China

Full Title: 大清國 (Empire of the Great Qing)

Common Usage: China

Government: Imperial Monarchy, currently under a regency

Population: ~400,000,000

Capital City: Peking, Zhili Province

Largest City: Peking, Zhili Province

Official Language: Mandarin Chinese

Other Languages: Wu, Yue, Minbei, Xiang, Gan, Hakka (dialects of Chinese), various minority languages

Currency: Standard Tael (silver-standard currency; one standard tael is equal to 37.5 g sterling silver or 34.7 g fine silver)

History
China is one of the world's oldest civilizations. There are confirmed historical records of Chinese civilization dating back as early as 1000 BC. Some Chinese scholars insist that their culture is even older than that, but most historians dismiss these claims. Over the past three millenia, China has alternated between periods of disunion in which warlords divided the land among themselves, and periods of unity under the rule of a single imperial dynasty. The ancient and medieval dynasties beginning with the Bronze Age Zhou (1046 to 770 BC) and running up through the Ming (1368-1662 AD) are interesting as historical studies, but distant enough to be largely irrelevant to modern times.

Founding of the Qing Dynasty
The roots of the modern government of China begins in the late 16th century among the Jurchen, a nomadic tribe of horsemen dwelling in the northwest of China. Like Ghenghis Khan before him, Nurhachi united the scattered tribes of his people, proclaimed himself their khan, and began hacking his way south into China. In the 1620s and 1630s, Nurhachi and his heir Hung Taiji pushed the Ming steadily southward, suffering only occasional reverses at the hands of the Chinese armies. In November 1635, Taiji proclaimed the name "Manchu" for all the Jurchen people, thus giving rise to the modern term for this ethnicity (and the region Manchuria); in 1636, he claimed the imperial seal that had once belonged to the Mongols' Yuan Dynasty and proclaimed his rule over China as the first Qing Emperor. The subsequent collapse of the Ming was hastened by a string of major peasant revolts, including one that took the capital at Peking; the Qing gained considerable credibility by being the ones to recapture it from the rebels in 1644. Over the following seventeen years, the Qing continued the offensive, taking China from the previous dynasty province by province. The last claimant to the Ming throne was executed by a Qing expeditionary force in 1662.

As the period of unification drew to an end, the Qing enjoyed a long period of rule by three great monarchs in a row: the Kangxi, Yongzheng, and Qianlong emperors, who led the China to a height of power and territorial extent. During their reign, the ethnic Han majority was reconciled to Manchu rule, and the Manchu armies led great campaigns to secure more territory for China on the frontiers. Skirmishing with the Mongols over Xinjiang proved inconclusive, but the Qianlong Emperor in particular was quite successful in expanding Chinese influence north into Siberia and bringing the original Mongol homeland under Chinese rule.

While the Kangxi and Qianlong Emperors were both among the longest-reigning monarchs in history, eventually the period of excellent rule came to an end. Shortly after Qianlong died, the first of a long series of major peasant revolts broke out in 1796: the White Lotus Society. Looking at the following sixty years, we see a steady decline of the dynasty's power. It was an era in which Qing control weakened and prosperity diminished. China suffered massive social strife, economic stagnation and explosive population growth which placed an increasing strain on the food supply. The bureaucracy seemed feeble in the face of famines and natural disasters, and completely helpless to handle technologically superior foreign intruders (especially from Pacifica and the Bourbon Empire). By 1856, in the face of the fanatical Taipeng Rebellion and repeated humiliating concessions to Westerners, many suspected that the Qing had lost the Mandate of Heaven and were doomed to collapse, leaving China to be divided up among malevolent foreigners.

Revival
The first sign of dynamism and capability from the Qing government in the 19th century came in 1857, through the actions of a previously obscure member of the royal family, Prince Fu. The prince's early life is not well documented, but his status was sufficient to gain an extended series of closeted discussions with the Xianfeng Emperor. The Emperor sent the prince south with only a bag of gold and a single bodyguard. Within six months, the rebels were brawling among themselves in a catastrophic sectarian conflict between leaders Hong Xiuquan and Yang Xiuqing. Prince Fu also obtained the services of foreign advisers to train the "Ever Victorious Army," which began pushing the rebels steadily further back towards their core territory. While it took years more to suppress the rebellion, they never again posed a significant threat on the offensive.

The young prince further distinguished himself during the final stages of the Second Opium War in 1860, when he was ordered to remain behind in Peking while the Emperor and the bulk of the dynasty withdrew to Chengde. Rather than await the arrival of advancing European troops, he took command of a mixed unit of Imperial Guards, local garrisons, and the survivors of an army falling back on the capital from a failed counterattack against a joint Pacifican-Roman army marching upriver from Tientsin. His forces were unable to stop the foreigners, but did delay the march by adept use of maneuver and ambush positions along their line of advance. Once it became clear that the invasion could not be halted, Prince Fu fell back to the capital and ordered the release of all foreign captives, and the harsh punishment of any of their jailers who had mistreated them. This show of good faith helped the attackers to refrain from burning the Summer Palace in Peking as a lesson to the dynasty. Fu then negotiated the Convention of Peking with the joint representatives of the European powers. While the treaty was painful and humiliating, it raised the prince's status, the utter defeat of their armies having convinced the dynasty that the outcome could have been much worse.

Thus, the postwar period found the prince in an extremely powerful position, made still stronger by the death of the Xianfeng Emperor in 1861, before he could return to the capital. Since Xianfeng's successor, the Tongzhi Emperor, was a five year old boy, effective control rested in the hands of the Eight Regent Ministers, appointed by Xianfeng on his deathbed.

The Xinyou Palace Coup and its Aftermath
However, the Regent Ministers were little match politically for the the boy's mother, the Empress Dowager Cixi. Taking advantage of the naïve good nature of her fellow Empress Dowager Ci'an, Cixi placed herself in a strong political position. She also recruited the support of many talented officials of the Imperial court who opposed the Eight Regent Ministers, making a special effort to cultivate an alliance with Prince Fu.

In November 1861, when the old emperor's funeral procession from Chengde to Peking began, Cixi and the boy emperor rode ahead of the procession and arrived in the capital with days to prepare a trap for the Regent Ministers. Prince Fu and the Empress Dowager produced documents accusing the Regent Ministers of having committed grave policy errors during the Second Opium War, of having altered the Xianfeng Emperor's will, and of having caused the late emperor's death. By the time the ministers arrived, troops loyal to Prince Fu were positioned to arrest the regency council. Of the eight regents, five were stripped of power and sent to their estates in disgrace, two committed suicide, and one minister, Sushun, was beheaded. The Empress Dowager Cixi rewarded Prince Fu by making him head of the General Affairs Office and Internal Affairs Office. While the Empress Dowager was the true regent of the dynasty,

Taking advantage of his new authority, the Prince created a new office, the Zongli Yamen, or "Office in Charge of the Affairs of All Nations." This served as China's first de facto foreign office, the empire never having needed one before. He greatly aided the Empress Dowager in her efforts to purge the bureaucracy of corruption, an operation which proceeded quickly and efficiently thanks to the breathing room made available by the gradual collapse of the Taiping rebels. He also supported Cixi's plans to incorporate more Han Chinese into the traditionally Manchu-dominated government, appointing Han ministers in charge of the southern provinces and Han generals in command of many of the great armies.

Imperial Navy
Main article: Imperial Qing Navy

The history of the modern Imperial Navy begins with a series of humiliating defeats at the hands of foreign powers over trading rights in the mid-1800s. It soon became clear that the Chinese military was powerless to stop enemy warships from ranging its coasts and waterways at will; even small gunboats could fight their way past local defense forces with confidence of success. The overwhelming naval superiority of Western powers led to a series of unfavorable treaties and concessions accepted by the Qing government.

Correcting this situation was a top priority for the Self-Strengthening Movement. Of the surge of customs revenue from the opening years of the program, much was directed into the construction of military shipyards and the purchase of foreign warships. Of particular interest were a series of German-built armored cruisers of up to seven thousand tons, which served as the flagships of the imperial fleet. These ships were designed to be a match for any individual European warship likely to be fielded in Chinese waters, and were largely successful at this role. They were backed by a large force of lighter cruisers, gunboats, and torpedo boats. Despite serious reverses in the 1882-83 Sino-Bourbon War, by 1890 the Chinese fleet was ranked as seventh best in the world, and was taken very seriously in the calculations of anyone proposing to interfere in Chinese affairs.

At the outset of the Sino-Wa War of 1894, China's main naval force, the Beiyang Fleet based in Tientsin, was the largest single concentration of naval power in Asia. On paper it had great superiority over the Wa fleet opposing it, especially in heavy guns. But a series of naval battles showed major weaknesses in the Beiyang Fleet. A lack of government upkeep funding had left the fleet poorly maintained, morale was low, and corrupt officials selling supplies on the black market reduced the ships' combat effectiveness. Within four months, the great majority of China's capital ships had been sunk or captured by Wa.

This humiliation provoked a major shift in naval strategy. Much of the prewar leadership was executed or dismissed in disgrace. While efforts to replace the destroyed capital ships proceeded during the postwar era, the focus of the Imperial Navy changed from using medium and heavy combatants to deter intervention by Western powers and toward defending the coastline against the larger Wa navy. As a consequence, much of the Chinese naval force is focused on light combatants designed to harass enemy ships operating close to the Chinese coast. The Chinese battleline is distinctly second-rate, with no capital ships commissioned and designed prior to 1905. The Dreadnought Revolution has caught China by surprise, and they have yet to lay down the keels for domestic-built dreadnoughts or arrange purchase overseas for such.

Within those limits, China possesses a fairly capable coast defense force. Their immediate postwar consstruction wave included a number of cruisers, but was heavily biased toward torpedo boats, which could be build quickly in great numbers to restore China's naval deterrent against enemy capital ships. Torpedo boat construction slowed to a halt in 1901, when Chinese naval attaches began reporting on the alarming rise of turbine-engined "torpedo boat destroyers" that could reliably intercept and destroy conventional steam-powered torpedo boats.

Since that point, the Chinese government has canceled mass torpedo boat production plans and begun more gradual construction of a series of more modern "destroyers." Further investigation on the subject of submersible torpedo boats inspired the purchase of a number of models from Roman and Pacifican yards, as well.

The capital ship force consists mainly of home-built cruisers and foreign-built battleships. Notable exceptions include a pair of very modern light cruisers built at Pacifica's famous Union Iron Works, as well as the latest additions to China's battleship force. These ships, first conceived in 1904, laid down in 1906, and completed in 1909, can best be described as "semi-dreadnoughts," being highly progressive for a pre-dreadnought design but lacking the all big-gun armament that characterizes a true dreadnought.

Imperial Army
Main article: Imperial Qing Army