Self-Strengthening Movement |
The rude realities of the Opium Wars, the unequal treaties, and the
mid-century mass uprisings caused Qing courtiers and officials to recognize
the need to strengthen China. Chinese scholars and officials had been examining and
translating "Western learning" since the 1840s. Under the direction of modern-thinking Han officials, Western science and languages were studied, special schools were opened in the larger cities,
and arsenals, factories, and shipyards were established according to Western
models. Western diplomatic practices were adopted by the Qing, and students were sent abroad by the government and on individual or community initiative in the hope
that national regeneration could be achieved through the application of Western practical methods.
Amid these activities came an attempt to arrest the dynastic decline by restoring the traditional order. The effort was known
as the Tongzhi
Restoration, named for the Tongzhi Emperor (1862-1874), and
was engineered by the young emperor's mother, the Empress
Dowager Ci Xi (1835-1908).
The effort to graft Western technology onto Chinese institutions became known as the Self-Strengthening
Movement. The movement was championed by scholar-generals like Li
Hongzhang (1823-1901) and Zuo Zongtang (1812-1885), who had fought with
the government forces in the Taiping Rebellion. From 1861 to 1894, leaders such as these, now turned
scholar-administrators, were responsible for establishing modern institutions, developing basic industries, communications, and
transportation, and modernizing the military. Modernization during this period would have been difficult under the best of
circumstances. The bureaucracy was still deeply influenced by Neo-Confucian orthodoxy. Chinese society was still reeling from the ravages of the Taiping and other
rebellions, and foreign encroachments continued to threaten the integrity of China.
The first step in the foreign powers' effort to carve up the empire was taken by Russia, which had been expanding into Central Asia. By the
1850s, tsarist troops also had invaded the Heilong Jiang watershed of
Manchuria, from which their countrymen had been ejected under the Treaty of Nerchinsk. The Russians used the superior knowledge of
China they had acquired through their century-long residence in Beijing to further
their aggrandizement. In 1860 Russian diplomats secured the secession of all of Manchuria north of the Heilong Jiang and east of
the Wusuli Jiang (Ussuri River). Foreign encroachments
increased after 1860 by means of a series of treaties imposed on China on one pretext or another. The foreign stranglehold on the
vital sectors of the Chinese economy was reinforced through a lengthening list of concessions. Foreign settlements in the
treaty ports became extraterritorial--sovereign pockets of territories over
which China had no jurisdiction. The safety of these foreign settlements was ensured by the menacing presence of warships and
gunboats.
At this time the foreign powers also took over the peripheral states that had acknowledged Chinese suzerainty and given
tribute to the emperor. France colonized Cochin China, as southern Vietnam was then called, and by 1864
established a protectorate over Cambodia. Following a victorious war against China in 1884-1885, France also took Annam. Britain gained control over Burma. Russia penetrated into Chinese Turkestan (the modern-day Xinjiang-Uyghur Autonomous Region). Japan,
having emerged from its century-and-a- half-long seclusion and having gone through its own modernization movement, defeated China in the war of 1894-1895. The Treaty of Shimonoseki forced China to cede Taiwan and the
Penghu Islands to Japan, pay a huge indemnity, permit the establishment
of Japanese industries in four treaty ports, and recognize Japanese hegemony over Korea.
In 1898 the British acquired a ninety-nine-year lease over the so-called New Territories of Kowloon
(Jiulong in pinyin), which increased the size of their Hong Kong colony. Britain, Japan, Russia, Germany, France, and Belgium each gained spheres of influence in
China. The United States, which had not acquired any territorial
cessions, proposed in 1899 that there be an "open door" policy in
China, whereby all foreign countries would have equal duties and privileges in all treaty ports within and outside the various
spheres of influence. All but Russia agreed to the United States overture.
Assessments
Until the late 20th century, the Self-Strengthening movement was considered a dismal failure in that it did not allow China to
become an advanced modern nation in the way that Japan did. The typical view which both Chinese nationalists and
Western historians, such as Joseph Levinson subscribed to was that the movement failed because China failed to make an sufficient break
with its past. In this view, the Self-Strengthening Movement did not recognize the significance of the political institutions and
social theories that had fostered Western advances and innovations. This weakness led to the movement's failure.
More recent historians have been kinder to the Self-Strengthening Movement and to the Qing dynasty as a whole. These views are in part the consequence that recognizes that development and
modernization are extremely difficult and complex processes and that the criteria for success that critics use for the
Self-Strengthening Movement were extraordinarily high.
See also: Hundred Days' Reform (1898)
References
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