General History of Modern China·volume 3: Early Modernization Attempts (1865-1895)
About This Novel
The Westernization Movement period can be said to be the earliest experimental stage of early modernization in China. During the Westernization Movement, some modern factors began to appear in China: on the military side, new weapons and equipment were introduced and produced, new military training was carried out, and a new navy was established; on the diplomatic side, a new diplomatic system began to be established, and envoys and consuls were dispatched abroad; on the economic side, new factories and enterprises began to be established in industries such as shipping, insurance, mining, communications, textiles, shipbuilding, and smelting, and the "official-supervisory-business-office" system of government-business cooperation was adopted and joint-stock forms; in terms of science and technology, some education and dissemination activities were carried out to learn from foreign advanced science and technology culture, a group of new scientific and technological talents were cultivated, and some Western science and technology books were translated and published; in terms of striving for national independence, a certain degree of military and diplomatic competition was carried out to resist foreign aggression; in terms of political reform, some early reform (reform) thinkers appeared and put forward ideas and propositions such as nationalism and democracy. Judging from the three main contents of China's early modernization, the attempts during the Westernization Movement were mainly reflected in the industrialization aspect including military industry. The other two aspects either appeared weak or were in the budding stage of ideas and made no achievements. Therefore, the early modernization attempt during the Westernization Movement was mainly an early industrialization attempt, or the beginning of early industrialization. It was an industrialization attempt that lacked prerequisites, and was a partial, preliminary and deformed early modernization attempt. The Westernization Movement ended with the Sino-Japanese Sino-Japanese War of 1895. China's failure in the Sino-Japanese War of 1891-1899 proved that the "self-strengthening" goal of the Westernization Movement not only failed to be realized, but even made China poorer and weaker, and even more invaded and plundered by foreign powers.
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