NINE
Beyond the Marble Boat: The Transformation of the Chinese Military, 1850–1911
In the northwestern suburbs of Beijing locals and tourists throng the Imperial Summer Palace, now a public park. At the center of the park is a picturesque artificial lake, and by the northern shore stands a pavilion carved out of stone (said to be marble) in the shape of a boat. The gaudy palace and the marble boat were both creations of the Empress Dowager Cixi, built in the 1880s and 1890s. As every Chinese schoolchild learns, building the palace was an expensive undertaking, accomplished by diverting funds needed to purchase warships. In the end, the story goes, the Empress Dowager got her palace and a marble boat on which to enjoy a spring picnic, but shortly thereafter China was humiliated in a war with Japan. The mable boat became not just a pleasant place to view the lake, but the emblem of a modern Chinese navy that never was, and of the failure of the late Qing leadership to respond to the foreign threat.
This was a threat that should have been evident even in the rarefied world of the Qing court, far removed from everyday life, for the new palace replaced an older and larger one just a few miles away. The earlier Yuanming Palace (called the Old Summer Palace by foreigners) was burned and looted by British and French troops in 1860 at the end of the Arrow War. Now it is also a public park, but all that is left is a picturesque ruin, carefully maintained as a public remembrance of China's humiliation by foreign imperialism. To Chinese, the two palaces are powerful symbols of China's military failures in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
There is substance behind the symbolism, for China's military experience from 1850 to 1911 is, indeed, replete with failure. Qing China badly lost the Arrow War (1856–1860) and the Sino-Japanese War (1894–1895). During the Boxer Uprising in 1900 an allied foreign army again swept away Chinese resistance as it marched to Beijing. The military was so weak that from 1897 onward Qing diplomats could not resist foreign demands for economic concessions and military bases, and in 1904 the Chinese could only watch as the Russo-Japanese War was fought primarily on Chinese soil.
But it would be a mistake to limit our understanding of the period to the powerful symbolism of the marble boat. For there were successes as well: In the 1860s and 1870s massive domestic rebellions were suppressed, and from 1861 to 1895 Qing diplomats were able to limit concessions to foreigners, demarcate boundaries, and assert the Qing dynasty's claims to sovereignty in frontier areas. In fact, throughout this period Qing officials sought to reform their armed forces by introducing Western weapons and military methods. While they did not ultimately succeed in producing a military force able to resist foreign aggression, they did transform military organization and training, dramatically increase the coercive capacity of the Qing state, and transform the relationship of the military with state and society.
This chapter will present a very brief overview of some of the major themes in China's military transformation during this period. The efforts to transform the Qing military can be divided into two periods: the self-strengthening movement from 1861 to 1894, and the creation of the New Armies from 1895 to 1911. In each period there are three important interpretive issues: the reception of foreign technology and ideas by Chinese civil and military officials, changes in the organization of the Chinese military, and the evolving relationship of the military and the Qing state over half a century.
THE SELF-STRENGTHENING EFFORT
In 1861, responding to embarrassing defeat in the Arrow War (also known as the Second Opium War) and to continuing internal rebellion, leading officials of the Qing dynasty began to call for “self-strengthening.” They initiated a range of efforts to repair the weaknesses of the Qing state, often involving the use of foreign technology and foreign methods. Military measures were at the center of this effort. Over the course of three decades troops began to use Western-style infantry firearms and artillery, and at times Western patterns of military training. New naval forces were created using armored, steam-powered ships. To provide weapons for these forces, new arsenals and shipyards were created, establishing the foundation of a modern armaments industry. The self-strengthening movement, as historians later dubbed it, was led by a rather small group of officials. Provincial leaders such as Zeng Guofan and his former subordinates Li Hongzhang and Zuo Zongtang, all of whom rose to prominence fighting the Taiping Rebellion, oversaw many of the most important projects and typically receive most of the credit. In Beijing, a new bureau of foreign affairs known as the Zongli Yamen, led by the imperial Prince Gong and masterminded by Wenxiang, a prominent Manchu grand councilor, sought to coordinate and finance many of these efforts through the 1860s and 1870s.
The self-strengthening effort began as a response to the multiple military problems faced by the Qing dynasty. Rapid population growth, systemic problems in Qing local government, currency instability, and in many cases ethnic conflict produced vast internal rebellions. The most significant were the quasi-Christian Taiping Rebellion (1850–1864) in the Yangzi valley, the Nian Rebellion (1851–1868) on the North China Plain, the Muslim Panthay Rebellion (1855–1873) in Yunnan and Guizhou, and the massive Northwestern Muslim Rebellions (1862–1877), which began in Shaanxi and Gansu provinces and later engulfed the vast territory of Xinjiang in the far northwest. There were external threats as well. Along the northern reaches of the empire, Russia was extending its control in the direction of the Pacific Ocean and seeking territorial and trade concessions. And, of course, “the West”—the British, French, Americans, and later Germans—wanted trade, railway, and mining concessions and a semicolonial realm of treaty ports, missionaries, and extraterritorial justice. The Opium War (1839–1842) and the Arrow War demonstrated that the British and French were willing to use arms in pursuit of these goals.
In confronting these threats the Qing leadership depended on an elaborate military system that had evolved since the Qing conquest. The regular military organization had two major sections, the Eight Banners and the Green Standard Army. The Eight Banners was a system of hereditary military and social organization for ethnic Manchus, Mongols, and Han Chinese whose families had long-standing loyalties to the Qing throne. Garrisons of bannermen were placed in strategic positions across the country. But while the banners were presumptively military forces, and their members provided with stipends, by the midnineteenth century they were primarily social organizations and their military effectiveness was limited. The Green Standard Army was ethnically Chinese but also predominantly hereditary in its organization. With the Green Standard troops spread across the country in tiny garrison units serving in constabulary as well as military roles, they were not easily concentrated into large mass armies, and when concentrated often did not perform as expected. By the midnineteenth century, two temporary modes of military organization existed for dealing with emergencies. “Braves” (yong), perhaps more adequately translated as “recruits,” were soldiers hired for a particular military task, paid from emergency funds, and in normal conditions disbanded once the crisis was over. Militia (tuanlian) were military organizations created by local elites and trained to come together to protect their locality when it was threatened.
But by the end of the 1850s the multiple challenges to Qing sovereign authority had pressed the empire's military capacities to their limits and beyond. The regular military forces proved pitifully incompetent in the face of both internal and external military threats. Against the domesic rebels, as the banner and Green Standard armies failed to perform as expected, Qing leaders increasingly turned to large, ramified armies of recruits, which gradually formed several new permanent (or semipermanent) forces, notably the Hunan Army created by Zeng Guofan and the Anhui Army created by Zeng's protégé Li Hongzhang. These new armies gradually began to gain the upper hand against the Taipings. Qing forces had even more difficulty against the British and French. Only one engagement in the Opium and Arrow wars, the 1859 ambush of British and French flotillas at Dagu in north China, could be regarded as a Qing victory. It resulted in a still more humiliating foreign invasion of north China that forced the emperor to flee Beijing. These military travails against both domestic and foreign opponents led officials such as Wenxiang, Zeng Guofan, and Li Hongzhang to implement the first efforts to adopt Western patterns of military technology and organization.
Army reforms began with several important experiments. In the early 1860s special brigades of Chinese soldiers equipped with European weapons and led by foreign officers were incorporated into the armies of Li Hongzhang and Zuo Zongtang as they fought the Taipings. The Ever-Victorious Army (led by the colorful British soldier Charles “Chinese” Gordon) and the Ever-Triumphant Army (led by French officers) played a significant although not decisive role in the final defeat of the Taipings. More generally, units of both the Anhui and Hunan Armies began to use imported Western-style rifles in the 1860s, and some efforts were made to incorporate Western drill. There were also attempts to revive the banner and Green Standard armies. In Beijing, in the aftermath of the disastrous performance of the metropolitan banners in the Arrow War, Prince Gong and Wenxiang organized a special unit called the Firearms Division. Often called the Peking Field Force, this unit was composed of selected bannermen equipped with Russian rifles and French cannon and drilled by British officers. Green Standard forces in the north were reorganized, equipped with rifles, given a modicum of Western drill, and dubbed “retrained forces.” Similarly, in the 1870s new naval units equipped with both foreign and domestically produced steamships began to appear, and by the 1880s these formed separate northern and southern fleets.
The modern Chinese military-industrial complex also began to develop in the mid-1860s. While our knowledge of pre-1860 arms production in Qing China is quite limited, it appears to have been a mixture of government-run foundries for casting cannon and artisanal gunmakers producing matchlock muskets and other small arms. Zeng Guofan realized by the early 1860s that to produce superior Western-style rifles and artillery, more sophisticated Western manufacturing methods would have to be imported. He began by creating an arsenal in Suzhou during the Taiping war. This was soon moved to Shanghai and vastly expanded to form the Jiangnan Arsenal under the aegis of Li Hongzhang when Zeng was moved north to fight the Nian rebels. The Jiangnan Arsenal was designed to manufacture rifles, artillery, and ammunition, and even had limited shipbuilding capacities. In 1866 Zuo Zongtang proposed the creation of an even more ambitious facility, the Fuzhou Navy Yard, intended to provide modern warships to protect China's shores. While Zuo was transferred shortly thereafter to the northwest to lead the Qing forces against Muslim rebels, under the leadership of the very capable official Shen Baozhen the Fuzhou shipyard, using French technical assistance, became the most sophisticated military manufacturing facility in China. Another major arsenal was created in Tianjin, initially with Zongli Yamen support, and under Li Hongzhang during the 1870s and 1880s it became a major supplier of ammunition. Some smaller ammunition production facilities were begun as well. In the early 1870s Zuo Zongtang began to establish an arsenal at Lanzhou to support his northwestern campaign. Smaller arsenals were created in the mid-1870s in Sichuan and Shandong. Taken on their own terms, the new military-industrial facilities were a dramatic improvement on the existing Chinese systems of weapons production. But Qing officials were also gravely aware that the weapons produced were not equivalent to contemporary Western production, and Chinese-produced ammunition was often unreliable.
By the mid-1870s the initial stage of self-strengthening had come to an end. Increasingly, financial restraints limited the creation of large new facilities. And while the Taiwan crisis in 1874 (when a Japanese military expedition landed on the coast of Taiwan, ostensibly to punish aborigines who had murdered and otherwise mistreated both Japanese and Ryukyuan sailors) renewed concerns about the need to further improve the military, large new commitments of funds were not forthcoming. Furthermore, as many of the early supporters of self-strengthening, such as Zeng Guofan, Wenxiang, and Shen Baozhen, passed away, and Zuo Zongtang was preoccuppied with his northwestern campaign against the Muslim rebels, the burden of reform increasingly fell on the shoulders of Li Hongzhang, now the governor-general of Zhili province. From 1870 on, Li's Anhui Army defended the approaches to Beijing, and in his role as superintendant of the northern ports Li also controlled the Northern Fleet. By the 1880s these were the best forces in China. The Anhui Army was equipped with modern rifles and artillery, often purchased from German or other European suppliers, and Anhui Army officers were aided by foreign (usually German) advisors. Li also sought to combine private and government investment to create strategic industries, including mines, telegraphs, and a steamship company (that could transport Qing troops in times of war). From the mid-1880s Zhang Zhidong, a younger official who had once been critical of the self-strengthening effort, began to create new facilities following a similar pattern, including a new arsenal and an iron and steel facility in the Wuhan area. These “official oversight and merchant management” (guandu shangban) facilities had mixed results. In the case of the China Merchants Steam Navigation Company, initial success under merchant management was later compromised as officials skimmed off profits for other uses, deterring further private investment.
The early self-strengthening period brought significant achievements. The use of Western weapons gave the Qing forces major advantages over domestic opponents. By the early 1870s the rebellions in China proper had been defeated, and by 1878 Qing armies had reasserted control of even the outlying frontiers of Xinjiang. In the meantime, the improved military situation had led to a stabilization of the international situation of the Qing state. During the 1874 Taiwan crisis, Shen Baozhen's quick mobilization of military resources put pressure on the Japanese to seek a diplomatic solution, and Qing authority in Taiwan was firmly reasserted (and as Edwin Leung has shown, contrary to the textbook explanation, the settlement did not sacrifice Qing claims in the Ryukyus).1 In 1881 Zeng Jize's brilliant diplomacy, backed by Zuo Zongtang's military mobilization along the northwestern border, led to the Russian withdrawal from the strategically important Ili valley in Xinjiang, which Russian troops had occupied for a decade. In 1884–1885 the war with France, primarily over French demands in northern Vietnam, saw some serious defeats for Qing forces, particularly at sea. But in Taiwan, Qing troops under Liu Mingquan performed reasonably well, preventing the French from capturing the town of Danshui, and along the Vietnam-China border, after initial French advances, Qing troops defeated the French at Lang Son and were advancing toward Hanoi when the armistice was signed. The war was settled without the Qing making any new concessions or paying substantial indemnities. While hardly a victory, the contrast to the Opium and Arrow Wars was striking.
In 1894–1895 all of this unravelled. In a lightning campaign, the armies of Meiji Japan crushed Li Hongzhang's best forces in Korea and then proceeded into China. The Japanese navy smashed the northern Chinese fleet at the Battle of the Yellow Sea, and Li Hongzhang's army lost a series of battles in Korea and north China. The settlement was humiliating. China ceded Taiwan to Japan, allowed the Japanese a free hand in Korea, and agreed to pay a massive indemnity, effectively covering Japan's costs for the war. Only the self-interested intervention of Germany, France, and Russia prevented the cession of the strategically important tip of the Liaodong Peninsula and the naval base at Port Arthur. But this came at the cost of a still larger indemnity.
SELF-STRENGTHENING AND QING PERCEPTIONS OF FOREIGN METHODS
Ever since the Sino-Japanese War ended in defeat for Qing China in 1895, historians and others have focused on the slow pace at which Qing officials seemed to awaken to the need to adopt the latest Western military methods. The war made comparison with Japan both obvious and invidious. In Japan, the leaders of the new Meiji government had made the creation of a modern military their highest priority. A new conscript army was created; organized along the lines of the latest and best European models, it was led by a professionally trained and technically proficient officer corps. By the turn of the century, the Japanese army and navy were among the most efficient military organizations in the world. By contrast, the Qing leadership seemed to stand still; indeed, many argue that fierce ethnocentrism and an intense allegiance to conservative Confucian values stymied China's efforts to move into the modern world. While there is some truth to this picture, it is exaggerated. Qing officials from the early 1860s onward were enthusiastic about the superior capabilities of Western weaponry. They were, however, far less receptive to Western training and Western institutional models; these only slowly came to be accepted, and were only effectively endorsed in the aftermath of the Sino-Japanese War and the Boxer Uprising. To understand the nature of the Qing response to Western miltiary ideas, methods, and patterns of organization, these issues must be considered in their intellectual and institutional context.
From very early on, Qing officials who actually faced Western military opponents were impressed with the efficacy of their weapons and the mobility of their ships. The famous imperial commissioner Lin Zexu, whose efforts to end the opium trade sparked the Opium War, quickly recognized the technological superiority of the British navy, particularly its maneuverable ships and powerful cannon. He created a translation bureau to try to learn as much as possible about his opponents, and one of his advisors, the prominent political theorist and military historian Wei Yuan, organized this material into the famous Gazetteer of the Maritime Regions (Haiguo tuzhi). Wei argued that arsenals and shipyards that could produce the superior European-style arms had to be established in order to develop an effective system of maritime defense. While the warnings of Lin and Wei fell on deaf ears, the Arrow War had a more dramatic impact. In Beijing, Wenxiang was unsparing in his criticism of Qing troops who had failed to defend north China: They were, he believed, poorly trained, poorly armed, and poorly led. Wenxiang tried to revive the units defending Beijing by introducing Western weapons and drill. Similarly, provincial officials such as Zeng Guofan, Li Hongzhang, and Zuo Zongtang who were fighting the Taipings became convinced that superior Western weapons were a crucial ingredient in suppressing the rebellion. In 1874–1875, a national debate over defense policy showed that senior officials across Qing China supported the adoption of Western weaponry nearly unanimously, although there were significant disagreements over what this should entail.
Curiously, however, Qing officials were far more reluctant to endorse Western training and organizational patterns. The Firearms Division was trained by British drill masters through the 1860s, but once its sponsor Wenxiang fell ill, training fell off and the unit gradually deteriorated. Likewise, Li Hongzhang's effort to incorporate Western drill into the repertoire of the Anhui Army by creating a special training center at Fenghuangshan quickly faded. In the 1870s, among the senior officers of the Anhui Army, only Zhou Shengquan (1833–1885) showed an interest not only in Western weapons (in which he was something of an expert) but also in Western training methods.2 While foreign observers saw European-style military organization, uniforms, and culture as of central importance, to their shock and annoyance most Qing officials did not.
There were both ideological and institutional reasons for the selective response to Western military methods before 1895. At the level of perceptions, to Qing officials the modern West was not a seamless whole: Diplomats, merchants, missionaries, and adventurers who came to China had their own motives, and their products and ideas needed to be considered in that light. The modern West could not or should not simply be imitated. At the same time, the Chinese political milieu shaped the way that Western ideas and technology were received and utilized. Orthodox Neo-Confucian political theory (which had undergone a revival in the 1840s and 1850s) emphasized that leaders needed proper ethical orientations rather than specific technical skills. Therefore, efforts by self-strengthening advocates to provide official positions for specialists in Western technology were subject to intense opposition by conservatives. Specialists in foreign methods were regarded as small-minded technicians and therefore morally suspect. To conservatives, the self-strengtheners' emphasis on technology was misplaced; a moral renaissance among officials was what was needed. As one conservative critic declared in 1871, “Ever since the [foreign trouble] began in Guangdong, we have been on an unfortunate slope, and we must hope to get loyal, righteous, and heroic men, who can act for the country in managing its difficulties.”3 Good men, not gadgets, would restore the dynasty to power. Even reformers, moreover, worried about the motives of foreign advisors. During the 1860s the Zongli Yamen and Li Hongzhang, the most prominent advocates of Western technology at the time, questioned whether foreigners would be willing to sell their key technologies to China, and even more whether foreign officers serving in the Chinese military would be willing to take orders from their Chinese superiors. Early returns were not good. An attempt to purchase a flotilla of river gunboats failed in 1863 when the British commander refused to be subordinated to Zeng Guofan, and in the final days of the Taiping campaign Gordon very nearly resigned in a huff over Zeng's management of the operation. Similarly, in the late 1870s the U.S. government reneged on earlier commitments to allow Chinese boys who had been educated in the United States to study at West Point and Annapolis. Taken together, these concerns created a quandary. On the one hand, foreigners could not be trusted in positions of authority. One the other hand, Chinese who had moved outside of the traditional education system to develop Western technical expertise were seen as morally suspect.
Qing efforts at Westernizing military reforms were also limited by institutional problems. In the financial realm, the Qing government simply did not adequately support military reform efforts. During the 1850s and 1860s new revenues flowed in from taxes on commerce, especially the internal transit tax known as the lijin and the maritime customs system administered by Sir Robert Hart and staffed with foreigners (but which reported to the Zongli Yamen). Foreign loans guaranteed with customs revenues were also used extensively to fund military campaigns. Gradually the new tax revenues were committed to various civil and military projects, and the discretionary funds that had made the reforms of the 1860s possible disappeared. Foreign loans were generally only used for emergencies, and further financial reforms were not pursued. Consequently, after 1875 financial constraints limited reform.4
The structure of Qing political institutions also impeded reform, for administrative authority over both civil and military affairs was spread out among numerous provincial and metropolitan officials. This system was intended to avoid dangerous concentrations of power and maximize the choices available to the emperor, but it made the management of policies extending across provincial jurisdictions quite difficult. Only decisive involvement by the throne (i.e., the emperor or the regents ruling in his name) could produce effective policies on the national level. And yet from 1861 until 1898 the throne simply did not act to establish strong and consistent defense policies. While reforms went ahead, support was half-hearted and self-strengthening advocates were subjected to ferocious criticism from conservative officials. This opposition eroded the enthusiasm of the reformers and almost certainly deterred others from joining their ranks.
Finally, in many respects the nature of foreign imperial involvement served as a deterrent to broader economic development, particularly in areas such as railways that could be seen as strategically important. The institution of extraterritoriality, by which foreigners were not subject to the jurisdiction of Qing law courts, severely limited the willingness of Qing officials to allow foreign investment. The earliest Western residents in China's interior, Christian missionaries, were felt to be abusing extraterritoriality to protect their converts and subvert the authority of local government. Foreigners with extraterritoriality, Qing officials felt, could not be controlled. The 1876 Wusong Railroad incident, in which a railway illegally constructed by British merchants from Shanghai to Wusong was purchased and removed by the Qing government, is often taken as an example of resistance to modernization. But to Qing officials the railway constituted a serious infringement on Qing sovereignty, and allowing it to continue would simply sanction lawlessness. In this situation, the dangers of foreign investment were perceived as far outweighing its economic and military benefits. Before 1895 new projects proceeded only when the government was convinced of strategic benefits and was willing to invest its own resources and/or attract private Chinese investors.
In summary, during the self-strengthening era the majority of Qing officials quickly recognized the superiority of Western weaponry, although they were more doubtful about methods of organization and training. Reforms were slowed not only by ideological resistance, but also, and more important, by institutional problems: Financial shortfalls, poor coordination among officials, and a lack of consistent support from the top combined to limit military improvements. Western pressure for reform and foreign investment was often counterproductive, making Qing officials justifiably suspicious of the purposes of foreign investors and diplomats. In the aftermath of the humiliation by Japan, however, the Westernization of the Qing military was dramatically accelerated. Doubts about the efficacy of Western models of organization were silenced, and after 1900 the throne came down in firm support of reform.
THE CREATION OF THE NEW ARMIES AND THE ROAD TO REVOLUTION
The crushing defeat in the Sino-Japanese War initiated radical changes in military policy. In the aftermath of the war, with its best armed forces destroyed and its prestige in tatters, the Qing government found itself in a position of profound weakness. Long unwilling to give railway and mining concessions to foreign companies, the Qing government now found it could do little to resist foreign demands. From 1897 to 1899 a dramatic scramble for concessions saw the empire carved into putative spheres of economic influence for foreign powers. Within these spheres foreigners demanded and received rail and mining concessions, naval bases, and other benefits. In this context increasingly ambitious efforts were made to restore China's military strength, this time by building new armies from scratch.
The first of the new armies were sponsored by two officials, Yuan Shikai in north China and Zhang Zhidong in Hubei. In 1895 Zhang had established a new “Self-Strengthening Army” consisting of thirteen battalions of carefully selected men who were organized along European patterns and trained by a team of thirty-five German officers and noncommissioned officers. This force included cavalry, infantry, artillery, and engineering units, and also had medical and support personnel. Zhang also created a new military academy in Nanjing in 1896 to provide trained officers for his new army. When he was transferred back to his former position of governor-general of Hunan and Hubei, Zhang created another military academy in Wuchang and began to reform the troops in these two provinces. Meanwhile, at the behest of the increasingly influential Manchu grand councilor Ronglu, in 1895 Yuan Shikai, a former protégé of Li Hongzhang, began to establish a new army to prop up the weakened defenses of north China. This “newly created army” was to total some 7,000 men, trained by German instructors.
Defeat also spurred larger changes in the political sphere. The shortlived Hundred Days Reforms in 1898, sponsored by the Guangxu emperor, proposed radical reforms in government and education aimed at putting China on a more positive path along Meiji lines. It was, however, politically naive. A coup supported by Yuan Shikai, among others, forced the emperor into involuntary retirement and restored his great aunt, the Empress Dowager Cixi, to the regency she had held from 1861 to 1873 and then from 1874 until 1889, and the emperor was imprisoned at the Summer Palace. Cixi reversed most of the political and educational reforms, but military reforms initiated before 1898 continued. In 1900 a more severe disruption followed, the Boxer Uprising. Originating in drought-stricken areas in north China, the Society of Boxers United in Righteousness was a popular organization that practiced martial arts and other spiritual practices. Its members targeted and victimized Christian converts and to a lesser extent foreign missionaries, believing them to be the cause of their economic and social hardships. Encouraged by a number of antiforeign officials, the Boxers grew rapidly, slaughtering numerous Christians as they spread across north China. Eventually, with support from the Empress Dowager, Boxers marched on Beijing, and together with imperial troops surrounded the foreign legations. Eight countries proceeded to send a joint expeditionary force that, facing only limited resistance from regular Qing troops, marched to Beijing, relieved the legations, and forced another embarrassing treaty on the Qing government.
The military reforms were only strengthened by the disaster. Prominent provincial officials such as Zhang Zhidong, Liu Kunyi, and Yuan Shikai had refused to support the Boxers and stood aside as the foreign invasion proceeded. In early 1901, after the treaty was settled, the Empress Dowager began to initiate thoroughgoing reforms in government, education, and the military, known as the New Policy reforms. The military aspects of these reforms specifically built on the earlier efforts of Zhang Zhidong and Yuan Shikai. Yuan's army was rapidly expanded to form the Beiyang (or “northern”) Army, which soon established itself as the preeminent military force in China. Provincial governments were ordered to establish armies along Western lines and to set up military academies to produce professionally trained officers. Separate standing armies, reserves, and gendarmerie divisions were to be created. The traditional military examination system was suspended and discussion of either dissolving or reforming the traditional Green Standard and banner armies began; in the end these were often redesignated as reserve units. Response to the New Army reforms varied from province to province. Progress was greatest where strong, reform-minded governors-general were in place, as, for example, in Zhili under Yuan Shikai and Hunan and Hubei under Zhang Zhidong. Elsewhere the process was less dramatic: Existing units were reorganized and officers trained in nascent military academies. Foreign (often Japanese) advisors were hired to train Chinese officers, and occasionally to drill Chinese troops.
In 1904 the government established a long-term plan to reorganize the New Army into thirty-six divisions totaling some 450,000 men under the oversight of the Army Reorganization Bureau. This was to be the “New Army,” and it was initially expected to be completed by 1922, although this was later advanced to 1912. The goals of the reforms were to standardize the hodgepodge of organizations, pay scales, and equipment then extant, and to begin to establish firmer central control. By 1906 there were ten New Army divisions: Five were part of Yuan Shikai's Beiyang Army in north China, and the sixth was made up of Zhang Zhidong's troops in Hubei; the remaining divisions and some independent brigades were spread across the rest of China, and generally both undermanned and undertrained. Large numbers of older types of army organizations, including Green Standard and banner troops and remnants of the Hunan and Anhui Armies, continued to exist as reserve and gendarmerie forces. Progress was substantial, yet slower than authorities hoped.
While the New Policy reforms did make dramatic progress on many fronts, the Qing government was facing a crisis of legitimacy. Abroad, dissident intellectuals like Liang Qichao (a supporter of the Hundred Days Reforms) were calling for constitutional reform, while revolutionaries like Sun Yat-sen and Zou Rong spiced their calls for revolution with racist anti-Manchu rhetoric. Within the government there were tensions as well. The failure of the leading provincial officials to support the Empress Dowager's pro-Boxer policy, however correct in hindsight, suggested that the throne could not always count on the obedience of its officials, and conversely officials could legitimately see the interests of China in conflict with the demands of the highest authorities.5 The accumulation of power by Manchu officials in Beijing exacerbated ethnic tensions. Manchu suspicions of leading Chinese officials were demonstrated by the transfer of both Zhang Zhidong and Yuan Shikai to Beijing in 1907, and the enforced retirement of Yuan two years later. Meanwhile, the central government's reluctance to cede political power to local elites and form a more democratic government bred growing resistance.
In 1911 and 1912 revolution finally felled the Qing dynasty, and the New Armies were a central part of it. The rebellion was sparked when it was discovered that soldiers in the Wuchang garrison were associated with revolutionary groups. The panicked soldiers rebelled, forcing a reluctant brigade commander, Li Yuanhong, to join the rebellion. With astonishing speed the insurrection spread among local elites and new military men. The government, facing the crisis, discovered that its New Armies were not as loyal as it had imagined; suppressing the rapidly growing rebellion was hard going. Yuan Shikai was recalled, and by early 1912 he decided that with the Beiyang Army's support for the Qing regime lukewarm at best, his most promising alternative was to negotiate the abdication of the Qing emperor. Using his unparalled influence as the creator of the Beiyang Army, he also established himself as president of the new regime.
EVOLVING MILITARY ORGANIZATION
The New Armies were the final phase in a three-stage transformation of military organization. Before 1850 Qing military institutions meshed hereditary recruitment and bureaucratic organization. During the self-strengthening era Western weapons were imported, but the military structure continued to follow either existing Qing insitutional systems or to take on new, indigenous models of organization. After 1895, new armies began to accept the Western military model whole, including organization, training, and even military culture.
For all of their success, in many respects the recruit armies of Zeng Guofan and Li Hongzhang seem like a backward step from earlier Qing military institutions. The banner and Green Standard armies, notwithstanding their hereditary mode of recruitment and antiquated weaponry, were professional and bureaucratic. During the self-strengthening era, the recruit armies of Zeng Guofan, Li Hongzhang, and Zuo Zongtang were organized along radically different principles. They were led by amateurs, men with no formal military training and often members of the literati elite, forced by circumstance to fight. Where personnel in the Eight Banners and the Green Standard forces were seen as largely interchangeable, key elements of the recruit armies were based on local and personal ties, important modes of organization in Chinese society. Zeng Guofan, drawing on the writings of the Ming-dynasty military thinker Qi Jiguang, recruited his army in his native province of Hunan and created a pyramidal structure of human relationships: He recruited commanders from among friends, relatives, and associates, and they in turn recruited their own subordinates. At the level of the battalion (ying, a unit of around 500 men), personal ties between commanders and recruits were so important in enforcing unity and discipline that when a commander died or retired, the battalion usually was not placed under a new commander—rather, it was disbanded and a new battalion was recruited. This was a striking contrast to the Green Standard armies, in which efforts were made to limit such local and personal connections.
To make these armies function effectively, senior officials also began to establish increasingly elaborate and specialized staff offices (mufu), recruiting specialized personnel to manage various functions. While the staff offices were originally associated with the official's civilian responsibilities, they quickly began to provide crucial staff and logistical support for the recruited armies. Near the end of the Taiping conflict, Zeng Guofan's military headquarters was said to have “at least two hundred officials…. Besides his secretaries, who numbered no less than a hundred, there were expectant officials, learned scholars, lawyers, mathematicians, astronomers and machinists.”6 Other commanders created similar staff organizations.
While the recruited armies were initially very successful, over time their training and discipline tended to break down. The emphasis on personal rather than bureaucratic organization undoubtedly had something to do with this. Where the banner and Green Standard forces had quite carefully defined training regimens, albeit using outdated weaponry such as matchlock muskets and bows and arrows, in the new recruit armies the commanders individually had to take responsibility for implementing training. With the influx of new rifles and the increased cost of training with live ammunition, many commanders did not provide sufficient opportunities for live target practice.
Leadership was also a problem. The military background of commanders was often limited to experience from the Taiping, Nian, and Muslim rebellions, with little formal military training. The problems among junior officers were even worse: Foreigners often noted the reluctance of junior officers to participate in training, and stated that they were unwilling to lead troops in battle.7 Li Hongzhang agreed with the substance of these criticisms. In 1885 he created a new military academy to train officers for his Anhui Army (and made similar efforts to professionalize the Northern Navy). But these efforts to improve the professionalism of the Anhui Army were insufficient, and the superior discipline, mobility, and training of the Japanese armies proved decisive in 1894–1895.
In terms of organization, the Sino-Japanese War was a turning point in the history of the Qing military. The destruction of the Anhui Army's best units by Japanese forces had a double effect: It eliminated the existing Anhui Army as an effective fighting force, and it clearly demonstrated the limitations of the recruited armies. The new-model armies of the post-1895 period, exemplified by Yuan Shikai's Beiyang Army and Zhang Zhidong's Self-Strengthening Army, were deliberately built on Western lines. The heavy emphasis on personal ties was replaced with bureaucratic organization, academy education, and an emphasis on discipline, training, and overall efficiency. In theory, merit was to guide recruitment and promotion. Indeed, a central aspect of the New Army reforms was education to form a disciplined and technically proficient officer corps through the creation of military academies, such as Yuan Shikai's at Baoding. Solid performance in the ranks could also provide a way up the ladder: In the Beiyang Army at least, literate recruits were able quickly to advance to become noncommissioned officers and eventually commissioned officers.
Significantly, the culture of uniformity that by this time was a central part of European military life was also imported. Before 1895, Chinese soldiers generally did not wear uniforms. This, along with the lack of close order drill, gave them what to foreigners was a distinctly unmilitary look (“clothed in a sort of Falstaff uniform,” remarked the British diplomat Rutherford Al-cock).8 The New Armies impressed foreign observers for their replication of European military culture. The Maritime Customs inspector-general Sir Robert Hart, a veteran of over half a century in China, declared after viewing the Beiyang Army maneuvers in October 1905 that the new troops were
an immense improvement on anything before seen in China—stout men, well paid and well dressed, strict discipline willingly obeyed, arms in good condition, and officers who are really soldiers and not merely be-button'd mandarins with fans in their hands instead of swords. Even Yuan [Shikai], the Viceroy, and Tieh Liang, the military chief of the War Bureau, got out of their Chinese robes and put on gold-laced trousers and jackets, etc., for the occasion! Militarism has taken hold and root.9
The Chinese had embraced Western models of military organization both in form and in substance. Nevertheless, even the New Armies were lacking important elements of contemporary European military organization. In particular, the lack of centralized organization and a general staff system suggests that even these new armies had a long way to go to match their potential European and Japanese adversaries.
THE MILITARY AND THE STATE
China's military transformation is important on one final analytical level: Military transformation dramatically influenced the development of the late Qing state. We can see this in three areas: First, there were shifts in the relationship of the central government in Beijing and the provincial leaders. Second, as local elites became more involved in organizing local militia and other military activities, they became deeply involved in the political realm. Finally, the New Armies were crucial to the overthrow of the Qing regime.
The issue of central-provincial relations is a complicated one. The writings of Luo Ergang in China in the 1930s and Franz Michael in subsequent years in the United States articulated what is known as the “regionalism thesis”: In the effort to suppress the Taiping and other mid-century rebellions, officials like Zeng Guofan and Li Hongzhang became, in effect, regional satraps, with essentially “personal” armies and autonomous sources of revenue from the lijin commercial transit tax. The Qing state, it was argued, was never able truly to reassert central control, and so the rise of these provincial leaders was a direct antecedent to the complete collapse of central control during the 1910s and 1920s.10 While initially plausible (and still widely reproduced in textbooks), the regionalism thesis has been under constant and devastating attack for years. Kwang-ching Liu demonstrated that Li Hongzhang remained highly dependent on the central government for funds and remained a loyal central government agent, and that his more or less permanent position as Zhili governor-general was an exception. Other scholars have shown that the customs revenues remained under firm central control. While a few governors-general undoubtedly became exceptionally powerful as a result of the suppression of the rebellion, it did not represent a fundamental structural shift in the Qing state.11
The real shift in central-provincial relations began during the Boxer Uprising. When the central government began to support the Boxers' antiforeign activities and the siege of the foreign legations, prominent provincial officials saw this as at best futile and at worst suicidal. While in many cases they simply ignored central government edicts and waited for the storm to pass, in the crucial Yangzi valley the prominent governors-general Zhang Zhidong and Liu Kunyi, responding to intense pressure from local elites, signed the Yangzi Compact, an agreement with the British that no military action would be undertaken in the Yangzi valley—and an open rejection of an imperial edict. In the aftermath of the disaster, as the Empress Dowager Cixi initiated the New Policy reforms, the disobedience was conveniently forgotten, but the unwillingness of even loyal senior officials and local elites to listen to Beijing indicated a real break from the traditions of Qing government. The building of new armies was primarily a provincial activity, and only slowly did the central state try to take control of the process. This centralization effort had not achieved much success by the end of the first decade. Efforts to assert control by shifting Zhang Zhidong and Yuan Shikai from their positions of power, and to nationalize the railways that local elites had vigorously sought to purchase from foreign control, provided fuel for open rebellion. From 1908 onward, as reformers became disillusioned with the central government, this lack of effective control would become a fatal problem.
A second level on which military change shaped the Qing state was in the formation of local militias in the mid-nineteenth century. Philip Kuhn argued that militarization of local elites during the rebellion led them into increasingly powerful political roles and toward growing efforts to influence state activities.12 The activism of local elites in everything ranging from paramilitary and police functions to tax collection and philanthropy was one of the most important developments in the post-Taiping period, eventually leading to local assemblies and other openly political activities. While local elites had always played significant roles in local politics, the scope and organization of these developments reached new levels, and at least in some areas, such as tax collection, there was a growing reliance on coercion in implementing these roles.
In the final decades of the dynasty, these two trends—local activism and increasing provincial power—came together. The New Policy reforms eliminated the traditional Confucian-based examination system, which had long attracted ambitious young men to pursue government service and inculcated in them politically safe ethical orientations toward service and loyalty. Now, with no alternative method of becoming involved in the government, many of these young men began to enter the New Armies and were far more literate and far more inclined than earlier Chinese soldiers to be politically active. By 1911 there were significant numbers of men in the New Armies who were increasingly committed to the revolutionary cause.
CONCLUSION
The traditional narrative embodied in the symbolism of the marble boat—of a militarily weak China conspicuously abused by Western and later Japanese imperialism and unwilling to respond effectively to the challenge—has tremendous resonance to Chinese nationalists and a degree of historical validity. But closer examination shows a more complex and interesting picture. While Qing reform efforts in the 1860s and 1870s did not create modern, Western-style armed forces, they did have a major impact on the military efficacy of China's armed forces. The suppression of rebellion and the stabilization of China's international position are clear indications of this. While Qing China through the 1870s and 1880s was hardly in a strong military position, the fact remains that Japanese threats in 1874–1875, a near war with Russia over Ili in 1880, and open fighting with France in 1884–1885 did not produce radical changes in China's position vis-à-vis the foreign powers. It was only with the crushing defeat at the hands of Japan that the scales shifted, and a dramatic effort to replicate European military patterns followed. While again this did not lead to a national military revival as its sponsors hoped, it did create a professional European-style military, dramatically more effective than the forces that had been humiliated just a few years before.
The historical significance of these efforts at military transformation is very much interwoven into the broader history of Chinese state and society in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The military transformation had direct impact on state structures: The recruit armies made provincial rather than central authorities the main locus of military reforms, and after 1900 central government authority was clearly in decline. The militarization of local elites during the great rebellions gradually led to their growing politicization, and ultimately to their significant role in overthrowing the dynasty. In the end, ironically enough, the new Western-model armies intended to save the dynasty from foreign aggression undermined it from within and bequeathed to the new Chinese republic a substantially modernized and deeply politicized military.
SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING
The starting point for those interested in late Qing military issues remains John K. Fairbank, ed., The Cambridge History of China, vols. 10 and 11 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978–1980). Particularly important are the articles by Kwang-ching Liu on the “Ch'ing Restoration” and Ting-yee Kuo on “Self-Strengthening” in vol. 10, and by Kwang-ching Liu and Richard J. Smith on “The Military Challenge” in vol. 11, with valuable material in many other chapters. The bibliographical essays at the back of each volume provide an excellent starting point for research in published primary and secondary sources.
On the Chinese military system in the 1850s, see Richard J. Smith, “Chinese Military Institutions in the Mid-Nineteenth Century, 1850–1860,” Journal of Asian History 8 (1974): 122–161. On the self-strengthening period, there is a considerable body of work. Mary Clabaugh Wright, The Last Stand of Chinese Conservatism: The T'ung-Chih Restoration, 1862–1874 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1957) is an invaluable survey. While Wright's argument that Confucianism was incompatible with modernity has been widely criticized, her empirical research is extraordinary and interpretations of specific issues remain cogent. On the recruit (yongying) armies, the works of the Taiwanese scholar Wang Ermin are essential. Particularly important is his analysis “Qingdai yongying zhidu” [The Brave Battalion system of the Qing Period], which is available in a collection of Wang's essays titled Qingshi junshi shilunji [Essays on military affairs in the Late Qing] (Taipei: Lianjing chubanshe, 1980). Wang's Huai jun zhi [Treatise on the Anhui Army] (Taipei: Academia Sinica, 1967) is the definitive work on the most important military force in the period leading up to 1895. Also useful is Stanley Spector, Li Hung-chang and the Huai Army: A Study of Nineteenth Century Regionalism (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1964). On local militia, see Philip A. Kuhn, Rebellion and Its Enemies in Late Imperial China: Militarization and Social Structure, 1796–1864 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1970). On the efforts to create a modern navy, see John L. Rawlinson, China's Struggle for Naval Development, 1839–1895 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967). The early history of China's modern arms industry is the subject of two excellent works, Thomas L. Kennedy, The Arms of Kiangnan: Modernization in the Chinese Ordnance Industry, 1860–1895 (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1978) and David Pong, Shen Pao-chen and China's Modernization in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), which deals with the creation of the Fuzhou Navy Yard. A useful collection of more recent scholarship related to Li Hongzhang's multifaceted role is Samuel C. Chu and Kwang-ching Liu, Li Hungchang and China's Early Modernization (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1994).
On the creation of the New Armies after 1895, there is somewhat less material. Yoshihiro Hatano, “The New Armies,” in Mary Clabaugh Wright, ed., China in Revolution: The First Phase, 1900–1913 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968), is the best short account. Ralph L. Powell, The Rise of Chinese Military Power, 1895–1912 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1955), while dated in its treatment of the period before the Sino-Japanese War, remains a useful general narrative on military developments after 1895. Stephen R. MacKinnon, Power and Politics in Late Imperial China: Yuan Shi-kai in Beijing and Tianjin, 1901–1908 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1980) analyzes the role of Yuan Shikai and the formation of his Beiyang Army. Ernest P. Young, “Yuan Shih-k'ai's Rise to the Presidency,” in Wright, China in Revolution, considers the role of the New Armies and particularly Yuan Shikai in the overthrow of the Qing dynasty. The most complete treatment of the military's part in the fall of the Qing is Edmund S. K. Fung, The Military Dimension of the Chinese Revolution (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1980).
There is a startling shortage of accounts of military campaigns in English that take advantage of Chinese sources. A recent exception is Allen Fung, “Testing the Self-Strengthening: The Chinese Army in the Sino-Japanese War of 1894–5,” Modern Asian Studies 30 (1996): 1007–1031, which offers an important corrective to textbook accounts based primarily on the reports of observers on the Japanese side.
SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER RESEARCH
There are vast gaps in the scholarship on this period and enormous opportunities for new research for those willing and able to use Chinese and Japanese sources. There is a considerable body of published primary source material in Chinese that has only minimally been exploited, and the First National Archives in Beijing, open to foreign scholars, is a treasure trove of new material. Detailed battle accounts of the Sino-Japanese War and the Sino-French War are badly needed, and Chinese documents can offer important new insights. While we have a fairly good idea of the larger structures of military organization, our knowledge of the actualities of life in the military, including training regimens, logistics, and other aspects of the infrastructure of war is still very limited. Research on the culture and social life of the military is also badly needed.
NOTES
1. Edwin Leung, “The Quasi-War in East Asia: Japan's Expedition to Taiwan and the Ryukyu Controversy,” Modern Asian Studies 17 (1983): 257–281.
2. Kwang-ching Liu and Richard J. Smith, “The Military Challenge: The Northwest and the Coast,” in The Cambridge History of China, vol. 11, Late Ch'ing, 1800–1911, Part 2, ed. John K. Fairbank and Kwang-ching Liu (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 244–245.
3. Memorial by Xu Tong in the documentary collection Chouban yiwu shimo [The management of barbarian affairs from first to last] (Rpt. Taipei, 1970), tongzhi chao 91, pp. 9b–10.
4. Richard S. Horowitz, “Central Power and State-Making: The Zongli Yamen and Self-Strengthening, 1860–1880” (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1998), ch. 4.
5. Chen Shiwei, “Change and Continuity: The Political Mobilization of Shanghai Elites in 1900,” Papers on Chinese History 3 (1994): 110–112.
6. Yung Wing, My Life in China and America (New York: Henry Holt, 1909), 148.
7. Rutherford Alcock, “Comments on William Gill, ‘The Chinese Army,'” Journal of the Royal United Service Institution 24 (1881): 376.
8. Ibid.
9. John K. Fairbank, Katherine Frost Bruner, and Elizabeth MacLeod Matheson, The I.G. in Peking: Letters of Robert Hart, Chinese Maritime Customs, 1868–1907, vol. 2 (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1975), 1484.
10. For a clear articulation of the argument, see Franz Michael, “Introduction: Regionalism in Nineteenth Century China,” in Stanley Spector, Li Hung-chang and the Huai Army (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1964).
11. Among others, see Kwang-ching Liu, “The Limits of Regional Power in the Late Qing Period: A Reappraisal,” Tsing Hua Journal of Chinese Studies (new series) 10 (1974): 207–223.
12. Philip A. Kuhn, Rebellion and Its Enemies in Late Imperial China: Militarization and Social Structure, 1796–1864 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1970), 211–225.