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became American citizens,93 Meiji Japan held similar views and pursued similar policies. In short, China's response to the basic problems of employing foreign military men, although tinged with specific characteristics of Chinese political culture such as a special emphasis on personalistic relations, was reasonably enlightened, and not fundamentally different from that of other countries, Asian or Western.95
China's attempt to build a modern, Western-trained officer corps in the T'ung-chih period did not fail because the foreigners she employed refused to become Chinese subjects or to accept Chinese culture. It failed primarily because the Chinese did not use foreign military assistance in a systematic and sustained way, as did, for example, Meiji Japan. Plagued by continual foreign meddling, and unwilling to fundamentally restructure the existing military establishment with its carefully devised system of checks and balances, the weak Ch'ing government neglected to sponsor meaningful, centralized military reform, dooming itself to defeat at the hands of the Japanese in 1894-95.97
NOTES
1 See, for example, Edward Schafer, The Golden Peaches of Samarkand (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1963), esp. p. 49, 291 note 75; Henry Serruys, "Were the Ming against the Mongols settling in North China?," Oriens Extremus, 6 (1959), 136ff; etc.
2 For the employment of foreigners under these circumstances, consult Wolfram Eberhard, Conquerors and Rulers (Leiden, 1965); Lei Hai-tsung, Chung-kuo wen-hua yû Chung-kuo ti ping [Chinese Culture and the Chinese Military] (Ch'ang-sha, 1940); Michael Loewe, Imperial China (New York, 1969), 182.
3 Kuwabara Jitsuzo, “On P'u Shou-keng,” Memoirs of the Research Department of the Toyo Bunko, 7 (1935), 44-45; also Su Ch'ing-pin, (Liang Han ch'i Wu-tai ju-chi Chung-kuo chih fan shih-tsu yen-chiu) [Research on barbarian families residing in China during the period from the Han to the Five Dynasties] (Hong Kong, 1967), 2; Wai-ming George Yuan, "Ko Son-ji (Kao Hsien-chih): A Korean in the Chinese Military Service,” Asea Yongu, 13.3 (1970), 160.
4 See the forward to this work in Li Te-yü's collected writings, Li Wei-kung hui-ch'ang i-pin chih [The collected works of Li Te-yu] (Shanghai, 1937), chüan 2, 10-11 (consecutive pagination). The book is listed in the sections on literature in the T'ang-shu (2:20) and the Sung-shih (2:19a). All references to the dynastic histories are to the po-na edition.
5 I have discussed these challenges and their implications in a forthcoming study entitled . (University of California Press).