Why Did China's Fall From Power

From the onset of the 1800s and trailing into the early 1900s Japan and China had a series of advances and declines in their status of world powers. This time frame for Japan and China saw a series of treaties, technological advances, and a wide range of military operations influence the balance of powers in each nation. Japan with their ability to accept Western knowledge and technology allowed them to become a world power in line with European countries and the United States. On the flip side, China throughout the century continued to maintain their conservative Confucianism views of, not accepting foreign principles in education, as well as favoring scholarly pursuits over military pursuits. Throughout all this, what enabled Japan to
China’s fall from power it started with the Opium wars, where in 1839 the British cut off China’s coast blockading them to their homelands. Consequently, the trade deficit destroyed China’s economy by opium smugglers driving silver out of the economy by smuggling the addicting drug into China. This eventually led to the Treaty of Nanjing in 1842, where five ports became unrestricted to foreign trade and gave the rights of Hong Kong up. Thus directly started the Sino-Japanese War, where in 1894 China and Japan battled. This war furthered Japan’s advances, while declining China yet again. During the one year war, China continued its ways of making unequal treaties and losing ground. Japan on the other hand, would force China to give free port access, while also forcing Japanese control of Korea and Taiwan. These additions to the Japanese empire allowed for treaties with other European nations to be equally renegotiated. On the other side, following Japan’s victory in the Sino-Japanese War was another victory in the Russo-Japanese War in, 1904 against Russia’s Pacific fleet. These successes of Japan’s war efforts placed Japan amongst the great powers by showing that an Asian nation could take out such a great European power. In doing so, it became known that Japan was on the rise, while China was on the decline due to unequal treaty
The Boxers believed that driving out foreigners would fix the economy and China, but instead forced foreign troops to occupy Beijing and force China to pay twice the country’s annual revenue to remove them. These acts further drove China from establishing any world relevance. Japan meanwhile, continued to have success, most notably in the Meiji Restoration. During this restoration period, Japan restored power directly to the emperor, started a new government, and focused on scholarship. These changes allowed for Japan to have economic and political success through taxes, the right to bear arms, and a better trained military force. It additionally allowed for the improvement of agriculture as rice could be produced at a 30% higher mark. This enabled the government to collect more money off of taxes, thus being able to construct railroads, harbors, and telegraph lines to improve communication. Thus, showing that while one country had a failed movement, the other country’s movement helped enable them to become a world power. Failure and success characterize China and Japan during the 1800s to the early 1900. Some of the most notable factors that both nations realized were that treaties, Western knowledge, and military superiority had direct influences on how each nation