China's modern era is a history of humiliation, the Qing government's incompetence, the eyes of the great powers, have brought a heavy burden to this country, if you want to really find a turning point in China in the long river of a hundred years, it must be the Outbreak of the Sino-Japanese Sino-Japanese War in 1894, why is this war a turning point?
Because it hurt the nerves of every citizen, although before the Sino-Japanese War, China, Britain and France and other powers had successively broken out into wars and signed unequal treaties, but in the impression of all the Chinese, they had no possibility of losing to Japan. Many people believe that Japan is just a small country, wanting to resist the Heavenly Dynasty like "mantis arm as a car", on October 8, 1894, Shanghai's "Zilin Shanghai Bao" even published "Gong proposed the Holy Lord's Pro-Conquest", asking Guangxu to emulate Song Zhenzong's pro-conquest of the Khitan and "pro-unification of the Sixth Division, Eastern Expedition to Japan". Not only at home, but also in the international community, the friction between China and Japan is also very optimistic about China's victory.
We all know the outcome of the Sino-Japanese War, which ended in the fiasco of the Qing Dynasty, but why was there optimism at home and abroad before the war? In fact, it is enough to understand the international status of the Qing Dynasty at that time. After the Opium War, the rulers of the Qing court also realized their own shortcomings, during the Tongzhi Emperor period, the Qing court still relatively lowered its posture to the outside world, cooperated with Britain and France, and established a foreign affairs movement, and a harmonious period appeared in politics, known as "Tongzhi Zhongxing".
The Qing Dynasty began to pay attention to learning Western technology, building factories, and adding advanced weapons, training a new type of army, the internal war was very smooth, in 1864 the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom was destroyed, in the external decision-making, the attitude of the Qing court gradually hardened, Zuo Zongtang led a large army to recover Xinjiang, defeated the Agubai forces invaded under the support of Tsarist Russia, and by 1883, China and France had a two-year war because of the Vietnamese problem.
Although this time ended with the defeat of the Qing Dynasty and the signing of the unequal treaty of the Sino-French New Covenant, in the course of the war, although France had the upper hand in most battles, it was still unable to achieve strategic victories, while the Qing Dynasty, in the late stage of the Sino-French War, also fought such a victory as the Great Victory of Zhennanguan, and the Qing army took advantage of the situation to conquer Liangshan and Wenyuan, which is enough to show that after the Foreign Affairs Movement, the equipment gap of the Qing Army has shrunk to the minimum with the great powers, and France at that time had the title of "Europe's First Army Power". After this battle, many people also changed their attitude towards the Qing Dynasty: the Qing Empire was still the strongest in Asia.
In the 1890s, the qing army's armed forces reached its peak, the Qing government purchased a number of modern naval ships from Germany and Britain, and formed the famous Beiyang Fleet, with a total of 25 main fleets, 50 auxiliary warships, 30 transport ships, and the tonnage reached 34,325 tons, while the Japanese fleet in 1888 was only 17,000 tons in size.
Tongzhi Zhongxing almost made many foreign historians and politicians feel surprised, afraid and admired the rising trend in China, and some foreign magazines issued the exclamation that "all the officials of China's size have taken action", and even Japan, taking the Qing court as an example of admiration, invited the Beiyang Marine Division to visit Nagasaki, Japan, in 1886 to observe and study.
However, during this period, the sailors on the shore clashed with the local police, and there were casualties on both sides, after this period of friction, the beiyang chief instructor Xi Langwei proposed to Li Hongzhang that it should break diplomatic relations with Japan and take force to solve it, and the guns of the Beiyang Fleet were also aimed at the city of Nagasaki, but in the end Japan felt afraid, and the Qing court was also doomed to compromise, and in February 1887, the two sides finally reached an agreement under the mediation of the British and German ministers, and each side compensated each other for the dead and wounded. Among them, the Japanese side paid a total of 52,500 yuan in pensions, and the Chinese side paid a total of 15,500 yuan in pensions. In essence, this can already be regarded as a diplomatic victory for the Qing court.
All of the above made the international community have the illusion that the Qing Dynasty was stronger, including the Qing rulers also believed so, so the Guangxu Emperor on the Battlefield of Jiawu insisted on fighting against Japan despite Li Hongzhang's persuasion. Everyone does not know that this is just a return to the light of the Qing Dynasty, and the problems it leaves behind are not at all solved by small reforms, and the defeat of the Sino-Japanese War has become inevitable.