to attack from the sea; British forces sailed and steamed wherever they wanted to go.... In the Arrow War (1856–60), the Chinese had no way to prevent the Anglo-French expedition of 1860 from sailing into the Gulf of Zhili and landing as near as possible to Beijing. Meanwhile, new but not exactly modern Chinese armies suppressed the midcentury rebellions, bluffed Russia into a peaceful settlement of disputed frontiers in Central Asia, and defeated the French forces on land in the Sino–French War (1884–85). But the defeat of the fleet, and the resulting threat to steamship traffic to Taiwan, forced China to conclude peace on unfavorable terms." According to Henry Hugh Peter Deasy in 1901 on the people of Xinjiang: "insurrection is about the last course to which the natives would of their own accord resort. Any riots and disturbances which occur are got up by the officials for the purpose of inflicting injury on foreigners. The population have no fighting courage, no arms, no leaders, are totally incapable of combined action, and, so far as the government of their own country is concerned. may be regarded as of no account. They have been squeezed to the utmost, but would prefer to remain under the dominion of China. If they are questioned, they say 'The Chinese plunder us, but they do not drive and hustle us, and we can do as we please.' This opinion agrees with that of the Andijanis, or natives of Russian Turkestan, who assert that Russian rule is much disliked among them, owing to the harassing administration to which they are subjected." 1890s alliance Russian Finance Minister Sergei Witte controlled East Asian policy in the 1890s. His goal was the peaceful expansion of trade and the increase of Russian influence over China. Japan's greatly-expanded and -modernized military easily defeated the antiquated Chinese forces in the First Sino–Japanese War (1894–1895). Russia now faced the choice of working with Japan, which had fairly good relations for some years, or acting as protector of China against Japan. Witte chose the latter policy, and in 1894 Russia joined Britain and France in forcing Japan to soften the peace terms that it had imposed on China. Japan was forced to return the Liaodong Peninsula and Port Arthur (both territories in southeastern Manchuria, a Chinese province) to China. The new Russian role angered Tokyo, which decided that Russia was the main enemy in