The pressure of the West compelled the Chinese government to define more clearly than ever before its own boundaries, its relations with the vassal states, and its lines of contact with the Chinese people. By the Treaty of Nerchinsk, negotiated in 1689 with Russia, the Chinese tried to demarcate their land frontier. The vassal nations presented a crucial problem. The Chinese failed to make explicit their quasi suzerainty in terms comprehensible to Western jurisprudence. At the same time they followed a policy of brisk exaggeration of territorial rights alternating with outright disclaimer of responsibility. The scope of government itself was affected by new functions which arose with the coming of the Westerners. The tax system was expanded. The development of an imperial customs service with Western personnel and Western methods of accounting provided the government with a source of large revenue. The demands that Western states be given adequate consideration in the transaction of business led to the establishment in 1860 of the Foreign Office (_Tsung-li Yamên_), a new institution which modified the traditional administrative pattern. In addition, the Western states introduced their own type of government into China through the demand that their citizens be subject only to the law with which they were familiar at home. In dealing with Westerners the Chinese had at first employed a code far more Draconic than the provisions of Chinese penal practice. After many years of irritation the Western powers, under the leadership of Great Britain, secured extraterritorial privileges for their citizens. Extraterritoriality placed Westerners in China solely under the jurisdiction of their respective national representatives. If an American today were to shoot down the Dalai Lama in Tibet, he could be tried legally only in the United States Court in Shanghai--although it is improbable that the Tibetans would insist upon juridical niceties. Apart from the guarantee of personal immunity from Chinese law for their citizens, wherever they might be in China, the Western powers, through a long series of special arrangements and actual usage, obtained certain footholds on Chinese soil where even Chinese were under Western rule. These areas were known as _concessions_ and _settlements_, and the cities of their location as the _treaty ports_. Both the presence of Westerners subject only to Western law throughout the Empire, and of areas where Western governance was paramount, taught the Chinese the lesson of strong government.