The Foreign Affairs Movement and Tongzhi ZTE
In the eleventh year of the Xianfeng Dynasty (1861 in the Western Calendar), the Xianfeng Emperor died of illness in Rehe, leaving a chaotic Qing State for his successors to deal with- at this time, there was the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Movement within the Qing Dynasty and the impact of the Second Opium War.
At this juncture, Empress Dowager Cixi and Prince Gong launched a coup in time to seize the highest power, known in history as the Coup d'état of Xin You.
Soon, with the support of the Qing government, many modern chemical industry projects in China were launched, and the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Movement was successfully suppressed by the Qing government in collusion with foreign forces.
Historically, this phenomenon has been called "Tongzhi ZTE".
Under the shadow of Tongzhi Zhongxing, the Qing government also formally established the Beiyang Water Division in the fourteenth year of Guangxu (1888).
Before the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War in Tongzhi, due to a series of reforms and constructions of the Qing Dynasty, the international community once regarded the Qing Dynasty as a new power in the Far East.
The significance of the Sino-Japanese War
In the 20th year of the Guangxu Dynasty of the Qing Dynasty (1894 in the Western Calendar), the Sino-Japanese Sino-Japanese War broke out with the Korean issue as the fuse. Soon after the outbreak of the war, the Beiyang Marine Division, which was then known as the third in Asia, was almost completely annihilated by Japan. Fearing that the Japanese Army would attack Empress Dowager Cixi in Beijing, li Hongzhang was hastily appointed to go to Japan to seek peace, and in the end, Li Hongzhang signed the Treaty of Maguan with the Japanese side, in which Li Hongzhang compensated Japan on behalf of the Qing Empire with a huge amount of money and ceded Taiwan and other places to Japan.
In China's modern history, the Sino-Japanese War and the signing of the "Maguan Treaty" have very important historical significance, because the end of the Sino-Japanese War meant that the Qing government's foreign affairs movement went bankrupt, at the same time, the identity of the "great powers" of the Great Qing Dynasty was also recognized, and when it was discovered that the Great Qing State, which was found to be a paper tiger, lost the Sino-Japanese War, the Western countries marveled at the "second discovery of China" and set off a frenzy to divide China -- on the eve of the Penghu Reform Law, the division of the sphere of influence of the great powers in China was born in this context.
Where did the Beiyang Marine Division lose?
Asia's first marine division, Asia's largest country, was defeated by Japan shortly after being opened by the Western powers, and this incident caused the indignation of many people at that time and in later generations.
History is used for reference and introspection, so is the total annihilation of the Beiyang Marine Division an accidental factor or an inevitable factor? In other words, did the Beiyang Marine Division lose unjustly?
Personally, I believe that with regard to the Sino-Japanese War, the situation between China and Japan at that time should be measured from many aspects.
Politically, the Qing Dynasty still adhered to the political state of the Middle Ages, and the decadent official culture, the partisan struggles influenced the situation of the Qing Dynasty, but also affected the military construction, and Japan had just undergone the Meiji Restoration, the political situation was relatively clear, and it had an advantage over the Qing Dynasty in integrating forces.
The corresponding reflection of this is that Japan can correctly build its own modern national defense industry, while the Qing court cannot, in the end, the weapons and ammunition needed by the Qing court either rely on their own shoddy manufacturing or import Western weapons, and in the process of importing, the decadent interest groups are not allowed to enrich themselves and use the money to buy inferior weapons with the money to buy high-quality arms.
In addition, in terms of management, Japan has implemented technocratic management of technical problems - both those who understand naval construction and military construction manage the navy, while the Qing court is not like this - for example, a generation of corrupt Confucians and confucians, who only know official struggles and the Four Books and Five Classics in their lives, and know nothing about science and engineering and military, but can actually use the convenience of their positions to point fingers at the Beiyang Marine Division.
Culturally. As early as the Tokugawa shogunate era, Japan had already introduced "orchid studies" (orchid refers to the Netherlands, here refers to Western mathematics, physics, chemistry and other natural sciences), so before the Meiji Restoration, many Japanese people of insight had a certain understanding of Western science and technology, culture, this accumulation is the Western affairs movement but only a few decades of the Qing Dynasty people can not compare.
Militaryly. In terms of weapon allocation, due to various reasons, on the eve of the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War, the beiyang naval division's weapon allocation was no longer superior to that of Japan, and this was also very unfavorable to the Beiyang marine division.
Therefore, from a comprehensive point of view, the defeat of the Beiyang Marine Division in the Sino-Japanese War is the trend of the times and a manifestation of historical inevitability. The failure of the Beiyang Marine Division, in the final analysis, the political corruption of the Qing Dynasty should be the primary reason.
Therefore, after the Sino-Japanese War, generation after generation of people of insight began to look for a way to save the country in the construction of the political system -- so there was the Later Hundred Days Restoration, the Preparatory Constitution, the Xinhai Revolution, and the May Fourth Movement.