Yuan Shikai
One man, in the aftermath of the defeat by Japan, had no doubt about what had to be done. Within weeks of the end of the war a vigorous young soldier, Yuan Shikai, came up with a detailed plan for a reorganization and expansion of the Chinese forces. He was made commander of the prosaically named Newly Created Army (Xinjianjun), at the age of thirty-six. His plan was a simple one: to make China strong enough to resist future foreign attacks. He cared little for ideology, principles, or vague visions of the future; his only interest was a strong, efficient military that could resist outsiders and keep the unruly Chinese in order.
Yuan Shikai was from a poor northern family, adopted into a military family, and brought up in the old army. He was a tough man, physically and mentally. He believed in organization and discipline, and in recruiting good men as soldiers, treating them well, providing them with good training and weapons, and giving them a proper career. Once he had his new position, he demanded the money necessary to train his new army, and he got it. Within a year or two he had over 10,000 men, a military school (Baoding), a collection of talented young officers (the foundation of his “Beiyang Clique”). By the time Yuan was promoted to governor of Shandong, at the end of 1899, his army was an effective fighting force.
The new in the old
In retrospect the Boxer Rising was a nail in the coffin for China’s old imperial system, for the Manchus as imperial rulers, and for the educated mandarin elite. In the immediate aftermath, however, the crestfallen dynasty tried to pick itself up. There was a general recognition now that change had to come, though no real idea of how to go about it. The dynasty acted with a mixture of defensiveness (training a new army), cautious adventure (the moves toward limited democracy), and recklessness (the slashing of old institutions, notably the examination system).
The abolition of the examination system was supposed to bring a new and Westernized education system to China, but first it brought to an abrupt end the Confucian education system, without putting anything in its place. With the announcement in 1905 that the Imperial Examinations would no longer be held, the government destroyed the hopes of legions of people involved in the examination system: the candidates, boys and men studying for the examinations, and their families whose hopes were placed in them; the teachers and the people who supplied texts to the students; and the people who ran the examination industry – hostel keepers, examiners. With one shocking blow all these people were told that the government had washed its hands of them. The government had destroyed a large part of its natural constituency, the people whose vested interests had until then been tightly linked with the ruling system.
The fiasco of the abolition of the examination system seemed proof that the Manchu elite had been infected by a sense of impending doom, and was helping to destroy the dynasty. Over the previous four decades the dynasty had been rescued from its weakness by the steely Empress Dowager; now, in her last years, she was exhausted, and incapable of the tough-mindedness she had shown before. She and her advisors were now desperately trying to hold on to power, making any concessions they could – and all the time weakening themselves further.
The dynasty did come up with some progressive moves in what turned out to be the last years of their rule. One example was the establishment of provincial assemblies. A second was the introduction of some control over opium. Another was the successful campaign against bubonic plague in Manchuria, entrusted to Wu Liande (Lien-te), a Cambridge-educated doctor. But these and other reforms were peripheral to the real agenda, and not nearly enough to stave off the inevitable, the end of some 250 years of Manchu rule.
Forces beyond the Manchus were at work. Some were Chinese, others were global. The rise of modern transport, the rapid spread of new political ideas, and the growth of international trade – all these were forces that the Manchus, like other rulers, were encountering for the first time. The most powerful force was the rise of the nation state, and the new passion that went with it: nationalism.
The Qing – The military
The most portentous change in late Qing China was the growth of the military, and the arrival in China of a universal process of the early twentieth century: the upgrading and professionalization of the military. In the West this process contributed to the First World War. In China the new military was a key part of the downfall of the old world.
The Qing’s modern military was designed to replace the old Manchu troops, the Banners, and the Green Standard Chinese armies. The new military and its commanders were disciplined, competent, and self-consciously modern-minded. Its members saw themselves as part of a distinct military culture, which had pride in itself, and believed in its own competence. They saw how the military model had transformed Japan, and before that Prussia, into effective, disciplined states. They believed that the same could be done for China.
The military had to fight against the traditional contempt for the soldier in Chinese society, and the belief that no worthwhile man would ever serve in the military.
Haotie bu dading, haonan bu dangbing.
“Good iron does not make nails, good men do not make soldiers.”
Source: traditional
This struggle was made easier by the fact that the military was so strongly favored by the dynasty. Money was poured into military facilities and training, young men were sent off to Japan to go to military school, and delegations were sent abroad to buy new equipment. The new military was costly to the Qing government. It had to be recruited, trained, and equipped with weapons; military installations had to be built – barracks, arsenals, fortresses. The Qing also had to maintain the Manchu forces; most of them were pensioned off, no longer able to fight except amongst each other. But the Qing government believed that a strong military was essential to hold off future attacks by foreigners. Those attacks did not come – the war with Japan turned out to be the last for a long while. The dynasty seems not to have calculated that the new military could play a domestic role: to bring down its own masters.
