AHC: Late XIX century Japan and China switch fates

[Onedotman]

Your challenge is to make the China able to pull out major socio-political reforms on par with the Meiji Restoration IOTL and soon gained the status of a major regional power, while the Japanese monarchy goes into decline and eventually became divided between spheres of influence between China and the Western powers. PoD must not be later than 1880.

 

[Faeelin]

How would you go about making this happen, OneDot?

 

[Elfwine]

A POD in 1880 means China has experienced the Opium Wars (with major concessions), the Taiping Rebellion, and the Dungan Revolt among other woes,

That seems like an uphill battle in my (to be honest, limited) reading, especially if it's not just "not weakened further" but a significant power with potential European partners.

 

[moopli]

PoD must not be later than 1880

A POD in 1880

Methinks you've done a swapsey-roundey, Elfwine - the PoD must be 1880 or earlier, not later.

My suspicion is that whatever the PoD (and subsequent further divergences) is, it needs to lead to a China that is outward-focused and engages significantly in mercantile adventurism. My reading of history is that this is generally what led to European dominance in world politics, since a European country could send a force halfway across the world to tip the balance in a local dispute and thus win concessions and allies, which many European nations were later able to leverage into exerting economic control over said regions.

Question is, what does it take to have a China that does this? The trope I'm familiar with is the idea of the Southern Song focusing on overseas adventurism, in the South China Sea and beyond, in a timeline with a butterflied Mongol expansion. Perhaps the north remains fractious under squabbling princes, but strong and united enough to prevent the consolidated south from expanding back into the plains for a few centuries, long enough for mercantile interests to become strong and politically important in the Song court. Then, even when it would be later possible for the southern Song to reunite China, they continue to focus on advancing trade overseas, and in the 16th century they establish trade with European powers in the Indian Ocean, with European traders demonstrating an interest in going further eastwards for better trade deals and market expansion, but critically the Chinese traders would be going the other way, until there's a Chinese route to the Ottoman Empire. Spices and silks for guns?

As long as the expansionist/mercantile forces in China are politically powerful enough, and economically important enough, then even when China unites again, hopefully the court won't be able to become too focused on internal politics, since an outward outlook, and the maintenance of overseas trade missions, trade colonies, etc will be too financially lucrative and strategically valuable.

 

[Elfwine]

Methinks you've done a swapsey-roundey, Elfwine - the PoD must be 1880 or earlier, not later.

My bad, yes. Though those event make me wonder what would be a good time where China is in a situation its spontaneously appealing to change directions and in a state to make such a huge change in orientation- not just as far as individual traders finding profits elsewhere, but that trade missions, colonies, etc. far removed from China are big compared to stuff in "China proper" (and how much of an empire that is compared to "just Metropolitan France" already as ar as imperial interests go).

 

[SwordGod]

Sad to say, I don't think it's possible for the Qing. China is far bigger than the japanese, and far more exposed to the west. The 8 nations alliance proved there to be at least 8 countries planning to wage war against China. Japan is too small and less rich in resources, so they never had much of a problem. The only way China could actually have the independence to carry out wide scale reform would be if the Qing dynasty had collapsed quickly, perhaps by a rebellion or something around the 1700s? and got replaced by a Han chinese dynasty (not the Ming, it had already been in decline. A new dynasty is needed to rejuvenate China with the best possible leader). Not for racism or anything, but simply because the Han would look more favourably on a chinese ruler, it would be easier for nationalism to grow, and the dynasty itself would be less extreme on the Han, there would be a promotion of firearm technology, unlike the Qing's suppression, fearing that it will level the playing ground. Ming dynasty technologies, firearms or otherwise, could be continued, and the West would have to fight a united China with technology at the very least not worse than theirs, and a more nationalised country.

As for Japan, you would just need a weaker monarch than Emperor Meiji or less capable civil officials (depending on which was the catalyst of the Meiji Restoration.

But I'm just theorising, please tell me if I made any mistakes