Self-Strengthening Movement
(1861–c. 1895). The self-strengthening movement, which began in 1861, was an effort by the Qing dynasty (1644–1912) of China to restore power to resist Western encroachments, especially after the Second Opium War, which resulted in the burning and looting of the Summer Palace in Beijing by British and French forces.
The goal of the movement was to employ Western technology while retaining traditional Chinese values to meet the new imperialist threat. It was assumed that China could adopt technology and not the values and philosophies that produced that technology. Thus, from 1861 until 1895, the Qing government and various provincial officials launched a series of projects, including creating Zongli Yamen (a foreign affairs office), establishing the Jiangnan Arsenal, the Fuzhou Dockyard, the Nanjing Arsenal, and the Tianjin Machine Factory, sending Chinese students to the United States, and constructing the Beiyang Fleet. The series of projects clearly centered on a program of military modernization initially and subsequently on an effort at economic self-strengthening, all designed to improve the nation's position vis-à-vis the imperialist powers.
The time period of the movement roughly approximates that of the Meiji Restoration in Japan, and it is instructive to note differences. Japanese leaders were more willing to throw off the past, change the structure of government and the structure of society because of the powerful desire to resist imperialist encroachments. By contrast, Chinese leaders were unwilling to change dramatically the system of government or the social hierarchy and thus truly struggled at the margins. China's defeat by Japan in the Sino-Japanese War (1894–1895) exposed the weaknesses of the nearly fourdecades-long self-strengthening movement.
Further Reading
Feuerwerker, Albert. (1975) Rebellion in Nineteenth-Century China. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.
Wright, Mary C. (1966) The Last Stand of Chinese Conservatism: The T'ung-chih Restoration, 1862–1874. New York: Atheneum.
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