What attempts did the Qing Dynasty make to reform and strengthen their state in this period? Why did these attempts fail? What similar troubles hampered the establishment of the new Republic? In accordance to documented historical accounts of the Chinese population, the Ch’ing, or the Qing were the last recorded dynastic reign to instil an imperialistic regime on the Chinese population, and the lands that it over ruled.
Although, there were various other regimes that enriched the Chinese culture throughout the centuries since its founding, the Ch’ing (or Qing as it is known to the Western world) was the most influential and interesting, because of the tremendous changes that strengthened their states, and the devastating reforms that led to the rapid decline in populous and tradition, and the increase in social rebellion against general governing forums.
As it can be seen in these documented accounts, the New Republic was plagued with similar problems during the development and reformation period after its founding, after the Xinhai Revolution, or the Chinese Revolution of 1911.
It can be seen in earlier text that the opening of the Chinese boarder, and the access given to transoceanic travellers had been a mistake as the Chinese struggled against the West for various months, before it was discovered that all resistance, both past and present, against the West was ineffective and brought along more trouble than it was worth as the Chinese had two methods of dealing with the West, and as it would appear, both failed.
The first was to strengthen their realm, and their people through reform, while the other was to drive the transoceanic travellers out of their divided nation through the use of militia tactics, and extreme force that would later end with numerous lives lost; and with the failure of the Boxer Rebellion looming over them, the idea of forceful resistance, and fitful rebellion was cast out. Therefore, the first idea of reform to strengthen their realm through peaceful terms was used.
However, it appears that the more conservative reformers did not like the idea of the Boxer Movement, seeing it as a disgraceful means to an avoidable end, that would later deconstruct their constitution, and traditions of old. Thus, the reform fell to pieces, having lost all support, it held no power over the state. It was because of this that the Empress Dowager reconsidered the idea of calling for more heavier reforms that would damage the nation more than it would help it.
After the Allied Expedition attack on Peking, the Empress had felt ashamed for having caused such chaos, that to regain her honour and the respect of her people, she proclaimed that the institutional reforms, which she despised months before, would be carried out and that the land again would be reunited. Even though, the need for reforms was stressed, and long awaited for the quickness of the reforms unsettled a multitude of social circles in China, that lead to various revolutionaries appearing with the aim of overthrowing the current empowered bodies.
Before the start of the nineteen hundreds, the need for reform was either turned down because of the large group of die-hard conservatives in the government, that would attempt to deconstruct it before it was brought forward, or accepted amongst certain parties on a small scale. However, with the slow decline of their statue, the Chinese were forced to go through with the reforms, and silent the die-hard conservative parties that desired to denote them further.
The reformation aims had been rather simple, the first had been to re-build the Manchu rule in China – Even though, it was said that the Empress had made use of the movement to hide her shame from previous incidents, such as the Boxer movement, and the humiliation it brought, she along with some of her people believed that these reforms were the only means of saving the remaining slab of the dynasty, as all the other means had failed. For the Manchus, the reform provided a supposed ‘fail-safe’ for them to fall back on and rebuild their corroding empire.
The Qing Dynasty knew that they could no longer base their rule on ancient Chinese tradition, and thus, laid out a new foundation to modernize China. For the nationalists and the reformers present at the time, the purpose of reform was to strengthen China again, before recrafting it into a modernised state, to re-establish and centralise Manchu power. It can be seen that self-interest became a leading factor in the fall of the dynasty towards the end, because of the need for self-strengthened power that empowered independent parties instead of a singular grouping.
The contents of the reform was based around the clearance of old weaknes threatened the governing bodies, such as useless clerks and servants, and the introduction of new offices in the form of various misshaped ministries that dealt with Foreign Affairs, Commerce, Tactical Training, and Education. In short, the reforms were designed to clear the ground of all shortcomings that were created in previous dynasties, and remove ‘tradition form the courtroom’ so that the Qing Dynasty could be created anew with centralised political organs present at all times to supervise and execute programs of reform.
Aside from self-strengthening, there had been various other factors that led to the failure of the reforms, and the eventual downfall of the regime. The weakened financial conditions can be considered a general factor for the downfall as the government has spent over double their annual income to restructure their culture and build various governing facilities, and as a result, the Qing struggled to carry out long-term projects, because of inadequate resources.
Another factor was the social and cultural conservatism that resided deep in the hearts of the people, and their desire to oppose the reform – even though opposing it meant legal charges would be placed, or worst. As it appears, with the introduction of modern law code to the Qing government, Confucian scholars accused various codes of violating law codes regarding morality left behind by Confucius, and as a result, the law codes had to be revised over and over again, before they could be given to the public.
In conclusion, the Late Qing Reform failed because the measures led to situations that developed into misguided assumptions, and unfortunate, but avoidable circumstances that weakened the dynasty, and lead to its downfall. By 1911, the Manchu crafted regime was left isolated and without the support of the Chinese population for all modern intellectuals, transoceanic travellers, and provincial scholar that had all helped craft the regime had left – and were named as disloyal participants to the dynasty, thus limiting their resources and abilities to advance further in the world.
The impacting terms of the lateness of the Manchu reform can be seen in various areas of the government and public-facilities such as the Militia reform that led to a rise in Militia profession as before this point in time, such a profession was looked down on by Confucian scholars, and therefore, with the growth of enlistments near the end of the Qing reform period, the reputation of those in the militia arose to the point that the career become an independent profession.
However, during this time, there was a spread of Chinese racial fear and discrimination. As it appears, the Manchu reform to re-establish control over the Chinese armed forces not only ended in failure, but also further the racial fear and discrimination arising in camps and villages across the nation. With a magnitude of people enlisting for patriotic reasons, wanting to demote the Manchu attitude, stronger armies were crafted and soon, there was an Army of revolt that started the Chinese Revolution in 1911.
Although, the armed forces turned into a refuge for foreigners and anti-Manchu supporters, it had a dark side, and that was the fact that it was the root of warlord politics, and soon various armies became bargaining chips with leaders like Yuan Shih-k’ai that trained his officers to be loyal to him, and him alone. Even though, there were some that remained gnored him, those that were loyal to him were promoted and honour – Therefore, with Yuan’s fall from power in 1908, those loyal to him remained and watched after his interests despite the fact that the other officers had become warlords of sorts, these men remained loyal to the point that at least five of them became presidents in the New Republic.