WI: Qing China Industrialized

After the First Opium war, the Qing dynasty realized that they could not do anything without such industrialization as the western powers that carved them up. If they did how would this change Asia as a whole?
 

RousseauX

Donor
After the First Opium war, the Qing dynasty realized that they could not do anything without such industrialization as the western powers that carved them up. If they did how would this change Asia as a whole?
The Qing dynasty did generate a significant degree of industrialization concentrated in the Yangtze delta and a modern navy/army after the second opium war

it's just that as turns out you can lose to other countries with better navy/army and when your political system is fractured to the point where half your military refuses to fight in certain wars
 
Qing China was industrial, just, yeah, what Rousseau said. You're kinda screwed when your nobility is plotting, and your army generals are plotting, and your bureaucrats are plotting, and they're all plotting at the same time against you and one another to the detriment of the entire country. It doesn't really matter how many factories you have when that happens.
 

RousseauX

Donor
What the Qing needed was a stable and modernized government on top of the technological/economic/military modernization

the problem is that reforming political institutions is actually the most difficult part of modernization

doesn't matter if you have factories and guns and ships if the central government falls apart and your country descends into civil war, or your military is corrupt/ineffective enough that you lose wars even with modernized equipment

see also Egypt vs Israel in the cold war, Egypt had best Soviet built equipment but lost vs Israel with comparable weapons, it's actually pretty analogous to China losing vs japan in 1895
 

ar-pharazon

Banned
I'd be interested to see a TL where an ambitious and capable Qing emperor modernized China in the early 19th century.

Perhaps crushing opposition from the bureaucrats, generals, and Nobillty.

This ambitious and energetic young emperor crushes opposition and resistance and manages to industrialize large parts of China.

Reforming both the army and navy.

As well as various other programs.

So by the end of the 19th century China isn't being exploited and humiliated but is instead rising and dictating terms to the Europeans in east and Southeast Asia.
 
Well, depending on how much industrialization when & where the Taiping Rebellion is gonna be lit, and by lit I mean even more horrifying and having a higher bodycount than OTL... or get quashed a lot quicker. Really depends.
 
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