What did China agree to do once the Treaty of Nanjing was signed? (Check all that apply.)

The answer

The Treaty of Nanjing (Nanking), signed in 1842, ended the First Opium War between Britain and Qing China. Under its terms, China agreed to all of the following — the correct "check all that apply" selections:

• Cede Hong Kong Island to Britain in perpetuity, giving Britain a permanent base on the China coast.
• Open five treaty ports to British residence and trade: Guangzhou (Canton), Xiamen (Amoy), Fuzhou (Foochow), Ningbo (Ningpo), and Shanghai.
• Pay an indemnity of 21 million silver dollars — covering the destroyed opium, war costs, and debts owed to British merchants.
• Set a fixed, fair (low) tariff on imports and exports, meaning China could no longer freely control its own trade duties.
• Abolish the Canton System, ending the Cohong merchant monopoly that had previously restricted all foreign trade to Canton through licensed Chinese merchants.

Why some options would be wrong

In the multiple-select version of this question, common incorrect choices include:

• "Legalize the opium trade" — the treaty did not legalize opium. Remarkably, opium is never mentioned in the treaty text; its legalization came later, after the Second Opium War.
• "Grant Britain full colonial control of all China" — false. China ceded only Hong Kong Island, not the mainland; it remained a sovereign (if weakened) empire.
• "Adopt Christianity" or "cede Kowloon / the New Territories" — these belong to later treaties (Kowloon in 1860, the New Territories in 1898), not Nanjing.
• "Extraterritoriality and most-favored-nation status" — these were granted in the supplementary Treaty of the Bogue (1843), not in the main Treaty of Nanjing itself, so they are a frequent trap.

The bigger picture: why it was an "unequal treaty"

The Treaty of Nanjing is the first of the unequal treaties because every concession flowed one way — from China to Britain — with nothing comparable given in return. China lost territory, lost control over its own tariffs (a core piece of economic sovereignty), and was forced to pay a massive indemnity after a war Britain had launched partly to protect its illegal opium trade.

For Chinese historians this treaty marks the beginning of the "Century of Humiliation," a period of foreign encroachment lasting until the mid-20th century. It set a template that other powers — the United States, France, Russia — quickly copied through their own treaties, each demanding similar privileges. Understanding the treaty's specific terms (ports, indemnity, Hong Kong, tariff) is essential because they show exactly how a single defeat cracked open China's closed trading system and eroded its sovereignty piece by piece.