DBWI: Japan wins the Sino Japanese war

Well, we know the Qing managed to crush the Japanese. What if it went the opposite direction? Would the Empire still be around today? Would they lose any of their holdings?
 
Well, we know the Qing managed to crush the Japanese. What if it went the opposite direction? Would the Empire still be around today? Would they lose any of their holdings?
The Qing success was the inevitable result of a successful self-strengthening policy. The only way you can have the Japanese win is for China's modernization efforts to completely fail, as an even half-modernized China would still be able to win on numbers alone.

Under such circumstances I am certain that China would go the way of India and Africa.
 
I wouldn't say Japan completely lost. They took Taiwan, its just that when they didn't have their navy to protect them anymore the Qing roflstomped them in Korea(Queen Min's charisma certainly helped things too). Then, of course, the Qing took Taiwan in the Great War, and Japan has been basically a Qing puppet since WWII.
 
To be fair, China did perform abysmally in the land war in Korea. The roflstomping really came after reinforcements were organized under former Xianfeng army cadres. Her saving grace was the Beiyang Navy's performance in the Battle of the Yellow Sea and blockade of Southern Korea.
 
To be fair, China did perform abysmally in the land war in Korea. The roflstomping really came after reinforcements were organized under former Xianfeng army cadres. Her saving grace was the Beiyang Navy's performance in the Battle of the Yellow Sea and blockade of Southern Korea.
The reason they initially performed abysmally was because at the beginning of the war the Japanese were still fighting banner armies and peasant levies. IN fact there's an argument to be made that the performance of the New Model Armies was the final nail in the coffin of the Conservative faction, and the main thing that allowed for the triumph of King Youwei's clique and the transformation to Constitutional Monarchy.
 
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