Under what historical background did China accept the challenge from the West?

1, backward technology. When Eight-Nation Alliance occupied Bauhinia City, it discovered the gunpowder they paid as a vassal state. I guess they don't know how to use it either.

2. Contradictions within the nation. When foreigners beat the Qing government, many people were watching to see how foreigners beat the Qing government. At that time, the Han people did not really regard the Qing government as their own government, but only after foreigners slaughtered the people began to resist.

3. The world has become a whole, which China doesn't know. Looking at the rise of great powers, we can know that when the Qing army entered the customs, Europeans were sailing, developing maritime trade, and then began the industrial revolution.

Extended data

At the end of the Qing dynasty, the Qing government was forced to sign various unequal treaties, including allowing the west to recruit Chinese workers in the southeast coast, because the applicants had to sign a contract called "Contract Chinese Workers", commonly known as "selling piglets" and "doing coolies". From then on, "going down to South Asia" entered a new period, and its process can be roughly divided into two stages:

The first stage was 19 from the 1960s to the beginning of the 20th century, and there was a wave of overseas immigrants mainly from China, that is, the coolie trade stage. At that time, foreign companies and CCBA lured the poor to the "pig house" by hiring "guest heads" (small pig heads) and signing contracts with their wages as collateral in exchange for overseas travel expenses. For decades, there have been about 2 million Chinese workers going to Southeast Asia alone.

The second stage is from the early 20th century to the early 1950s, which is the peak of "going to South Asia". During the period of 1922-1939, more than 5 million people immigrated to Xiamen and other ports. After the founding of New China, the immigration tide of "Lower Nanyang", which lasted for hundreds of years, basically stopped.

People's Network-China people's hard journey to the world in the late Qing Dynasty (historical story)