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As I saw there are many arguments relating this subject, I decided to make a poll to somewhat conclude it.

Qing China: In OTL, although politically backward and corrupted, the Qing actually did great job on her "Self-Strengthening" campaign, that there are modern enterprises which founded itself during the Late Qing, and her reformed armies were crucial in defeating the Taiping Rebellion. Assuming these facts, someone argued that given the right PoD, like Cixi died earlier, or there were more competent emperors in Late Qing, Qing China would be able to become a modern country.

Ethical Chinese dynasties: More precisely, a surviving Ming or Shun. Those who saw Qing as too oppressive to implement true political and economic reforms (well, there were many bribes between the local officials and the westernized companies) found possibilities on dynasties that were ethically more "right". One of their arguments are that (actually it's me:p), as the Qing were historically oppressive---forbidding freedom of speech, an emperor who held much political power along with the Grand Council that worked secretly etc., such that it created an sociopolitical atmosphere which discouraged any kind of reforms that would shake the status quo, thus there were chances that whatever the less oppressive Ming or the newborn Shun would pushed herself a more successful, and completed, modernization.
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