If a unified China undertook the modernization process that Japan did during the last half of the 19th century what kind of power would China have been by the start of the 20th century?
Would a China undertaking a Mejii type restoration in the 19th been a woken giant?
- Thread starter Mitchell Hundred
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Maoistic
Banned
The Meiji restoration worked in Japan because the great powers in the 1850s and 60s, mainly Britain, Netherlands, Russia, France, Prussia and the United States, were too busy carving China and Oceania to themselves, allowing remote and isolated Japan to play each power against each other and absorb their technology that way. It wouldn't have worked in China because even by the early 19th century China was already falling into a semi-colonial state, something that developed fully with the second Opium War where the British even managed to occupy Beijing and only decided not to take all of China by deposing the Emperor because it would have surely caused a war with Russia and potentially with the United States too.
The only way that China could have industrialised in a similar way to Japan is if Britain and other Western powers decided to allow China to do so, which of course is not happening as China is too tempting to colonise to just let go, especially if that allows it to become a superpower that can challenge the West. I do believe that some kind of revolution could have overthrown the emperor and establish some kind of economic development program to improve the state of constant warfare that characterises the Century of Humiliation, but this still wouldn't be Japanese levels of industrialisation.
The only way that China could have industrialised in a similar way to Japan is if Britain and other Western powers decided to allow China to do so, which of course is not happening as China is too tempting to colonise to just let go, especially if that allows it to become a superpower that can challenge the West. I do believe that some kind of revolution could have overthrown the emperor and establish some kind of economic development program to improve the state of constant warfare that characterises the Century of Humiliation, but this still wouldn't be Japanese levels of industrialisation.
More like it would have been a logistic nightmare that’s highly impractical.Not that it’s not doable,but Britain would have to invest a lot on such an endeavor.As the saying goes:’the people feared the imperial court,the imperial court feared the foreign devils while the foreign devils feared the people’.
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Maoistic
Banned
The British occupied Beijing itself (even burned the Summer Palace for the laughs). They really could have just disposed the Emperor and turned China into yet another colonial viceroyalty like those in India, Africa and the Americas. Russia was really the only reason why that wasn't done, as Russia had already colonised all of northern Asia at that point, was making significant advances in Central Asia and threatening India itself that way, and as a result had interests in China, which is why it would have declared war on Britain if China was officially annexed.
The US was another reason too, as the US had already sent Commodore Perry to Japan three years before the Second Opium War and had developed interests in China as a result. Prussia would follow not long after as well.
I mean, I did use to think that it was a logistical nightmare, but if Britain was able to manage India, a significant portion of Africa, Australia, Canada and also French colonies, as France basically became just an extension of Britain after Napoleon's defeat, then I don't see why it couldn't have managed China.
How do they depose the emperor?The emperor fled with his court.Controlling Beijing itself or just the coastal areas’ meaningless.
China’s also not India.It’s not surrounded by the sea.The British would have trouble supplying from the sea.
Finally,Russia and the US would be powerless to stop the British from colonizing China if the British were hellbent on it.Prior to the establishment of the transiberian railway,Russia’s ability to project troops into the Far East was fairly limited.The US military was especially miniscule in this period.Commodore Perry’s fleet was a joke compared to what the British could deploy. As for Prussia,Prussia’s a non-factor.
India also wasn’t a country.It was a sub-continent that contained a lot of tiny countries.Britain spent over a hundred years conquering India bit by bit.
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Maoistic
Banned
I don't know, by installing a colonial viceroy that replaces the emperor? You talk as if the emperor would have been able to somehow kick the British out of the capital of China. He would have at most ruled some small, unrecognised territories, which the British would have taken no more than a couple of years (and that's exaggerating) to finally annex. It's basically the same case as Alexander the Great and Darius III.
Seems very surrounded by sea for me. And it's not like the British can't handily supply China from India.
They don't have to. They can just go and wage war against Britain itself without having to take troops into China.
Maoistic
Banned
Wouldn't Japan have seen itself the same as its cosmology was the same as China? Also, why is it that China developed such impressive technological feats like massive rock architecture and temple complexes at the peaks of mountains, four masted ships, paper printing, and of course, a great variety of gunpowder weapons, if supposedly the belief that it is the centre of the universe prevented technological development?
One difference I have been led to believe over the years is that Japan, while isolated and somewhat backwards, was quite far along in pre-industrial development and in literacy compared to China. This meant the state structures could easily absorb and direct industrialisation when it came along. Plus, it was quite homogeneous, and so it took a single sharp fight between pro- and anti-reform to settle the matter definitively.
Meanwhile China had plenty of internal fault lines between the more developed coast and the interior, as well as between the ruling class and 'the people', so a reform period could shatter China (as it did eventually) more easily, or just lead to sequential revolts of first the interior nomads, eventually get put down, then the Han peasants from the interior rise up, then some Cantonese merchants get the Brits to back them, etcetera, making a longer period of instability (possibly).
Meanwhile China had plenty of internal fault lines between the more developed coast and the interior, as well as between the ruling class and 'the people', so a reform period could shatter China (as it did eventually) more easily, or just lead to sequential revolts of first the interior nomads, eventually get put down, then the Han peasants from the interior rise up, then some Cantonese merchants get the Brits to back them, etcetera, making a longer period of instability (possibly).
I’m sorry,but your post just reaks of ignorance. After the second opium war,most of the officials that mattered already saw the need to westernise and reform. The problem was how much reform should be done and how to do it. Arsenals and shipyards were built all over the country. These efforts were however grossly mismanaged,often done incorrectly and with highly corrupt or incompetent managers.
And why would the rest of the country listen to this foreigner,just because he captured a single city? Beijing is important only because the emperor was there.Sure there will be some defectors,but you are clearly overstating Beijing’s importance.They will need to conquer far more than just Beijing.
Not enough compared to India. They will have trouble penetrating inland,like Shanxi and Henan.It’s not as simple as conquer Beijing and the entire country just folds.
Seems very surrounded by sea for me. And it's not like the British can't handily supply China from India.
So where do they attack?How does Prussia launch Operation Sea Lion with no navy and Austria next door just waiting to rape her?
As for the US,you do realize that this is the era where the US has less than 20,000 regular soldiers right?
Finally, Russia just got raped by Britain in Crimea.
TruthfulPanda
Gone Fishin'
Big rivers ...
As to control - there'd be Chinese and/or Manchu warlords eager to rule and playing lip service to Britain a plenty ...
Foreign Devils took Peking = no Mandate of Heaven (or can be viewed in such light).
I don’t doubt that there will be defectors,but it will take more than just losing Beijing for them to start defecting. As a rule,governors had to leave their entire families as a form of insurance with the emperor whenever they are commissioned as governors.
As for rivers,the British will actually be vulnerable when fighting in rivers given their best ships are pretty large and that they are unfamiliar with the area. More than that,within the rivers,smaller Chinese ships will probably be quite advantageous.
The primary issue I feel would be less that Japan did it better, but that Japan was allowed to do so because all the folks who would've tried to conquer it were instead busy carving up China.
China absolutely could, and did, reform, but it could not do so in so similar a manner as the Meiji Revolution.
China absolutely could, and did, reform, but it could not do so in so similar a manner as the Meiji Revolution.
I'm not sure they couldn't because they would not be allowed to, there were many differences between Japan and China at this point which can be handwaved in some decades alone.
For China to achieve similar results to the Meiji Restoration it would have to start earlier, perhaps in Qianlong’s prime. It is often overlooked that China was in serious decline by the early 19th century. Four famines of 1810, 1811, 1846, 1849 killed at least 45 million. By the time of the Taiping Rebellion of 1850, China had been in recession since 1820.
For the poster that said Britian could have seize control in the Second Opium War, I have to disagree. China had a modern national identity which India lacked. No alien power, which the Manchus were not, could rule China. The real problem was no one could rule the country in the 19th century. The Manchus being not alien but neither fully Chinese did not help matters.
What China needed was structural reforms before internal crisis and external exploitation conflated.
For the poster that said Britian could have seize control in the Second Opium War, I have to disagree. China had a modern national identity which India lacked. No alien power, which the Manchus were not, could rule China. The real problem was no one could rule the country in the 19th century. The Manchus being not alien but neither fully Chinese did not help matters.
What China needed was structural reforms before internal crisis and external exploitation conflated.
Optical_Illusion
Banned
As I understand it, China and Japan don't really diverge in terms of productivity and GDP per capita until about 1890-1900, though the Meji Restoration dates to around 1870, and Japan has a good size gap with the Western technological frontier (in GDP per capita), in absolute terms about midway between China and Germany, until the postwar convergence.
We could talk about Japan modernizing in the last half of the 19th century, but Japan is far from convergence with high GDP/capita frontier even quite long after the last half of the 19th century, or even last tenth.
A China that follows Japan's growth history at about the same time (and somehow it pulls this off, frustrating factors that prevented sustained growth in OTL), I would guess it probably would not have been a giant on a world scale at the start of the 20th century, but would probably have had enough taxable surplus to have been the regional power in the sphere of China+Japan+Korea. (I suppose this should have discouraged some of what Western countries did in China in the early 20th century, though the opium trade was certainly long gone by then).
As another note, if China follows Japan's economic growth, you probably also see the country begin population growth decline earlier, and avoid the whole high population growth rates that begin in the 1950s. Basically you don't wouldn't see the interaction of rural norms of larger family size with modern medicine and agriculture that have led China (and India) to have such large population booms in the second half of the 20th century (and much larger relative populations compared to Europe than is the historical case). So such a China might only be equivalent to roughly 7x Japan population, or US+Western Europe, rather than the 1.4 billion strong population today.
We could talk about Japan modernizing in the last half of the 19th century, but Japan is far from convergence with high GDP/capita frontier even quite long after the last half of the 19th century, or even last tenth.
A China that follows Japan's growth history at about the same time (and somehow it pulls this off, frustrating factors that prevented sustained growth in OTL), I would guess it probably would not have been a giant on a world scale at the start of the 20th century, but would probably have had enough taxable surplus to have been the regional power in the sphere of China+Japan+Korea. (I suppose this should have discouraged some of what Western countries did in China in the early 20th century, though the opium trade was certainly long gone by then).
As another note, if China follows Japan's economic growth, you probably also see the country begin population growth decline earlier, and avoid the whole high population growth rates that begin in the 1950s. Basically you don't wouldn't see the interaction of rural norms of larger family size with modern medicine and agriculture that have led China (and India) to have such large population booms in the second half of the 20th century (and much larger relative populations compared to Europe than is the historical case). So such a China might only be equivalent to roughly 7x Japan population, or US+Western Europe, rather than the 1.4 billion strong population today.
As to the op I think Imperial China might be too large and too useful to the colonial empires to be meiji without interference.
It could be done but would probably need an earlier pod on foreign relations and colonial empires to think it will be in their best interests. This will have butterflies and knockons with other lands in Asia Africa etc.
It could be done but would probably need an earlier pod on foreign relations and colonial empires to think it will be in their best interests. This will have butterflies and knockons with other lands in Asia Africa etc.