Self-Strengthening and Reform

The Chinese were able to learn from their mistakes from the past and turn them into positives in order to better improve their economy for the future. With the opened ports and foreigners free to visit China, the educated citizens class was increasing in numbers. Many of these people were not happy with the progress of the Qing Dynasty and started to form groups in order to help find alternatives to certain situations. By 1912 the last Chinese emperor stepped down and the order that had ruled over China for two thousand years had finally fallen. This was a new start for the China. The rebuilding of China was very difficult, but using what they had learned, China was able to modernize themselves in many aspects, including military, improve their economy, and overall developed themselves into a superior country.

Anti-slavery, perfect societies, connections with nature, and less alcohol were just some of the issues discussed and acted upon during the Age of Reform. The Age of Reform was a social reform, or an attempt to improve upon issues in society, occurred in America during the mid-1800’s. Reform movements such as public education and women’s rights both made essential impacts on American Society.

China has changed in certain ways and remained the same in others from the early Golden Ages to the late 1900s. China has experienced a series of cultural and political transformations, shaping the lives of many Chinese citizens. Culturally, the country’s art and literature hardly changed for almost eight hundred years. Along with their culture, China remained politically the same from the beginning of the Golden Ages all the way until the 1800s. On the other hand, China’s government and society were restructured after new leaders took over. From a monarch to total communism, China’s society had a multitude of new ideas and policies they had to adapt to.

Some internal struggles that led to the fall of the Ottoman and the Qing were similar. Both civilizations strode to implement reforms to help restructure society. These reforms were more concentrated and more far-reaching in the Ottoman Empire, but we're just as ineffective as the Qing reforms. One of the Ottomans last sultans, Selim III, attempted to westernize society and the military. He exchanged ambassadors with European powers and allowed them to supervise Ottoman training. Over time, the westerners saw the Ottomans as barriers to more radical reforms. Thus, they began to clash with many classes in society, causing more conflict to arise. In China, many reforms were proposed and backed by radicals. The most well known radicals were the Taipings. Led by Hong Xuiquan, they sponsored

With the uprisings become stronger, and tensions building greater it led to a massive reform across the state. The reforms began first in 1948 with the arming of the peasants in China to fight against Japan, with the peasants armed it had prompted rebellion against the landlords taking the power from them and taking back what was originally theirs. (DOC 6). With the picture of the peasant sticking their tongue out to the landlord shows how the power has shifted quite massively. The fact that struggle meetings where organized in the land reform process quite well shows that the peasants have the power now.(DOC 9). In the same year of 1950, along with change of power there was also a change

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.

For the last several decades China and Japan have both risen as superpowers and dominated the Pacific. Japan during the 1980s had the “economic miracle”, however it had a recession in the 1990s that set Japan back. As China becomes a rising superpower due to growing populations and cheap labor and, while Japan remains a “fragile superpower” because of the lack of resources and ageing population both nations will continue to grow, or will China become another fallen communist nation and will the tiger of the Pacific come to a roaring halt? Ever since the Four Humiliations in 1839 China was in desperate need to modernize and change many aspects of its government if it wanted to keep up with the ever-changing world.

The definition of reform is to make changes in something; socially, politically, or economically, to improve it. One of the world’s most prominent writers, Thomas Carlyle, said, “Reform is not pleasant, but grievous; no person can reform themselves without suffering and hard work, how much less a nation.” According to Carlyle, the action of reforming is not easy to do for yourself, let alone for a whole nation of people. While many revolutions have tried, only a few have successfully reformed the people around them. Such innovators include Frederick Douglas, Charles Darwin and Steve Jobs.

Reformers often are remembered more favorably in history these radicals. To reform something means to “change into an improved form or condition or to put an end to (an evil) by enforcing or introducing a better method or course of action.” Professor Walters describes

In chapter 15 we discuss the topics of new reforms and the new American Culture which takes place between 1820-1860. In this time, a wide range of new reforms came and improve the conditions in the United States. During this time, the desire social reforms were huge, both for religious and political roots. As we know, America was defined as a democracy, more than ever people took part in the government. Although many thought differently, they looked towards the promises of equality and liberty in the Declaration of Independence. They said if America was a democracy, women would be made equal, and slavery would be outlawed. By resolving these infringements, the United States shifted towards its political ideals.

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,”

We have many reformers in Russia, such as Leon Trotsky, Vladimir Lenin, and Joseph Stalin. These famous Russian reformers all attempted reform in Russia while some misinterpreted the message the basis of what they wanted to do was in Communism. The same goes for China, which to this day lies in Communism and lives with communism, in the case of Mao Zedong he was the father of the People’s Republic of China, which he governed as the Chairman of the Communist Party.

Along with Prince Gong’s active role in ‘seeking to improve China’s diplomatic relations and advance the military’11, the dominant leaders of modernization sought to ‘take the foreigners as their teachers and models; then they may come to the same level and be their equals; finally they may move ahead and surpass them’. Their ideas were supported by a number of provincial governors and scholar-officials who began to ‘seek out an effective path for reform’12. These efforts would become known as the Self-Strengthening Movement. The leading theorist of the movement was the scholar-official Feng Guifen who believed in order to ‘strengthen the Qing state, traditional Confucian culture and institutions must be preserved’ and ‘supplemented by Western weapons and technological learning’. Although the reforms proposed modernization, a cultural change was needed for it to truly be in effect. With the establishment of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Zongli Yamen), Zeng advised to send students to Western countries for technical training and in result a mission was sent to the United States of America the following year. However after a few years the students were instructed to return to China claiming that they spent to much time on Western learning and not enough on their Chinese studies. Although, the officials most likely feared that the students were ‘learning democratic or republican ideas’13

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

Being bombarded by the Confucian studies, the reform leaders had no intention of reforming the social order. They did not ever realize that social reform was necessary for a country to become modernize. For example, they did not stress the importance of western learning. Besides, they had little idea of universal education which was the foundation for the strength of the west. The limited scope of the reform led to the failure of the Self-strengthening Movement. Being influenced by their confidence in Confucianism, the Chinese thought that the Chinese state and society was perfect and there should not be reform