Question

How did Western power control trade with China?

Answer 1

Hint: The West wanted the tea that China produced and thought that it was entitled to trade for it. Trade was seen as a means of expanding national and personal wealth, so it was assumed that it was natural for every nation to participate in trade.

Complete answer: The Chinese were compelled by the Opium Wars to open Chinese ports to Western governments and to make the opium trade legal. The British would then cheaply procure and export costly Chinese consumer goods and other items such as tea to Europe. In the past, the Chinese would only consider silver in exchange. In China, by making unequal deals with China, Western powers obtain greater trade privileges. The first settlement since the first opium war, the Nanjing treaty, for instance.
In this treaty, China was expected to open five ports. Nations like Britain, France, the US and
Russia made China sign many treaties. The Kanagawa Treaty made it possible for the
American ships to stop at two Japanese ports. For Westerners, a later treaty allowed trade in more ports and created extraterritoriality. These treaties allow other cities, "Treaty Ports," to trade, foreign legal jurisdiction on Chinese territory in these ports, foreign tariff control, and Christian missionary presence, first along the coast and then throughout China. By the late 1800s, foreign powers competing for "spheres of influence" on Chinese soil said China was "carved up like a melon".

Note: The Qing dynasty limited European merchants in Guangzhou to a small trading outlet, but later they also established a policy that China should embrace Western technology but preserve its Confucian principles and institutions.