I know the British and later other Europeans were able to take treaty ports and force unequal treaties on the Chinese, but they didn’t need to stop there. They seized treaty ports and forced unequal treaties on Africans and were later able to conquer the whole continent despite terrible terrain and natural obstacles, as well as an extremely decentralized political structure. China was super centralized and had a pretty good environment to project power into. European armies and navies were clearly superior. Why didn’t they try to cut China into pieces to be ruled directly, like Africa? Were there ever serious attempts made at conquering mainland China? I read on wikipedia that in the late 1890’s Europeans were about to split China into pieces to be ruled by each power as a direct colony, and stopped because the Boxer Rebellion intimidated them. Is that true? Did the fall of Qing dynasty change anything?