What factors led to China being so far behind the western powers militarily...

>Le Rigid Confucianism is everything in east asia meme.
They were also richer than peasants.
And paid more taxes to the government.
And were buddies with a lot of officials.
And even travelled with the banner armies on campaign during the expansion of Qing China in 1700's, providing shitloads of services to the army.
And when the conquests were over, they settled down and became middlemen between new subjects and the Qing government and were a great aid to new Imperial Administrations set up in Tibet, Mongolia, or Xinjiang.
And overseas, the merchant was the middleman between a technically closed Qing China and Dutch/Portuguese/Spanish traders. They even were tapped as ambassadors whenever the Qing needs to speak with any of the Europeans.

Merchants were despised by hardliner Confucianists. But most of the time it was considered a good job and a respectable trade.

>hey, check it out, i hav many big ship
> t. lord palmerston

>that is true, big ships are a very valuable commodity, i now have no choice but to submit to my sino servile instincts and import millions of shipments of opium and bow before you
>rip hong kong

I've seen the argument that as civil servants were moved around, and were unlikely to be dismissed based on complaints from commoners, they had an incentive to squeeze everything they could from their region while they were there. So everyone was effectively being taxed at the maximum rate possible, with only a portion being passed on as Imperial revenue. Over time, either the government didn't have the funds to rule China anymore, or the people would be pushed to the point where it was rebellion or starvation.
The Qing couldn't afford to have a competent military.

Women rulers.

They were a bit like bankers in the West. Everyone complained about the parasitic leech bankers, usury is considered a sin in Abrahamic religions and Greco-Roman morality (ancient wisdom had it that usury was twice as bad as theft), but look at all the power and influence they held and hold.

1492

anybody mention the Qing yet?

>not really

welp, being ruled by a dynasty of insecure yet terribly arrogant Manchurians from 1644 to 1912 didn't help.

The Opium war was purely a naval War so I would argue that naval Inactivity on the part of the Chinese Caused the defeat

Not sure when European Armies surpassed them

>Opium war was purely a naval War

being too stupid to improve the guns they invented at a rate that matched europeans

how is this possible? im assuming the Chinese were even further behind in tech at that point then i thought

underrated

Isolation and despotism

China was at its best wen it was open to the world through trade during the Tang, Song and Ming dynasty's

That and the rule of the emperor and his court really limited any development or political will to embrace other things I like Europe where it was all a huge competition

Europe was at its worst during Rome for the same reasons

The Chinese army then was completely out of date, also all their soldiers were probably high on opium

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonkin_Campaign
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Canton_(May_1841)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Chapoo

etc

Qing China was actually still open up until the mid 1700's.

Its only due to Catholic Missionaries causing disturbances in China that the Europeans were ordered out, with only Jesuits allowed to remain in because they weren't spastics.

Pic related, a painting of the Qianlong Emperor by Giuseppe Castiglioni.

The Qing dynasty wasn't very experienced in fighting contemporary wars. Their expansion was mostly in fighting nomads in Dzungaria, the Tarim Basin, Mongolia, and Tibet. China as a whole had next to no naval experience, and also didn't adopt cannons readily (because nomads don't have castles). That's basically what it came down to. China and the West were roughly equal in terms of economic productivity during the wars, they only began to be eclipsed after them.

Isolationism doesn't matter, the europeans had strict technology and capital controls in their own countries during industrialization, as well as agreements not to arm natives and non europeans. The chinese just couldn't buy a large shipment of machine guns

>be random Jesuit in China
>show of dank western inventions and science
>Emperor is imprest
>Emperor wants us to tell him more
>Be appointed "Head of the Mathematical Board"
>feelsgud.painting
>BTFO chinks in astronomy because of my western toys
>argue that there are errors in the Chinese calander
>Emperor actually agrees after going through my research
>We Jesuits get pretty close to the Emperor
>Some even learn him western instruments
>He is a pretty cool guy
>Let him see western firearms and atillery
>Ask us help his realm manufacture them
>New atillery makes it possible to BTFO Russians and conqure Formosa
>I fucking hate slavs
>Emperor is happy
>He is getting a liking to Christianity
>give us rights to go on missonary missions everywhere in China
>unite Confusian rites with Christianity
>millions of Chinese followers
>everything is going great
>learn some little chinkes european math
>get letter from pope
>ask us to stop the heresy and ban confusian rites
>Is the pope literal retarded?
>tell him to stop the bullshit
>pope decide to send letter to the Emperor
>oh god pls no
>"Hey faggot, I know you are the ruler of the most powerful Empire on earth, but remember if you convert you will be below me and you have to ban your traditons"
>YOU FUCKING RETARD YOU DESTROYED OUR MISSION
>Emperor is mad
>ban christians, no more import of western ideas and toys
>get beheaded
>ISHYGGDT

>The chinese just couldn't buy a large shipment of machine guns
They can.

And they did.

Look up the Beiyang Army son. But by the time the "Self-Strengthening" movement got underway, the Qing's authority was seriously undermined that the traditional "THE DYNASTY HAS LOST MANDATE!!!" declarations has begun.

Add to this was the birth of Chinese Nationalism.

It isn't my area of study, and I forget what the source is, but I have a friend in Moscow who mainly does research on historical relations between various powers.

He shared with me once, an eye-witness account of a huge victory the British won over the Qing soldiers -- because of language.

You see, the Qing upper class were Manchu, but most of the country were Han, so there was a language barrier. In this one particular battle the account is from, the Chinese general gave the order to "not use your guns until you get close." The interpreter he had was shit, and translated this message as "Do not use your guns." What ensued was a slaughter in which Qing soldiers had to "climb over piles of their own dead" to even get close to the British forces.

They really couldn't though, after the boxer Rebellion it was harder for China to import western advisors and firearms because the Imperial powers were begining to fear China after they saw what the somewhat modern armies of the Qing could do.

Doubt.jpg

1) The language of the Upper class was classical Chinese. The language of government was MANDARIN. Hence the name (i.e. Language of the Mandarin Officials).

2) And there was no race-based caste system in Qing China. The upper class is the upper class. period. There used to be, at the start, but it was gone by the late 1600s. There were shitloads of Mongol, Han, Hakka, Manchu, generals in the Chinese army.

And they all spoke the official language.

Pic related, a very famous late Qing general. Not a Manchu.

Hmm. I might have fucked up the narrative a bit. He sent me this like a year ago, so I wouldn't be surprised.

Eh, its possible that he is right but with the language barrier being Mandarin VS. languages of Southern Chinese militias.

The Opium war was fought in Southern China after all.

I don't think the account specified whether it was just a militia or bannermen, etc.

Still applicable. Bannermen usually are regionally assigned (save for the Green Standard) and so Southern Troops fight in Southern Armies.

Ah.

Still a really feudal system at its core, it would seem.

>were begining to fear China after they saw what the somewhat modern armies of the Qing could do
>the somewhat modern armies of the Qing could do
For starters, the Qing got fucking steamrolled in the Boxer War. Second, Yuan Shikai and the Army of the Seven Banners pledged neutrality. The vast majority of the Boxer War was Western and Japanese armies slaughtering Chinese peasants and destroying Qing cities out of revenge. The fucking Chinese soldiers elevated their sights all the way because they thought it raised the power of the guns for fucks sake. The European powers were more afraid of African revolts than the Chinese.

I would agree that the Boxer War was not what it was, but I would disagree that there wasn't a fear of China modernizing. But I would say it was caused by this: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-French_War

^This war proved that China was getting better.

Nah. The Eight Banners are state armies. Feudalism is dead in China outside economic feudalism in the form of merchant owned plantations. Its the provincial militia like these guys who are raised by individual governors, who are usually a mix of armed civilian posses, ex-bandits, and private military organizations.

Unfortunately for your argument, the opposite happened. The West and Japan continued to sell military goods and industrialization actually increased after the Boxer War due to the fact the Foreign Powers were not longer limited to treaty ports. In fact, investment was so heavy in China that the Japanese and Russians fought a fucking war over it in 1905 and the Chinese army was almost solely supplied by Krupp.

Who is the person?

>what is filename
Anyway it is Ferdinand Verbies.

Funny how Jesuits in China have come so close to converting shitloads of Chinese to Catholicism only to be ruined by internal shit.

This was even the case before the Qing. The Ming fucking Dynasty had- for its last empress- a Catholic Empress for fucks sake.

Same happened when Genghis Khan took a liking to Christanity, just for the pope to remind him who was the boss.

It was a new kind of autism

Incidentally, Genghiz Khan's pet Christian Turks ruined Nestorian Christianity for the Chinese. Who already had millions of em.

>Oh, the guys who invaded us had this religion us well? Fuck it, I'm converting out.

>What factors led to China being so far behind the western powers militarily, that they were curb stomped in the opium wars?
this is high school shite man

Their society did not have the same place in it for professional investors/scientists like the west did.

The Manchus were a formidable military power up until Qianlong's reign (8 October 1735 – 9 February 1796), but his Ten Campaigns also contributed to the decline of the empire. In a lot of ways, Qianlong reminds me of Basil II. Both were the last emperors of merit in their respective dynasties and crushed their opponents, which had the detrimental effect of weakening their House's vitality.

If the Ming hadn't fallen, it would've been interesting to see how open they would've been to 1700's and 1800's tech, seeing how they used Jesuits to cast cannon for them.

What are those turks doing in China?

They lived on a landmass that dwarfs Europe,

Were to start... first off China had been lagging behind Europe on the area of artillery for a long time. The "Folangji" (breech-loading swivel gun) and the "hongyipao" (culverin) were Chinese copy's of European cannons. So why was that when the first cannons were invented in china?

I think that the reason for the that Rammed-earth walls were just to tough to crack with early cannons thus causing there to be little motivation to improve on early cannons in China. When the Ming got their hands on looted Portuguese breech-loading swivel guns from the Battle of Xicaowan they tried to scale the design up with limited success. They did not have the knowledge base to make heavy siege cannons, but it appear they did have the idea of doing so. At the tail end of the Ming dynasty they did get culverin with help from the Jesuit Johann Adam Schall von Bell.From there the same design was more or less scaled to fire 10 to 38 pound cannon balls. Because of the time it took for heavy cannons to become a time that means the fort and ship designs in china did not have to deal with heavy cannon till much later then European counter part did. That would be a a very easy to accept reason why China lagged in those areas.

So why did China lagged in the area of land tactic's? Not just when compared to Europeans but also Japan (from 1560 to about 1640) and to a lesser degree Korea? This is a person guess but it is because they rarely fought wars on equal terms. Most of the time when early modern China lost a war it was because terrain, supple line issue, or back end political issues. If the Chinese army does not need to do better in battle to win its wars then why would they focus to much on improving its tactics?

as stated in the thread numerous times. Isolationism.

but to understand it you have to look at one of the more extreme examples of history. Sakoku Japan.

When the Tokugawa Shogunate closed the country off, Japanese innovation was largely crippled without access to outside information like Dutch books that were traded during the Sengoku era. After 100 years, Japan, which was roughly equal to Korea and China in terms of technology as proved by the Imjin War, fell far behind their Chinese neighbors, and even further behind Imperial Europe.

But after the Meiji restoration and the repeal of Sakoku, Japan almost immediately adapted to new technologies and became one of the richest and most advanced empires on the planet by 1914, able to go toe-to-toe with Russia and China and defeat them on the battlefield.

China was much the same way but less extreme than japan's case. the restriction of outside information slowly left them behind, and you can probably still see that restriction of information even still today, with Chinese military technologies mostly comprised of late-Soviet era weapons, rather than trying to develop 5th generation fighters or main battle tanks like what the US and Russia are doing. But that's both because of information restraints and just sheer cost to produce technologies like that, costs that they feel are better driven into industrial development or building residential units.

Military tech advances rapidly when countries are constantly trying to kill each other and not be killed in turn. This turned Europe into military masters while the relatively stable Chinese were left with shit-tier weapons and tactics.

> rather than trying to develop 5th generation fighters

What?!? The Chengdu J-20 entered low rate initial production early this year. The Shenyang J-31 has not entered production but it appears that it will be entering service around 2019. In light of some of the issues with the Sukhoi PAK FA China may be in second place on fighter development.

>main battle tanks like what the US and Russia are doing.

That is be more true. After reading a bit on /k it appear that Type 99A2 is a bit behind the current M1A2 Abrams in some areas and it does not have the level of upgrades in development as the M1A3 Abrams. At less that we know of.

The area that they are most behind in is body armor btw.

Well for starters, China has a history of arrogance.

1. They cannot win wars that aren't civil wars or against barbarians.
2. They have bursts of innovation and dominance and then they see themselves as the most superior and refined thing on God's green earth and they decide to stagnate for a while. This goes on until some outside force anally annihilates them. They adapt and then stagnate and get raped again.
3. When the Christian missionaries brought over the European technology, the Chinese copied the 15th century warfare tech of Europe and then mass produced that. They kicked ass in their part of the world for a while, but they never attempted to build on what they got from Europe. So when the Opium Wars happened, China was still using the same cannon styles that they got from those missionaries centuries beforehand.

im mad too

Merchants can be innovative. For example, is it not innovative to establish new trade routes?

>1. They cannot win wars that aren't civil wars or against barbarians.
Everyone not Chinese is a barbarian

>After reading a bit on /k it appear that Type 99A2 is a bit behind the current M1A2 Abrams in some areas and it does not have the level of upgrades in development as the M1A3 Abrams. At less that we know of.
Does Abrams finally have non-armour piercing round or it's still useless crap?

>1. They cannot win wars that aren't civil wars
I want this meme to die.
>or against barbarians
Eh, you know that Europeans were seen as Barbarian rights? Russia was even seen below that.

How do you lose a civil war anyways?

It is not fully understood, there were various reasons, mainly geography, economics and the spread of technology.

One thing is for certain, the idea that they chose to become isolationist is a meme based on a few edicts by a few emperors which didn't last long if they had much impact at all. Chinese merchants had expatriate communities in South East Asian ports like Malacca and junks composed a large proportion of traffic more or less continuously for centuries.

>So why did China lagged in the area of land tactic's? Not just when compared to Europeans but also Japan (from 1560 to about 1640) and to a lesser degree Korea?
Citation needed

Do you know what isolationist means?

>Does Abrams finally have non-armour piercing round or it's still useless crap?

It has had the M830 HEAT since before the first gulf war and made very good use of that round. Since 1994 it has been fielding the improved M830A1 Multi-Purpose Anti Tank which replaced the M830 in some but not all functions. Starting in 2005 the M1028 Canister was fielded, see video for a prototype test of it. Last it also has the M908 Obstacle Reduction round.

youtube.com/watch?v=Cgn1nhUEgo8

All of that is in turn going to be replaced with the Advanced Multi-Purpose inside the next few years.

They weren't that far behind. The technological edge in the first opium war was measured in decades, not centuries, but those decades had seen a paradigm shift of naval warfare.

Chinese tech group made it 60% harder for the Chinese to innovate, thus leading to the collapse of the Ming in the 18th Century by The Commonwealth.

Even today the south speaks Cantonese as well as other dialects such as Wu, so that's likely the case.

Lol, this isn't EU.

>So why did China lagged in the area of land tactic's? Not just when compared to Europeans but also Japan (from 1560 to about 1640) and to a lesser degree Korea?
This is wrong.

For one thing the main enemy of the Ming & Qing Chinks wasn't infantry, but the armies of the Steppe Nomads.

If Japan was put in China's place battling Nomadic Invasions, they'd be pisspoor prepared.

get the fuck out of this board and don't come back until you can understand a fucking joke

Wow you're hostile, I actually found the joke funny. Fuck you.