The Mandarin shakes off the doldrums - 1760 to 1840

All, I'm not an expert in Chinese history.

What I know is that the Chinese Empire, by the 18th century was stagnating under corruption and incompetance and missed out on the early stages of the Industrial Revolution.

What could have occurred, from the 1760's to before the Opium War in the 1840's that would have precluded China's domination by the western powers under their "Sphere's of Influence"?

China doesn't need to be fully caught up to Great Britain but enough to prevent this sort of domination.

Economically, politically, culturally, militarily, what needs to happen and what are the likely persons/events necessary?

More free trade? Less?

Taking the Japan 1870's strategy of importing foreign technology specialists and a central desire to catch up?

Massive bureaucratic reform?

Who are the proponants? Who are the reactionaries?

Thanks. Many of my POD's involve Britain failing to capture India (1759-1818) and therefore having less mustle to force open China, if that helps.
 
Hard. Due to several reasons:
  • 1. The Qing court is still more or less dominated by the Manchus, which does not allow the popular voice(of the Han) to be heard well enough;
  • 2. The Qing has seen centuries of success in the Haijin policy in freeing up budgets while keeping pirates out;
  • 2-1. Related - the Chinese are not interested in keeping a large navy, as it would be seen as a "waste of budget";
  • 3. There are too many Chinese for there to be impetus to industrialise and increase production;
  • 4. The merchants, while being great in maintaining economic robustness of China, merely use such money to buy land and become the gentry class after a certain threshold;
  • 5. There was no impetus for China to develop, as it was still seen as a "centre of the world"(a statement true in a certain sense, IMO);
  • 6. A military still based on ancient weaponry and tactics.
Each of these problems and more need to be dealt with. I'll try to cover at least the bulletpoints:
I. Reforms led by a certain Emperor that allows greater representation of the Hans in the imperial court.
II. Maybe to capture Formosa again, maybe due to a dramatic change in policy, along with input of naval tech, a dramatic rise of a Chinese navy.
III. Threat from Russia, possibly; maybe they capture Beijing after going straight through Mongolia, etc. If there is a threat to war and massive human wave tactics are seen to not work, there will be a need to make more weapons.
IV. This one is hard - one that I've also tried to solve in vain, as Korea as the same problem during the time. Perhaps emphasis in Confucian text by a new wave of Neo-Confucian ideology that emphasises "wealth is great", etc.
V. The Russian invasion would do well to put an end to that - although, whether it's even feasible is beyond the point of this post.
VI. Changes with II, III and V.
As said before this doesn't cover whether or not this is feasible at all. I just tried answering the OP.
Hope that helped.
 
Thanks for the insight.

Any ideas on major POD's that might alter some of these?

Maybe a massive and humiliating defeat in a naval battle, say, around 1790ish timeframe that spurred parts of the Qing court to try to upgrade their fleets?

I'm thinking the defeat destroyed their fleet but did not alter the international situation that much. Enough to shock the Chinese but not lead to a crushing subordination as after the Opium Wars.

Any chance of some sort of coup, either among the royalty or their primary advisors that might significantly alter the regime's political will to industrialize?

I'm looking for a similar event as the American fleet forcibly opening up Japan and then the Japanese see that, to maintain their independence, they must industrialize as quickly as possible. It took Japan only about 40 years OTL to do this.

I accept the two examples are very different as China has much larger bureaucracy to overcome and therefore has more negative inertia to overcome.

Basically, I'm looking for a semi-industrialized China by 1860ish timeframe.

Thanks.
 
H[*]3. There are too many Chinese for there to be impetus to industrialise and increase production;

Much unlike today, of course.

[*]4. The merchants, while being great in maintaining economic robustness of China, merely use such money to buy land and become the gentry class after a certain threshold;

Mmmm. I think this is overrated; plenty of gentry had ties to the mercantile community, and even British industrialists did the same things.
 
Much unlike today, of course.
.

"Endless national humiliations" is as good an incentive as any. :D

Anyway, that statement could be rephrased as "an extremely manpower-rich situation", which is definitely a disincentive to labor-saving technology. The Chinese population grew pretty fast in the 18th century: there were always going to be strong backs cheaply available to tote that barge and lift that bale.
 
Anyway, that statement could be rephrased as "an extremely manpower-rich situation", which is definitely a disincentive to labor-saving technology. The Chinese population grew pretty fast in the 18th century: there were always going to be strong backs cheaply available to tote that barge and lift that bale.

Oh yea. The Ming are actually kind of weird, because a lot of Song inventions seem to vanish, almost as if people decided it was cheaper to make some guy do the job. But it could also reflect a society hitting Malthusian limits. Give the Yangzi Delta an equivalent of an American south for cotton production, and who knows what might happen?
 
"Endless national humiliations" is as good an incentive as any. :D

Anyway, that statement could be rephrased as "an extremely manpower-rich situation", which is definitely a disincentive to labor-saving technology. The Chinese population grew pretty fast in the 18th century: there were always going to be strong backs cheaply available to tote that barge and lift that bale.

I've never agreed with this. If a merchant/manufacturor finds a better way, he's going to take it. There may be fewer incentives to industrialize but that is not the same as a disincentive. I don't think any central authority was thinking about the affect of industrialization on employment and purposely suppressed it.

Also, the nation needed to upgrade technologies, the end being more important than the means to getting a modern warship.

And the Chinese openly acknoledged that their armies were obsolete and poorly trained.
 
Maybe Spain or the Netherlands or someone attacks in the early 1800s, enough that the overwhelming superiority of European armies is demonstrated, but early enough that that overwhelmingness isn't enough to overcome the vast disparity in army size.

Or even Britain, I suppose, if the 1796 McCartney (sp?) diplomatic mission went totally pearshaped.
 
I've read that Ming China was actually on the cusp of an industrial revolution when a famine happened, killing or impoverishing millions, then the restless half-starved peasants revolted during the Taiping Revolution (which may have been the bloodiest war ever fought). This all meant that any moves towards industrialization were put off by about 50 years, at which point the Japanese were sniffing around...

So it may be that with better weather in the 1840s, China shakes off the doldrums naturally (or, to be more accurate, never slips into the doldrums).

fasquardon
 

Dorozhand

Banned
I've read that Ming China was actually on the cusp of an industrial revolution when a famine happened, killing or impoverishing millions, then the restless half-starved peasants revolted during the Taiping Revolution (which may have been the bloodiest war ever fought). This all meant that any moves towards industrialization were put off by about 50 years, at which point the Japanese were sniffing around...

So it may be that with better weather in the 1840s, China shakes off the doldrums naturally (or, to be more accurate, never slips into the doldrums).

fasquardon

Early Ming China up until about the Tumu Crisis was a fascinating beast that may have been on the edge of something truly fantastic. Dynamic, talented, and outward thinking emperors, great minds and advancements in engineering and technology in both the domestic and military fronts gave China both the energy it needed to recover from the Mongols (who themselves helped to destroy Song achievements) and the impetus to stay neck in neck with Europe technologically right up until the end of Kangxi Era during Qing. Ultimately, however, Ming began to look increasingly inwards and the Emperors grew increasingly ill-suited to rule, culminating in the Wanli Era.

The collapse of Ming was a disaster unparalleled in China's history except perhaps by the chaos wrought by the Mongols. Millions died, some regions (most infamously Sichuan) never recovered or were changed forever demographically and culturally, infrastructure was decimated and the Qing, who actually did little of conquering or the killing, were left to clean up the mess and recover the country. Qing, for its part, had talented and dynamic rule and the banner armies were, for several generations, very well trained and effective. The decline of Qing was due mainly to corrupt officials like Heshen, the peaceful era during and after Qianlong in which the banner armies languished and lost their martial experience, a tendancy towards weak puppet emperors beginning with Daoguang, and a conservative, inward thinking view on the part of the Manchu, who (perhaps rightly) feared modernization and the reawakening of Han nationalism that it would bring.

The Taiping rebellion was also a major demographic disaster, but it was also a disaster in another way. Hong Xiuquan was a well meaning, even visionary, man who had many forward thinking ideas, but his bizarre spiritual beliefs were going to piss off both the Europeans and the Chinese themselves, and he was never going to rule the whole country, so the rebellion accomplished nothing while wasting the insurrectionary potential of the Chinese peasantry for another generation. This era, had Hong or a similar figure been a conventional Chinese rebel leader, could have signaled the end of Qing and the beginning of a new, native-ruled, outward thinking China developing and industrializing in its own ways and on its own terms.
 
The Taiping rebellion was also a major demographic disaster, but it was also a disaster in another way. Hong Xiuquan was a well meaning, even visionary, man who had many forward thinking ideas, but his bizarre spiritual beliefs were going to piss off both the Europeans and the Chinese themselves, and he was never going to rule the whole country, so the rebellion accomplished nothing while wasting the insurrectionary potential of the Chinese peasantry for another generation. This era, had Hong or a similar figure been a conventional Chinese rebel leader, could have signaled the end of Qing and the beginning of a new, native-ruled, outward thinking China developing and industrializing in its own ways and on its own terms.

Adolf Hitler could be called a well meaning and visionary man. That doesn't mean he did humanity (or even his own Nazi party) any good. What visions a visionary has matters greatly.

Hong Xiuquan gets plenty of good press (mostly because he wasn't the Qing it seems), but every source I've read that goes into the character of the man himself paints a nasty picture. Weak-willed, jealous, scheming, decadent, corrupt, lacking in military ability, weak in scholarly skills and drunk on his own krazy kool-aid. Much of the success of the Taiping was due to circumstance and Hong attracting some very able subordinates (many of whom he would sabotage in due course).

However, even replacing the Taiping for a more traditional nationalist/peasant revolution, I am not sure how that would improve things for China - nor why the Qing were somehow incapable of improving if things had gone different for them.

fasquardon
 
Another thing is that the imperial examinations were basically examining the wrong things to qualify an individual to become an official.The exams assessed an individual's knowledge in Confucian texts rather than practical knowledge.
 
Make the Quianlong Emperor realize that outdated tactics and lack of naval support means no blockade of supply lines and no ability to use superior numbers to crush wayward foes. Were it not for such blunders, Burma and Indochina might be provinces of China today a la Tibet. Have his son Jiaqing keep up the pace with encouragement of 'barbarian learning' and how it might be applied be playing Confucianists off of Legalists to divide the bureaucracy. By the time of the Daiguang Emperor there might be a few clusters of early industrialization and the development of universities or at least technical schools, this might be enough to stop China from becoming a rug for the rest of the world's powers and could lead to a resurgent China by the end of the century - one eyeing Korea, Burma, Indochina, Malaysia, Taiwan, much of Siberia, and possibly everything east of the Caspian as its 'rightful/ancestral territory'.
 
Make the Quianlong Emperor realize that outdated tactics and lack of naval support means no blockade of supply lines and no ability to use superior numbers to crush wayward foes. Were it not for such blunders, Burma and Indochina might be provinces of China today a la Tibet. Have his son Jiaqing keep up the pace with encouragement of 'barbarian learning' and how it might be applied be playing Confucianists off of Legalists to divide the bureaucracy. By the time of the Daiguang Emperor there might be a few clusters of early industrialization and the development of universities or at least technical schools, this might be enough to stop China from becoming a rug for the rest of the world's powers and could lead to a resurgent China by the end of the century - one eyeing Korea, Burma, Indochina, Malaysia, Taiwan, much of Siberia, and possibly everything east of the Caspian as its 'rightful/ancestral territory'.

You know that Indochina, Burma and Korea were vassal states of China back then, right? And Taiwan actually a province?

And in this scenario, how does China maintain this policy in the face of foreign war, flooding, famine and famine-fueled rebellion? Universities and technical schools require a certain degree of stability to flourish in a country.

Another thing is that the imperial examinations were basically examining the wrong things to qualify an individual to become an official.The exams assessed an individual's knowledge in Confucian texts rather than practical knowledge.

I think the Imperial exam system is used as an excuse more often than the facts merit. China did well under the exam system and did poorly under the exam system. Other countries had even more impractical systems - some of them did better, most did worse.

For example, in England, until relatively recently getting a "practical" university education was illegal for non-Anglicans and, while theoretically possible for Anglicans, the courses just weren't offered in the country's universities. Yet people found ways to work around the inconvenient system.

Further, I wonder how impractical the exams really were. Sure, they are impractical compared to the systems we have today, but were they really so bad by the standards of the day? They did at least make sure that civil servants had good language skills (both spoken and written), clear "handwriting" and solid moral indoctrination.

fasquardon
 
It's difficult to see China pursuing grand reform during the period without risking an even more intense backlash than what it experienced OTL (White Lotus Rebellions, Taiping Rebellions etc.).

At this point in time the Qing were starting to suffer from a demographic problem where population explosion leads to decreasing arable land per person, which combined with land accumulation by landlords results in widespread poverty, which leads to a very disaffected population easily instigated into rebellion by various millenarian sects.

People like to talk about how the Qing caused China to lag behind the West, but any attempted reform during this period would have stoked ethnic/cultural tensions even further. Remember that the epicenter of the Boxer Rebellions in the 1900s was actually in the more developed regions of China, where reforms led to a dislocation of traditional Chinese society and thus intense dissatisfaction with the new ideas and technology. (That said, the White Lotus/Taiping Rebellions started off as local revolts in marginal lands - but it's not difficult to see these rebellions entrench themselves in the heartland ITL if reformist measures are taken by the Qing).

From the Chinese point of view, free trade with the UK would have been quite bad as well, since British manufactures could very well swamp the Chinese market and drown out local industry, as well as causing a severe balance of payments issue. A carefully-managed gradual transition could do the trick but the Qing bureaucracy was probably not equipped to handle such a delicate political/economic process.

There is almost no reason for the Qing to upgrade their fleets beyond the minimum required for piracy suppression. The Qing's military focus on China's continental frontiers was wildly successful and through feats of logistics, managed to extend dynastic boundaries far beyond what the Ming was able to do. The Qing certainly did not consider themselves militarily 'inferior' to Britain at all prior to the Opium Wars.

I think for China to resist significant Western domination you'd need to have a much more gradual 'opening' to the West and that would require a longer PoD than 1760s. A potential scenario could be this:

1) Kangxi doesn't ban Christian missionaries from working in China.

2) Christianity somehow becomes wildly popular in China, with significant adherents in the coast. This Christianity also manages to transcend itself from ethnic/cultural distinctions and doesn't become a vehicle for anti-Qing sentiment.

With a common religion linking them together, coastal China and the West enter into a period of extensive technological and cultural exchange, which then diffuses itself across the Qing Empire. With a century of said exchange (so around 1760s), one could argue that while China might still lag behind the West, it would also possess a strong class of people who can constitute the basis for future reform movements.
 
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