died in 1716. He started the first ever Chinese-French dictionary, and a Chinese grammar to help French and European researchers to understand and study Chinese, but died before finishing his work.
Paris-based geographers processed reports and cartographic material supplied by mostly French Jesuit teams traveling across the Qing dynasty, and published a number of high-quality works, the most important of which was Description de la Chine et de la Tartarie Chinoise edited by Jean-Baptiste Du Halde (1736), with maps by Jean Baptiste Bourguignon d'Anville.
In the 18th century, the French Jesuit priest Michel Benoist, together with Giuseppe Castiglione, helped the Qianlong Emperor build a European-style area in the Old Summer Palace (often associated with European-style palaces built of stone), to satisfy his taste for exotic buildings and objects. Jean Denis Attiret became a painter to the Qianlong Emperor. Joseph-Marie Amiot (1718–1793) also won the confidence of the emperor and spent the remainder of his life in Beijing. He was official translator of Western languages for the emperor, and the spiritual leader of the French mission in Peking.Alain Peyrefitte, Images de l'Empire Immobile, p. 113
19th century
France asserted itself as the protector of the Catholic Church in China from the 1840s to 1920s. Lacking significant commercial ties to China, France focused on its religious role as a major aspect of its diplomacy with China.
French Catholic missionaries were active in the Qing dynasty; they were funded by appeals in French churches for money. The Holy Childhood Association (L'Oeuvre de la Sainte Enfance) was a Catholic charity founded in 1843 to rescue Chinese children from infanticide. It was a target of Chinese anti-Christian protests notably in the Tianjin Massacre of 1870. Rioting sparked by false rumors of the killing of babies led to the death of a French consul and provoked a diplomatic crisis.Henrietta Harrison, "'A Penny for the Little Chinese': The French Holy Childhood Association in China, 1843–1951." American Historical Review 113.1 (2008): 72-92. online
In 1844, China and France concluded its first modern treaty, the Treaty of Whampoa, which demanded for France the same privileges extended to Britain.
Beginning in the 1840s, France asserted a religious protectorate in China over the Catholic Church there. It began as a foreign policy goal of the French civil government through its foreign minister to China, Marie Melchior Joseph Théodose de Lagrené. A Catholic, de Lagrené viewed the negotiation of the Treaty of Whampoa as an opportunity to improve the prestige of France and the Catholic Church through religious policy. He asked his Qing government counterpart, Qiying, to persuade the Daoguang Emperor to provide religious toleration for Catholics as a demonstration of goodwill for France. Hoping that doing so would create division between the French imperialists and the Protestant British imperialists, the Daoguang Emperor agreed. Various historical views date the ending of the French religious protectorate in China to 1922 or the 1940s.
The Treaty of Whampoa institutionalised benefits for French Catholics, including the ability to operate and establish religious institutions in the treaty ports, decriminalisation of Catholicism throughout China, and providing that any missionaries discovered by Chinese authorities outside the treaty ports should be escorted to a French consulate. De Lagrené negotiated an edict which the Daoguang Emperor issued in 1846 which reaffirmed the free exercise of Catholic religious practice, mandated punishment for Chinese officials who persecuted Catholics, and restored to local Catholics all church property seized since the Kangxi Emperor's ban on Christianity in the early 18th century. The result in the subsequent decades was that magistrates dealing with Catholics in China were required to negotiate with French officials and address both domestic law and treaty law.
In 1860, the Summer Palace was sacked by Anglo-French troops and many precious artifacts found their way into French museums following the sack.. France obtained further privileges through the Sino-French Beijing Convention of 1860, which followed the Qing government's loss in the Second Opium War. Christian missionaries had the ability to travel anywhere in China's interior and buy property in China's interior.
Sino-French war, 1884-1885
For centuries China had claimed the Indo-China territory to its south as a tributary state, but France began a series of invasions, turning French Indochina into its own colony.Immanuel C. Hsu, Rise of Modern China (1975) pp 389-94. France and China clashed over control of Annam. The result was a conflict in 1884–85. The undeclared war was militarily a stalemate, but it was recognized that France had control of Annam and Indochina was no longer a tributary of China. The main political result was that the war strengthened the control of Empress Dowager Cixi over the Chinese government, giving her the chance to block modernization programs needed by the Chinese military. The war was unpopular in France and it brought down the government of Prime Minister Jules Ferry. Historian Lloyd Eastman concluded in 1967: The Chinese, although fettered by outmoded techniques and shortages of supplies, had fought the French to a stalemate. China lost, it is true, its claim to sovereignty over Vietnam, and that country remained under French dominance until 1954. But the French had been denied an indemnity; railroad construction had been averted; and imperial control of the southern boundaries of the rich natural resources lying within those boundaries had not been broken. In short, China was not much changed by the war.Lloyd E. Eastman, Throne and Mandarins: China's Search for a Policy during the Sino-French controversy, 1880-1885 (Harvard University Press, 1967) pp 102-3, 189, quoting page 202.
In 1897, France seized Kwangchow Wan, (Guangzhouwan) as a treaty port, and took its own concession in the treaty port of Shanghai. Kwangchow Wan was leased by China to France for 99 years (or until 1997, as the British did in Hong Kong's New Territories and the Germans did with Kiautschou Bay), according to the Treaty of 12 April 1898, on 27 May as Territoire de Kouang-Tchéou-Wan, to counter the growing commercial power of British Hong KongA. Choveaux, 1925, pp. 74–77 and was effectively placed under the authority of the French Resident Superior in Tonkin (itself under the Governor General of French Indochina, also in Hanoi); the French Resident was represented locally by Administrators.Olson 1991: 349
Railway construction
20th century
In 1900, France was a major participant in the Eight-Nation Alliance which invaded China during the late Qing dynasty period to put down the Boxer Rebellion. In the early 20th century Chinese students began to come to France. Li Shizeng, Zhang Renjie, Wu Zhihui, and Cai Yuanpei formed an anarchist group which became the basis for the Diligent Work-Frugal Study Movement. Zhang started a gallery which imported Chinese art, and the dealer C.T. Loo developed his Paris gallery into an international center.
In 1905-1907 Japan made overtures on China to enlarge its sphere of influence to include Fujian. Japan was trying to obtain French loans and also avoid the Open Door Policy. Paris provided loans on condition that Japan respect the Open Door and not violate China's territorial integrity. In the French-Japanese Entente of 1907, Paris secured Japan's recognition of the special interests France possessed in “the regions of the Chinese Empire adjacent to the territories” where they had “the rights of sovereignty, protection or occupation,” which meant the French colonial possessions in southeast Asia as well as the French spheres of influence in three provinces in southern China—Yunnan, Guangxi, and Guangdong. In return, the French recognized Japan's spheres of influence in Korea, South Manchuria, and Inner Mongolia.Seung-young Kim, "Open Door or Sphere of Influence?: The Diplomacy of the Japanese–French Entente and Fukien Question, 1905–1907." International History Review 41#1 (2019): 105-129; see also Review by Noriko Kawamura in H-DIPLO. "Arrangement between France and Japan Concerning their Policies in China" American Journal of International Law, (1910) Volume 4. online