Self Strengthening Movement Essay

In foreign relations, trade had a marginal value and foreign investment both inwards and outwards were essentially absent. One of the greatest failures of Mao’s notable project ‘Great Leap Forward’ in 1958 turned out to be one of the greatest failures as it was intended to collectivize all agricultural, industrial and service life under people's communes and militias’ control . The first consequence of this measure was an economic autarky that led to one of the worst famines of the twentieth century. Developments in international policy pushed China towards a gradual isolation and growing conflicts. Eventually China's international political and economic relations degenerated and led to a serious military confrontation with its main ally, the Soviet Union and fighting a border war with India in the 60s. Isolation, political and economic, reaches its highest levels with the outbreak of the Cultural Revolution in 1966 until 1976 .

I truly agree to the statement of Fareed Zakaria on why political polarization has gone wild in America. He said over the last few decades, the rules of organizing American politics have changed. This is in regards to the changes in congressional rules that made it more difficult to enact large compromise legislation (Zakaria, 2011). This is the type of problem, we as citizens of this country and the nation will compel to face if no changes will occur.

As appealing as this reform sounded, the projects were actually unsuccessful because many of them did not pertain to the state’s concerns and scholars were still following the traditional system of Confucianism. It was also economically straining for China to grow their foreign imperialism when the price cost just as much as their military. Priorities were definitely not enforced for the modernization of China. Japan, on the other hand, sought to immediately transform their country after seeing just how strong the military fleets and weaponry of the western countries were. They did not want to be defeated and end up like China, so the Meiji government decided to rapidly westernize the nation and urged the citizens to adopt western mannerisms and morality as soon as possible.

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China has always been renowned for being successful in the domains of science and arts, however in previous decades, China has been ravaged by famines, civil discomfort and foreign outsourcing. China was consumed by this injustice until well after the Second World War when Mao Zedong introduced Communism adapted from the U.S.S.R, and created an autocratic socialist system which imposes firm constraints upon the Chinese social, political and economic system. It wasn't until the 1980's China's following leader Deng Xiaoping who focused focused on developing China into a

It was a failure for the Qing in the long term for it aroused Western

Confucianism is a traditional ideology that has already penetrated into every Chinese head. Its main principle is to follow the past, changes and new technologies or new objects are not necessary. Whatever happened in the past are the best standards to follow. The way that Qing government responded after being defeated in the Opium War was shocking from current perspective. China accepted all the unfair treaties to cover the

This constituted China's Great Leap Forward, an attempt by Mao and the State to unify the nation under a common goal in order to overthrow Great Britain and other European giants in agricultural production. Entire communities toiled vigorously in order to drastically increase China's production output and demonstrate the nation's growing prowess against the powers of the West. The Great Leap Forward, despite its disastrous failure which cost over 2 million lives, was a clear denouncement of individual freedom, instead raising the status of communities and 'awarding' collective freedom.

1900s China saw a century of fluctuating development and progress, which is recognised through various political, economic and social changes. The early division of the period encountered some change for the country yet this was not as significant as the latter change in which China’s political landscape metamorphosed into one of total contrast to the former. Foreign intervention was of course a reason and usually the root cause for the changes that occurred, particularly in the first half of the century until 1962 whereby there were still some minor influences by the foreigners but other factors seemed to have caused these later changes. It could be deduced that yes, foreign powers did have a significant influence over the transformation

As stated in The Struggle for Democracy, the U.S. is a representative democracy, also known as a republic (). In this system of government, unlike a direct democracy in which all citizens vote on all public matters, elected representatives govern the people. The U.S. system consists of three separate governing branches, executive, judicial, and legislative, which all hold checks and balances on one another. These checks and balances were meant to ensure the U.S. would be as democratic as possible and prohibit one branch from gaining too much power. Throughout America’s history, the system has predominantly been a success.

The Great Leap Forward was a creative yet disastrous interruption in Chinese economic development. It is one of those "moments" in Chinese history that is the epitome of Mao Zedong's willingness to experiment, as well as his political genius in seizing control of the forms of government out of the hands of his intellectual and political adversaries within the Communist Party of China. Given that more conservative leaders, such as Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping, were not in agreement with Mao on the policies of the Great Leap Forward. The implementation of these policies resulted in disaster, generating a crisis in Chinese society as well as a massive famine that would in the end be resolved in ways unfavorable to Mao's political, economic,

Furthermore, the Marxist revolutionary government of Communist China dealt with Confucianism negatively. “In the early 20th century, both before and after the fall of the Qing dynasty, Confucianism was harshly criticized by the New Culture Movement. (Adler 6)” The assumption of this movement was that “virtually everything about China’s traditional culture was holding it back from becoming a modern nation-state.” In fact, Confucianism was high on the list of culprits in this “blanket rejection” of traditional China. “The New Culture Movement criticized Confucianism for its age and gender-based hierarchies, which had become quite rigid during the Ming and Qing dynasties. Communist thinkers also joined this anti-Confucian trend, so by the time of the Communist victory in 1949 Confucianism in mainland China seemed virtually dead. (Adler 7)” “After the Communists took power their anti-Confucian rhetoric only increased. In addition to their professed opposition to social hierarchies, they viewed Confucianism as a feudal ideology. (Adler 8)”

The Self-strengthening Movement (1860-1894) was also named "Yang-Wu Yun-Tung" by the Marxist historians. It is because the movement did not strengthen China and it depended too much on the foreigners. All the reform programmes just imitated the West. In the upcoming paragraphs, we are going to discuss the causes and failure of it, and how its failure affected China up to 1912.

reform naturally removed some of the assumptions for revolution and impeded its progress. This helped to sharpen the already intense conflicts that occurred between the reformists and the revolutionaries. In efforts to check this unfavorable tide, the Chinese student revolutionaries in Tokyo extended their war of words to physical combat. Unfortunately the revolutionaries victory over the reformists in Tokyo was not equal to (5=Zhaoxing, Li, “Seeking Common Ground,”

Why Nations Fail takes an in depth look into why some countries flourish and become rich powerful nations while other countries are left in or reduced to poverty. Throughout this book review I will discuss major arguments and theories used by the authors and how they directly impact international development, keeping in mind that nations are only as strong as their political and economical systems.