The editors of the Haval History of the Qing Dynasty believe that the crisis of the Qing Empire at the turn of the century was caused by three simultaneous difficulties: the first was the external impact brought about by the expansion of the West at that time; The second is a long-term crisis that accumulates from long-term socio-economic problems; The third is the severe government dysfunction associated with the consistent dynastic cycle pattern.
Leaving aside the external crisis, let's look at the long-term changes in the Qing Dynasty at that time: after the Qing Dynasty stabilized the situation around 1860, I guess it was the Kangxi, Yongzheng, and Qianlong periods, which were also the flourishing period of this dynasty, and the population grew so rapidly that between 1753 and 1812, the per capita arable land area decreased by 43%. The growth of the population has exceeded the growth of arable land. During that period, due to the decline in job opportunities due to domestic exports and imports, the number of unemployed (most of them were originally distributed in commerce, handicrafts, transport and mining) was greatly reduced due to various reasons. Population is not only growing in numbers. Moreover, there was a large "surplus of talent" at that time, so that by 1800, there were only about 20,000 official positions in the Qing Empire, and the talent pool had more than 1.4 million talents and scholars. The danger of cultural overcrowding was greater, and these intelligent young people developed a striking and critical political style, so the book argues that it was the constant criticism of these intellectuals that prompted the Qing government to support armed confrontation with the West, resulting in the disastrous First Sino-British War.
In addition to long-term population pressures and fears of unemployment, the second reason was the problems of the Qing imperial government at the time, which he attributed to the failure of the emperor's willpower and supervision, the loss of bureaucratic morality and initiative, and corruption and chaos. He criticized Jiaqing and the Daoguang Emperor by name, saying that they were not decisive enough at critical moments and were at a loss in the face of serious crises. Take the big corrupt official Hejun as an example, he embezzled on a large scale, sold official titles, and controlled the imperial government, until his death, it is said that his personal assets were 800 million taels of silver, more than half of the national tax revenue during his 20-year reign. The Jiaqing Emperor was well aware of the serious ills represented by Helong and did not arrest him and his henchmen until his death in 1799 and ordered him to commit suicide. Historians believe that Jiaqing's original sin was the lack of courage to purge the corrupt bureaucracy.
Of course, the decline of a dynasty also has the problem of internal rebellion, and the reason for the rampant bandits is the first one, the peasants who have lost their land and have a lot of taxes and taxes, and the demagogic lower intellectuals. The larger rebellions are, of course, the well-known White Lotus Sect Uprising and the Taiping Rebellion, which ended up spending about 120 million taels of silver to suppress the rebellion.
In the 20s of the 19th century, that is, 1820? The economic depression of the Qing dynasty, the author argues was due in part to short-term production cuts during the Latin American revolutions. In the Qing Dynasty, there was a decline in demand in the West for Chinese products such as silk, tea, cotton, and I think porcelain (Westerners had already stolen Chinese porcelain production methods). Of course, opium began to be imported in large quantities at this time, and the Qing Dynasty changed from a silver-importing country to an exporter at this time, causing a further decline in the economy at that time.
The straw that finally crushed the camel was the impact of the West, known as the British East India Company. This notorious company imported opium into China, and in the mid-19th century, 10% of the country's population was addicted, which was so frightening that at least 8-10 million people had to use opium at that time, mainly literati and the military. Of course, the emergence of the steam power manufacturing industry during the Industrial Revolution will lead foreign trade to a new horizon, and the West is eager to open the huge Chinese market first. This is the position of Western economic theory, on the other hand, the end of the Napoleonic Wars gave the European powers the capacity to expand overseas, and they had basically completed their military modernization after the Industrial Revolution. So the Western impact boils down to this: Western countries now find themselves with motivation (demand from overseas markets), ideological legitimacy (international etiquette and liberalism advocating free trade, and now there should be a cloak of human rights and democracy) and means (new military technology) to force the Qing Empire to "open"! This passage is wonderful. The reasons for Japan's aggression against China are exactly the same. Now Western countries are afraid that this is also the idea.
As a result, the Opium War broke out in 1840, and in August 1842, he was forced to sign the Treaty of Nanjing and cede land to pay reparations. What is worse is that the Western powers, including Japan and Russia, have been inspired by this incident and have successively or jointly launched wars of aggression against China.
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