HIS102Y1 Study Guide - Sinecure, Peking University, Yuan Shikai
Document Summary
Reform" meant changing china so as to make it more fit to cope with the problems it faced. China"s need to reform itself since its defeats by other powers in the mid-nineteenth century. By the late nineteenth century, the case for reform was stronger than ever: china had been defeated by france in 1885; even worse, it had been defeated by japan in. 1894-95, and the subsequent scramble for concessions" raised the danger that china might be partitioned amongst the powers. Indeed, the need for china to modernize at this time would seem to have been obvious. But one must remember that this was difficult for some chinese to accept: imitation of the west could have been seen as humiliating or immoral by some traditionalist chinese. There were many who had vested interests in the existing system. Moreover, there was the problem of what, and how much, to reform.
