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By the late 1890s China’s Qing dynasty had been devastated by half a century of war and unrest. Decades of foreign encroachment (unequal treatiesUnequal Treaties Full Description: A series of treaties signed with Western powers and Japan during the 19th and early 20th centuries. These agreements, forced upon China through gunboat diplomacy, stripped the nation of its sovereignty and control over its own economy.The Unequal Treaties were the legal shackles of semi-colonialism. They forced China to open “treaty ports” where foreign law applied, ceded territory (like Hong Kong), fixed tariffs at artificially low levels to favor foreign goods, and granted “extraterritoriality”—meaning foreigners…