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Being an Chinese descendant living in South East Asia, China as a nation has always fascinated me. Even though I feel I have been assimilated into the local culture of my country, I still feel a special bond with China which in my opinion is also shared by a great number of other overseas Chinese. ... I am greatly interested in everything that class has taught me, but nothing stirs as much passion in me as the part about Western dominance over China and the Chinese struggle to form a modern nation. It was the period of her greatest humiliation and her reborn as a nationalistic nation, more conscious of her identity in the world than any other periods in her long history.
From the ancient times to the present, Chinese have always called their country Zhong Guo or The Middle Kingdom. This reflected their thinking of China as the sole civilization unequaled by any other country in the world with China in the middle and everything else on the fringe of her border. Towards the nineteenth century, China regarded all the people that did not follow her culture as barbarians and they were treated with contempt. Before the emergence of the West as the world superpower, China had every right to regard herself as the celestial empire with the Son of Heaven as the ruler of mankind. Isolated from the other major civilizations by the natural barriers such as the mountain ranges, deserts and oceans, China had indigenously developed her culture without much borrowing from others, and therefore traditionally had considered herself as the world and the way. ... The change was slow at first but as the Chinese became more disillusioned with their culture, it grew into a blatant revolt against their culture and traditions.
Though China had known the west or at least had an inkling of western civilization even before the Yuan Dynasty, it was only after the foreigners began to sell opium, to the great detriment of China, that it began to appear in the Chinese consciousness. Great amounts of silver were being drained out of the country by the opium trade and this caused money shortage in China. ... His heavy-handedness in dealing with the foreign merchants exacerbated the tension between the west and China. Britain soon declared war on China under the pretext that the Chinese authority had dealt unfairly to their merchants. ... He believed the Chinese army should be modernized if China wanted to protect herself from the onslaught of the west. ... The Taipings had occupied most of southern China before they were defeated by able commanders of Han origin like Zeng Guofan, Zuo Zongtang and Li Hongzhang. ... Those men were staunch Confucians and though they had the means to overthrow the dynasty, they were more interested in garnering awards from the emperor. ... Another reason was that their reforms were mostly regional in character and did not have the endorsement from the central authority.
Approximate Word count = 2387
Approximate Pages = 9.5
(250 words per page double spaced)
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