Learning the lessons of defeat

On the 120th anniversary of the outbreak of the First Sino-Japanese War (1894-95), China should reflect on the causes for its defeat

This year marks the 120th anniversary of the outbreak of the First Sino-Japanese War (1894-95). As China gears up for the anniversary, it is essential and actually more realistic for the country to reflect upon and draw a lesson from the defeat of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), than to expect a former invader to express regret over what it has been trying hard to glorify.

Japan's victory in the First Sino-Japanese War was built on its successful institutional reform. The Opium Wars, two wars fought between Western powers and the Qing Dynasty from 1839 to 1860, were a cautionary tale for China and Japan, prompting the two neighbors to embark on learning from the West, although in a different way. Japan was determined to adapt itself to Western learning from the inside out during the Meiji Restoration, a period spanning the 1860s to the early 1910s that was responsible for Japan's emergence as a modernized nation.