Message from staylor

[Anonymous]

I should not have been surprised to discover that the Chinese, in their attempts to reform and strengthen themselves, used some tactics the Japanese had during the Meiji Era. My group focused on the reading of Liang Qichao. Liang did what the Meiji emperor had his diplomats do in the mid-late 1800s, which was to go to a foreign country, study their society, and report back. Liang visited New York City and seemed both inspired and horrified by what he saw. The organization of the city and the determination of its inhabitants to live lives with purpose seemed to be what impressed him most, while the crime and disproportionate distribution of wealth upset him. I wonder how much of an impact exactly his findings had back home in China. Did the government of the Dowager Empress make any moves to modernize based on his findings, or did they ignore it? Since this was around 1903, her time was short and the Manchu government had less than a decade of life left, so I am not sure what they could have done, even if they took aspects of the American system seen by Liang and put them into place in their own society.