The effect of the Taiping Rebellion was the emergence of a unified front of the Self-Strengthening movement. Despite the presence of stiff resistance from conservatives in the Qing court to social reforms, all of the Qing officials had to admit that the technology brought forth by the foreign forces were a force to be reckoned with. From the mortars to the siege howitzers, the British equipment was far superior to anything in the Qing arsenals. After reaching a compromise, the Qing reformists and conservatives strived for one thing: to become stronger through the adaptation of Western military technology without touching any systemic social reforms.

This brought forth a thirty year period of reform efforts under the Self-Strengthening movement between 1861-1895. Improvements were attempted in three main fields: military equipment, infrastructure, and education. It was in this time that China established its first modern military academies and attempted to build its own muskets and a naval fleet using European technologies. Telegraph lines and railroads were also a part of this plan. Yet though these reforms were heavily invested in by the Qing government, without systemic changes, they were largely ineffective. Due to the nature of the Qing military structure, matters of training and coordination largely fell upon provincial leaders who had no incentive to exchange information or resources. In order to create its own manufacturing base, the Qing court had to hire multiple advisors from Europe such as Charles Gordon from Great Britain, and import the raw materials from abroad, all of which were costly endeavors. Corruption was virulent on all sides, with many of the contracted European advisors lacking qualifications, while some of the Qing side provincial official saw these projects as an opportunity for embezzlement. Morale was low amongst the soldiers as a profession with low respect and low pay as the remnants of opium usage remained within the ranks of the military. A similar situation was present amongst the workers for the manufacturing side, where a newfound unskilled Chinese military manufacturing industry completely uncompetitive against British products which were of superior quality at lower costs. After a single kilometer of train track was built by a British engineer to showcase the power of the railroad, the Qing court met the plan with such vehement protest that they made an excuse to demolish the vehicle for “crushing a soldier to death” and promptly tossed the disassembled rail parts into the ocean. The Tianjin massacre incident of 1870 also casted a dampened the Qing dynasty’s reform and diplomatic attempts with foreign nations as series of riots broke out due to a conflict between Western missionaries and fearful Chinese locals during a period of unrest resulting in deaths on both sides, with the Europeans believing that the Qing were uncommitted to the protection of missionaries, while the Qing court believing that the incident was invited by the arrogant carelessness of the missionaries, who acted brashly with their extraterritorial status by shooting an Qing official and causing a panic to breakout amongst the Qing public.

Some of the only effective reforms were in the realm of education. Three types of universities were established: technical, military, foreign languages. Study abroad programs were established to encourage young talents to procure Western knowledge to fortify the nation, and translations of foreign texts came flooding in. Rudimentary news networks were established to transmit information to the public. Yet all of this investment ended in 1895. In 1894, Japan started the First Sino-Japanese War over the issue of Korea. Korea had been a tributary state of the Qing dynasty; however, its location and potential as a grains and metals producer were extremely attractive to the island nation scarce with natural resources. Japan saw the weakening of the Qing empire and pushed the issue towards war after the Koreans defaulted on a few agricultural trade agreements in a year with bad harvests. At the time, international observers believed that the Chinese forces would easily crush the Japanese fleet due to the size of the fleet as well as the amount of money invested into the endeavor. However, compared to the Meiji reforms conducted by Emperor Meiji from the 1870s, which transformed Japanese societal institutes to suit Westernization, the facile results from the Self-Strengthening movement were simply incomparable with a lack of standardization of military practices, the lack of talent within the corrupt military leaders and extremely poorly trained soldiers. Although officially the Qing had a reserve force of 960,000 soldier’s to Japan’s 240,000, in reality, only around 170,000 were actually deployable. In the end, the Qing suffered a series of humiliating defeats before signing the Treaty of Shimonoseki in 1895 to concede defeat.

This signified the end of the Self-Strengthening movement when the reform policies for strengthening the military were declared ineffective and bankrupt. In the background of throughout this time period, in the imperial court, every action for reform was fiercely debated between the conservatives and the reformists. Pushed to the brink by this military defeat by a former tributary nation, the reformists advocated for drastic measures. Two of the most influential scholars pushing for this new wave of reforms were Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao. Kang, the elder of the two, was pushing for drastic systemic reforms not because of any radical social commitments, but rather for the efficiency and survival of his nation. As such, Kang attempted to reframe the reform efforts not as radical revolutions to Qing culture, but rather a revisionist Confucian narrative for continual improvement. The Emperor of the time, Guangxu, had succeeded the throne at the age of 5 and had a timid nature after spending a childhood dominated by the Empress Dowager Cixi, his regent and aunt, a firm conservative. Yet after witnessing the catastrophic defeat from the First Sino-Japanese War, Daoguang realized the need for social reforms to utilize the technology and other Western instruments to their full potential. As such, he employed reformists like Kang You Wei and Liang Qi chao in court as advisors. These advisors quickly passed several radical reform bills that abolished the civil service exam, restructured the military, and transformed the government system to a constitutional democracy. This movement became known as the Hundred Days Reform.

As implied by the unfortunate moniker, the Hundred Days reforms lasted less then four months. Sensing the threat to their power base, various generals in the Qing aristocracy joined Empress Dowager Cixi in forcing Emperor Guangxu into house arrest. All of the Hundred Day reformers were either executes, arrested or fled the country.