The right kind of reform matters too. Part of the reason underlying the Japan success/Chinese failure argument was that the Chinese Self-Strengthening Movement did not seek a wholesale reconstruction/construction of the country's institutions: for example, there was no modern police force, educational system or cabinet government OTL until the Late Qing reforms in the 1900s. Such failures might have caused the marked deficiency in Chinese 'software' (e.g. training, innovation) in comparison to 'hardware' acquisition (arsenals, ships, etc.), the latter of which was quite successful by most measurements. So you had the curious situation in the late 19thC where China had the largest fleet in Asia (before Sino-Japanese War), yet its soldiers during the Boxer Rebellion could not be expected to hold defensive lines against a bayonet charge.
Alternatively, one could also argue that Chinese reform was too radical - in that the state quickly abandoned its traditional raison d'etre of maintaining agricultural infrastructure in favor of a more commercial bent. The Chinese emphasis on sovereignty, applied here in the face of intense Western commercial penetration, led to the state devoting most of its efforts to creating native companies to compete with the West (China Steamship Co/China Merchants etc.), as well as hardware such as rail, telegraph etc. But the benefits of commercial reform rarely trickled down onto the vast majority of Chinese farmers, who were saddled with the costs of state re-prioritization in the form of bandits, floods, and famine. Again and again, rural revolt was a constant threat for Chinese governments: Taiping, Nian, Boxers (dispossessed Grand Canal porters/messengers due to rail/telegraph), and of course the Chinese Communists.
Still, if we are talking about the late 1890s and 1900s, it's probably too late to be contending with the direction of reform.