Hundred Days' Reform in the First Sino-Japanese War in 1894–1895, not long after the First (1839–1842) and Second (1856–1860) Opium Wars; this blow came as a major shock to the Chinese, because Japan had been regarded as a tributary state, was much smaller than China, and was regarded as inferior. China also fought France in the Sino-French War from 1884 to 1885. Moreover, the defeat of China by Japan led to a scramble for "privileges" in China by other foreign powers, notably by the German Empire and Russia, further awakening the conservatives. Before the First Sino-Japanese War, China engaged in technological modernization only,
History of Chinese immigration to the United Kingdom the opium trade. Britain defeated China and under the terms of the Treaty of Nanking in 1842, Hong Kong became a British colony. In 1857, the Second Opium War resulted in the unequal Treaties of Tianjin which included a clause allowing Britain and France to recruit Chinese to the British Colonies, North American, South America, and Australia as cheap labour (otherwise known as "Coolies") following the cessation of the slave trade. Forced to pay for defeat in these and other colonial wars, impoverished Chinese people were driven abroad where they were often treated with suspicion, hostility, and even violence. Cheap