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Treaty ports (; ) were the ports that were opened to foreign trade mainly by the Unequal treaty forced upon them by Western world, as well as cities in Korea opened up similarly by the Qing dynasty of China (before the First Sino-Japanese War) and the Empire of Japan.William C. Johnstone, "International Relations: The Status of Foreign Concessions and Settlements in the Treaty Ports of China" American Political Science Review (1937) 31#5 pp. 942-948 online
The second group of treaty ports was set up following the end of the Second Opium War (Arrow War) in 1860 and eventually, more than 80 treaty ports were established in China alone, involving many foreign powers.
Western images of the Chinese treaty ports focus on the distinctive geography of the "bund", a long narrow strip of land in a prime location on the waterfront where the businesses, offices, warehouses, and residences of all foreigners were located. The Shanghai Bund was the largest and most famous. The North Riverbank in Ningbo (nowadays known as the Old Bund), was the first in China, opening in 1844, 20 years before the Shanghai bund. A typical bund contained British, German, French, American, Japanese, and other nationals.
The bund was a self-governing operation with its own shops, restaurants, recreational facilities, parks, churches, courts, police, and local government. The facilities were generally off-limits to the natives. The British, who by far dominated foreign trade with China, normally were the largest presence. Businessmen and officials typically brought their own families with them and stayed for years but sent their older children back to England for education.
Chinese sovereignty was only nominal. Officially, the foreign powers were not allowed to station military units in the bund, but in practice, there often was a warship or two in the harbor.Robert Nield, China’s Foreign Places: The Foreign Presence in China in the Treaty Ports (2015) Online.
The system effectively ended when Japan took control of most of the ports in the late 1930s, the Russians relinquished their treaty rights in the wake of the Russian Revolution in 1917, and the Germans were expelled in 1914. The three main treaty powers, the British, the Americans, and the French, continued to hold their concessions and extraterritorial jurisdictions until the Second World War. This ended when the Japanese stormed into their concessions in late 1941. They formally relinquished their treaty rights in a new "equal treaties" agreement with Chiang Kai-shek's nationalist government-in-exile in Chongqing in 1943. The international communities that were residues of the treaty port era ended in the late 1940s when the communists took over and nearly all foreigners left.
The Shanghai International Settlement rapidly developed into one of the world's most modern cities, often compared to Paris, Berlin, and London.Rhoads Murphey, Shanghai: key to modern China (Harvard UP, 2013). It set the standard of modernity for China and all of East Asia. In Shanghai, the British and American settlements combined in 1863 into an international settlement, with the French settlement operated separately nearby. The foreigners took out long-term leases on the land and set up factories, offices, warehouses, sanitation, police, gardens, restaurants, hotels, banks, and private clubs. The Shanghai Municipal Council was created in 1854, with nine members who were elected by three dozen foreign landowners at first, and by about 2,000 electors in the 1920s. Chinese residents comprised 90% of the total population of Shanghai but complained about taxation without representation. Eventually, the Council admitted five Chinese representatives.Robert Bickers, "Shanghailanders: The formation and identity of the British settler community in Shanghai 1843–1937." Past & Present 159.1 (1998): 161–211 online.
The European community promoted technological and economic innovation, as well as knowledge industries, that proved especially attractive to Chinese entrepreneurs as models for their cities across the growing nation.Yen-p'ing Hao, The Commercial Revolution of Nineteenth-Century China: The Rise of Sino-Western Mercantile Competition (U of California Press, 1984). Port cities combined several leadership roles. First of all, they were the major port of entry for all imports and exports - except for opium, which was handled by smugglers in other cities.Mühlhahn, Making China Modern 110–114. Foreign entrepreneurs introduced the latest European manufacturing techniques, providing a model followed sooner or later by all of China. The first establishments focused on shipbuilding, ship repair, railway repair, and factories producing textiles, matches, porcelain, flour, and machinery. Tobacco, cigarettes, textiles, and food products were the specialty in Canton. Financing was handled by branch banks, as well as entirely new operations such as HSBC -the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, which remains a world-class establishment into the 21st century.Frank H.H. King, et al., The History of the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation (Cambridge UP, 1991). Across the modernizing world, railway construction was a major financial and industrial endeavor, usually led by the British. Investments now poured into building a railway-plus-telegraph system knitting China together, connecting the treaty ports, and other major cities, as well as mining districts and agricultural centers.David McLean, "Chinese Railways and the Townley Agreement of 1903." Modern Asian Studies 7.2 (1973): 145-164 online Chinese entrepreneurs learned their skills in the port cities, and soon applied for and received bank loans for their startups. Chinese merchants headquartered there set up branches across Southeast Asia, including British Singapore and Malaya, the Dutch East Indies, French Indochina, and the American Philippines.François Gipouloux, ed. The Asian Mediterranean: port cities and trading networks in China, Japan and South Asia, 13th-21st century (Elgar, 2011).
The information industry flourished in the port cities, with printing shops, newspapers, magazines, and pamphlets in Chinese and European languages. Book publishers often featured Chinese translations of European classics in philosophy, politics, literature, and social issues.Natascha Vittinghoff, "Readers, publishers and officials in the contest for a public voice and the rise of a modern press in late Qing China (1860-1880)." T'oung Pao 87.4 (2001): 393-455 online. According to historian Klaus Mühlhahn:
Christian missionaries saw all of the Chinese population as their target audience, but they were headquartered in the port cities. The missionaries had very modest success in the conversion of the Chinese population but discovered they became widely popular for setting up medical and educational facilities. For example, St John's University in Shanghai (1879–1952) first set up faculties of theology, Western learning, and Chinese languages, then expanded to cover literature, science, medicine, and intense coverage of Western languages eagerly sought by the ambitious Chinese intellectuals and entrepreneurs who had rejected the old Confucian exam system for the Western model of modernity. Engineering schools were established as well, and by 1914 a network of universities, colleges, teacher training schools, and specialized industrial schools was headquartered in the Port cities, and diffusing their alumni across urban China.Philip L. Wickeri, ed. Christian encounters with Chinese culture: essays on Anglican and Episcopal history in China (Hong Kong University Press, 2015).
Students poured into the port cities. Many adopted ideas and used the facilities newly opened to them to network with each other, set up organizations and publications, and plot a revolution against the Qing government. Aggressive Japanese moves to dominate China in World War I caused a strong backlash of nationalism in the May Fourth Movement, which focused its ire not just on Japan, but also on the entire port city system as emblematic of imperialism that should no longer be tolerated.Chow Tse-Tsung, The May fourth movement: Intellectual revolution in modern China (Harvard UP. 1960) pp 228-238. online The national government had almost no police power in the port cities, allowing secret societies to flourish in the Chinese community, some of which turned into criminal gangs. Eventually, Shanghai had a strong underground illegal underworld that was ready to employ violence.John C. DeKorne, "Sun Yat-Sen and the Secret Societies." Pacific Affairs 7.4 (1934): 425-433 online.
In modern China, most of the country's special economic zones are located in former treaty ports and therefore have symbolic significance in demonstrating a "reversal of fortunes" in China's dealings with foreigners since the century of humiliation.Zongyuan Zoe Liu (2026). 9780674271913, The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. ISBN 9780674271913 Researcher Zongyuan Zoe Liu writes that "the success of these cities as 'red' treaty ports represented another step in China's overall reform and opening-up plan while legitimizing the leadership of the CPC over the Chinese state and people."
| Shanghai ! scope="row" | Shanghai | 1842–1946 | Greater Shanghai had three sections:
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| Jiangsu ! scope="row" | Nanjing | 1858 | |
| Jiangxi ! scope="row" | Jiujiang | 1861–1929 | , British Concession in Jiujiang |
| Hubei ! scope="row" | Hankou District (now part of Wuhan) | 1858–1945 | ; later , and , Russian Empire |
| Hunan ! scope="row" | Changsha | 1937–1945 | |
| Sichuan ! scope="row" | Chongqing | ||
| Zhejiang ! scope="row" | Ningbo | 1841–1842 | |
| Fujian ! scope="row" | Fuzhou | 1842–1945 | , then |
| Guangdong ! scope="row" | Guangzhou (Canton) | 1842–WWII | ; then |
| Guangxi ! scope="row" | Beihai | 1876–1940s? | , , , , , , , |
| Yunnan ! scope="row" | Mengzi City | ||
| Shandong ! scope="row" | Yantai | ||
| Hebei ! scope="row" | Tianjin | 1860–1902 | , , , , , , , , |
| Liaoning ! scope="row" | Niuzhuang | 1858 | |
| Jilin ! scope="row" | Changchun | ||
| Heilongjiang ! scope="row" | Harbin | 1898–1946 | , , ; later and the |
| New Taipei City ! scope="row" | Tamsui District | 1862 | |
| Tainan ! scope="row" | Tainan | 1858 |
| 1898–1905 | Russian Dalian (1898–1905); now Dalian | |
| 1905–1945 | ||
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