The Westernization Movement made the Qing Dynasty's national strength recover and enhance to a certain extent, and during the Tongzhi period when the Empress Dowager Cixi and Prince Gong jointly ruled, the Qing Dynasty once appeared a relatively stable situation, known as "Tongzhi Zhongxing" in history. During this period, the Qing Dynasty, with the help of Westerners, successfully eliminated the civil rebellion in the interior and recovered Xinjiang, which greatly improved its international status and image. By the 80s of the 19th century, the equipment of the Qing Dynasty army had been significantly improved compared with before the Westernization Movement; Externally, in 1884, the Sino-French War broke out between the Qing Dynasty and France over the sovereignty of Vietnam (Annam). The Qing Dynasty lost its vassal state of Vietnam, Vietnam became a French colony, and Taiwan was declared a province. After the war, the Qing Dynasty established a naval yamen. When the British invaded Burma in 1885, Zeng Jize, the Qing Dynasty's minister to the British, protested to the British to no avail, and was forced to sign the Sino-British Treaty of Burma the following year, recognizing Burma as owned by the British. After the Meiji Restoration, Japan's national strength increased greatly, and in 1872, Japan forced the Qing Dynasty vassal state of Ryukyu to be changed to Japan, but the Qing Dynasty refused to recognize it, and China and Japan became hostile. In 1894, the Sino-Japanese War broke out, and finally ended in the defeat of the Qing army.

A modern enterprise in the Westernization Movement

The empire is in shambles

In 1895, the Qing government signed the Treaty of Shimonoseki with Japan, ceding Taiwan and Penghu and losing the vassal state of Korea. The Beiyang Fleet established by Li Hongzhang, a Westernist faction, completely collapsed, and the self-improvement movement was finally defeated. Subsequently, the political reform movement led by Emperor Guangxu and Liang Qichao and Kang Youwei was also called the "Hundred Days Restoration" because of the opposition of the Empress Dowager Cixi and conservatives, and the reform was under house arrest. In 1896, the Qing court signed the "Sino-Russian Secret Treaty" in order to unite Russia with Japan, and the great powers set off a frenzy of carving up China in view of the fact that the Qing Dynasty was no longer able to defend itself. The Qing Dynasty was humiliated by foreign powers for a long time, and the Boxer Rebellion broke out in the Jilu region with the slogan of "helping the Qing Dynasty to destroy the foreigners". The Empress Dowager Cixi wanted to take advantage of this xenophobia, secretly acquiescing to the Boxers and declaring war on the Eleven Kingdoms. In order to protect China and South China, the governors of the southeastern provinces did not obey the Qing court's edict to declare war on foreign countries, and launched the southeast to protect themselves, and the Boxer Rebellion triggered the retaliation of the Western powers.

Sino-Japanese War

In 1900, the Eight-Nation Coalition invaded Beijing. Beijing was occupied by the coalition forces, looted, killed, and plundered. The Empress Dowager Cixi led the Guangxu Emperor to flee westward, and Cixi believed that the disaster was caused by the Boxers, so she issued an order to exterminate the Boxers. In the end, the Boxer Rebellion failed under the joint suppression of the Qing army and the Eight-Nation Alliance. In 1901, the Qing Dynasty signed the Treaty of Xinchou with 11 countries. The Qing court paid heavy compensation, demarcated leased lands and spheres of influence. In 1904, the Russo-Japanese War broke out into a conflict of interests between Japan and Russia in the northeast, further deepening China's semi-colonization.

Revolutionary Tide

After the Qing Dynasty fell sharply after the Eight-Nation Alliance, intellectuals all proposed various ways to save China, mainly divided into two reform lines: constitutionalism and revolutionary. In 1901, the constitutionalists Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao promoted the constitutional movement, and Liang Qichao published the "Constitutional Proposal", hoping to make Emperor Guangxu a constitutional monarch. In order to save the decline of the Qing Dynasty, the Empress Dowager Cixi intended to follow the reforms of Europe and Japan and implement the new policy at the end of the Qing Dynasty. The New Deal mainly implemented a series of reforms, such as the establishment of a constitutional monarchy, the establishment of a new army of the Qing Dynasty, the abolition of the imperial examination, and the rectification of finances. The revolutionaries were disillusioned with the reforms of the Qing court, and they advocated the overthrow of the Qing dynasty and the establishment of a republic. Sun Wen founded the Xingzhong Society in Honolulu, Hawaii, in 1894, Huang Xing's Huaxing Society in Changsha in 1904, and Cai Yuanpei's Guangfu Society in Shanghai in 1904, among other revolutionary groups. In 1905, Sun Wen united the Xingzhonghui, Huaxinghui, and Guangfuhui in Japan to establish the China Alliance, and put forward the program of "expelling the Tatars, restoring China, founding the Republic of China, and equalizing land rights". The revolutionaries united with the old anti-Qing forces such as the Triad and Hongmen to launch ten uprisings in South China and infiltrate the Qing New Army in Central and South China.