Consequences of Industrialized Imperial China in 19th century?

As the title says, what happens if Imperial China (whether under Manchu Qing or alternate Han Chinese-ruled dynasties) undergo the industrial revolution at the same time as the West?

This is scenario where Imperial China is less isolated and more open to the world and trade.

What're the consequences of Industrialised Imperial China in 19th century?
 
Enormous changes; I think you'd have to work through them slowly to work out what happens! Points I can think of immediately:

- Would say industrialisation wouldn't necessarily mean more openness. Some of the successful industrialisers, like US in some sectors, never actually became competitive on world markets in some products and relied on tariffs and other barriers to protect sectors. Plus on the flip side other powers might want to keep out a huge China. So there might well be an industrial "Great Wall of China" where China becomes an industrial world unto itself (which to some degree may happen in our near future).

- To achieve large scale in industrialisation, China would need enormous changes to agriculture and urbanisation to build an industrial workforce, especially as China is so large it would have to feed itself rather than use much trade in agriculture. In our history, even some countries which had similar productivity in industry lagged due to low agricultural productivity and small sized industrial sectors.

- Demographically when similar scenarios were offered before, I've thought China might have a lower population today if industrialised earlier. But when you actually look at the curves of growth since the pre-industrial era, and imagine followed the growth of an earlier industrialiser instead of its real growth, the total growth by the present probably would have been similar. However there would be a much larger population in the late 19th and early 20th century (probably about 80% larger) and a gentler change in age dynamics than China will soon see.

- Also a point is that pre-industrial growth divergences were quite large though and further early-mid 19th century industrial growth builds up quite an advantage in production and productivity terms for Western Europe and offshoots, unless growth begins at *exactly* the same time. If you had China follow Japan's per capita economy growth starting in about 1860-1870, you would still be looking at GDP/capita PPP of about 0.33-0.5 of Western Europe in 1940. Although divergences in China would mean some regions richer than others (and closer to Japan, roughly about 2/3 of Western Europe).

I'll leave military etc implications to others.
 
You'd need to go back a lot further than 1800-ish to let China industrialize at the same time NW Europe did. Industrialization itself requires several aspects of society to be exactly right (or nearly so) to allow it to take root:

cultural (comparatively low class bigotry, giving lower-class but intelligent people the chance to prove their worth to social superiors), affirming a certain minimum of worth for the law-abiding lowest of the low (no caste system as such, like India had). Sure, it wasn't the present-day Western world, but as said there still was a certain bottom limit as to how badly you thought of your lessers without getting severe scorn (if not legal penalties) for it.

governmental (tough bankruptcy laws, government that allows private enterprise to flourish at least marginally well, saying nobody - not even the king/emperor - is above the law, consistently enforced - if not wide selection - of at least the bare bones of civil liberties, a certain minimum of non-interference of academics and intellectuals in matters of philosophy and science, and so forth)

financial - reasonable guarantee that the money you have today will be worth the same ten years from now, people with money willing to lend it out at a reasonable rate of interest for a reasonable time period, and governmental and business institutions in place to help facilitate this).

intellectual - not too harsh a condemnation of people who think well outside the mainstream, and even better if government usually won't harass much the dissidents.

geographic - no gurarantee, but China has a fairly smooth coastline compared to Europe. That stimulated maritime development less than in Europe. Europe's heavily indended coastine not only motivated nautical development, but more or less invited political disunity - enough to foster competitive nation-states but not so much that it hindered exchange of ideas from nation to nation. Britain especially benefitted from this. With a strong navy to protect it, plus seaborne invasions being difficult, that let Britain devote more funds to actual productive and enriching purposes.
 
Well, considering how proto-industrialized the Song Dynasty was and all the stuff they had (coke mines, social welfare, vastly increased education), then if some Dynasty (could just be a Han ruled dynasty that overthrows the Qing) could just do what the Song did and improve it. Population growth would stabilize and increase and they’d dwarf all other economies for a long time, per capita gdp be damned.
 

Kaze

Banned
There would also be side effects as well. The 1848 / 1849 revolutions of Europe had its basis in factories and the weird land settlements of Europe, Karl Marx came to be seen as a prophet by many after their crushing... the same woes of the workers would be felt in China - where in they will want a minimum wage, health care, an 8-hour workday, weekends off, a pension, etc. The workers demands will be addressed in several manners and the same manner - ignore, delay, bribe, shooting, hire new workers, and a look towards Marx.
 
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