Chinese History

Q1. Evaluate critically this statement by identifying the problems confronting China then.

  I agree this statement partly. There's no doubt that this period of imperialism aggression made a significant impact on China. Although it broke China's feudalism, it led China into a Semi colonial and semi feudal society. The aggression violated China's sovereignty, but promoted the development of China. Every coin has two sides. At this point, we should evaluate critically on different angle to see the influence on China after it was divided by imperialism. In my personally view, the aggression made a negative impact outweigh the positive impact.
  Firstly, in the aspect of economy, the imperialism not only demanded huge indemnities from China, but also use the privilege from the unequal treaties to expand the market in China and capital export. In this way, the capitalism was involved in China's market gradually. The main performances were controlling the trading ports of China, depriving China's tariff autonomy and unloading and exporting the commodity to China. The imperialism gradual controlled China's economic lifeline so that China lost the independence in the economy. On one hand, these made the costal cities of China become prosperously, but the rural economy bordered on the bankruptcy and caused modern China's poverty and backward. On the other hand, the imperialism aggression has broken China's originally self sufficient small peasant economy accidentally. This made part of Chinese realized the west capitalism development and introduced the western advanced technology and management. China was also compelled to industrialized and modernized. After the natural economy is broken, China's capitalism modern enterprise starts to develop and the modern economy starts to emerge.
Secondly, in the aspect of military, China's technological progress level and the military power fall far behind the Western because of policy of closing the country to international...