Asia and the West, Essay Example

After long periods of insulation, China and Japan during the nineteenth century increasingly came under western pressure to open up their borders and establish trade and diplomatic relations. The Industrial Revolution had taken place in the West beginning in the 1830s, which widened the chasm between the West and China and Japan in terms of military and technology advancements, Neither Japan or China countered western powers, which eventually forced the two historically isolated nations to sign unequal treaties with the West in which both countries begrudgingly forged trading partnerships with their western counterparts. The manner in which these events unfolded varied on an idiosyncratic basis, which is why scholars remain so fascinated by this topic since tow Asian cultures and societies that appeared similar reacted to the same historical develop in starkly different manners. It becomes clear that while Japan acquiesced to Western pressure and opened up its borders to engage in trade with the West, China refused to do so. For this reason, Japan modernized in a celeritous fashion while China lagged behind, which can be attributed to China’s lack of knowledge about the West while Japan has historically borrowed cultural facets from others.

At the turn of the twentieth century, Asian intellectuals struggled with the problems and solutions to reform Asia while trying to restore the confidence of its people who had been profoundly humiliated by Westerners. Chinese scholars made no exceptions to the struggles as they ceaselessly wrestled with the ways to respond to their losses to the West since—despite being the birthplaces to one of the greatest ancient civilizations—China had repeatedly been controlled and defeated by the Western powers during the nineteenth century. Chinese intellectuals experienced far more trenchant, cataclysmic shock as a result of the Chinese military defeat in the Opium Wars (1839-1842 and 1856-1860 respectively). Indeed, members of the Chinese intelligentsia had always viewed their country as the center of the universe while discursively framing all other cultures as wholly barbaric. The defeat of the Chinese during the Opium Wars marked the most shameful and humiliation of Asia’s biggest and greatest country at the hands of westerners, thereby forcing Chinese intellectuals to acknowledge the superiority of western technology and admitting that the Chinese military failed to keep pace with the military advancements that took place as a result of industrialization and modernization so discernible in the western world beginning in the mid 1800s. Constant defeat resulted in China acquiescing to the United States, as they agreed to an Open Door Policy in which they made their borders more porous with regards to trade with the West despite their hatred of the western way of life.

While Japan has historically insulated itself from the rest of the world, in the nineteenth century, it was forced to open it borders when the United States engaged in gunboat diplomacy.  Japan recognized that she needed to modernize quickly in 1868 during the Meiji Restoration to make sure that Japan did not lag behind the west in terms of industrialization and modernization. As a result of rapid modernization, Japan soon ascended as a world power within decades as Japan was able to rival the European powers, even defeating the Russians in 1904. As Japan’s prestige burgeoned, so did its nationalistic fervor, which explains why the Japanese exhibited such antipathy towards Western encroachment in the Asian continent. As a result, Japan created the so-called sphere of influence in order to weed out Europeans from exerting their presence and influence in Asia in the hopes of creating a unitary Asian entity under the auspices of the Japanese.

It is unequivocal that Chinese reacted to the West during the nineteenth century far differently than the Japanese did. While it appears that Japan’s willingness to modernize using the same blueprint as the West germinated from its admiration of western culture, China exhibited overt antipathy towards the West. For over five decades, despite suffering from humiliating defeats, the Chinese resisted Western encroachment and intervention. It was only until the Chinese strengthened its military that they were able to force out the Europeans that had made inroads during the nineteenth century.