China and Japan

by Ezra F. Vogel

  cluding new ships and weapons, would be required. Yet many Chinese of-

  ficials remained focused on cultivating the moral qualities that they con-

  sidered essential for national vitality.

  Empress Dowager Cixi and many high officials believed that the essence

  of China’s prob lems stemmed from the loss of a true Confucian spirit. To

  address this, they had to rebuild the moral base of traditional Confucian

  civilization, restore the importance of the examination system, and eliminate

  the buying and sel ing of offices. The empress dowager valued the importance

  of symbolism. She undertook the building of a grand palace that would

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  help strengthen the dynasty, and later, during the Guangxu era after the

  Summer Palace had been destroyed, she sought to build a new, vast, and

  expensive Summer Palace.

  In 1861 China launched the Self- Strengthening Movement, focused

  on training its own troops, building its own ships, and producing its own

  military weapons. With the support of Prince Gong, Li Hongzhang (see

  Bio graphies of Key Figures), Zeng Guofan, and others established fac-

  tories to produce weapons. Initially they made use of foreign workers

  to help build the factories. They established the Jiangnan Arsenal in

  Shanghai, which by 1871 was already producing rifles. They also built

  naval dockyards in Fuzhou, Shanghai, and elsewhere. By the 1880s China

  had moved ahead of Japan in purchasing ships and then building them on

  its own. In the 1880s Li Hongzhang established the China Merchants

  Steam Navigation Com pany so that China would have its own commer-

  cial shipping to help Chinese merchants. Although the empress dowager

  had originally delayed the building of railways because she considered

  them too noisy, by the 1890s railways were being built to link the port

  cities with cities in eastern and central China. The Chinese also began

  creating public utilities.

  The Chinese sent a mission abroad to learn about foreign developments,

  but the mission was not as large or as systematic as Japan’s Iwakura Mis-

  sion of 1871–1873, and after its return the members of the mission did not

  play the key role that their Japa nese counter parts had played in designing

  and implementing new programs. However, because many foreigners had

  cooperated with Zeng Guofan, the great po liti cal and military leader who

  led the fight against the Taiping rebels, China was able to use its contacts

  with them to obtain information that would be useful for producing the

  technology and military equipment required during the Self- Strengthening

  Movement.

  As Jenny Huangfu Day concludes from her study of Chinese missions

  sent abroad during this period, the Chinese who took part in the missions

  had a broad range of contacts, and some of them had a good understanding

  of the science and technology they observed. They made thoughtful indi-

  vidual efforts to come to terms with the differences between Western and

  Chinese cultures.

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  Responding to Western Chal enges and Reopening Relations, 1839–1882

  In May 1868, three years before Japan’s Iwakura Mission set out, a Chi-

  nese del e ga tion, the Burlingame Mission, arrived in the United States. This

  del e ga tion went on to spend extended time in Britain, France, Prus sia, and

  Rus sia, with briefer visits to other Eu ro pean countries, before it returned

  to China in October 1870. The purpose of the del e ga tion was to better learn

  how Westerners conducted diplomacy and to attempt to bring about a re-

  vocation of the so- called unequal treaties. Anson Burlingame, a highly re-

  spected American who had recently retired after seven years as the second

  U.S. minister (in effect, the ambassador) to Beijing, was appointed by the

  Chinese to lead the del e ga tion. On the mission, there were some thirty

  members, including two se nior Chinese representatives. On behalf of China,

  Burlingame negotiated the Burlingame- Seward Treaty, considered China’s

  first equal treaty.

  Burlingame died of pneumonia in February 1870 while on the trip, and

  two Chinese delegates, Zhigang, a Manchu, and Sun Jiagu, a Han, both

  degree- holding officials well trained in the classics, took over as leaders of

  the del e ga tion for the remainder of the trip. The mission met with heads of

  state, including the Rus sian czar, diplomats, businesspeople, missionaries,

  and Chinese citizens who were living abroad. In Eu rope, they visited indus-

  trial sites, mines, and shipyards. They observed steam engines and the use

  of electricity. In his diary, Zhigang revealed a good understanding of the

  machinery he saw during the trip and of the scientific princi ples that un-

  derlay such new technology. The delegates also engaged in broad- ranged

  discussions, and, as their diaries show, they asked discerning questions. For

  example, they asked missionaries why Christians, who had such high ideals

  and performed such good work in China, were bullying Chinese workers in

  the California mines and oppressing people in the colonies. On their re-

  turn, the participants wrote reports and memorials, and Zhigang’s more

  detailed diary of informal observations was later published as a book.

  Some of the Chinese participants on the missions that China sent

  abroad, including Zeng Jize, eldest son of Zeng Guofan, had positive opin-

  ions of the things they had observed and got in trou ble with the conservative

  officials at home for being too sympathetic toward foreign customs. Li Hon-

  gzhang and other officials, however, took a great interest in what the Chinese

  travelers reported about developments abroad and encouraged participants

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  to provide broad descriptions of po liti cal and economic matters. Empress

  Dowager Cixi personally met with some of the mission participants to un-

  derstand what was happening abroad. However, a group of conservative of-

  ficials in high positions, well trained in the Confucian tradition, did not sup-

  port the efforts to modernize and did not implement any of their suggestions.

  The result was that unlike the Iwakura Mission, which returned to lead Ja-

  pan’s rapid industrial and technological advances, the Burlingame Mission

  members were unable to make good use of what they observed.

  While Japa nese leaders were investing in industry and infrastructure,

  Korean and Chinese leaders were looking to restore a national spirit in their

  countries by displaying imperial grandeur through lavish new buildings. In

  the 1860s the Koreans undertook a massive rebuilding of their palace, with

  some 330 buildings and nearly 6,000 rooms. Similarly, the empress dow-

  ager enlarged and renovated the Summer Palace in Beijing, including its

  Marble Boat pavilion, using funds that could have been used to strengthen

  China’s foundation for modern industry. In fact, she rebuilt the expensive

  Marble Boat in the palace garden with funds that were earmarked for mod-

  ernizing the navy.

  Some officials, such as Li Hongzhang, believed that in addition to new

  factories, arsenals, and shipyards,
fundamental changes were needed in

  China’s educational system. He advocated that, like Japan, China should send

  young people abroad to study, and that civil- service exams should be offered

  in technical areas as well as in cultural areas, but his proposals were not ac-

  cepted. China made some pro gress in constructing a modern industrial base

  through its “self- strengthening,” but after 1885 conservative officials in Bei-

  jing slowed down efforts to support new industries. China achieved some

  successes in building up industry and producing weapons, but it did not un-

  dertake the thoroughgoing institutional reform that Japan achieved.

  The Meiji Leaders Promote Study Abroad and Modernization

  In contrast to China’s limited program for self- strengthening, Meiji Japan

  undertook comprehensive modernization in all fields, including po liti cal and

  social organ ization, the economy, education, and the military. The arrival

  of Commodore Perry in 1853 had immediately set off debates throughout

  Japan about how to respond, but by 1861 the shogunate had concluded that

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  Responding to Western Chal enges and Reopening Relations, 1839–1882

  Japan did not have sufficient military power to resist the West. Righ teous

  young samurai from several of the large southern domains— Satsuma,

  Choshu, and Tosa— indignant about this humiliation, began holding meet-

  ings in the late 1850s. In 1868 hundreds of young samurai from these three

  domains marched from Kyoto to the shogun’s palace in Edo, where the

  leaders of the Tokugawa shogunate, aware that they had lost the support

  of the domains around the country, agreed to transfer power to the emperor

  to avoid entering into a devastating, prolonged war.

  On April 7, 1868, in a Shinto ceremony attended by leading officials, the

  fourteen- year- old Emperor Meiji, who had ascended to the throne fourteen

  months earlier, advanced to a Shinto altar, bowed in prayer, and made an

  offering. An official, in the name of the emperor, then read from the Charter

  Oath, proclaiming that all future matters would be de cided by public dis-

  cussion and that knowledge would be sought from throughout the world.

  Thereafter, fundamental changes were made in the name of the emperor,

  and in 1869 the emperor moved in a pro cession from Kyoto to Tokyo, which

  officially became the capital.

  The samurai rebels agreed that for Japan to survive, it not only had to

  abolish the old domains and create prefectures under a new national ad-

  ministrative system, but it also had to abolish the formal class system that

  had given them their special status as samurai. In 1871 the feudal domains

  were abolished and replaced by a system of prefectures that were under

  much more centralized control by Tokyo. Also, the four social class

  designations— samurai, peasants, workers, merchants— were abolished, and

  former samurai were prohibited from wearing swords, the symbol of their

  class. Former samurai initially received stipends, but after several years they

  were paid off in cash or bonds and the stipends were terminated. The le-

  gitimacy that was derived from imperial proclamations led to fundamental

  changes without a revolution, and a rear- guard reaction, the Satsuma Re-

  bellion of 1877, was put down relatively quickly. By 1869 the emperor was

  living in Tokyo, and by 1877 all branches of government, as well as all for-

  eign legations, were also located in Tokyo.

  The Japa nese undertook learning from abroad on a much larger scale

  than China, and they used study tours abroad, especially the Iwakura Mis-

  sion, to build a consensus among those who led Japan during the Meiji pe-

  riod. The shogun had already sent a mission to the United States in 1860.

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  But in 1868 the leaders of the new Meiji government began planning Japan’s

  even grander study- abroad tour, the Iwakura Mission.

  The mission was led by Count Iwakura Tomomi. Upon its return, he

  and the deputy heads of the mission (Okubo Toshimichi, Kido Takeyoshi,

  and Ito Hirobumi [see Biographies of Key Figures]) were expected to and

  later did in fact play major leadership roles in government. Advance parties

  were sent abroad to prepare for the trip, which included visits to the United

  States, most Eu ro pean countries, Southeast Asia, and then China. The

  Iwakura Mission set off in December 1871, visited fifteen countries, and re-

  turned to Japan in September 1873. In addition to meeting national po liti cal

  leaders and studying the diff er ent forms of government in the vari ous coun-

  tries the mission visited, the members of the mission split up into specialty

  groups to study developments at factories, mines, ports, railways, research

  centers, experimental agricultural stations, universities, schools, army bases,

  and military arsenals. Never before and never since has any country sent so

  many young officials on such a long study tour of other countries.

  The last stop on the trip was Shanghai, which the mission reached

  toward the end of the Tongzhi period. The mission members spent less than

  three days in Shanghai, where they were given an elaborate welcome ban-

  quet by the top Shanghai official, Chen Fuxun. They were not entirely

  shocked by what they saw in the city because Japa nese officials had been

  going to Shanghai since the 1862 Senzaimaru visit. However, after seeing the

  won ders that industrialization had brought to the United States and Eu-

  rope, the travelers were struck by how much China had fallen behind. Kume

  Kunitake, the chief chronicler of the voyage, recorded his impressions of

  Shanghai: “ There are no sewers, and urine flows along the streets. Amid all

  this, the inhabitants seem quite unconcerned.” Believing that the Japa nese

  were harboring illusions about Chinese sophistication based on the past,

  he tried to correct the view of his countrymen who “regarded every Chi-

  nese to be a refined gentleman well versed in lit er a ture and the arts. Thus

  [in Japan] the custom still persists of holding any curios, calligraphy, paint-

  ings, poetry or lit er a ture from China in high esteem. . . . Under the Qing

  dynasty,” he wrote, “learning has been stagnant in China.”

  At the time of the Tang dynasty there had been so much to learn from

  China, but by 1873 the mission members felt that there was very little they

  could learn. Many of the travelers continued to nourish the hope that China,

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  Responding to Western Chal enges and Reopening Relations, 1839–1882

  Japan, and Korea could work together to resist the advances of Western im-

  perialism, but some had already begun wondering whether that would be

  pos si ble when China was so far behind, so disor ga nized, lacking a strategy

  that could be effective in responding to the West, and short of wise overall

  leadership. But, like Japa nese officials on the Senzaimaru’ s visit to China,

  the Iwakura Mission officials expressed great compassion for the impover-

  ished Chinese people, a sense of kinship with people whose culture they

  shared, a sense of sadness about what had happened to the great civiliza-

  tion, and
hope that the situation in China would improve.

  When the mission returned home, chronicler Kume Kunitake compiled

  his diary notes into five volumes reporting on what participants on the

  Iwakura Mission had learned. These volumes became part of a basic hand-

  book guiding discussions of what changes were to be introduced in Japan,

  and the compilations of later volumes from the trip were used to guide in-

  dustrial policy. Japan sent additional observers abroad to follow up with

  more specialized studies on certain topics.

  Those who were sent abroad were convinced of the depth of the changes

  required to bring about modernization in Japan. During the trip they had

  opportunities to discuss what might be appropriate for Japan, and by the

  time they returned to Japan they were beginning to arrive at a consensus

  about the broad features of the programs that needed to be designed. After

  their return, the mission members were placed in key government positions

  from which they could begin to plan the institutions and programs neces-

  sary to build a modern country. Many disagreements on specific issues fol-

  lowed, but no other country undertaking modernization had such a deep

  and broad common understanding of the issues involved.

  At the time of Emperor Meiji, China and Korea, like Japan, were also

  ruled by young emperors, but neither of them acquired the authority that

  Emperor Meiji would have when he reached maturity. In China, Emperor

  Tongzhi was five years old when he ascended the throne (and Guangxu was

  four years old), but when Tongzhi ascended the throne, power remained

  largely in the hands of his mother, Empress Dowager Cixi, and her advisers,

  who were resistant to a fundamental governmental reor ga ni za tion. In Korea,

  Emperor Kojong ascended the throne at the age of twelve in 1864, but his

  father, the Taewongun, was still alive and held ultimate power. Even after

  1873 when King Kojong and Queen Min and her family temporarily pushed

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  aside the Taewongun, the conservative Taewongun remained influential. In

  Japan, in contrast, in the name of the emperor the young samurai, inspired

  by what they saw on the Iwakura Mission, moved boldly to bring about great

  changes. The se nior advisers to Emperor Meiji began tutoring him in 1868,