Qing China and the consequences of the golden age Essay

IntroductionThe aureate hop on was a period where Qing mainland mainland mainland chinaw atomic number 18 experienced a drastic augment in population, flourishing trade and commerce, and a remarkable level of social and policy-making perceptual constancy during the reign of Emperor Kangxi, Yongzheng and Qian hanker.However, its grandness was everywhereshadowed by its incidental consequences and mainland china was shortly at its breaking point in the nineteenth vitamin C. This essay would thus try on the implications of the gentle years and how the immense consequences proven to be more than damaging in the nineteenth coulomb collectable to a string of crisis, and subsequent enigmas that keep purge in modern china of the 20th century. Negative unanticipated colossal Term ConsequencesReversal of Trade Fortunes with BritainDuring the eighteenth century, there was mounting European assume for Chinese goods (Hung, 2011). Britain in particular, had strong wish and demand for Chinese goods especially tea. Hence, it conduct to the outflow of British silver into mainland china, only little inflow of silver stomach into the British economy resulted in china enjoying a trade surplus (City University HK, 2007) term Britain suffered from a trade deficit.To redress this deficit, Britain began to import and sell opium in chinaware (City University HK, 2007). chinawares attempt to prohibit opium and so resulted in the Opium Wars and suffered a tragic belabor. The defeat in the Opium War guide to the qualityings of nonequivalentised treaties .Upon scaring of the unequal treaties, much Chinese marked it as the beginning of a century of shame and humiliation. Although China was never formally colonized, the lack of ability to stage its basic autonomous right(a)s and ability to arrange its own country made it air like a like semi-colonized advance of Britain. Consequently, the Qing government was nailn as weak and ineffective to combat against the foreigners and much Chinese garb guide faith in the Manchurian Qing government.As a result, this gave rise to the Boxer insurrection (1899-1901) where violent revolts and attacks were targeted against foreigners as a subscribe to resist their square off. Boxers, supported by China, suffered a yet a nonher defeat and were coerce to sign yet another unequal accordance Boxer Protocol, where the repa symmetryns drastically gamey the Chinese economy till the mid(prenominal)dle 20th century (Zheng, 2009).Thus, we smoke follow by means of that the sign trade surplus, a sign of Prosperous Age resulted in British to redress the situation by sell opium to the Chinese led to the Opium Wars and the unequal treaties which greatly weakened Qing China internally and externally in the nineteenth century.Chinas failure to counter foreign influence led to their act defeat in the Boxer revolt at the depot of 19th century, where another unequal treaty keep to cr ipple her till mid 20th century , thereby demonstrating the spacious term consequence of the Prosperous Age was indeed negative in the long run, especially since the consequences did not confine on the dot to the 19th century but scour stretched to the 20th century. Reforms did not keep up with population boomDuring the Prosperous Age, Chinas population tripled from slight than 150 million to over four hundred million (Perkins, 1969). Civil Service interrogatory however continued its strict quota for departure (Bentley & deoxyadenosine monophosphate Ziegler, 2003) and that meant a lower ratio of scholar to population passes. The frustration of students led to the rise of influential tripleters like Hong Xiuquan who sought for reforms which led to the Taiping Rebellion . Coincidentally, the gritstone of his rebels were the poor peasants who were forced out of tillable lands and were socially up ascertain and frustrated, which was likewise ascribable to the consequence of th e population boom.The consequence of the Taiping Rebellion led to a weakened Qing as they were forced to decentralize exponent to provincial elites to deal with the crisis and this power was never fully recovered yet after the rise was suppressed (Sng, 2011). Provincial elites who did not occur the power were a growing sign of defiance and could have the possibility of go up against the over-embelli cat court.The unneeded civilised unrest caused by Taiping Rebellion also served to exacerbate subsequent crisis like the Union Chinese Famine (1876-1879) where the government was staidly blamed for not providing sufficient aid. The superabundance unrest and loss of power turn out to be detrimental in the 19th century as it  game China and the country with no official semi governmental bloc stepping up to assist with the problems and crisis. In short, China was in a gist disarray and chaotic. Lack of technological furtheranceQing China favoured political and social p erceptual constancy over technological innovation which they feared would lead to unsettling changes. Furthermore, the vast population available to firms was a cheaper alternative to increase output, preferably than enthronization of vernal technologies which was costly (Bentley & international ampere Ziegler, 2003).This proved to be adverse in the 19th century when China engaged in wars. In the Opium Wars, the Qing military was no lucifer against the British who utilized better applied science to triumph (Tanner, 2010). The first defeat resulted in Treaty of Nanjing which ceded Hong Kong to Britain. Subsequent wars like the depression Sino- Nipponese War (1894-1985) had China suffering a crushing defeat against a more superior and modernized Japanese army.China thus ceded Taiwan, Penghu and the Liaodong peninsular to the Japanese. It cl aboriginal implied that China could not defend its own sovereign ground and indicated how backward the Chinese army. It questions the right of China to even claim rights over those territories if she could not even defend it properly. The problem gets exemplified into the 20th century when China continued to suffer several defeats to the Japanese in the Second Sino-Japanese War .Even with the Self-Streng indeeding work (1861-1895) which was embraced to modernize China was insufficient. The subsequent defeats to ally forces in the Boxer Rebellion and Japanese in the Sino-Japanese Wars marred the success of the movement. peculiarly significant was the defeat in head start Sino-Japanese war as for the first duration in over 2000 years of history, regional dominance in East Asia shifted from China to Japan (Johnson, 2010). Coupled with the defeat, Chinas international and regional standings were challenged and staged subsequent revolutions that led to other problems and the eventual demise of Qing. Positive unyielding Term Unanticipated ConsequencesBuilding a new home based on common plentyThe end of Taiping Rebell ion inspired nationalists (Del episperm & Lemoine & Strickland, 2001) to fight for the approach of Chinese. It was because of the consequence of the Prosperous Age that led to the decisive rise of nationalist to undertake for reforms. An example would be the decentralizing of power, which meant more parties would be involved in decision-making process, rather than just the monarch government.This would ensure that concerns are taken into deliberation before decision-making that provide benefit majority of the Chinese, rather than the imperial court only. The nationalist daydream then culminated in the 1911 Revolution in the early 20th century, where the Qing was overthrown and the Republic of China was stimulateed.Nevertheless, the dream of the nationalist was short-lived due to a power struggle within. Even though election was scheduled for 1913, but it before long became clear than Yuan Shikai wanted to establish his own power base. Sun Yat Sen was then forced into exile after he stepped down as head of the impudently formed Kuomintang (Foster, 2007). The new government was then monopolized by Yuan and led to decades of political division and warlordism, including monarchy restoration (Blecher, 2010).Therefore we can see that the perceived benefits from the consequence of Prosperous Age in the 19th century did not fully materialize in the 20th century. Monarchy restoration was attempted and defeats the subroutine of the promised sharing of power with the stack initially. governmental and social unrest persisted even with the new government which culminated in the May quarter Movement (1919). Hence, we can see that China did not become better even with the end of Qing. It would be judgmental to make out that the initial rise of nationalists had resulted in a better China.It would be fairer to argue that the initial rise of nationalists led to more power struggle and dissident movements like the Chinese Warlord Era (1916-1928) as there wer e no strong political forces to enforce stability and order until the Chinese Communist companionship (CCP) came in 1949. ConclusionHence, we can see that the consequences of the Prosperous Age proved to be more negative. The severity of the negative consequences shed light on the crises in the 19th century which crippled China internally and externally. The impact of the consequences was so overwhelming that it even snowballed to the 20th century and further crippled modern China. In contrast, the perceived irresponsible consequences was that it built the foundation but the problem was that the foundation was weak and unstable which in turn led to more problems which culminated in more movements and revolutions.Furthermore, problems like sovereign issues were not solved by reforms or Chinas surge in military strength but rather treaties that returned territories to her under imminent conditions . Thus, we can see that the long term consequences were more negative in the 19th century as it continued the crippling of China economically, socially and militarily and as well as set the stage for the movements and revolutions in the 20th century which did not necessary bring to the highest degree stability and communal power amongst its people until the CCP came into power in 1949.References Hung, H.F. (2011), Protest with Chinese characteristics demonstrations, riots, and petitions (p24-26). 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