The same phrase is encountered in use by the Southern Song dynasty in reference to dealing with the crisis of Jurchen invasion, and again by the Qianlong Emperor, writing that self-strengthening was requisite for warding off foreign aspirations.

[6] Li Hongzhang uses the term in an 1864 letter whereby he identifies the Western strength as lying in technology and advocates learning to construct such machines, first military and subsequently – in a memorial the following year – civilian.

[8] Scholar official Wei Yuan, writing on behalf of Commissioner Lin Zexu at the close of the First Opium War, expressed advocacy for production of Western armament and warships.

[12] Zeng Guofan, official in Hunan province, begun recruitment for his privately managed militia, the Xiang Army, sourcing funds from local merchants, to combat the rebels,[13] using Western weapons and training.

[14] Imperial forces encompassed the Ever Victorious Army, consisting of Chinese soldiers led by a European officer corps (see Frederick Townsend Ward and Charles Gordon), backed by British arms companies like Willoughbe & Ponsonby.

The Tongwen Guan was established in 1862 by the joint advocacy of Prince Gong and Wenxiang, offering classes in English, French, Russian and German, in order to train diplomats to engage with Westerners.

Li Hongzhang was the Tianjin Superintendent from 1870 and was so successful in taking over the functions of the Zongli Yamen that communication between the imperial court and the foreign diplomats at Beijing were kept under the auspices of the Self-Strengthening reformers.

[20] For the latter half of the nineteenth century, China would be maximally exploited through the foreign Maritime Customs Service's exercise of treaty tariffs on opium and other goods, inland navigation, colonies, concession territories, and extraterritoriality.

It also furnished part or all of the revenues of such new undertakings as the Beijing Tongwen Guan, the Jiangnan and Xingu Arsenals, the Fuzhou Navy Yard, and the educational mission to the United States.

He tried to initiate some reforms that would contribute towards Self-Strengthening: he advocated for the establishment of a national mint and post office, as well as trying to help China organize a modern naval fleet.

Shipbuilding efforts were also disappointing: the program consumed half of the arsenal's annual income but the ships built were at least twice as costly as comparable vessels available for purchase in Britain.

Huai general Zhou Shengchuan, who was well-versed in Western armaments, advocated for the purchase and proper maintenance for Gatling guns, Krupp cannons, and Remington or Snyder rifles, alongside full training for their use.

With the exception of troops immediately in and about Peking (Beijing), the military forces of the empire are made up of separate armies that have been raised and organized by, and are practically under control of, the several high provincial officers each viceroy being held responsible by the Imperial Government for a suitable quota of troops to maintain order within his own jurisdiction, and, in case of extreme emergency, to help suppress insurrection or repel invasion in other provinces.

Even General Ward and Colonel Gordon, who were employed to assist in putting down the Taiping rebellion, were engaged and paid by the viceroy at Nanking, although the Central Government gave to them a tacit but not real imperial position".

[32] Li Hongzhang, in an 1874 memorial, tabled the concept of "Bureaus of Western Learning" (洋學局) in coastal provinces, participation in which was to be accorded the honor of Imperial examination degrees.

Putiatia visited the China–Russia border in 1888 and observed Chinese soldiers in northeastern China, which had shrunk two decades earlier by the Russian Amur Annexation of Outer Manchuria.

They, Putiatia observed, were potentially able to become adept at "European tactics" under certain circumstances, and the Chinese soldiers were armed with modern weapons like Krupp artillery, Winchester carbines, and Mauser rifles.

Chinese armies were praised by John Russell Young, US envoy, who commented that "nothing seemed more perfect" in military capabilities, predicting a future confrontation between America and China.

[72] Historians are generally divided into two camps: those such as Michael Gasster (1972) and Kwang-Ching Liu who perceive the self-strengthening movement as an inadequate reform program that was doomed to failure because of its conservative ideology, and those such as Li Chien Nung, Samuel Chu, and Benjamin Elman who focus on the political struggles in the Qing government, while another view was presented by Luke S. K. Kwong (1984) who argued that the movement has been wrongly perceived as a failure because it was not meant to be a defense strategy to ward off further military losses; he argues that it was only meant to be an adaptive reform, and it succeeded in that Western ideas did spread through trade, building of academies and overseas education.

The conservative faction was led by Empress Dowager Cixi, who became the most powerful political figure in the Qing imperial court after she became the regent for her son, the Tongzhi Emperor, during his years as a minor.

Both the pro- and anti-reform factions strongly advocated for the recentralization of political power in the hands of the Imperial court as a means of bringing a decisive end to the perpetual bickering on the Westernization issue.

The Imperial court furthermore refused to take any clear stance on the reforms so as to avoid alienating either faction and hence lose key supporters of the regime; Empress Dowager Cixi needed to appease the conservatives due to her flouting of dynastic law in installing the Guangxu emperor as her puppet.

Meanwhile, new but not exactly modern Chinese armies suppressed the midcentury rebellions, bluffed Russia into a peaceful settlement of disputed frontiers in Central Asia, and defeated the French forces on land in the Sino-French War (1884–85).

[95] In abject contradiction with Confucian doctrine, they were influenced by German and Japanese ideas of military predominance over the nation, and coupled with the absence of unity amongst the various cliques in the officer class, led to the fragmentation of power in the later Warlord era (1916–1930).

Li moved to acquire enough influence to rival the Imperial court, dominating arms production, maritime customs revenue, and all military forces in the Northern half of the country.

[99] Kenneth Walker criticized the emphasis placed on cultural conservatism as a factor in delaying the industrialization of China, pointing out that Sheng Xuanhuai and his fellow early industrialists were capable, accomplished businessmen who generated much profit from their operations.

He considers them to have merely abided by the principle of increasing risk in calculating liquidity, capital replacement funds, short-term and long-term expectations, while their enterprises remained highly successful commercially.

[100] Albert Feuerwerker emphasized that these industrial projects were remarkable in the enormous diversity of fields they embarked in, involved in coal and iron mining, steel production, textile manufacture, telegraphy, steamships, railroads and modern banking.

These, he regards, are especially remarkable in light of the fact that these industrial projects were entirely groundbreaking for China, and yet simultaneously impeded by fierce foreign competition due to imbalanced trade terms of the unequal treaties, shortage of capital and skilled labor, and governmental acquisitiveness.

Feuerwerker remarks that Western powers were more aggressive in establishing factories in China as compared to Japan, using cheap local workers to profit off the Chinese market, siphoning off much of the benefits of industrialization.