ABSTRACT
Chinese naval defeats, beginning with the first and second Opium Wars, continuing through the Sino-French conflict, and ending up with China’s catastrophic defeat in the Sino-Japanese War, meant that China lost its formerly unchallenged position as Asia’s hegemon. One major cause for these defeats was China’s lopsided attempts to modernize its naval forces by adopting, first, traditional but outmoded naval models based on Chinese history, and second, through the purchase of modern European equipment without adopting the corresponding Western training and strategic thinking that made them work. China’s initial attempts to both modernize and Westernize weakened the government’s domestic power even while increasing the authority of the naval commanders. These reforms resulted in a series of important naval mutinies in 1911, 1926, and 1949 that corresponded to three important periods of regime change in China’s early 20th-century history.
