Robert Hart would have been horrified at the massive corruption scandal involving Chinese customs which came to light last week. Hart was the Irish official who created the modern Chinese customs service for the Qing Dynasty in the 1860s.
During his four decades as inspector-general of the Imperial Maritime Customs Service, the one thing Hart would not tolerate was corruption. It undoubtedly ran counter to his inherited values as a Protestant of planter stock from Co Armagh.
Robert Hart was born the son of a Portadown grocer in 1835, and baptised in Drumcree Church of Ireland Parish Church. He graduated from Queen's College Belfast and entered the British consular service in China. China was then ruled by the Manchus of the Qing Dynasty, which for two centuries had lorded it over the majority Han Chinese.
This was the time when western powers imposed unequal treaties on a weak China, and Europeans often behaved discourteously. Hart, however, learned to speak fluent Chinese, and mastered the intricacies of ceremonial conduct.
The Manchus came to trust and value him, especially when he showed how the customs service could generate a lot more revenue, which they needed to suppress the Taiping rebels fighting to expel the Manchus and all foreigners.
Hart even acquired a Chinese concubine, Ayaou, who over six years bore him three children, Anna, Herbert and Arthur. However, in 1866, when the time came for him to return to Ireland to find a bride, he paid off Ayaou with $3,000, shipped the children to England with generous endowments, and married Hester Jane Bredon of Portadown. After a brief honeymoon in Killarney, he took her to Beijing where they had three children.
The "Great I-G", as he became known, was a formidable social presence in the Chinese capital, where he created the first western brass band to perform at his garden parties. But as Fergus Gaines, president of the Irish Chinese Cultural Society, notes in the fascinating lecture on Hart he gave to the society last year (and which is the main source of this article), his one true love was the Chinese customs service, and Hester eventually left him and returned to Europe.
Hart didn't restrict his energies just to the Customs Service. Finding that coastal charts were sketchy, he established a system of 182 lighthouses, the first ever in China. He commissioned four gunboats - Alpha, Beta, Gamma and Delta - from Armstrong's, the British shipbuilders, to form the nucleus of the Chinese navy. He established the Chinese Postal Service, based on the Customs' own internal postal system, with himself as inspector-general.
He even played a role in launching China's diplomatic service by persuading the emperor to appoint Peking's first ever ambassador to London. The Chinese Foreign Ministry today might not readily acknowledge the Portadown man as one of its inspirations, but Hart played an extraordinary role in China's international negotiations.
For example, in 1887 he finalised a treaty with Portugal giving Lisbon permanent rights to Macau - relinquished just two months ago - and in 1894 he initiated peace negotiations with Japan on behalf of the Qing government.
Contemporary Chinese historians claim that in his work, Hart accumulated statistics on local conditions all over China which could only have helped British intelligence. They argue that his Customs Service was a device to collect taxes to pay foreign loans, and therefore was the agent of imperialist subjection of China.
No doubt Hart helped prop up the old order and maintain a dying, corrupt dynasty. However, by setting up so many national institutions, he furthered the creation of a modern nation-state in China.
Far from being against change, Hart sympathised with the growing anti-foreigner movement represented by the Boxer rebellion in the 1900s. He shocked contemporaries by describing the Boxers as Chinese patriots reacting to a long series of foreign abuses. He predicted that within 50 years a new generation of Boxers would take back everything with interest.
Sure enough, half a century later the communist revolution brought an end to foreign domination.
Hart found himself besieged in the embassy quarter during the Boxer rebellion. He threw notes wrapped in stones over the wall in the hope that some message would get through to the outside world. The only one that was delivered was to his tailor in London, ordering a new suit.
The Great I-G left China in 1908, never to return. He was appointed the first pro-chancellor of Queen's University Belfast and received awards from 15 countries, and, much to his amusement as a northern Protestant, was made a Commander of the Order of Pius IX by the Holy See.
A statue was erected in his memory in Shanghai, which was destroyed by the Japanese in 1942. Its inscription hailed him as Inspector-General of the Chinese Maritime Customs, founder of the Chinese lighthouse service, organiser of the National Post Office, trusted counsellor to the Chinese government, and "True Friend of the Chinese People".