Westernization Movement
3 min readWesternization Movement（Part One）
In the latter half of the 19th century，China was faced with troubles from both inside and outside forces and the Qing government therefore set about trying to turn around the nation’s fortunes through a whole study of the West science and society，which is known as the Westernization Movement .
In 1865，the Qing government established Jiangnan Arsenal in Shanghai and started the production of Western style guns.This was soon followed by other factories at Nanjing and Tianjin and a ship building company in Fujian，all of which importantly boosted China’s national defense.In the 1870s，more mines and factories were opened that employed foreigners to equip and help operate the new machines.
In 1868，Jiangnan Arsenal established a translation section to translate Western technical guide books into Chinese in addition to implementing Western training methods.
John Fryer（1839-1928）from England was employed to head up the translation and training teams.Among the translators was Xu Shou（1818-1884），who came up with all the Chinese translations for the elements of the periodic table.Xu Shou’s clever use of the radicals meaning metal，stone and water，matched with common Chinese characters that shared a similar sound with the beginning sound of the English name of an element such as“magnesium，”became a system that are still in use today for the translation of scientific terminology.
Westernization Movement（Part Two）
As good as these organizations and their foreign employees were，they could only meet the short-term needs.In order to meet longer-term demands Chinese students needed to be sent to study abroad.In 1872，Zeng Guofan（1811-1872）chose the first group of Chinese students to study in the US.Many of these students studied very hard and got excellent grades，thus winning places at America’s top schools，such as railway engineering expert Zhan Tianyou（1861-1919），a graduate of Yale’s School of Engineering.Upon their return these scholars formed the basis for greater Western learning in China.
At the same time，the Qing government sent some Chinese students to Europe，who weremainly military students sent to Britain and France.Upon their return they greatly increased the special knowledge and skills of the Chinese army and navy.In addition，the translator Yan Fu（1854-1921）translated some revolutionary Western works such as Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations that gave thinkers in China much food for thought.China’s defeat at the hands of another Asian nation，Japan，in the war of 1894-1895 was proof to many that the movement of self-strengthening had failed.The main reason for the failure of the war was that the modernizers were still trying to work within the corrupt body of the Qing government and that while in theory the aim was to strengthen China in the face of foreign shame，the means of the Qing government was to submit to foreign pressure all times.
Although the movement failed，the methods of Western Learning had slowly come into the Chinese society and Chinese people’s opinions towards Western ideas changed.
