The whole reason that the Qing was far more devoted to regulating the European rather than the Asian junk trade, was more than a general principle of Qing xenophobia, as some discontented British minority concluded, was that European sailors had not been on their best behavior two centuries before Macartney's arrival. The Portuguese, the first Europeans to make a concerted effort to penetrate mainland China under the Ming dynasty, had barged undiplomatically up to Canton - building a fort, buying Chinese children, trading at will. The author of the book that I referencing from the beginning of the forum, mentions one Captain John Weddell, who, in 1637, similarly forced his way up to Canton aspiring to 'do all the spoils ... [he] could unto the Chinois.' While deliberating on how to handle the Macartney embassy, the Qing court pondered accounts of the British absorption of India, and the Qianlong emperor observed that the British were ever-ready to take advantage if slack military discipline on the coast.
In addition, the Qing - as a conquering minority - uneasiness about security was a way of life, directed at every ethnic group within its sprawling frontiers, including the Han Chinese majority who helped administer the empire.
:laughs:
