AHQ: Why did the Qing collapse?

However, even in 1911 the Qing might have survived-- the commanders of the Beiyang Army ("Northern Army"), who controlled most of north China between them, did not initially join the southern uprising. However, the commanders (most of whom regarded each other as colleagues, and who had once studied together in the same schools) mostly decided that, rather than throwing China into civil war and weakening it further, it would be more effective to negotiate with the rebels. It was the resulting negotiation that led to the Qing being deposed-- a negotiation that was, depending on one's perspective, born out of nationalism of a kind.

Yuan Shikai sided with the rebels by his fear of irrelevance if the uprising was crushed. The Republicans and revolutionaries had infiltrated the New Army already. If 1911 was put down, you would have had Yuan Shikai overthrow the Qing himself while the Republicans and revolutionaries regroup, or even a new monarchy base around wither a Ming, or a descendant of Confucius.

There is just too much factional tension and incompetence to save the Qing at this point.
 
@profxyz I'm convinced that there simply wasn't any way for the Qing Dynasty to defeat Japan in the First Sino-Japanese War. One must look at the manner by which the Qing forces conducted the war. For the most part, the Chinese forces,despite having modern equipment,simply did not put up a fight. This is true in most other cases for the rest of the wars with the other great powers.A lot of Chinese troops,especially the officers,simply deserted before the fighting even began. Corruption was also endemic. In the naval battle with Japan,Chinese forces,despite having superior ships,basically fired rounds filled with sand because of corrupt officers.

One must ask beyond the corruption as to why there was little motivation to fight at all.I personally suspect that for the vast majority of the Chinese,the Qing Emperor was just a foreign warlord,a figure who could not inspire patriotism for soldiers to lay down their lives for.
It was probably impossible for them to win with the discipline and quality of the officer corps they had, but I think that the Beiyang army could have defended Korea with major, but not implausibly drastic, reforms. In a 1996 essay "Testing the Self-Strengthening: the Chinese Army in the Sino-Japanese War" by Allen Fung (not to be confused with Allan Fung), the author made a convincing case that the unwillingness to engage in modern military drilling may have been, surprisingly, a main reason for the poor performance in the war. The Chinese consequently suffered high casualties and failed to inflict comparatively many battle deaths on Japan. The effect on morale meant that the problem got worse each time the two sides met.

And of course, even if they couldn't fully match the Japanese in discipline and training, the Qing armies still had the inherent advantage of being on the defense and of the potential to draw up lower quality but more numerous troops over time. They only needed to effectively repulse the initial Japanese attack in Korea and bog them down in a defensive war and build up their forces until Japan is forced to give up. Japan was at a logistical disadvantage and the Korean population was not friendly to them. Had the Qing soldiers been trained and commanded such that they were able to made good use of their weapons, which were often superior to Japan's, they could have inflicted comparable casualties on their enemies and tanked their morale; Japan was not yet the confident nation it was in 1905, after all. Even if Japan won most or all of the battles, I can see the Qing managing to get a peace while yielding comparatively minimal concessions and without suffering a total humiliation. If Japan could maintain naval supremacy but could not achieve a sufficiently decisive victory on land, then they might still be able to get Taiwan, which, I think, would mostly save face for them.
 
Very interesting reply all over, but not sure I get that bit?
Drilling coupled with proper training to be precise. The troops were not drilled in the way modern European style militaries were, including Japan's. Firstly, only a handful of people knew how to use artillery and the soldiers never practiced. Some soldiers would readily admit they had no idea how to use these weapons. Even more shockingly, a lot of them weren't really trained in firing their rifles at targets of any substantial range. They would allegedly practice with halberds even though they were meant to fight with guns! This meant that the Japanese could often begin a battle attacking with relative impunity, even when then Chinese forces possessed superior weapons, and inflict huge damage, particularly with artillery, without suffering many casualties. In addition to gunnery, the author argued that the lack of drilling practices developed since the 18th century led to tremendously greater performance and coherence of units in battle, their ability coordinate with the rest of the force and their overall commitment to fighting. He cited a number of accounts by Western observers who were greatly troubled by the Chinese army's failure to engage in rigorous training/drilling.

This claim goes against the idea that the Beiyang army really was the elite, modern force it seemed to be. Reform minded and, arguably, reasonably competent generals like Li Hongzhang had a hard time getting the funding and commitment from the Qing government that they knew would be required to properly train an effective force.

Here's a citation of the article (though it's behind a paywall):

Fung, Allen. "Testing the Self-Strengthening: The Chinese Army in the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895." Modern Asian Studies
Vol. 30, No. 4, Special Issue: War in Modern China (Oct., 1996), pp. 1007-1031

He talks about why the training and drilling issues are important on pages 1022-1026.
 
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There was no nationalism.The emperor was essentially a foreign warlord who can only secure loyalty through reward,punishment or Confucian philosophy which most people couldn’t give a fuck about.
True to an extent, but the Qing's foreignness was nothing new and, in fact, it had waned since the empire's height of strength in the 17th and 18th centuries. Other armies with weak inherent nationalistic motivation (such as colonial troops in European service) could, if they were led and trained correctly, be molded into somewhat effective fighting forces, at least, when compared to the Chinese troops in 1894. Furthermore, the Qing, though still resented by many and clearly ineffectual by this late date, could still command some loyalty from its subjects against foreign incursions. The boxer rebellion 5 years later, whose members shouted the slogan "support the Qing, destroy the foreigners!, suggests that that even though there were many grievances against the empire (and Cixi often made these worse), many people would still gladly defend the empire before letting it fall to outside invaders like the Japanese, who were clearly much more foreign by this time than the by now heavily sinicized Manchus.
 
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