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Impact of the 19th Century Imperialism on China

In:

Submitted By stickymagoo
Words 555
Pages 3
Negative.
The impact caused China millions of lives and left much of China's problems today.

On country level:
If weren't for the imperialists' invasions, Taiwan wouldn't be a problem (Japan took Taiwan away). Tibet wouldn't be a problem (Britain tried to take it away and combine it with its Indian colony, it led to today's problems in Tibet and Britain and India backing the Tibetan separatists). Xinjiang wouldn't be a problem (weak Chinese government due to foreign invasion led to Xinjiang's separatist activities to build East Turkestan which eventually led to terrorism in this province.) Mongolia would still be part of China (Russia backed Outer Mongolia into independence, leaving China with only Inner Mongolia.) Part of the Siberia would still be China. (Part of Siberia used to be Chinese territory but fell to Russian invasions)

China was forced in years to pay enormous amount of silver to the western powers, especially Britain and France, which funded the western industrialization and economic boom and greatly destroyed the Chinese economy, millions died in hunger.
China's fall led to its lost of political and cultural influence in east and central Asia. Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Thailand, Philippines, Kazakhstan, etc, all turned away. Western cultural moved into East Asia.

On cultural level:
Chinese cultural and art no longer had great influence worldwide. Westerner people started to appreciate their own culture and art, Japan turned completely western. People started to appreciate western stuff more than Chinese, from culture, to art, to fashion, to ideology, to everything. Chinese were discriminated throughout the whole world, even till today. Their collective spirits are no longer shared, their traditions and customs are often attack under prejudices.
Before the rise of 19th century imperialism, China was viewed by western people and most people of the world as the dreamland. People around the globe praised their society and values, then suddenly after they were beaten down by the western military might, they turned into ****. If you ever watched cartoons of earlier years of the 20th centuries, killing a Chinese would make for an amusing topic on cartoons of those days.

On political level:
The imperialism led to less openness in China and Communism.
China used to be a country open to all kinds of thoughts and cultures. Ancient China was much more open than China of today. Gays were accepted, religions ran free, and women wrote poems to express their sexual desire, criminals were allowed to go free to meet with their family for the last time, and they do return willingly, without being supervised, to be killed to honor their commitment to their deaths. But after the imperialist invasions, Chinese suffered so much that they closed themselves up in terror.
The centralization of a strong controlling government was inevitable because otherwise, the country would have fallen apart, not only losing Siberia and Mongolia.
In the early days of the 20th century, Chinese dreamed of rebuilding the country with Capitalism, but the Imperialists sold China even it fought alongside against the Germans in WWI, turning all German colony in China into the hands of Japanese.
This led to uproar on a country level in 1919, Chinese lost faith in the Capitalist countries and Communist Party was formed with overwhelming support from the Chinese intellectuals to rid the country of foreign interference and build a strong democracy.

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