Best case scenario for 19th century Qing Dynasty

Like the title says, what would be the best case scenario for the Qing Dynasty in the 19th century?

China under the times of Early Qing were at the most powerful at their zenith under Kangxi, Yongzheng and Qianlong. After Qianlong, Qing China is no longer the great empire it once used to be and stagnated into a weak dragon at the mercies of Colonial powers in OTL like the Opium Wars and Boxer Rebellion.

What could be a better way for Qing Dynasty to avoid the worst-offs it suffered in 19th Century OTL?
 
I would say that the Qing empire has been pretty lucky in the 19th century, surviving and defeating several rebellions simultaneously while maintaining its territory largely intact. OTL is quite close to a best case scenario for the Qing dynasty, but a more successful Self-Strengthening Movement would help. Whenever nationalism hits China, the Qing dynasty’s remaining days are numbered.
 

Kaze

Banned
I would say that the Qing empire has been pretty lucky in the 19th century, surviving and defeating several rebellions simultaneously while maintaining its territory largely intact. OTL is quite close to a best case scenario for the Qing dynasty, but a more successful Self-Strengthening Movement would help. Whenever nationalism hits China, the Qing dynasty’s remaining days are numbered.

There are several ways I would save the Qing --
1. Self-Strengthening early. I would go with it starting after the Macartney Embassy or the First Opium War.
2. An *mysterious accident* must be *arranged* for the Bone Eating Witch.
3. Marriage of the Qing Emperor to either a daughter of the former Ming Emperors, a descendant of Confucius, or both. This will take the wind out of that sail - a lot of the objections to the Qing was fueled by people that wanted a descendant of Confucius or a Ming pretender on the throne, a good way to stop it would have your heir be one of those descendants.
4. Constitution along the Bismarck Prussian line and buy lots of Krupp.
5. No Boxer or Taiping Rebellion.
 
Presumably that would be Empress Dowager Cixi, whose legacy is...a bit controversial would be an understatement.

I'd put her in my list of 'rulers so despotic, they might as well be from a Disney cartoon'. She is a textbook example of corruption, too indulgent with material luxuries that she siphoned funds off the construction of a modern navy to build her massive pleasure yacht, manipulative of the emperors in a way that would make CK2 players laugh at her incredibly noob play style, and just insanely blind to the fact that the Qing is hopelessly outclassed by the West simply because she's living in a gilded cage. A Qing without the Bone Eating Witch is a Qing that's already halfway towards recovery.

EDIT: Of course, that's just the long-held view, and the truth may be more nuanced in that she's simply caught between a rock and a hard place, trying to placate the implacable conservatives in the court and the reformists and generally struggling under incredibly harsh circumstances, especially with her humble origins.
 
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Perhaps a more cooperative, mutually beneficial relationship between the Qing and the British. I don't believe there's a way to avoid a first contact showdown between both, one the British are always going to dominate. After that loss, perhaps more progressive minded members of the Imperial court manage to gain enough power and influence to convince the emperor that it would be in China's best interest to, for the moment, deal peaceably with the British and acknowledging the disparity in strength, and bide the nation's time until the moment comes when China is better prepared to strike back, knowing it could be a very long while. It would also time China the opportunity to learn about the rest or the world, end their relative isolationism at their own pace.

Something like this would take an incredible amount of foresight, though I don't think it's implausible.
 
Pulling a Meiji successfuly.
I doubt having Emperor Meiji in charge of the Qing Empire would end well.

On a more serious note, Meiji as a byword for modernisation is a pet peeve of mine simply because the conditions for the Meiji Restoration (a decentralised, culturally homogenous, highly urbanised and educated domain with a long history of trade and importing cultural and technological innovations from the west (Dutch Studies) in amounts allowing it to not lag too far behind the west while not destabilising it entirely, large enough of a market for the western powers to be interested without being self-sufficient enough to eschew trade with Europe with leadership reasonable/humble/sane enough to accept the changing tides of geopolitics and thus avoid being attacked for trade rights, and able to transition from one power structure to another with relatively little bloodshed is very specific to late Tokugawa Japan and would not be a proper model for the ethnic-minority-ruled, Europe-demeaning, self-sufficient-and-thus-only-opium-satisfies-the-trade-imbalance, keeps-having-massive-rebellions Qing empire).

But, back to the OP, the Qing actually being willing to trade with the Western Powers without being held at gun(boat) point would go a long way to avoiding the Opium Wars, since the primary motivation in selling the titular opium was to avoid further drainage of silver from Europe into China and to gain more trade rights with the world's largest market. Not everyone in Britain was onboard with the Opium Wars either, Gladstone being a notable example, so they weren't guaranteed to happen if trade with China isn't restricted in the first place.

Then there's the issue of overpopulation (the Chinese population doubled from 1766 to 1833), natural disasters (can't really stop those with any PoDs) and anti-Manchu sentiment in general, but the Opium Wars have a more obvious solution than those two and destroyed the illusion of Chinese military might, which contributed to the Century of Humiliation in a significant way with all the later wars the Qing had to fight. Granted, they'd still have major issues and the Qing court was corrupt beyond belief but they'd have a better shot at surviving further into the 20th century.
 
But, back to the OP, the Qing actually being willing to trade with the Western Powers without being held at gun(boat) point would go a long way to avoiding the Opium Wars, since the primary motivation in selling the titular opium was to avoid further drainage of silver from Europe into China and to gain more trade rights with the world's largest market. Not everyone in Britain was onboard with the Opium Wars either, Gladstone being a notable example, so they weren't guaranteed to happen if trade with China isn't restricted in the first place.

Yea, but there's still the issue of what the British could offer that the Qing don't already have, barring state-sanctioned recreational drugs. What the British have in terms of industrial innovations is pretty much unnecessary in resource and labour-rich China, and everything else seems awfully gimmicky to them. And then there was the worldviews of the two nations, which can generally be oversimplified as 'my liege is bigger than yours'. The failure to compromise on their worldviews - the British being that they and their liege was a dominant yet equal trade partner, and the Chinese being that China was the center of the world with no equal to their emperor - did a lot to damage relations later on. A better understanding and ability to be flexible on diplomacy would have helped both sides, but such individuals would probably be very unwelcome on both sides of the table.
 
Mid-18th century maybe the best time to reverse the decline, before the general corruption of the Qing state get too deeply rooted.

Replace the Qianlong Emperor. He was an energetic leader, but also profligate and very conservative. Someone more curious of the rest of the world and progressive could see the benefit of western trade (at a time China and the West were still relatively equals) and initiate necessary modernization reforms of the tax system and then the army.

Alternatively, you could have Qianlong's "ten great campaigns" turn into complete, embarrassing failures. OTL they were already half-successes and pyhrric victories transformed into brilliants campaigns by propaganda, but should they be total disasters, (on an even greater scale than the foray into Burma and Vietnam) the Emperor may finally see the writing on the wall saying the Eight Banners have become fat and lazy.

Either way, you need to disband the Eight Banners. It would probably cause a revolt of the Manchu lords, but that's a necessity: they were an obsolete system prone to corruption.
 
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