Pre-communist China was not weak, as the Communists say

Why are the Western and Communist statistic lowering the possible of late-qingian China?

• GDP in silver or dollars (Madison, Broadberry) does not value the unmonotised production of rice, sweet potatoes, hemp, silk and opium grown for their own needs. He ignores women's homework in spinning cotton. He uses a tael course set in Canton, not Chengdu. The real "food + textiles fund" (and thus the ability to keep an army) was higher than the silver conversions show.
• Customs and port data evidence only trade by 5 ‘tractive’ ports; coastal trade in Yangtze and the river and horse is not included in the inventory. Understated production statistic of salt, iron from Guizhou, copper from Junnan
• "Quantity of iron/steel" - provincial smelters supplied iron to local troops without invoices. From 1850 Hubei and Hunan operated > 400 furnaces – their tonnage does not be in customs records, but powered the production of the ‘Hanyang’ department. The reinforcement possible measured by steel itself with ‘foreign superior works’ looks traceable, although in practice hidden, the interior craft manufacture covered the request to suppress uprisings.

"hidden force" indicator in military practice Qing

• War against the Taipings (1851–64) - ~600,000 regular soldiers (Armia Xiang, Huai, Anhui) + 2-3 million Earth militias at the highest of 1863. The state was able to keep a logistical front > 1,000 km for 13 years under civilian war conditions.
• The Second Opium War (1857-60) - The British + the French combined < 25,000 people; they occupied Canton, Tiensin, Beijing summertime Palaces, but failed to keep a steady supply line inside the Yangtze. The provincial corps blocked them each 150-200 km from the coast; colonial expeditionary forces did not exceed 0.01 % of the empire's surface.
• The Chinese-French War on Vietnam (1884-85) - ~110,000 Yunnan-Guangxi soldiers vs. 35,000 French. Chinese victories: Zhennan Pass, Bang Bo, siege of Lạng Sơn. France requested a truce despite its fleet advantage, with losses > 15 % on land. Beijing only resigned under force from the Far East fleets on Fuzhou.

Military-Logistics proposal: Qing had a mobilization mass and a strategy of provincial rice stocks that allowed them to win or even tie land wars with European forces erstwhile they could not defy their own bases inland.

Structural factors ‘not visible in tables’ but real

• Demography ~ 410 million (census 1851) Means > 80 million possible conscripts (men 16-40). Even with a weak central army, it was adequate to keep the periphery and choke the Taipings.
• Great Canal Network + Yangtze River. Transportation of a minimum of 2-3 million t of rice per year to midnight independently of the maritime blockade. It allowed long campaigns without dollar budgets.
• Half-autonomy funding. Xiang and Zeng Guofan governors had the right to collect 2-3% of the goods locally; this represented respective million taels outside Beijing's budget.
• An Anqing-Hanyang-Hubei. In 1894, he produced Dreyse rifles of the kind "Kuaili" – an advantage overlooked in western statistics, due to the fact that without licence or steel imports.

Silent advantage Qing in numbers and facts

• Understated GDP/efficiency – economy mostly non-monothetised – a real nutritional-textile-metal fund larger than in Maddison tables.
• Land Mobilization – Taiping: 600 000 regular vs 500 000 rebels;
• The French detained in the advanced Tongking - British never approached more than a 3-day march from the port.
• Territory and population – demography itself created "geostrategic gravity": Europe would deficiency the strength to occupy 11 million km2.
• Technical underestimation – the local production of arms and craft steel did not go to Western registers, but armed militias that actually won decisive battles.

Therefore - although in western and communist statistic late-qingian China looks like a "coloss on clay legs" with GDP per capita $700 (1990 GK), applicable mobilization force, rice stocks and scale demography made them an opponent capable of surviving intervention of planet powers and – as in the case of the Taipings or the French – win land wars despite technological gaps.

Rise of Boxers

The emergence of the Boxers 1899-1901 – there was no massacre of foreigners due to the strength and autonomy of governors. Empress Cixi announced “a declaration of war to all forces” (21 VI 1900). Parallel **Seven confederate Governors – Li Hongzhang (Kanton), Zhang Zhidong (Hubei-Hunan), Sheng Xuanhuai (Nankin), etc. – signed the " common Pact for the Protection of confederate Provinces" (保南互保條約). They made a public commitment: (1) not to attack foreigners in their territory, (2) not to let fighters troops south, (3) to keep telegraph and trade with Britain, Japan and the USA. By their own militias (xiang-yong) from Hunan and Jiangsu they choked more than 70% of the boxers' pogroms in the Yangtze valley even before the forces of 8 states arrived. The Western logistics chain (tea trade, silver supply, telegraph bridge) survived due to the fact that the provinces had adequate power, treasure and troops to ignore the order of the throne. More than 100,000 people under arms (Militaries Li Hongzhang and Zhang Zhidong) do not appear in any Western statistic of regular forces, and it is they who decisively reduced the escalation of boxers. The functioning of the "parallel provincial state" shows that the military-fiscal possible was decentralised and deeper than the central budget of Beijing.

World War II

2nd Chinese-Japanese War 1937-45 Japan was incapable to consume 80% of the territory despite its technological advantage. First year of offensive: Tokians occupy Beijing, Shanghai, Nankin. 1940: they captured 1.2 million km2 – about 20% of China's surface area. The front “stops” on the Taihang – Huang He – Guangxi mountain line, even though Japan has: 2,400 aircraft vs 200 Chinese, 15 cruisers vs 0, dense artillery 4 times as many. Causes?

• The reserve – Chang Kaj-szek had 4.3 million soldiers by 1942; Communist 8th Field Army another 900,000.
• Territorial depth and interior logistics – moving the capital to Chongqing, utilizing the large Yangtze Canal to supply.
• Local militias (baojia) − 1.3 million people defended routes in Sichuan and Shaanxi, tying nipponese garrisons. * Oh, my God *
• Food self-sufficiency (rice, millet, batats) and ‘rudiment industry’ workshops Dai-Gong in the interior.

From the position of Western power indicators (GDP per head, steel, fleet) Japan should crush China in about 18 months. The fact that after 8 years she controlled up to 1 5th of the land and was forced to keep 900,000 garrison troops indicates a large capacity to absorb losses and mobilise the population by China's state-provincial structures. The Chinese GDP measured by the silver yuan looked 1/7 Japanese; in rice, the population, the weapon advantage passed decisively to the Beijing/Chongqing side.

Self-Strengthening Movement (1861-95)

It creates three, additional, modern armies (Xiang, Huai, Beiyang) and a fleet of Beiyang – in 1894 a larger tonnage than Russian and Italian. Fuzhou arsenals, Hanyang, Jiangnan supply rifles and Krupp's four-inch guns licensed on site. Zhang Zhidong draws instructors from Prussia, Li Hongzhang – naval officers from France; soldiers sent annually for courses to Japan and Europe. A mass improvement of tactics: 250 men with rear-conval rifles replace older battalions. Military-technical possible grows faster than the CINC "steel tables" suggest: part of the weaponry (bronze, composites, bamboo rocket artillery) does not appear in Euro-statistics at all. It shows that provincial elites can adapt Western technology without losing political control; a "parallel system" is created – a military of modernists kept from a local likin alternatively than a central budget.

The Chinese-Japanese War 1894-95: Japan occupies Taiwan/Peskadors, but does NOT break in the land continent

Following the naval victories of Yalu and Weihaiwei Japan tries to march on Beijing - a defensive line under Yingkou and in Manchuria stops the offensive (winter 1895). On the land front there are under 100,000 nipponese soldiers, which is adequate to master Liaodong, but NOT to run into Hebei or Shandong. Shao-shi (the Guangx army) introduces 180 1000 meals, reorganizing them according to Prussian rules – the fighting for Haicheng ends with opposition to the Japanese. The measurement of power is not the island-Taiwan (inhabited by 2% of the Chinese population), but the ability to halt the opponent on the first scope of rivers and mountains. Japan obtains the Shimonoseki treaty not by breaking, but by force from the sea and the Yawat Bank on Qing's finances.

Limited scope of territorial losses "for an age of unequal treaties"

• Hong Kong (1842) = 80 km2 peninsula + 12 km2 island; just 0.0007 % of the land of the empire.
• Concessions in Shanghai + Tiencin have a full size of 60 km2, and the abroad population (1900) is ~70 1000 per 400 million inhabitants (0.017%).
• The Treaty of Aigun/Pekin (1858/1860) reflects Russia's part of the Amuru – a region of taiga mountains with a population density of < 0.3 people/km2.
• Extraterritoriality covers 16 ports; the remainder of the 1,600 inland ports trade purely Chinese (liken).

The "colonization" mainly concerns the corridors of tea and silk exports; 97-98% of the economy remains in the strategy of multilateral provincial fairs. The numbers of abroad settlers < 100,000 are incapable to break the social structure of 400-million civilizations; military pressures of the powers never exceed 40,000 expeditionary soldiers once.

Confucian ‘controlled yield strategy’ (利修、义战)

The doctrine "to surrender outwardly, to behave internally" (外示弱、内自强): the moral census orders the emperor to let "barbarites" to the tribute strategy if the price of blood outweighs the benefit. Consent to port concessions protects the agricultural interior – the key to the doctrine of the Mandate of Heaven: the people must have rice and peace, even at the expense of the "obscene" building for a abroad mission in Canton. From the position of Liu KunYi (Governor Jiangxi): "chemical" silver of the West is only another category of tributary; it is crucial to preserve the monopoly on salt, tea and ceramics inside. For statistics, it looks like "relenting", but in the Confucian strategy it's a controlled buffer that buys time for self-enforcement. Therefore, Beijing signs the treaty after the war with France, despite winning land battles: it gives distant the peripheral protectorates of Vietnam, preserves the Junnan corridor and the roads to Canton.

A synthetic image of an “inestimated power”

• The Self-reinforcement movement provides modern weapons and corps of officers – but in the western ranks unlicensed production does not appear - underrating technology.
• Wars against Japan and France show that a marine opponent can teardrop an island or a concession, but he cannot keep the front ≥ 300 km from the coast: the demographic-logistic depth effect.
• The scale of territorial losses is micro for all demography and GDP; interior trade (Jangcy, large Channel) > 10 times the volume of Canton-London exchanges – powers “bite” only the shore.
• Confucian mandate = cost-benefit calculation: erstwhile the price of war exceeds the failure of prestige, Beijing signs the treaty to keep rice and calm; it is not a weakness but an administrative and moral priority.

Conclusion

Western indicators – steel, nominal GDP, number of battleships – reduce 400 million (then) civilization to 1 column of digits. erstwhile we turn on the hidden economy of non-monetic, provincial mobilization autonomy, micro-scale real territorial losses, and conscious Confucian strategy of “amenity for time”, late-qingian and Republican China appears not to be the “sick man of Asia” (as it was in Europe called), but to be a deep, polycentric organism whose power was adequate to last the cascade of modern interventions and even to halt second-war Japan.