Prince Gong modernizes China

Prince Gong has always been one of those historical persons that have intrigued me.

After the Taiping rebellion and on the death of the Xianfeng Emperor on August 1861 Gong launced a coup with the Dowagers Ci'an and Cixi known as the Xinyou Coup, to oust the power of the Eight Regents. Thus installing Zaichun as the Tongzhi Emperor. Making himself as prince regent.

And launched reforms known as the Self-strengthening movements.

Was it possible for him to actually modernize China? and if yes how?
 
For Gong to succeed, he needed sole power. His problem was that he focused on how China could modernize rather than what was stopping China from modernizing; in this case, extreme corruption. You have to socially and governmentally modernize a country before you technologically modernize a country. The Qing actually had a modern navy in the 1st Sino Japanese War, for example, but the extreme corruption stopped shells from getting to the ships.
 
For Gong to succeed, he needed sole power. His problem was that he focused on how China could modernize rather than what was stopping China from modernizing; in this case, extreme corruption. You have to socially and governmentally modernize a country before you technologically modernize a country. The Qing actually had a modern navy in the 1st Sino Japanese War, for example, but the extreme corruption stopped shells from getting to the ships.
Quite impossible really,given the country's basically in the hands of local gentry and viceroys who do their own thing and can ignore the imperial court whenever they disliked the central authority's policies.
 
From what I remember from a thread I posted about this myself, someone postulated that if Prince Gong came to power, he would become conservative to fit the court. Not sure if this is completely accurate, but...
 

scholar

Banned
Quite impossible really,given the country's basically in the hands of local gentry and viceroys who do their own thing and can ignore the imperial court whenever they disliked the central authority's policies.

Oh, its not that simple. Local gentry and viceroys could never overtly defy central authority policies unless they were tied directly to foreign powers. It was much more passive aggressive, and often when appealing to other elements of the court they would use powerful allies to indirectly suggest that it would be impossible or improper for them to do so under X, X, and X. People who just simply defied the imperial government would not remain in power for long unless they were ridiculously powerful, and most of the gentry and viceroys do not fit in that category. The self strengthening movement never really took off precisely because it was not made into firm government policy, and many local leaders took after the disinterested parties at court, such as Cixi, and thought participating in it would be beneath them. The court never did much to dissuade these views, and support for the movement was always oscillating.
 
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