How significant was China's more than 1000-year tradition of a stable, hierarchial, Confucian society in keeping China from seeing the need to modernize?

"If you can rule your own country, who dares to insult you," was a statement that Confucious had once said. Confucious was a very influential man and many people in China abided to his statements with feelings of great credence. China's modernization suffered severely because the people were so fixed on a Cofucian society that Confucious was largely responsible for. Imagine living in a country where everyone followed a system that, "stressed the practice of virtue-especially the cardinal virtues of faithfulness, sincerity, earnestness, and respectfulness-as the route to a stable social order and a defense against forces of corruption." (Fairbank, pg 98) A society that strongly believes in ethnocentrism, the idea that a country's own way of life is far better than all others, and a society not wanting to have anything to do with any other countries, fearing corruption. These examples of the Ch

Tseng Kuo-fan in time died in 1872, his position was taken over by Li Hungchang. Li Hungchang did not follow the Confucian ways as much as Tseng did, but he was forced to. He wanted to build the army but yet another quote by Confucious "warfare depends on men, not weapons" brought his idea to a screeching halt. Li tried his hardest to modernize China. He tried to give new ideas to help out his country but they were all shot down. The Chinese did not trust the Westerners. They could not forget how they humiliated them by their invasions of Peking, killing of their people, and the burnings of their sacred properties. China felt that they could never trust these "barbarians" and by no means ever adopt their ways of living.

China felt that they were in no need for a change. A stable society kept them content. The Chinese who were more than happy with there own Confucian society feared the reforms of the Western Nations. Before the late nineteenth century, China had little or almost no contact with the outside world, especially that of the western world. There were many efforts that were made for China to be

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Approximate Word count = 757
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)