During the early nineteenth century, both China and Japan enforced policies restricting foreign trade in order to avoid industrialization and western ideas, but after both societies experienced foreign invasions and unequal treaties being established by foreigners, Japan began to industrialize and became imperialists trying to create an empire, while China differed in that the people wanted reform and government restrained the reformation of their society, therefore causing multiple rebellions and overall the collapse of their empire.
At the beginning of the nineteenth century, westerners were heavily industrializing and practicing imperialism, and since both China and Japan wanted to retain their cultures and traditions, they figured the best way to do so was to instate policies restricting trade with foreigners. For hundreds of years, both societies were isolated and only concerned themselves with internal issues and developments, so once westerners began to try and imperialize eastern Asia, they in turn began to block off their nation to preserve their cultures and protect themselves from threat of the west. China started to become addicted to drugs, due to the opium being sold to them for silver by the British, not only were they illegally trading being foreigners, but they were taking China’s silver so that they could become more wealthy, meanwhile Japan had a dirt poor and starving population full of destitution, and the Europeans were trying to come in to stimulate the economy, but mostly to their own benefit and profit. Both of these intrusions into Japan and China caused the government to restrict their population from trading with the Europeans and Americans so that they would not lose their own heritage and traditions to adapt to the ways of the westerners.
As the nineteenth century went on, westerners continued to penetrate and attack Japan and China with the intentions to imperialize these regions and make them another