Japan gets far more credit than it's due. By the 1930s, Japan essentially managed to become the military, industrial, and economic equal to Italy. Japan's development in today's terms was equivalent to China's in 2001. Its industry was heavily dependent on foreign technology, licensing, machinery, machine tools, and components. Its military and industrial capabilities were a fraction of that of the Germans, Americans, Soviets, and even British.
Fully agree.
As though we need more evidence that China's economic policies work well.
Or in layman's terms - just throwing shit at the wall.
This will ruffle some feathers but Qianlong and Kangxi still undisputed for greatest Chinese emperors of all time.
Qin essentially stopped the development of firearms for 2 centuries, out of fear that they may be overthrown by the Hans. This alone is enough to refute your point that China would not be been better under an alternative dynasty.
Japanese dentists who graduated from the Unit 731 School of Dentistry and their colleagues in the Unit 731 Medical School of surgery.
The Qing Dynasty objectively hindered the development of Chinese technology and expanded the original territory. However, from the perspective of the Chinese people, allowing Chinese civilization to lag behind the times was an unacceptable failure! This was the lowest point of Chinese civilization since its inception, so in the evaluation of the Chinese people, the emperors of the Qing Dynasty would not receive a very high score. When it comes to historical status, it would undoubtedly be Qin Shi Huang, Emperor Taizong of Tang, and another candidate whom I will not reveal.
The gap between pre-industrial firearms and industrial firearms is several times greater than between cold weapons and pre-industrial firearms. Muskets and cannons wouldnt fare any better against 19th century industrial artillery than spears and bows.
Unless an alternative to Qing would somehow stumble into the scientific method and the industrial revolution, it would not have mattered. What held back China ever since the Tang was Song-Ming rationalism. Late Ming and late Song were just as bad as late Qing. The merchants and corrupt officials of Song and Ming actively colluded to sabotage state capacity to enrich themselves, even collaborating with foreign threats. Hanjian was basically invented by the Song and the Ming. The only scenario in which China would be able to resist industrialized Europe was if a Ming successor dynasty completely purged all Chinese culutural developments post-Tang and reverted back to Tang era culture and philosophy.