When did Qing China begin to decline? Many scholars think that it is the Opium War, but the editor believes that it is not. The opium war did not have much impact on China, limited to the Guangdong area, the most fundamental problem at that time was the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, about millions of people died in battle, China's economic center Jiangnan area was chaotic, the Qing Dynasty's vitality was consumed very badly. After the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, both the scholars and the imperial court realized that they wanted to change, and the foreign affairs movement began. But after the 1890s, China encountered a nail in the coffin, that is, the Sino-Japanese War.
In the Sino-Japanese War, Westerners thought that China would win because China's naval strength was twice that of Japan, but the problem was that China's navy was divided into four parts, scattered in Beiyang, Nanyang, Shanghai, and Fuzhou, and they did not cooperate to fight. During the Sino-French War, the Beiyang Navy did not come to support the Fuzhou Navy, and during the Sino-Japanese War, the Fuzhou Navy did not help Li Hongzhang. If the Chinese navy were in a huddle, the Japanese would not dare to invade China. In the Sino-Japanese War, the Chinese Navy's cannon was actually a squib, which is unimaginable, but it really happened.
The Sino-Japanese War was not a war between two backward countries, when China had 65 warships, the navy ranked eighth in the world, Japan had only 32 warships, the navy ranked 11th in the world, and the warships on both sides were very modern and steam-powered ships.
At that time, the world was paying attention to the war, and it was the first modern naval operation. Japanese warships were very light, faster, and faster to fire their guns; Chinese warships were heavy, slower, and slower to fire their guns than Japanese warships, and at that time Europeans and Americans realized that battleships were faster than better, and ships should be lighter, which directly affected the construction of their navy.
After the Sino-Japanese War, Japan felt that it was the strongest country in East Asia. The Japanese began to say that China declined because it was a traditional country. Since then, many Chinese have begun to study in Japan, and they all agree with this view, taking the Example of the Meiji Restoration in Japan and believing that China is backward. The Han Chinese revolutionaries at that time needed a backward China before they could make a revolution. But if China wins the Sino-Japanese War, history will be completely different from the present, do you say?