Chapter 51 Comparison between China and Japan: Westernization Movement and Meiji Restoration

In East Asia, Japan was the only country that the Chinese Empire never conquered.In the course of a century of modernization, China and Japan have stood on the same "growth line" three times.The first time was in the 1870s, when the two countries started the Westernization Movement and the Meiji Restoration almost at the same time; the second time was in 1945, when Japan was defeated and the Chinese War of Resistance ended, and both countries suffered huge war trauma; the third time is the current , the economic aggregates of the two countries are equal, ranking second and third in the world respectively.

At the beginning of the Restoration, Japan also tried to "use the West for daily use".Shigeru Yoshida wrote in "A Hundred Years of Stirring History": Before setting off, Japanese reformers expected to use "Western technology, Eastern morality" or "Western knowledge, Japanese spirit" as the basis for Japan's reform. Way.However, a visit to Europe and the United States in December 1871 completely overturned the ideas of the reformers and made them realize that "such a method is contrary to the implementation of modernization."Ito Hirobumi described his shock as "shock at the beginning, drunkenness at the beginning, and madness at the end." He believed: "The road to prosperity and strength of a country must be at the second end. The second is to make the people break the bad habits of the past, unwilling to be passive, and then work together in the country's public affairs to build a prosperous and strong country."

Under the guidance of this concept, Japan carried out all-round reforms.First, the education system was reformed. The government established the Ministry of Education, and successively issued the "School System Order", "Education Order" and "Imperial University Order", which established the modern education system.The second is to carry out bold constitutional reforms, abolish feudal vassals and set up counties, destroy all feudal regimes, and at the same time form a parliament to implement constitutionalism, "everything is decided by public opinion."The Meiji government implemented the cabinet system in 1885, and began to formulate the constitution the following year. The constitution was officially promulgated in 1889, and the first parliament was held in 1890, thus establishing a new system of constitutional monarchy.

In terms of economic reform, in December 1870, the Meiji government established the Ministry of Industry, responsible for "supervising and managing all mines; building and maintaining all railways, telegraph lines and lighthouses; manufacturing and casting copper, iron and lead used by various enterprises. mines, and engaged in machine building".Over the next ten years, Japan successively opened state-owned enterprises such as Yokosuka Iron Works, Yokohama Iron Works, Nagasaki Iron Works, Sekiguchi Cannon Manufacturing Works, and Ishikawashima Shipbuilding Works. Their scenes can reflect each other with the Westernization Movement of the Qing Dynasty. . In the mid-1880s, at the same time when Li Hongzhang returned the Shipping Merchants Bureau to bureaucratic control, there was a resolute privatization in Japan. The Meiji government realized that the state-owned government was too harmful, so it resolutely changed course and promoted privatization. Fukuzawa Yukichi, the enlightener of the Meiji Restoration, exclaimed: "If the government wants to enrich the country, it thinks that it can do anything, engage in the same ordinary business with the people, and even compete with the people for the success or failure of business, which is extremely harmful." Hirobumi Ito believes that One of the purposes of the Meiji government in establishing various enterprises is to "show real profits and lure the people." Sell ​​these government-run enterprises to private business associations.

It was under the guidance of this line of thinking that the government successively resold many state-owned factories to private entrepreneurs.The privatization process of state-owned enterprises in Japan has not been smooth sailing.Kenichi Ohno recorded in the book "From Edo to Heisei": "All state-owned enterprises except military supplies factories were privatized. etc.) caused an uproar in public opinion in Japan, and it developed into a political scandal in 1881. But the fact is that after privatization, many companies turned losses into profits through layoffs and additional investment.” The privatization movement led to This led to the rapid growth of the Japanese economy, and the emergence of chaebol-type private companies such as Mitsui, Mitsubishi, and Kansai Railway. In 1895, Japan, which won the Sino-Japanese War of Sino-Japanese War, received 260 million taels of silver in compensation. Adding the booty and cash captured, the combined silver was 340 million taels, equivalent to four times the annual fiscal revenue of Japan.This huge sum of money was heavily used to build railways, develop shipping, shipbuilding, and machinery manufacturing, which significantly improved the level of transportation and industry.At the same time, Japan took the opportunity to reform its currency system and establish a gold standard system in line with the international financial system.Since then, the gap in national power between China and Japan has widened.

It was the two different path choices that led to the completely different national fortunes of these two East Asian countries.