Could the Boxer Rebellion have lead to a World War?

I finished the book "The President and the Assassin" recently which details the lives of William McKinnley and Leon Czolgosz. In the part about the Boxer Rebellion it states that the European powers involved wanted to break up China. I assume this means that they wanted to dissolve the Chinese govt. and break up China into colonies. If this is so could this have lead to a World War between the powers over the control of Chineses land?
 
Well we're at the point there where a number of things could lead to a World War, so I don't see why there couldn't be a path that way if China is broken up.

I was actually just wondering about the possible mechanics of the western powers dividing China into colonies and what it would take to happen. I think there's a big problem getting China broken up by the time of the Boxers, though. It would put so much stress on the power relations between the European powers that support for it might be impossible, especially considering they had just beaten China and controlled the center of government and extracted concessions of huge amounts of silver. They already demonstrated a massive amount of influence. Why spend even more resources splitting China up?

ED: Also, notably China was huge and populous even then. COULD the Western Powers have split it up at all effectively?
 
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katchen

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Mainly because there were a number of Great Powers and Middle Powers who were late to the Great Power game and for whom China was just about the last place to get a major colony that was not sewed up by the UK especially, France or the Netherlands. Germany was losing out and so was Italy and even Belgium Then there was Japan. . Russia wanted more warmer land to be able to better open up Siberia. Basically the only countries that valued China intact more than China broken up were the UK and the United States with it's open door policy. The US wanted a complete halt to colonial acquisition anywhere since it was politically incapable of doing any more land grabbing itself and needed the maximum number of countries independent of European nation's colonial empires that could be markets for US goods. So that was the lineup on China and the only way China stayed intact was because the Chinese were adept at playing one nation against another.
 
ED: Also, notably China was huge and populous even then. COULD the Western Powers have split it up at all effectively?

The periphery yes, the core, no, atleast not unless they wanted to deal with continuous uprisings, guerilla warfare and attacks every week for decades.
 
The periphery yes, the core, no, atleast not unless they wanted to deal with continuous uprisings, guerilla warfare and attacks every week for decades.

I'm pretty sure they could set up friendly local Kings in places like Tibet and East Turkestan. Much of the rest is accessible by coast or the two major rivers.
 
I'm pretty sure they could set up friendly local Kings in places like Tibet and East Turkestan. Much of the rest is accessible by coast or the two major rivers.

Those, along with Manchuria (at the time) and Mongolia would be what I meant by periphery.
 
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