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Self strengthening movement

Self strengthening movement

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Self-strengthening Movement

The self-strengthening movement was a push during the nineteenth century that was

meant to modernize China especially industrial and military wise. There were several failures

that China experienced that triggered the creation of self-strengthening movement. They

included foreign imperialism in China, its defeat in the second opium war which happened in

1860 and the Taiping rebellion.(Gardella et al, 67-97) There was also another humiliating

treaty of Tientsin that triggered the formation of the movement. The Chinese hoped to their

country by preserving some of their traditional rules while at the same time embracing

western military and industrial practices. They were forced to acquire knowledge from the

westerners and this entailed them studying their language, and examine their technologies

and their trading activities.

Despite all these efforts, the movement was still not successful. First of all, there was

a conservative opposition. Farmers greatly opposed the movements the reason being most of

them had a fear that the movement will have a negative impact in their lives as farmers. They

were afraid that the reforms that were to come with the movement like constructions of roads

and railways. Also, there was some opposition from scholars and officials. Most of them

viewed that western education, especially the western languages, had no value in the country

and that it would not contribute much to the strengthening of the country(Gardella et al, 67).

They thought that the new reforms and new methods would make them lose some of the

important positions that they had in the government. Cixi who had effectively controlled the

Chinese government for 47 good years also opposed the move. She was anti-foreign and

conservative. She opposed almost al the reforms the reason being that she might lose her

authority. Instead of her supporting the movement she was against it and she spent a larger

percentage of the country's naval expense to build her Palace. All these oppositions made this

movement to be termed as a failure return.

Another reason that made the self-strengthening movement of the 19

century failed

return is that there was no careful planning and coordination. The reform program was

characterized by unsystematic partial measures taken over a long period. Many of the

projects were not well organized for instance the building of the dockyards in the harbour and

building of the railways to transport goods from the port to the mainland. They did not do one

project at a time and this made the projects go slow. Time is always a factor in many things

and thus anytime projects go slow, it affects many things at large. There was a lack of unity

among the people and this paved a way for the failure of the movement. There was no unity

between the leaders of the movement and the leader of the country (Gardella et al, 67). For

instance, Empress Dowager Cixi was against most of the decisions concerning the projects.

She had appointed leaders in various provinces who were in charge of the projects going on

in their areas of jurisdiction. These heads of the different places were not united with one

another and they could not speak the same language and this greatly contributed to the failure

of the movement.

Another reason why the reform failed is that the Chinese did not copy well from the

westerners. This inadequate conception of the West led to the failure of the movement.

Chiese only adopted part of what was happening n Western countries and not the whole

thing. They mostly adopted practical skills that are science and technology without realizing

that these are not the only things that made the Westerners strong (Harris, Karen &Steve, 34-

36). The Westerners had become strong due to various reasons and foundations. They had

become strong because of their firm political, social and economic foundations. The

reformers neglected the changes in their social and political systems. For instance, they still

had their traditional values in place and this dragged the whole process behind. There was no

good political structure since the leader Empressor Cixi was planning to stay in power for the

rest of her life and this limited her from doing some developments and supporting the agenda.

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Also, those who were under her did the same because if they could have gone against her

decisions it could have led to them either being sacked or demoted.

Lack of capital also contributed to the failure of the program. By the time China was

implementing the movement, it was very weak economically and also very poor. What made

the things even worse is the repeatedly heavy indemnities and other financial burdens that the

country was experiencing at that time. All the projects that were to be carried out under the

movement were very expensive. Somethings like building the railways and the dockyards

cost a very huge amount of money. It involved buying a lot of heavy machinery and hiring

more superior technology and expertise from the West (Thomas, 890. Hiring and buying such

machinery was super expensive and it hindered the movement form achieving its goals.

Spending on these things would mean that the company had to suffer in some other aspects

for instance affected the provision of basic facilities into the people of China and this made

the people suffer.

Corruption greatly affected the ability of the movement to achieve its goals. There

was a lot of official corruption in the Qing Court. The official could embezzle and

misappropriate funds for their gains and they were not afraid to embezzle the funds because

they knew they could just briber the judges and get away with it. Leaders like Cixi even used

the funds to build her summer palace which cost millions of money (Schmitt et al, 78). If the

money would have been spent on the projects then the objectives of the movement would

have been easily achieved. Cixi was the head of the court and she could not set a good

example for the junior officials under him. They were also engaged in corruption activities

very comfortable because they knew that their leader was also a corrupt person. Where there

is a corrupt leadership there cannot be anything good and that is why the wholemovement

was a failed return.

Lastly, there was a shortage of competent officials and also foreign threats. Most of

the officials who managed the programs studied Confucianism. They had not acquired the

western knowledge of Engineering, Marine science, natural science, and commerce. They

relied on foreign labour form the experts in the West (Ch'en, 90). Due to this, there was some

sort of cultural confrontation between foreign expertise and traditional officials. The foreign

threats that China faced were mostly from Japan, Britain, Russia and France. All these threats

made Chinas undergo a lot of stress and indemnities which made it difficult for them to

soberly implement their plans concerning the movement.

In conclusion, self-strengthening movement in the 19

is a failed return because of

several reasons such as opposition, both external and internal opposition, poor planning and

coordination between the officials and the various regional heads of the different provinces,

inadequate conception of the political, social and economic policies of the West, lack of

capital, corruption and embezzlement of funds, lack of competent officials, and lastly foreign

threats from different countries like France, Britain and Japan. Were it not for all these things

the movement would not have failed but rather it would have been successful.

References

Then, Jerome. China and the West: society and culture, 1815-1937. Routledge, 2018.

Schmitt, Sara A., et al. "Strengthening school readiness for Head Start children: Evaluation of

a self-regulation intervention." Early Childhood Research Quarterly 30 (2015): 20-

31.

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Self-strengthening Movement The self-strengthening movement was a push during the nineteenth century that was meant to modernize China especially industrial and military wise. There were several failures that China experienced that triggered the creation of self-strengthening movement. They included foreign imperialism in China, its defeat in the second opium war which happened in 1860 and the Taiping rebellion.(Gardella et al, 67-97) There was also another humiliating treaty of Tientsin that triggered the formation of the movement. The Chinese hoped to their country by preserving some of their traditional rules while at the same time embracing western military and industrial practices. They were forced to acquire knowledge from the westerners and this entailed them studying their language, and examine their technologies and their trading activities. Despite all these efforts, the moveme ...
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