Colonization of China

[Ego_Extrodinaire]

We know that Hong Kong was well managed under the British system, whereas, the rest of China when given back its self rule became a buracratic state second only to the now collapsed Soviet Union.

With the hindsight of history, do you think that China would have been better run if it remained divided uner colonial rule?

Do you think that it would be better if Chinese culture was replaced by Western culture?

Do you think the Boxer Reballion was a big mistake and a needless waste of life?

What do you think?

Maximus Materialize!

[Stumblefist]

You are right if you realize that you cannot understand chinese kungfu fully if you do not understand chinese history and chinese communism and modern culture. Because, for one thing, to understand these things you can understand the origins of ideas and separate the fantasy and the wishful from the real. If you understand the motivations and psychology you can more understand the reality and sort out the "classical mess" and now i might add "the modern mess" that has developed in America for one.
Your bent is a little off.
The most important thing amout chinese history is the extremity of cultural destruction and total wipeout for all its history. So often, neither man nor beast nor book nor relic remains. Wudang, Henan, Beijing and so many places at various times, all wiped clean. Each dynasty did it up to the modern. The monguls hated cities. Often they determined not to leave a stone standing nor a single man alive.
The other moost important thing is to understand a modern cultural mind that does not beleive in right or wrong as we know it. Whether we believe in god or not we have all been exposed to and inherited a concept of conscience, and struggle, and good and evil which is non-existant in modern chinese culture. From that basis you have to evaluate the information you receive from chinese sources.
Your q's:
It is not self-rule that has coused china's retardance, it has been communism. The communism was instilled by Russia. The civil war was won many times by the guomindang, the communist leaders at many times were just a handful. The constant resupply of support by russia maintained communism and eventually made them win.
All the communist leaders were many times smuggled in and out of russia for training (and incidentally weeding out - sometimes they were executed and did not return to china). Also Russia suppied the Cmommunists with the arsenal for final victory after the Japs left.
The inept and cowardly and corrupt leadership of chiang kai Shek is the reason for the loss of the civil war to the communists.
China could not have remained under colonial rule: with 1911, the communists and the japamese. It's a non-issue. The only alternative is that the Republicans could have, and almost did, win the civil war.
Culture is not a dead thing, either western or Chinese,it's a living thing and grow and one can be influenced by the other. The attempt to isolate culture and prevent growth or influence ends in disaster (which is what the communists are attempting now) Many aspects of chinese culture are considered destructive to their society. This is the opinion of chinese themselves: Seee Bo Yang: "the ugly chinaman". So to answer the question. Not replaced, but many old cultutral influences are weighing down and destroying china.
It wasn't just the BOxer Rebellion that was the mistake. It was the policies of the latter ching Dynasty that were a mistake and caused a big loss of life and destroyed and hindered china. The boxer rebellion was an half-baked experiment encouraged by the decaying ching management. The chings were responsible for the retardence of the modernization of china. For example they refused to used cannon and modern military methods. That alone cost them the country. They were afraid of their own people using modern methods against them. After all they were not "HAN" they were invaders, foreign rulers. They were right. They were finally dumped by the chinese people in 1911.
In summary only one thing went wrong.
Russian Backed Communism
or can be called
Stalinism.

[Ben Gash]

Wouldn't use cannon? So who was it using them against the Western compound in Beijing?

"Weapons are the embodiments of fear,
the wise use them only when they have no choice"
Lao Tzu

[Stumblefist]

No Ben. They wouldn't use cannon against the legations in Beijing. I take it you are talking about the Boxer rebellion 1900. They had a warehouse of cannon and could have reduced the legations to rubble in half a day.
There was some question as to why the dowager refused to let her chief military prince have the cannon. The most obvious is that she feared she would be next. Another explanation is that she did not want her signature on the Boxer uprising. Even though it was a manchu bannerman that assassinated the german delegate that touched events off and it was bannerman doing most of the shooting, she still wanted to blame the Boxers for an undeclared war (uprising).
The best read on this is Peter Fleming's eyewitness account "seige of the legations in Peking".
Perhaps the attackers had a few old pieces but i think more likely, Ben, you've been watching Heston and Gardener in that hollywood sucky movie "55 days at Peking".

[Stumblefist]

I did some research on the net but it's hard to get exact data on artillery and the qing resistence to using it and modernization.
The data is more likely in library textbooks.
Here's a good site.
http://www.history.navy.mil/docs/boxer/index.html

They DO mention artillery in the eyewitness statements.BUT...
The story is complicated. Best to read at least Flemings account and you can understand the battle and realize that the major artillery was locked up somewhere.
You can see the flavour of the accounts: constant barrage of small-arms fire. There was no artillery to knock down the improvised perimeter around the legations. It was a battle of attrition, the permiter becoming smaller and smaller due to tunnelings underneath and bombs set off in the tunnelings and sniping and overruning wall defences. Actually two walls faced each other, the defender's wall and the attackers's wall from which they exchanged constant gunfire, no rents created by artillery.
The dowager only considered reform of the army after the boxer defeat, far, far too late. 11 years later there was no more ching dynasty.