Unequal treaty

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Unequal treaties were a series of agreements made between Asian countries (including China and Korea) and foreign powers (including the United Kingdom, France, Germany, the United States, Russia, and Japan) during the 19th and early 20th centuries.^[1] They were often signed following a military defeat suffered by the former party, or amid military threats made by the latter. Their terms specified obligations to be borne almost exclusively by the former party: provisions included the cession of territory, the payment of reparations, the opening of treaty ports, the relinquishment of the right to control tariffs and imports, and the granting of extraterritoriality to foreign citizens.^[2]

With the rise of Chinese nationalism and anti-imperialism in the 1920s, both the Kuomintang and the Chinese Communist Party used the concept to characterize the Chinese experience of losing sovereignty between roughly 1840 to 1950. The term "unequal treaty" became associated with the concept of China's "century of humiliation", especially the concessions to foreign powers and the loss of tariff autonomy through treaty ports.

Japanese and Koreans also use the term to refer to several treaties that resulted in a reduction of their national sovereignty. Japan and China signed treaties with Korea like the Japan–Korea Treaty of 1876 and China–Korea Treaty of 1882, with each granting privileges to the former parties concerning Korea.