Why did the Qing modernize far worse than Japan did?

Why did the Qing modernize far worse than Japan did?

Both had a turbulent time (Meiji period, boxer rebellion etc) But Japan came out as a developed power. China ended up an unstable, undeveloped warzone.

Because Japs are actually almost as intelligent as Europeans while the Chinese are subhumans.

Fuck off with your pseudoscience.

Very different circumstances. The Meiji Restoration wasn't nearly as turbulent as what the Chinese had to deal with. The Japanese elite also stood to gain a lot through modernisation and Westernisation and yet the Qing elite felt as if they would gain more if they retained their autocratic grip on tenants on their lands.

Japan is also a very tiny surface to cover with a very homogeneous peoples with similar goals, interests, languages and history. China is enormous with many different ethnic groups who have drastically different wants and needs.

Finally, the Japanese government was not bloated and corrupt like the Qing bureaucracy and so a cohesive plan was made to modernise in tandem with business elites. The Qing system was archaic, incompetent and after being humiliated constantly by foreign powers it was really in no position to control China.

Edo Japan was more developped than China. It was already going through some kind of industrial revolution, even before Europeans came.

kys

Maybe it has to do with size. I'm sure there are many different factors, but pushing through reforms and modernization is harder the bigger your empire is.

So China is essentially ungovernable?

Too big.

I always figured it was cultural. China was the central kingdom, they had always been in charge and never had to deal with other nations on equal or even near-equal terms. The idea of a transition to a foreign form of government was antithetical.

Japan not only had the benefit of watching this process, historically they had always been on the margins and had adapted foreign technology and government before. The fact that the emperor was essentially sacrosanct also gave them something unchangeable but unimportant they could rally around.

China became ungovernable due to it being too bureaucratic, Opium being pumped into the system, public disdain towards the Qing rulers (as they were barbarians/foreign rulers) and its armies getting trashed by superior western firearms.

Had it not been for Opium, they might have been able to turn things for the better. While the civilians didnt see Qing as rightful, they didn't have too much issue until the other things popped up (west intervention)

Strangely enough later Qing emperors tried to maintain a policy of lassaiz faire governance and had too few magistrate throughout the countryside. Lawlessness was a big deal and bandits/rebels often roamed the countryside and the peasants were left to themselves. If no one can protect them but themselves, why should the average people give a shit about the central court? Resentment about this and the fact the dynasty were a bunch of Manchus sealed its fate.

The Japanese saw first hand what the west had to offer. They refused to become a white colony so they sent prince iwakura out on a mission to take The best ideas from the US and continental Europe and when he returned to Japan they implemented things like a French school system a German military style etc. In regards to the boxer rebellion, they were actually among the expidetiary forces to help put it down. Japan wanted to become a power and did, china was a big mess and was unable to keep up with the times so to speak. Furthermore, with the British forces in Hong Kong, the British forced the Chinese to keep buying opium.

>m-muh opium

Zhang pls, the Chinese were going to be shit with or without opium.

>T-they forced us to keep buying Opium

Bullshit. The evil Qing tried to prevent good cantonese boys from buying their poppy goods from the British merchants who dindu nuffin.

What was it, the first time American ships sailed into Japanese harbors they had sails and were wooden and then the next time the US sent envoys they had steam engines and massive warships. It freaked the Japanese out.

Also one nation is highly industrious with a history of adapting and excelling.

The other nation has a history of adapting ideas and never developing them themselves. China peaked early as a culture with their achievements and have been sitting on their laurels ever since. Eventually China gets its shit pushed in by an outside force and they realize they need to catch up so they do and then they think themselves superior to everyone again and get complacent.

Maybe because they weren't in similar positions?? Who would've thought an empire the size of the USA with 350 million people is different from an island nation of 25 million?

It was governed many times before.

>The other nation has a history of adapting ideas and never developing them themselves.

Japan?

Amazing how revisionist this post is.

Traditional Japanese culture is literally a copy of Tang-era China. In some ways it's more Chinese than modern China, which has adopted some foreign political theories/culture and developed them (for better or worse).

Because the Qing was a fractured state, broken into ethnic regional factions. Japan was homogeneous. Also the Meiji period was not at all turbulent aside from its rough start with the Bosshin war and Satsuma rebellion. Once the Emperor asserted full control over the country they all moved in lock-step with his plans to rapidly modernize. The entire country bent to the task of becoming the equal of European powers.

Meanwhile the Qing emperor could not even command the loyalty of his governors.

this I was going to say something similar.

In the 20th century the asian tigers were basically islands + South Korea that might as well be an island. They were more secure and were a good place for long term capital investment. Whereas China was divided into warlords until it was brutally united under Mao's totalitarian dictatorship which held back development a few decades after ww2.

There was a similar trend in the 19th century.

Japan produced a lot of grain on the Kanto plain. It had a lot of coastline which is good for trade. It was a densely populated set of islands which were easy to secure, a wayward clan knew their rivals would tear them apart within months if they were disloyal to the shogun.

I don't think the Qing was spectacularly incompetent, more like with the massive size of the country and its security needs put a constant strain on the system. At the same time the black ships arrived they were going through the taiping rebellion.

First off, 18th century China was far more turbulent than 18th century Japan. The two opium wars, European concessions, and Taiping rebellion dwarf anything Japan faced.

Second, The Empire of Japan was far more centralized than the Qing, whom relied on various regional Han administrators to prop up their rule. This reinforces the major issue with the late Qing, that there was just as much friction between different Qing factions than there was between the Qing and foreign imperialists. The Qing rulers up in Beijing often distrusted the progressive Han reformers/literati who were mostly based in the lower Yangtze. This was further strained by the reactionary Empress Dowager Cixi who went on a power trip when her Nephew took the throne and attempted to implement reform. She implemented a coup and took over control halting any meaningful reform.

Lastly, while there was a million social and economic answers for your question, one of the big contributing factors behind the Qing's reluctance for reform was the fear of nationalism. Nationalism was extremely important in the 19th century concept of Nation-states and governance and it fit Japan's Meiji Reforms perfectly. However the Qing were a foreign minority ruling a majority Han China. Any form of popular nationalism would likely turn against the ruling Qing.

>capital investment
It bothers me how capitalists always ignore the effect of capital, and act like it just grows on deregulated trees, when the name of their system is called capitalism

The Qing were not seen as Chinese.

If Japan had been occupied by a foreign power who believed in the interests of their ethnic clique over the interest of their nation-state they would've had a tough time too.

Taiping rebellion and boxer rebellion were an order of magnitude more destructive than the Meiji Restoration.

The Chinese thought of themselves as the literal center of the world and the axis around which all the barbarian peoples looked at as if a shining example for them.
Why would they want to learn from barbarians? Adopt their ways?
Japan on the other hand had a culture and history of importing foreign models as soon as the tides changed in China. So they didn't feel much resistance to modernization as the proud Chinese did.

>Why would they want to learn from barbarians? Adopt their ways?
Well, they hadn't really needed to before then since they had such a huge population that labor saving devices were not as much a necessity as they were in Europe (which has driver the industrial revolution) and there hasn't been centuries of competition against other countries in the region.

And in fairness they did try to modernize after the Opium War, but failed because of political infighting and civil wars.

Basically this, failure to see that the West had surpassed them. Efforts to modernize were stymied by retarded leadership, like Cixi spending budget originally intended for modernizing the navy on pointless vanity projects like rebuilding the Summer Palace.

Did China had a caste system like Japan? Because that could also have made the development smoother