Compare and Contrast - Japan and China in the 19th Century

There were many things and ideas that the Chinese did accept and also rejected from the

Westerners during the 19th century. One of the things that the Chinese did not happily accept and

were later forced to, was the Opium trade with the British. The British started to trade Opium

with China in the early 19th century, but as time went on huge amounts of silver were being

exported from China. They realized that this relationship of opium for silver was not in their

favor but that the British were the ones really profiting from it. They rejected this trade process

and in 1839 the Opium War broke out, in which the Chinese lost. As for the Japanese they did

not have a problem with the trading with the Westerners, because in the 19th century the Japanese

did not possess any thing that was desired in the West. Unlike China they had no raw materials

and were not very technologically advanced so they didn’t have much to offer. They had a few

products here and there that could be desired, but even these were most likely taken from the

empire by foreign economic and political interests.

pose a serious alternative not only to the Qing dynasty but also to Confucian civilization as a

Unlike the Chinese they did not have huge revolts that endangered the government but they tried

1901, Europeans, Americans, and Japanese forces entered China were they only resisted for two

alliances. But the government ran into financial problems. A long budget reform spurt in the

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