Foreword: The launch of the Westernization Movement was an important attempt by a group of officials to personally witness the advancement of Western armaments and promote learning from the West.
Prince Gong learned from the Anglo-French alliance that the ships of the great powers were strong and artillery. Emperor Xianfeng left Rehe, and Prince Gong stayed in Beijing to deal with the aftermath. The capital could not be held, so that the Manchus woke up from the dream of the great power of the Celestial Empire. Prince Gong witnessed the Anglo-French forces easily defeat the Qing army and capture Tianjin and Beijing, reflecting the difference in the level of armaments between the two countries. Prince Gong had the status of Minister of the Parliamentary Prince, presided over the Military Aircraft Department and the Prime Minister's Yamen, and was the core figure of the Westernization Movement.
Prince Gong
Zeng Guofan was the commander of the Hunan army, and Li Hongzhang was the commander of the Huai army, and in the process of suppressing the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, they witnessed the strong ships and artillery of the foreign powers. After the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom occupied Nanjing, the Manchus were defeated in the early days, and after the Anglo-French alliance, the British assisted Shanghai in forming a victorious army, recruiting civilians as soldiers, commanded by the British, and using the armament of the great powers, thus reversing the disadvantage of the Manchus. Zeng Guofan, Li Hongzhang and others were the main figures in promoting the Westernization Movement.
Challenge and Response is a theory that analyzes history. Applied to the Westernization Movement, the Anglo-French alliance brought about a sense of crisis in the imperial court, stimulated reflection on the current situation, and promoted reforms to respond to current challenges. Wei Yuan edited the "Atlas of the Sea Kingdom" after the Opium War, and proposed the master's skills to control the country, which did not receive attention, and twenty years later, under the sense of crisis under the British and French forces, it was valued by the Westernists and became the target of the Westernization movement.
Although the Westernization Movement was the starting point of China's modern industrial construction, it was not the original intention of the reform. After 10 years of military reform, the results were not as satisfactory, but it brought a financial burden, so the Westernists adjusted their goals and expanded them into a rich country and a strong army. In other words, in terms of objectives, industrial construction is not to resist the dumping of foreign goods, nor is it to improve the economy and people's livelihood, but to use rich countries to support and strengthen the army, and to use economic construction to strengthen the practice of mastering and strengthening the skills of the master and the people to control the country.
In other words, the Westernists were narrow-minded, and they were not only the heroes who promoted the Westernization movement, but also the sinners who failed the Westernization movement. This argument is to the effect that most of the Westernists were traditional bureaucrats who came from the imperial examinations, who were convinced of the completeness of Confucianism, believed that it was enough to learn only Western science and technology, and that the reform focused on the construction of armaments, and did not realize the need to learn from the Western system and culture, so that the Westernization movement ended in failure.
This statement may be correct as an objective description, but two additional items need to be added in order to humanize this culpability. First, learning the culture of other countries is a logical process that starts from what you have seen on the surface, understands them through a period of time, and then learns their deep culture. Witnessing the advancement of the West's armaments, the Westernists aimed at learning from the West's armaments instead of aiming at the construction of Western democracy.
Second, everyone is limited by their own time, just as Tang Taizong showed self-limitation in the three provinces, and only those that must be stamped by the three provinces can be considered legal, and we will admire Tang Taizong's enlightenment, and we will not complain that it does not meet the standards of democracy. In the same way, the Westernists have shown a keen sense of the times in their limitations, and when the court regarded Western artifacts as obscene and Prince Gong was ridiculed as the sixth devil in a social environment, the Westernists could promote the reform of Westernization, which was a kind of transcendent vision. Eventual failure is a fact, but it does not negate the greatness of those who pushed for reform.