How was China so poor and backwards in the early 1900s that they allowed Japan to take over half their country?
Was it all the internal cobflict?
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How was China so poor and backwards in the early 1900s that they allowed Japan to take over half their country?
A few reasons, I'd say the biggest is that Japan's modernization didn't happen until after they saw how badly China (historically THE most powerful civilization in the world to them) was getting absolutely fricked by the Europeans. Europeans didn't really care that much about Japan and saw it as a poor backwater compared to China, which it was. So while they did have to deal with some minor unequal treaties imposed by America and Russia, they had an opportunity to modernize before the imperialists really started to frick them, which China did not.
Another factor was that China had to face the Taiping Rebellion just as Chinese leadership was waking up to the reality of just how backwards they had become in terms of military and industrial capacity. This rebellion was a true national disaster of unimaginable scale that locked up the richest and most productive parts of China in rebel hands for TWO DECADES and killed tens of millions of people. Its interesting that the second opium war happened right in the middle of the rebellion and the Qing saw it as an annoying sideshow compared to the more important task of destroying the Taiping, an estimation I have to agree with.
This was a massive diversion of resources and effort that could have been used to modernize the country, something Japan had no equivalent experience to.
We all know this, it's common knowledge, but how did the Republic of China that had more or less unified at this point and received considerable military aid from both the Soviets and the Germans fair so badly? Sure, you can say Japan had a headstart but China folded like an African military.
Wasn't China occupied by like 12 different Warlords (Including Chaing and Mao)?
By the 30s? No. The relevant part had been unified in the Northern Expedition and the few remnants of the communists that survived the KMT's purge had fled to the mountains. China received substantial help from Germany to expand their already decent army into a Western standard one. On paper they should have faired well.
You cant just conjure up a decent military in a few months. Japan had lots of time and lots of veterans. China has impoverished peasants to work with. China fared decently well halfway in and by the end of the war, their well trained and armed divisions were scoring victories.
We're not talking about a period of months, China was essentially unified by 1929, then Japan (or more accurately the Kwangtung army acting autonomously) invaded Manchuria in 1931, that gave them 6 years between 1931 and 1937 in which they could and should have become a decent fighting force. Again, I'm not saying "win hands down", but they should have done better than had the most important parts of their country taken instantaneously.
You explained why China were good and why the Qing were bad, that doesn't explain why 30s China was bad.
Why Japan were good*
>In 1934 General Hans von Seeckt, acting as advisor to President Chiang, proposed a "80 Division Plan" for reforming the entire Chinese army into 80 divisions of highly trained, well-equipped troops organised along German lines. The plan was never fully realised, as the vying warlords could not agree upon the reorganised division organization and the disbanding of the others. By July 1937 only 8 infantry divisions had completed reorganisation and training. These were the 3rd, (Commander Qian Dajun), 6th, 9th, 14th, 36th, 87th, 88th, and the Training Division.
TLDR: The warlords pleged loyalty to the new national government on paper, but China was still very divided in practice and it hampered their industrial capability and ability to organize an army
Chiang controlled Jiangsu, Anhui, Hubei, Henan, Hunan, Fujian, the burnt-out husk of Jiangxi which had been the center of the Chinese Soviet Republic, and the important parts of Shaanxi (the ass-backward north of which was occupied by Communist remnants). This was a vast territory with tons of people and many economic enterprises, so Chiang should have been able to build a decent army. Instead, the whole thing collapsed in a few months of fighting in Shanghai, despite the Japanese starting the fight in a terrible position with few troops. The Chinese failed to wipe out the Japanese beachhead, and then the whole operation collapsed because their German advisors had completely neglected to plan against enemies steaming upriver, landing, and outflanking them. This is what the Japanese did, crushing the entire modernized part of the Chinese army and going onto Nanjing. After that, China only survived because the warlords intervened on Chiang's side. Despite lack of equipment, the warlord armies, and the Guangxi and Yunnan forces especially, were much better led. Bai Chongxi and Li Zongren are often held as the best Chinese generals of the war.
I literally explained it to you already, what didn't you like about the answer? Giving military aid doesn't matter when your country does not have the built-up infrastructure or institutions to make proper use of it.
He's not here for your answer, but you probably know this already.
China had only been unified for a very small amount of time by the start of the 2nd Sino-Jap war.
the nationalists were in full control of most of the country for a decade
>for a decade
Exactly what I meant: a very short amount of time. You think a decade is long enough to industrialize an entire country from scratch?
Stalin did it from 1925-1935
>which China did not.
Why would you say that? China was literally given thousands of advisors, missionaries, training, technology etc. They were given every chance, they just didn't modernize due to constant backwards thinking. Like ditching rifles Europeans gave them from shitty old guns because Chinese style gunpowder was too shit to work in them (Europeans also gave them recipes for proper gunpowder, some generals just stubbornly refused to switch production).
Japan had spent decades modernizing to the point they could go toe-to-toe with one of the Great Powers of Europe by the turn of the 20th century. In that same time period China was getting reamed by various tag teams of those same great powers without any chance to modernize its economy or military.
From the really, REALLY big picture, China by the late Yuan dynasty onwards stagnated, because it had long since already gone through all the major phases that it was possible for a civilization to go through. For example, the Chinese had already went through the cultural stage of gradually leaving Fuedalism/seething international rivalries that characterized Europe from Napoleon to 1945, in the form of their Warring States Period. China by the Ming dynasty was an expired civilization living the definition of insanity, going through the dynastic collapse/rebirth cycle over and over again, because there literally did not seem like there was anything else to do as a collective civilization in terms of philosophy, art, cultural development etc.
Japan, in contrast, went through the exact same cultural stage from the Meiji restoration that China went through, except 2,500 years afterwards during the World Wars. The Japanese immediately mentally inserted themselves into competition as part of the international rivalries of Europe/America/Russia.
The Japanese in the first half of the 20th-century behaved in almost every respect as the most successful states of the Chinese warring states period did from 450-221 BC. Imperial Japan’s aristocratic military tradition, the pseudo-feudalistic code of honor, the intense nationalism, the sturdy development and protection of property rights, the growth of entrepreneurial capitalism out of a decaying feudal structure, the social inequality and the existence of a class of dynamic and audacious younger sons, all those features which recur at a certain stage of the historical cycle—the stage of China’s Warring States era or of nineteenth-century Europe.
TLDR; by the 1800s, China was a massive dead planet that was once a massive star but had long since burnt itself out, and Japan was a bright fiery much younger little star.
Interesting take. So you deem progress of forms of governance and rights of the people as progress of the strength both economic and military of a civilzation?
I don’t really get what you’re saying.
I dont get what youre saying either. China was weak due to infighting at every level and due to corruption. It was unable to reform despite wishing to. All these cultural bullshit sound pseud as shit bro
>China was weak due to infighting at every level and due to corruption
Yes, because it was a stagnated civilization. It had no other direction to continue evolving as a people, they’d gone through all that shit already.
The idea of assigning sets of specific identifiable common traits to some different civilizations which sometimes overlap and happen in remarkably similar fashions was pushed by many people like Carroll Quigley and Amaury De Reincourt.
To be fair, It has mostly died down as a school of historical thought, and a lot of historians aren’t impressed by this sort of historical overlap theory, and I myself have my doubts as to its accuracy a lot of the time, but the case of Japan’s modernization and general mindset somewhat in parallel with Europe is IMO one of the best pieces of evidence. It is almost an undebatable fact that Japan during/after the Meiji Reformations behaved uncannily similarly to some factions of the Chinese Warring States Period.
I wrote my history master’s thesis on this but I’m a phonegay and can’t be helped to get up off my bed to get my PC.
>inb4 “history major HAHAHAHAHAHAHA LOL BET UR homeless LOLOLOL”
frick off
>stagnated civilization
I don’t like communism, you dumb neurotic shitskin, and neither did the authors I’m parroting.
>It has mostly died down as a school of historical thought
For good reason, it's pseudshit that's better off not revisiting.
I am actually now more curious about your personal history and how you/some adviser managed to convince you to waste your precious youth on a topic like that. Of all the interesting things you could've spent your time on, you boldly chose to ignore them all and focus one of the many orientilist copes constructed by Xenocentric midwits as opposed to what Einstein and everyone else could conclude in a single glance: "Chinks are bugpeople", therefore they are stagnant.
Now that’s just being plain rude. I wrote my paper debating its authenticity and cited the instance of Japan as one of the strongest ones in favour of it.
But if I may ask: why did my post spark a squirrely nervous angry feeling in your gut? You don’t have to answer me, but think about it to yourself cuz.
Which book is that from?
https://libgen.is/book/index.php?md5=E81349974F97587D40AA4059CF07406A
He also wrote a companion book on India. Both were written in the 1950s but he went back and revised/expanded them in the 1980s.
>Now that’s just being plain rude.
It's necessary. I am not angry at you personally I hope you understand, I am angry at the facets of the system that led to this.
>I wrote my paper debating its authenticity and cited the instance of Japan as one of the strongest ones in favour of it.
You didn't answer my question. Why? Who told you to waste precious research time on this topic?
>But if I may ask: why did my post spark a squirrely nervous angry feeling in your gut? You don’t have to answer me, but think about it to yourself cuz.
We are all trying our best to advance our civilization and the prosperity of our people. Then I see ducks like you. All the money and resources your parents spent on raising you. All their care and attention. All the working hours of taxpayers who subsidised your education. All of it...so utterly wasted. Even if you come with the usual "yeah I just wasn't smart enough for math, science or engineering" this is not an excuse to have wasted your potential. You could've researched something interesting, something important, something that inspires our culture, our people, remembers something of our history or at least teaches us valuable lessons from foreign cultures.
Instead you did this cucked...thing, basically critiquing another man's work who in turn was doing something utterly irrelevant. Besides that you could have spent your 20s building a business or whatever, or you could've just made some woman happy, I really don't get it.
Yes, it offends me on a deeply personal level. You would not understand and you don't have to. Just try to do better please.
>basically critiquing another man's work who in turn was doing something utterly irrelevant.
physician heal thyself
You have to be new here in order to be shocked that people on IQfy are losers who devote their precious taxpayer subsidized time to pseudoscientific topics they can navel graze about on the only site that'll accept it.
Based. I would follow you and call you master, anon.
You sound like a gay bottom
Only a homosexual would think that. Its more like a Confucius and his disciples thing.
>We are all trying our best to advance our civilization and the prosperity of our people.
We're not moron. If by "We" you mean the state you are wrong, the state's goal is simply to ensure that men's happiness can be fulfilled by not having to care about survival
>People bond together and form states to survive and to start doing shit they want for a bit of their freedom
This is partly why the evolution of science and "progress" happened so late, because people didn't see progress as a mean of happiness, rather as something that would disrupt their stable lives and subsequently disrupt their happiness.
>All the working hours of taxpayers who subsidised your education.
Man you'd be surprised by the amount spent on shit that doesn't "progres" society
>You could've researched something interesting
Like what ? Some higly theoric mathematics about thermodynamics ? You don't realise that it's by working on highly theoric and "useless" shit that we get practical application. Maybe that anon will end up working in China, and maybe his thesis or whatever will be useful. Point is, every thesis is highly theoric and we don't know what the future is made of, so why bother critiquing if some anon is making a thesis about something that you don't see as directly useful.
>Besides that you could have spent your 20s building a business
You further contradict yourself, self made businesses rarely "progress" society, not only that but they often also end up costing a lot in taxpayer money for various reasons.
Newton literally started studying Optics in order to give the British navy an edge in telescope performance over the Dutch. Most of the laws of Optics were only written down as a side publication after he developed this.
>>Now that’s just being plain rude.
>It's necessary. I am not angry at you personally I hope you understand, I am angry at the facets of the system that led to this.
>>I wrote my paper debating its authenticity and cited the instance of Japan as one of the strongest ones in favour of it.
>You didn't answer my question. Why? Who told you to waste precious research time on this topic?
>>But if I may ask: why did my post spark a squirrely nervous angry feeling in your gut? You don’t have to answer me, but think about it to yourself cuz.
>We are all trying our best to advance our civilization and the prosperity of our people. Then I see ducks like you. All the money and resources your parents spent on raising you. All their care and attention. All the working hours of taxpayers who subsidised your education. All of it...so utterly wasted. Even if you come with the usual "yeah I just wasn't smart enough for math, science or engineering" this is not an excuse to have wasted your potential. You could've researched something interesting, something important, something that inspires our culture, our people, remembers something of our history or at least teaches us valuable lessons from foreign cultures.
>Instead you did this cucked...thing, basically critiquing another man's work who in turn was doing something utterly irrelevant. Besides that you could have spent your 20s building a business or whatever, or you could've just made some woman happy, I really don't get it.
>Yes, it offends me on a deeply personal level. You would not understand and you don't have to. Just try to do better please.
this absolutely MUST be the new "what the frick did you just say about me you little b***h" Navy SEAL copypasta
> "Chinks are bugpeople", therefore they are stagnant.
They aren’t so stagnant in Taiwan, Singapore, and Hong Kong though.
Exceptions that prove the rule.
>Taiwan, Singapore
zero pop culture
>Hong Kong
zero pop culture since they stopped being British
NTA but Taiwan has boba, which is probably one of the biggest pan-Asian cultural pride things with Asian diaspora
Imagine an entire multi-millennia culture being reduced to balls.
Kek, but Taiwan is weird and trying to differentiate itself from China as a whole. People still associate Chinese restaurants, etc with continental PRC China
Where did you get this idea? Source? Never heard of anyone assigning stages to civilizations.
This is a beyond moronic take. There was basically nothing written down from the warring states period. Chinese history often started teaching students from the three kingdoms period.
>There was basically nothing written down from the warring states period
Yes there was, a lot of it was lost though lol. One can also deduce how thet behaved in more detail by what survived during/right after the Qin or verifiably did not exist before.
And, like I said, most people think this set civilizational historical sequence idea is full of holes anyway. But I’m a sucker for trying to conjoin similarities.
>a lot of it was lost though lol
That's the point. It could not influence Manchu China when it was taught or remembered. Not only the entire idea, but even the premise is wrong.
>The Analects
>Mozi
>Zhuangzi
No, THIS is one of the most moronic takes I have had the misfortune to stumble upon. The Warring States was when there was a massive rise of written works.
>...teaching students from 3k period
Source??
This is a moronic take and people need to stop shoehorning high middle ages manorialism into every conceivable political system that features decentralization to any small or great degree. Fengjian isn't feudalism no matter what Wikipedia nor CPC textbooks tell you (and there's perilously little material evidence for it in the first place, which is a troubling fact about early Chinese history people don't like to admit - in Europe there are literal ruts in the ground demarcating where the ploughs went in the open field system - it's called ridge-and-furrow. Zhou jingtian on the other hand... there's basically nothing. We're going off the words of Mencius and Confucius alone for it and even in modern Chinese historiography there's huge controversy over whether or not such a system even existed in the first place).
Late Zhou polities were really more like loose city-states based on kinship ties. Think ancient Greece but if every lordship was second cousin to the next lordship over. And much of the land was straight up uninhabited wilderness - a lot of the great land clearing projects started with the Han and continued through the Sui and the Tang. Medieval Europe had more wilderness than today, but significantly less so than bronze age China. By the High Middle Ages a lot of forest had been cleared and a lot of marshland had been drained and there were townships everywhere - more so even than today (the UK uses the term DMV - deserted medieval village - to refer to small and medium settlements that straight up died out from the triple whammy of the Great Famine into the Black Death into the Little Ice Age). The King of Zhou was as much a master of ceremonies as he was an overlord as we understand the term - a religious official that had significant temporal power albeit waxing and waning depending on the individual strength of the leader.
very interesting, but don’t be rude. Everybody on this board is so rude vgh
>in Europe there are literal ruts in the ground demarcating where the ploughs went in the open field system - it's called ridge-and-furrow. Zhou jingtian on the other hand... there's basically nothing.
anon you don't plow rice paddies
this is what happens when educated city slickers try to comment on agriculture
>northern china predominantly farms rice
Here's how I know you've never been.
Just because they didn't have advanced crop rotation methods doesn't mean they didn't have feudalism.
in such a way as to leave permanent markings in the soil* if you want to be pedantic
They didn't have feudalism because Zhou society does not resemble High Middle Ages Western European society in any way, shape, form, or function barring being a pre-industrial agricultural society. Modern America is feudalist because it has devolved states by the level of stretching you need to connect the two.
Also, the Zhou *did* have three field rotation - that's one thing they do legitimately have in common with Medieval Europe. But unless you want to argue crop rotation is the definition of feudalism, there's little to go off of. Religious life was fundamentally different. Political authority was vested in entirely different means and expressed in different ways. The philosophical backdrop was different and day-to-day life was fundamentally different. High Middle Ages Western Europe was a series of development settlements bounded by extensive agricultural development and highly managed tracts of semi-wilderness - the 'royal forests' etc. The auroch went extinct in Western Europe during this time period for that reason and the wisent was localized to Eastern Europe. China wouldn't see extensive development on that scale until the Han period.
What are your thoughts on calling what Japan had feudalism?
>in such a way as to leave permanent markings in the soil
so you refuted your own point
>in Europe there are literal ruts in the ground demarcating where the ploughs went in the open field system - it's called ridge-and-furrow. Zhou jingtian on the other hand... there's basically nothing
thanks for playing
>5200 years ago
>the zhou dynasty
Thanks for admitting you've never studied this period of history anon. Jingtian is a very specific concept and there's no archaeological evidence it ever existed in any shape or form.
>there's no archeological evidence of feudal agriculture systems
>just because there isn't any evidence doesn't mean they didn't exist
>there is archeological evidence of agriculture systems!
>okay so they did exist
>noooooo that was from a different period
as much as i'd like to keep replying as you have an argument with yourself i think it'd be kinder to make this my last response
>all agriculture is feudalism
Just when I thought IQfy couldn't get stupider, lmfao
>a system of land based agricultural management overseen by a hereditary system of ranked aristocrats ultimately led by a single ruler who rules by divine right
yeah no idea why people draw parallels between this and feudalism
>if there's a social hierarchy with a king, it's feudalism!
Just admit you've never studied Zhou China or European feudalism.
>ignores everything i said
If it has an economy based on cultivating land overseen by a ranked system of manorial lords it is feudalism, yes. That is the definition of the word feudalism. You can't change the definition of words because you don't like the conclusions they draw.
>That is the definition of the word feudalism
It's not and it's clear you've obtained your definition of the word 'feudalism' from IQfy. Let's ignore the first part of your statement, the 'cultivating land overseen by a ranked system' bit, because - like I stated earlier - there's no archaeological evidence for such a system ever existing in Zhou China! Your argument was pointing toward a Neolithic paddy field and going 'ZOMG! FUELDAISMS!!" which is the equivalent of saying Çatalhöyük is feudalism (though honestly, you probably believe that one too, huh?) Historically the predominant form of land ownership in China was private cultivation and there's only literary testament to believe it was any different in the Zhou kingdom.
Secondly, the Zhou nobility was only ranked loosely based on familial ties rather than through the dense system of loyalty oaths-and-patronage ties that bound Western Europe together in the 12th century. This system broke down into the Eastern Zhou period (or so it was written by Confucius - but Confucius was a noble himself! so there was every chance he was waxing lyrical for what he *thought* the old days were like rather than what they were like). By the later Eastern Zhou this system had collapsed entirely and the local warlords were hardly bound toward any such ties of familial loyalty or landholding patterns, you'd basically be calling random tribal despotates feudal.
But it's all irrelevant because there's every indication these local lords were simply taxing peasants farming private landplots - which is the exact opposite of feudalism. If you own your land and pay property taxes - that's modern landholding law. Is all the world feudal now? Is your suburban house feudal because you have to pay taxes on it?
i'm gunna be honest i have literally no idea about any of this, the first post about city slickers was a meme because of how ardent your first post was
beyond that i just kept replying out of habit
i don't know anymore about zhou than your average joe, but i have found your posts interesting and insightful
>you don't plow rice paddies
Chiang micromanaged military promotions and postings to an absurd degree. All he cared about was demonstrated political reliability, not competence, and he didn't give a shit how corrupt any of his officers were. In fact he liked his officers being corrupt, because that way he'd have something to hang over their head.
The Chinese national army was like the Soviet Army during the purges, except it never improved. If you're curious about this I strongly recommend reading Barbara Tuchman's "Stilwell and the American Experience in China 1911-1945" it documents in detail just how corrupt and incompetent the whole regime was.
Easy..
It was because of the warlord period.
Thats like asking why Nigeria is better than Ghana lmao