[shawn]

Japan was able to modernise itself and learn from the western powers when industrial age and trading age began from middle of 19th century onwards, why couldn't China modernise itself and although it had many great inventions?

[thirdgumi]

There is a very good book about this issue: The Modernization of China, Edited by Gilbert Rozman

[Yang Zongbao]

Some of threads too, if you do a search function in the Qing forum.

[T98G]

Backward thinking and the false belief that China is the most advance Nation in the world.

Basically a European observer doing that time has comment that the burcratic public servant which also happens to be a of Confusion official, "spend most of the day growing long finger nails and reciting poem and literature".

Which of course means they don't like any reforms that would threaten their life style, they also think such as building a railway line happens to be unnecessary and the nation doesn't need it.

The same thing happen to Japan, but the emperor had political power to make reform happen and slaughter/kill any conservatives opponents who happen not to agree with him.

The conservatives in China just went to Empress Dowager Cixi for support and save themselves from the 100 days reform propose by Emperor Guangxu and Kang Youwei .

[Ashura]

moving to qing forum

[shawn]

Yang Zongbao, on Dec 19 2006, 10:59 PM, said:

Some of threads too, if you do a search function in the Qing forum.

Thanks, looks like I didn't do my homework...

[Howard Fu]

Kunisada, on Dec 19 2006, 05:56 PM, said:

Some thought China invincible, but others were scared by the foreign concepts that they felt would undermine their power. For example, the idea of exams being completely practical and based on personal merit, rather than who could come up with a lovely poem, scared those who benefited from stopping people thinking outside of the box. Also destroying the patronage system would have hurt them gravely.

The civil service exam of Qing didn't test poem writing. Some one in the government did want to change, but the changes often comes too little, too late. Like in the civil service exam, They try to include some topic of modern world into the exam,(Ok, this is an old joke), like 'Comparing Xiangyu and Napoleon'. But someone examner end up writing something like, 'Xiangyu is a hill lifting hero. How can he take a broken wheel and can't lift if? (Napoleon's name's Chinese translation are similar to broken wheel.)'

The reason why China can't modernise like Japan are two,
1, China is much bigger and much more complex than Japan, thus much more difficult to change.
2, The ruling elites of China is in a much weaker position compared to Japan. Cixi dominate power most of the time when change is mostly needed, but she didn't have the authority or will to make any significant change. Radical change needs absolute authority. On the contrary, sticking to the conservative doctrines gives your political enemy less excuse to attack you. Qing government is a minority government, that lent the government another layer of weakness. The powerful officials who promote modernization are often Han, like Zuo Zongtang, Li Hongzhang, Zhang Zhidong. The Qing government need their ability, but deeply suspicious of their loyalty.

[Ruthless4Life]

Japan was relatively left alone by the Western powers to modernize, while China had such a greater market and a place of interests for the Western powers. In a way, the Western powers wanted China only to "modernize" in certain aspects, to an extent that the Qing Dynasty could not challenge them because they wanted to make sure they could continue to dictate the Qing government's foreign policies, keeping the government in place, but weak. The last thing the West wanted was the abolishment of the Qing Dynasty, because the Western powers took great lengths into making the Qing Dyansty rule China in such a way that benefitted the Western trading interests the most. If the Qing were to be overthrown or China becomes too powerful, those Unequal Treaties and their treaty ports would no longer exist for the benefits of the West.

[heijingling]

Maybe we could ask "Why did Japan modernized ?"
The 2 countries shared many similarities at that time : they had been quite isolated from the rest of the world for many years , they were ruled by people not 100% "legitimate" (the Shoguns instead of the emperor in Japan , the Manchus in China) for more than 2 centuries, & these powers were declinining , & both refused any western influence; the western powers tried to open these countries for trading using the military forces quite at the same moment (the opium war in 1839 , the u.s. commodore Perry in 1853).
The difference is that the forced opening of Japan led to a revolution (the Meiji restoration) , & it was this new power who decided to modernize Japan.
There had been no such successfull revolution in China after the opium war (BTW , had the Taiping rebellion any link to the opium war ?), such a revolution came much too late , in 1912 , & wasn't as successfull as the japanese one; actually it led to many chaotics years.

[T98G]

Howard Fu, on Dec 20 2006, 05:20 PM, said:

The civil service exam of Qing didn't test poem writing. Some one in the government did want to change, but the changes often comes too little, too late. Like in the civil service exam, They try to include some topic of modern world into the exam,(Ok, this is an old joke), like 'Comparing Xiangyu and Napoleon'. But someone examner end up writing something like, 'Xiangyu is a hill lifting hero. How can he take a broken wheel and can't lift if? (Napoleon's name's Chinese translation are similar to broken wheel.)'

The reason why China can't modernise like Japan are two,
1, China is much bigger and much more complex than Japan, thus much more difficult to change.
2, The ruling elites of China is in a much weaker position compared to Japan. Cixi dominate power most of the time when change is mostly needed, but she didn't have the authority or will to make any significant change. Radical change needs absolute authority. On the contrary, sticking to the conservative doctrines gives your political enemy less excuse to attack you. Qing government is a minority government, that lent the government another layer of weakness. The powerful officials who promote modernization are often Han, like Zuo Zongtang, Li Hongzhang, Zhang Zhidong. The Qing government need their ability, but deeply suspicious of their loyalty.

Unfortunately there were more conservatives than reformers before the boxer uprising, after the uprising where a lot of conservatives were executed until reforms were finally discuss. But even then it came too slowly.

An interesting fact on Li Hongzhang was that he was outside visiting Europe when Cixi stage her coup with support from the conservatives. After he came back Cixi suspect he support Emperor Guangxu coup against her, so she arrange a meeting and he even told her face to face that he supported the reforms.

This post has been edited by T98G: 20 December 2006 - 04:54 AM

[T98G]

heijingling, on Dec 20 2006, 06:57 PM, said:

Maybe we could ask "Why did Japan modernized ?"
The 2 countries shared many similarities at that time : they had been quite isolated from the rest of the world for many years , they were ruled by people not 100% "legitimate" (the Shoguns instead of the emperor in Japan , the Manchus in China) for more than 2 centuries, & these powers were declinining , & both refused any western influence; the western powers tried to open these countries for trading using the military forces quite at the same moment (the opium war in 1839 , the u.s. commodore Perry in 1853).
The difference is that the forced opening of Japan led to a revolution (the Meiji restoration) , & it was this new power who decided to modernize Japan.
There had been no such successfull revolution in China after the opium war (BTW , had the Taiping rebellion any link to the opium war ?), such a revolution came much too late , in 1912 , & wasn't as successfull as the japanese one; actually it led to many chaotics years.

There was actually a attempted revolution after the sino-Japan war of 1894, but it was crush by the conservatives.

[twofish]

I question the whole premise of the question. It seems to be obvious that the Qing dynasty *did* modernize between 1800 and 1900. In 1900, the Qing dynasty had factories and ironclad ships, in 1800, the Qing dynasty didn't.

What people are usually asking when they say "why couldn't China modernize?" is "why couldn't China modernize as quickly as I think it should have?" If you look at what you are asking the Qing dynasty to do which is to become a great power that could beat back the Europeans in a time in which even small technological differences would have been fatal, the answer is that China could modernize that quickly because it was in the middle of massive political turmoil and that modernization is a very difficult process, and that China was lucky to get as far as it actually did.

The other thing is that a lot of answers to this question rely on views of history that are far overly simplistic.

[T98G]

twofish, on Dec 28 2006, 08:31 AM, said:

I question the whole premise of the question. It seems to be obvious that the Qing dynasty *did* modernize between 1800 and 1900. In 1900, the Qing dynasty had factories and ironclad ships, in 1800, the Qing dynasty didn't.

What people are usually asking when they say "why couldn't China modernize?" is "why couldn't China modernize as quickly as I think it should have?" If you look at what you are asking the Qing dynasty to do which is to become a great power that could beat back the Europeans in a time in which even small technological differences would have been fatal, the answer is that China could modernize that quickly because it was in the middle of massive political turmoil and that modernization is a very difficult process, and that China was lucky to get as far as it actually did.

The other thing is that a lot of answers to this question rely on views of history that are far overly simplistic.

Your forgetting one thing, these modernisation didn't do China any good since they were still consider backward. If you actually read late Qing History, at least two modern army were created due to the Taiping rebellion. After the rebellion was put down, these armies were disband, I would say the Taiping turmoil actually help China military to modernise but they disband it.

The political turmoil was cause of the conservatives or Confucian official didn't want to modernise China versus the reformers. If you read the late history of the Qing dynasty, these modernisation were created by reformers or foreigners. There were unfortunate too few reformers and a lot more Conservatives, which is why the Qing dynasty got to be overthrown by revolutionaries.

You can basically thank Cixi and the Confucian conservatives for the backwardness.

[twofish]

T98G, on Dec 28 2006, 10:14 PM, said:

The political turmoil was cause of the conservatives or Confucian official didn't want to modernise China versus the reformers. If you read the late history of the Qing dynasty, these modernisation were created by reformers or foreigners. There were unfortunate too few reformers and a lot more Conservatives, which is why the Qing dynasty got to be overthrown by revolutionaries.

That's the traditional view of the KMT revolutionaries to justify the Qing overthrow. This view has come under some serious criticism since the 1960's, and Fredric Wakeman's "The Fall of Imperial China" has a chapter in which he points out the problems with it. Also Sterling Seagrave's "Dragon Lady" provides a revisionist view of the Empress Cixi, which portrays her in a far more positive light.

The basic problem with the traditional view is that if you look at the history, people didn't divide themselves simply into conservatives and reforms. You find people who are conservative in one time and place, become reformers a few years later, and then back again. In particular, if you look at the 1911 revolution, you find some of the strongest "reformers" and "revolutionaries" among the "conservative" gentry and bureaucracy, and "conservative" gentry backing retention of the Confucian examinations while at the same time building railroads, starting factories, and creating provincial assemblies.

The other thing that I've noticed is that people keep on talking about "failure to modernize" meanwhile you have railroads and factories sprouting left and right. Look at the Sino-Japanese War. The Japanese navy crushed the Chinese fleet, but China didn't have a fleet of ironclads twenty years ago.

The question is not "failure to modernize" but rather "failure to modernize quickly enough."

Quote

You can basically thank Cixi and the Confucian conservatives for the backwardness.

I don't think that the Qing dynasty is that backward. Sure it looks bad when you compare it to Japan, but I'd put as my point of comparison the Ottoman Empire or Austria-Hungary, and the Qing's look a lot better if you use those as points of comparison.

Japan had some special advantages. It was smaller, maritime, and easier to defend militarily. Also, the genro curiously used a lot of "traditional" and "conservative" rhetoric to defend their actions.