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RICHARD J. SMITH
played an historic role similar to that played in the West in late Tokugawa Japan, first precipitating a political crisis, and then helping to resolve it in favor of revolution. It would not be the last time Japan would play the part in China.
Viewed from the perspective of military modernization in China and Japan, two factors seem crucial to Meiji Japan's domestic and international success: (1) A sustained sense of crisis, sufficient to justify fundamental institutional change; and (2) strong central government leadership and support in implementing reform, together with the systematic use of foreign assistance. Paul Cohen is obviously correct in pointing out that pre-Meiji Japan enjoyed a number of distinct advantages in responding quickly and creatively to the Western "impact."51 But we may question whether without the self-conscious and concerted modernizing policies of the Meiji central government Japan could have achieved "wealth and power" so quickly, even with these advantages. An examination of military change in Japan during the period 1853-1868 indicates, for example, that Bakumatsu military reform efforts were in fact no more effective than those of the T'ung-chih era.52
In China, the Manchus refused to sponsor basic institutional change, fearful of upsetting the system of military checks and balances that had preserved their rule in China for over two hundred years. More concerned with the maintenance of internal control than with the problem of external defense, the Manchus had little incentive to go beyond the limited military changes that had enabled them to suppress the major rebellions of the 1860's and 70's. It was not until 1907 that the throne took the first concrete steps to dismantle the costly, cumbersome and worthless Manchu Banner system-steps that even then were soon retraced.53
It should be noted that Manchu rule was less significant in other areas of Chinese life, notably the economy. Dwight Perkins insists, for example, that the Ch'ing government's sins in the economic realm were less those of commission than of omission, that the policies of the Chinese government "were not so much wrong as inadequate."54 But in comparing Japan's economic success with China's failure, Perkins attributes China's difficulties primarily to "lack of funds." Sapped of money by foreign and domestic wars, heavy indemnities, the sustenance of huge and useless "regular" standing armies, and the high cost of maintaining irregularly financed "temporary" imperial armies, the Ch'ing government...