The English were not as successful at imperializing China as they were India and Africa. The Chinese were a very ethnocentric society, so they would not allow Europeans to influence them as heavily as the Europeans would have liked to. In both of these documents we see this idea of Chinese ethnocentrism demonstrated. In the Chinese emperor's response to Lord McCartney's request to have European trade in China, we see how the Chinese believed that …
showed first 75 words of 391 total

showed last 75 words of 391 total
…her divine right persona, and coolly asks for the Queen of England to take opium out of China. China was extremely ethnocentric. The fact that they even asked anything of the Europeans was a sign of the urgency of their plea for the opium be taken out of their "Celestial Empire." That was a huge sign that the English had weakened the Chinese. We also see here a decline in their own sense of power.