Every dynasty in our feudal society could not avoid the fate of extinction, either overthrown by peasant uprisings or destroyed by the minorities in the north. But whenever imperial power was challenged, the old dynasty had to struggle to the death. Although the old dynasty has decayed and declined, because it is deeply rooted and holds huge national resources, its demise is not a matter of one or two, and it will have to go through several years of war. Only the Qing Dynasty, almost in the blink of an eye, was wiped out, almost unimaginably fast.
There have been many discussions about the reasons for the rapid demise of the Qing Dynasty, which are very detailed and incisive, but there is another reason that has long been ignored and even rarely mentioned.
Before and after the Qing army entered the customs, it adopted a policy of moderation towards Mongolia, Xinjiang, Tibet and other ethnic minority areas, which alleviated the resistance to the handover between the Ming and Qing dynasties, and the people in these places were also spared from the pain of war. However, for the Han people in the Central Plains, they adopted brutal methods, such as the Three Massacres of Jiading, the Ten Days of Yangzhou (Massacre), the Hair Without Heads, etc., which were no different from the animalistic nature of the Japanese army.
The brutality of the Qing army deepened people's resistance, especially some cultural people broke with the Qing Dynasty with the pain of subjugation, and Wang Chuanshan resolutely did not act as an official of the Qing Dynasty and lived in seclusion in Yangquan Town, Hengyang, Hunan.
After the Qing Dynasty stabilized its rule, it adopted some practices to alleviate contradictions, such as the era names of the two emperors of Shunzhi and Kangxi, which mean "wind and rain are smooth" and "the people are healthy". However, the rulers of the Qing Dynasty have always been afraid of the rebellion of the people of the Central Plains in their hearts, and keep a distance from the people of the Central Plains, and the "return to the ancient" reforms of the two emperors of Jiaqing and Daoguang have aggravated the twilight of the Qing Dynasty and made the ruling class more distant from the people of the Central Plains. Although the anti-Qing restoration gradually became depressed with the passage of time, the Qing Dynasty has never gained psychological recognition.
During the Second Opium War, on the way to Beijing by the Anglo-French coalition army, the common people actually rushed to sell things to the "foreigners", which surprised the "foreigners". What was even more surprising was that the British and French allies killed several ordinary people near Zhili, and the Qing Officials who participated in the negotiations actually implied that the "foreigners" were killed by mistake. Although the later Boxers supported the Qing government and shouted the slogan of "supporting the Qing Dynasty and destroying the Foreigners", it can also be seen from the slogans that the Boxers put themselves on an equal footing with the Qing Dynasty and the "foreigners", and did not submit to the rule of the Qing Dynasty.
The gap between the Qing Dynasty and the people of the Central Plains also spread to the ruling class, and when Li Hongzhang, Zhang Zhidong and other important officials of the late Qing Dynasty died, the binding force of the Qing Dynasty on the people of the Central Plains soon disappeared. Half a month before the Xinhai Revolution, a county in Sichuan (Rong County) declared independence and broke away from the Qing government. After the Xinhai Revolution, the southern provinces, like overturning dominoes, broke away from the Qing government and declared independence. The remaining huge shell of the Qing government became a bargaining chip between Yuan Shikai and the southern government.