Pràctica del tema 3

After reviewing the various defeats that had made China's nineteenth century so bleak, Wang pointed to China's own history for one encouraging sign to the future. In the past, he noted, the most skillful emperors had never regarded their country's laws and customs as frozen; on the contrary, the founders of the Han dynasty (in 206 B.c.), of the Ming dynasty (in A.D. 1368), and of the Qing dynasty (in the mid-seventeenth century) had all adjusted to new circumstances by establishing new institutions, and had employed new men drawn from outside conventional bureaucratic channels. The Japanese had acted similarly in their dramatic Meiji Restoration reforms of the 1860s and l870s.

Chinese infantry should have small, arms and rifles such as the German Mauser, the French Chasseur, the British Martini gun, and the American Hotchkiss and Remington; Chinese artillery should have heavy guns made to the same standard as those manufactured by the Krupp company. What China could not initially manufacture herself she should purchase at intelligently competitive rates-for instance on the international Hong Kong arms market-rather than at inflated domestic prices. And the Chinese should be aware of how swiftly military technology changed: in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71, guns had been able to fire ten rounds a minute; by the time of, the Russian clash with China in the 1880s, there were guns able to fire thirty rounds a minute; and now (as the Chinese had learned at their cost) the Japanese had guns that could fire sixty rounds a minute. If China herself could not muster enough technically skilled persons, then she should call on the four million Chinese who lived overseas in Southeast Asia-who felt China's humiliation all the more keenly for looking on from the outside, but remained Chinese at heart and would be eager to help her regain her lost prestige.

The only hope for China's future lay in a full "self-strengthening program" that would reform the basic governmental structures of the country. "When objects get old, they break. When institutions get old, they are corrupted." Therefore the Emperor must move boldly in at least six areas of fundamental importance. First, the Qing government must increase taxes and raise more domestic revenue. The current government receipts were at the level of only seventy million ounces of silver a year. Such a sum was quite inadequate-it would take every ounce of the current seventy-million-a-year income for three years just to pay off the Japanese indemnity demands from the last war, for example. By drawing on rich gentry households and merchants, by developing state banks and extending transport systems, there was no reason that China's revenues could not exceed a hundred million ounces of silver a year. Second, China must develop a national railway network-for national defense, to open up border regions, and to stimulate commerce. Third, the Qing government must encourage the machine industry and develop shipping. Fourth, China must exploit her own vast mineral resources-the copper of Yunnan, the coal and iron fields of Shanxi and Guizhou, the lead in Shandong and Hubei, the tin in Jiangxi and Hunan, the many resources of Sichuan-for "if we don't open them up, then others will." Fifth, the Chinese currency system must be unified and stabilized; and sixth, an effective national postal system must be set up.

[SPENCE, Jonathan (1981), The Gate of Heavenly Peace. The Chjinese and their Revolution, 1895-1980, Londres, Penguin]