Various European powers, the USA, and Japan, maintained flotillas of these shallow draft gunboats patrolling Chinese rivers. These gunboats were enforcing those nations' treaty rights under the unequal treaties that China had started to sign following her defeat during the first Opium War with Britain. The advantages of steam power and shallow drafts meant that the new European vessels initially vastly outclassed anything available to the Chinese. Foreign powers had coerced concessions from China, like extraterritoriality for their citizens in China, and the gunboats policed these rights.
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