ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book examines the effects of foreign intervention on China’s industrialization efforts between 1870 and 1911. It explores two approaches to the analysis of China’s industrialization efforts: the generally accepted domestic’ limitation approach and the alternative foreign-intervention approach. The book shows that Chinese efforts toward industrialization from 1870 to 1911 were rational, carefully planned reactions to almost overwhelming foreign assaults. Some non-Western countries, such as China, reacted by introducing Western industrial and military technologies to increase their wealth and power. The economic goals of self-strengthening were to enrich China through importing Western industrial technology and to protect China’s li-ch’uan, or economic rights, by assuring Chinese ownership and control of industries. Many scholars of late nineteenth and early twentieth century Chinese industrialization have adopted a domestic-limitation approach.
