AHC: Qing Dynasty WW1/WW2?

How long can the Qing Dynasty possibly last with a POD in 1865? Bonus points if the Qing participate in either of the world wars.

As well on the side, how possible is a Heavenly Kingdom of Great Peace (lol, the Taiping rebels led by Hong Xiuquan and what might this state look like in the long run?
 
The best you can do in 1865 is to make Cixi change her views on modernization and subsequently have the Tongzhi Restoration take a turn towards a gradual move towards modernization. Then, later on, have someone look to Japan as a model for Westernization too, considering how successful the Meiji Restoration was compared to the Self-Strengthening Movement and Hundred Days Reform.
 

RousseauX

Donor
The best you can do in 1865 is to make Cixi change her views on modernization and subsequently have the Tongzhi Restoration take a turn towards a gradual move towards modernization. Then, later on, have someone look to Japan as a model for Westernization too, considering how successful the Meiji Restoration was compared to the Self-Strengthening Movement and Hundred Days Reform.

But the Qing dynasty did precisely this, they did look to Japan for modernization and built factories, railraods, telegraph lines, army and navy. In the 1880s a neutral observer would have thought China was having as much success as Japan.

The factor which toppled the Qing dynasty was not the lack of modernization, but the consequences of modernization. The dynasty was overthrown because the leader of the modernized military: the Beiyang army, sided with the anti-Qing rebels than the dynasty.
 

RousseauX

Donor
How long can the Qing Dynasty possibly last with a POD in 1865? Bonus points if the Qing participate in either of the world wars.

As well on the side, how possible is a Heavenly Kingdom of Great Peace (lol, the Taiping rebels led by Hong Xiuquan and what might this state look like in the long run?

Simple, Yuan Shi Kai decides in 1911 to side with the dynasty. the Qing dynasty lasts but real power shifts to the leaders of the Chinese military. Yuan Shi Kai is defacto military dictator presiding over a powerless monarchy.

This might actually end up way better than the era of the warlords OTL.
 
How long can the Qing Dynasty possibly last with a POD in 1865? Bonus points if the Qing participate in either of the world wars.

As well on the side, how possible is a Heavenly Kingdom of Great Peace (lol, the Taiping rebels led by Hong Xiuquan and what might this state look like in the long run?

Well if the Qing survive to 1914 I don't see why they wouldn't opportunistically participate in the world wars. Surely taking back the German concessions, at the very least, (like what Japan did OTL) with little fear of retaliation must represent potential gain for the Qing.

As for how they survive to 1914, I'm halfway between HongCanucker and RousseauX - modernization did happen in the Qing OTL, but it wasn't a completely comprehensive one even compared with Japan's, especially in the field of 'human capital' (discipline, training and knowledge).

During the Boxer Rebellion, for example, Qing soldiers regularly abandoned strong field positions when faced with determined Allied bayonet assaults. They also tended to sight their rifles/artillery for as long a distance as possible (rather than the distance the enemy was at) because of a mistaken belief that longer distance = greater power. These incidents show a basic lack of training and had the Qing done more of that (perhaps if they had been more confident in the loyalty of their Han subjects), they could have avoided some of the catastrophic defeats in the late 1890s that dealt such fatal damage to their legitimacy.

As for the Taiping... one could argue that a different leader (a surviving Feng Yuxiang [EDIT: Feng Yunshan], for example) would have possessed more pragmatism than the messianic Hong, who squandered initial Western goodwill (at least on the ground) towards the Rebellion and turned the gentry against the Taiping. However, one could argue that the Taiping were not as 'in control' of their military forces as commonly assumed (which is why factional infighting was so common in said empire) - so in a sense things like the misguided attack on Shanghai, and the failure to pre-empt gentry leaders like Zeng Guofan from raising forces to resisting the Taiping were pretty inevitable - the Taiping were simply too radical for their day.
 
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Well if the Qing survive to 1914 I don't see why they wouldn't opportunistically participate in the world wars. Surely taking back the German concessions, at the very least, (like what Japan did OTL) with little fear of retaliation must represent potential gain for the Qing.

As for how they survive to 1914, I'm halfway between HongCanucker and RousseauX - modernization did happen in the Qing OTL, but it wasn't a completely comprehensive one even compared with Japan's, especially in the field of 'human capital' (discipline, training and knowledge).

During the Boxer Rebellion, for example, Qing soldiers regularly abandoned strong field positions when faced with determined Allied bayonet assaults. They also tended to sight their rifles/artillery for as long a distance as possible (rather than the distance the enemy was at) because of a mistaken belief that longer distance = greater power. These incidents show a basic lack of training and had the Qing done more of that (perhaps if they had been more confident in the loyalty of their Han subjects), they could have avoided some of the catastrophic defeats in the late 1890s that dealt such fatal damage to their legitimacy.

As for the Taiping... one could argue that a different leader (a surviving Feng Yuxiang, for example) would have possessed more pragmatism than the messianic Hong, who squandered initial Western goodwill (at least on the ground) towards the Rebellion and turned the gentry against the Taiping. However, one could argue that the Taiping were not as 'in control' of their military forces as commonly assumed (which is why factional infighting was so common in said empire) - so in a sense things like the misguided attack on Shanghai, and the failure to pre-empt gentry leaders like Zeng Guofan from raising forces to resisting the Taiping were pretty inevitable - the Taiping were simply too radical for their day.

Who is Feng Yuxiang? I've never heard of him, and Googling his name only brings up a guy who was born in 1882, after the Taipeng Rebellion ended.
 
But the Qing dynasty did precisely this, they did look to Japan for modernization and built factories, railraods, telegraph lines, army and navy. In the 1880s a neutral observer would have thought China was having as much success as Japan.

The factor which toppled the Qing dynasty was not the lack of modernization, but the consequences of modernization. The dynasty was overthrown because the leader of the modernized military: the Beiyang army, sided with the anti-Qing rebels than the dynasty.

Yep, its a misconception that Japan was the only country to get the bright idea to modernise.
Most non-European countries tried this. Korea is the only big exception that stands out to me.
The thing is Japan had a lot of advantages other countries didn't have and it was lucky.

Nonetheless during the first Sino-Japanese war the entire world expected Japan to get slapped down.
The Chinese navy was so much bigger and more modern.

Japan didn't just up and modernise its industry out of nothing. It had a background of a very sophisticated urban culture and modern economic system with the analogues of stocks and trades and incorporated companies and all that sort of thing that laid the ground work for European industrialisation.
It also had much better centralisation.

For China as a whole to modernise successfully...you need pre-industrial changes.
Though, I do wonder whether it would be possible for some region of China to have a local leader who is less corrupt and more forward looking and really develops his area.
 
For China as a whole to modernise successfully...you need pre-industrial changes.
Though, I do wonder whether it would be possible for some region of China to have a local leader who is less corrupt and more forward looking and really develops his area.

And an elite wanting to modernize the country. Sure, even Cixi did some reform work, but the most important things had, lastly, to be done by the republic and later Mao.
 
But the Qing dynasty did precisely this, they did look to Japan for modernization and built factories, railraods, telegraph lines, army and navy. In the 1880s a neutral observer would have thought China was having as much success as Japan.

The factor which toppled the Qing dynasty was not the lack of modernization, but the consequences of modernization. The dynasty was overthrown because the leader of the modernized military: the Beiyang army, sided with the anti-Qing rebels than the dynasty.

This is true, but I'd like to add to this, as the situation with Qing China and modernization is a little more complicated than that.The Qing were to a large extent able to modernize on a technical level, but did not reform their institutions to match material progress. There was some imperative to reform, but the Qing botched it.

The Taiping Rebellion forced the Manchus to make better use of the Han Chinese, the most famous individuals here being Zeng Guofan and Li Hongzhang. This theoretically could've served as a segue for the Manchus to liberalize things more, but instead the Han armies were disbanded and Zeng was made to retire. And Li Hongzhang, whatever his skill, was limited in his options. As an inidividual statesman, he did a great job, but ultimately he could only work within the confines of the old bureaucracy to improve the empire.

The system that favored the ethnic Manchus over the Han was completely obsolete by about 1850. Real developments such as the annexation of Outer Manchuria by Russia forced parts of this policy to give way— in this case, the ban on immigration of Han Chinese to Mongolia and Manchuria was lifted a few years before the turn of the century.

But such "reform" (if it can even be called such) was too sparse and in no way systematic. IIRC constitutional monarchy was adopted sometime near 1910, by which time it was too late and unrest was too ubiquitous. At this point, Yuan Shikai saw in the Qing what Boris Yeltsin saw in the USSR, and decided to abandon ship.
 
I think the main issue was how much influence/power each Qing bureaucrat actually had in the say of reformation, which is something I still don't understand. I remember that seemingly every change towards industrialization and reform was met with backlash from conservatives, or the public to some extent. I recall an event mentioned in a bio on Cixi that a railroad she had backed the building of had to be relocated due to local citizens protests because they feared the noise of the train would disturb the spirits of people buried in a nearby cemetery.

I think that somehow the conservative individuals need to be either persuaded to the liberal side, or removed from power, and the public backlash to reform must be mostly ignored in order to make better progress.
 
I think the issue is less one of modernization/reform and more of an issue of nationalism.

By the 20th century the Han Chinese hated the Qing and used them as a scapegoat for everything wrong with the country. Not modernizing fast enough? Blame the Qing. Speedy modernization causing unemployment and worker problems? Blame the Qing.

You'd need a PoD waaaaay back to get the Chinese to want the Qing to stick around in a meaningful way, which gets harder and harder as nationalism seeps into the country. I think getting the Qing to stay as constitutional monarchs is possible, but again the PoD needs to go back because they were seriously hated in the 20th and late 19th century.
 
Nobody really cared about the Manchus all that much until things really started going downhill in the first half of the 1800s. Even then nationalist feelings weren't so strong until it became seemingly apparent that the Manchus not only were not Han, but that they couldn't protect the empire, not from Britain, not from France, not from Russia, not from Japan, not from the 8-Nation Alliance.

It was more about the Manchus seeming to fail at everything that allowed Chinese nationalist revolutionaries to turn them into a scapegoat, rather than there being natural animosity between ruler and ruled.
 
Who is Feng Yuxiang? I've never heard of him, and Googling his name only brings up a guy who was born in 1882, after the Taipeng Rebellion ended.

Oops, yeah I meant Feng Yunshan. I've been playing too much Hearts of Iron lately :p

I think the main issue was how much influence/power each Qing bureaucrat actually had in the say of reformation, which is something I still don't understand. I remember that seemingly every change towards industrialization and reform was met with backlash from conservatives, or the public to some extent. I recall an event mentioned in a bio on Cixi that a railroad she had backed the building of had to be relocated due to local citizens protests because they feared the noise of the train would disturb the spirits of people buried in a nearby cemetery.

Yes, modernization wasn't seen as an unambiguously good thing by Chinese at the time - Shandong province, one of the 'core areas' of the Boxer Rebellion, was also one of its more developed areas. There's the standard 'technological obsolescence' issue - railroads put a ton of barge haulers, porters and so on out of business - and no small amount of superstition was also involved, of course, though that was more directed at the spread of Christianity. It's also important to note that reactionary attitudes were also heavily influenced, to some degree, by adverse weather and natural disasters (i.e. "they built a rail, and now there's a drought, so the rail must have displeased the spirits") which the Qing obviously had no control over.
 
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RousseauX

Donor
Yep, its a misconception that Japan was the only country to get the bright idea to modernise.
Most non-European countries tried this. Korea is the only big exception that stands out to me.
The thing is Japan had a lot of advantages other countries didn't have and it was lucky.

Nonetheless during the first Sino-Japanese war the entire world expected Japan to get slapped down.
The Chinese navy was so much bigger and more modern.

Japan didn't just up and modernise its industry out of nothing. It had a background of a very sophisticated urban culture and modern economic system with the analogues of stocks and trades and incorporated companies and all that sort of thing that laid the ground work for European industrialisation.
It also had much better centralisation.

For China as a whole to modernise successfully...you need pre-industrial changes.
Though, I do wonder whether it would be possible for some region of China to have a local leader who is less corrupt and more forward looking and really develops his area.

The key point was really during the 17th-18th centuries. What happened in Japan during the period was effective state building, with the Tokugawa shogunate turning the Samurais from a warrior to a bureaucratic class. This allowed the emergence of a strong, centralized state which can actually do things. When Japan wanted a public education system for example, it had the state capacity to build schools/hire teachers and collect the taxes needed to do so.

Qing dynasty (I think it was Kangxi) OTOH decided in the 18th century that the best government is the one which taxes the least. The population also quadrupled in size between 1644 and the 19th century, with -no- corresponding increase in the number of officials. So mid 19th century China had what was a centralized but very weak state. When the needs of modernization popped up it can't responding effectively. If it wanted to build a national education system for example it simply doesn't have the money to do so.

This isn't something unique 19th century Japan/China either, the problem of state effectiveness and strength is something which plagued developmental economics all the way to today.
 
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RousseauX

Donor
Nobody really cared about the Manchus all that much until things really started going downhill in the first half of the 1800s. Even then nationalist feelings weren't so strong until it became seemingly apparent that the Manchus not only were not Han, but that they couldn't protect the empire, not from Britain, not from France, not from Russia, not from Japan, not from the 8-Nation Alliance.

It was more about the Manchus seeming to fail at everything that allowed Chinese nationalist revolutionaries to turn them into a scapegoat, rather than there being natural animosity between ruler and ruled.

One of the issues here is that modernization actually further alienated key elements of the Han population.

In 1905 for example the old Confucian exams were abolished but that immediately pissed the Han gentry which had remained loyal to the dynasty during the Taiping rebellion. Because the gentry had traditionally wanted the exam system it was.

The Qing was really stuck in a perhaps impossible situation, it needed to reform the system, yet its bases of support came from the part of the system that needed to be thrown out. It was kind of like what happened with Gorbachev and the Communist party in the 80s USSR. And as you said Yuan Shikai is obviously the Yeltsin analogue.
 

RousseauX

Donor
And an elite wanting to modernize the country. Sure, even Cixi did some reform work, but the most important things had, lastly, to be done by the republic and later Mao.

The Elite did -want- to reform the country, it was just the pace of modernization that people were arguing about. Remember modernization do have a whole bunch of negative consequences (like the creation of a Han Chinese army trained in modern western methods which hates Manchus). It's really not very obvious that "modernization ASAP" was the best set of strategy.
 
Oops, yeah I meant Feng Yunshan. I've been playing too much Hearts of Iron lately :p



Yes, modernization wasn't seen as an unambiguously good thing by Chinese at the time - Shandong province, one of the 'core areas' of the Boxer Rebellion, was also one of its more developed areas. There's the standard 'technological obsolescence' issue - railroads put a ton of barge haulers, porters and so on out of business - and no small amount of superstition was also involved, of course, though that was more directed at the spread of Christianity. It's also important to note that reactionary attitudes were also heavily influenced, to some degree, by adverse weather and natural disasters (i.e. "they built a rail, and now there's a drought, so the rail must have displeased the spirits") which the Qing obviously had no control over.

Keeping that in mind, a quicker move to industrialization may entail an earlier Boxer Rebellion.

Also I'd like to acknowledge that I don't think Cixi is a real problem. Yes she was not a liberal, and may or may not have misused govt funds to rebuild the Summer Palace, but she did support many reforms and moves towards industrialization in China. She just had to deal with alot of people more conservative than herself.

Also, based on my understanding, the reason Cixi instigated the coup in 1898 was because Guangxu's 100 day reform was 'WAY' too radical for most Chinese to stomach.
 
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