Before the 1800s, China and Japan were almost identical. They isolated themselves from other countries; but after their imperialisms in the late 1800s, the countries went on different paths. China remained traditional and denied modernization and suffered because of it, while Japan emulated the imperial powers and became an imperial
Why Europe? Anan Patel 12/16/13 The Europeans were the first people to explore and conquer the rest of the world. But, before they explored the world the Chinese had started this voyage project also, but they eventually receded from this because they were looking to focus more on domestic matters (DOC 2, 3, 4, and 5). The reason why Europe succeeded and the others didn’t because Europe already had advantages in society because of the plant and animal domestication, also they had enough competition between the different European countries to go out on voyages to look for more (DOC 1, 6, 7, 9) . On the other hand, the other countries weren’t able to succeed because they conquered by Europeans or their population died out from diseases or plagues (DOC 4, 5, 8).
The Kings were converts of Christianity just to establish closer relations with Portuguese whereas Chinese has great problems with the exclusivity of Christianity but the Jesuits were respectful of Chinese culture and won a few converts. China had an outstanding naval capacity in the early 1400s and the Chinese used a tribute system as a basis for trade and restricted access of foreign traders to Chinese markets, particularly by limiting them to specified ports under controls established by the central government. China experienced economic changes,
However, Sun Yatsen was not in the country at the time the revolution started, implying that the Qing would’ve fallen anyway. An influential character of the revolution was Sun Yatsen, the leader of the tongmenghui. Sun was a nationalist revolutionary who believed that the only way China could refrain from being a backwards country was to adopt western ways in agriculture, industry and become a republic. Sun was educated abroad as a doctor in Hong Kong where he experienced the lifestyle of those who lived in the Western Society. However, by the time of his graduation, Sun believed that whilst the Manchu dynasty still existed, China would remain corrupt and backwards.
Gandhi struggled to fight against British colonizing power and the Western models of society brought with it. In China, Mao shared the same struggle against an invading power. While not a Western nation, Japan invaded China and brought what Mao considered Western systems: imperialism, colonialism, and capitalism. The historical context in which these two leaders fought an invading power was, of course, a national issue, independent of one another. However, what they fought against and the goals they made for their national struggles were global and holistic.
Though this proposition is correct, I argue that the decentralization of the Chinese system of governance was an integral reason for its inability to cope with the challenges posed by modern nation-states. This decentralization is characterized by many factors including internal social unrest, lack of strong leadership, corruption, and traditional ideals. The already decentralized, corrupt state was thus easily exploited by modern imperialist powers due to their superior military technology and organization. Eventually, China’s decline and successive defeats led to the fall of the last Chinese empirical dynasty. To begin, it is necessary to have a strong understanding of China’s background as an empire and what led to its decline during this period.
Japan is a small country, while considering the contribution to the world economic Japan still is a big country. So trade exchanges and business negotiations between these two countries is a systematic project because of different national culture, beliefs, values and norms. All of these differences may lead to some unpredictable issues in commercial activities if both side do not clearly know the difference. Japan is a typical oriental culture nurtured the country, while the United States is a combination of Western civilization itself nurtured the development of the United States set their own unique culture. These two contradictory business negotiations and cultural differences between countries and thus caused inconvenience to bring the negotiation process was affecting each other.
Throughout the 19th century, American relations with China were restricted to a small but profitable trade a. The British, in competition with France, Germany, and Russia, took advantage of the crumbling Manchu dynasty to force treaties on China, creating “treaty ports” and granting exclusive trading privileges in various parts of the country. b. American attitudes toward the Chinese people reflected this confusion of motives. 2. The annexation of Hawaii and Philippines in 1898 and 1899 convinced Secretary of State Hay that the US should have announced a China policy.
China resisted these efforts, by England, to continue trade and began attacking their ships. These acts were seen as aggressive in the eyes of the English and the first opium war resulted. The war ended with the treaty of Nanking, which ceded China to Britain. The second opium war between 1856 and 1858 ended with the treaty of Tientsin (2). These two wars were prime examples of commercial imperialism, not only through the opening of treaty ports but through British control of Chinese customs which the 1842 treaty established, and continuing opium trade without restraint (3).
How and why did the Chinese and Japanese responses to the West differ during the nineteenth century? In the course of 19th century colonialism and European expansion, the far east and especially both China and Japan were becoming increasingly interesting to western states’ economies. Therefore, in order to achieve economic expansion, western powers started to try to open Japanese and Chinese markets, even though their ingrained principle of cultural and economic isolation forbade any type of interaction with other nations, which were commonly regarded as inferior. However despite the striking similarities in Japanese and Chinese traditional ways of dealing with other “barbarous” civilisations (Pelissier, 1967, S. 11-13) the outcome of the confrontation with the West could not have been more different. Whereas Japan successfully managed to modernise to such a point that it even eventually became an industrialised, modern state with democratic traits in an astonishingly short space of time (Henshall, 1999, S. xiii-xv), China’s adaptation has been infinitely slower, undermining its status as an independent state.