Unirule Invited Professor LEI Yi to Speak on Unirule Gengdan Forum
Author:Unirule
Time：2014-11-04 14:14:28 Clicks:
October 8th, Unirule invited Professor LEI Yi, researcher from CASS, to speak on Unirule Gengdan Forum. The topic was “The Delay of Institutions and the Fall of the Qing Dynasty”.
Gengdan Institute of Beijing University of Technology is in long-term strategic partnership with Unirule Institute of Economics. In order to provide a theoretical and academic platform for the students and teachers at Gengdan Institute, Unirule has been working together with Gengdan Institute to invite famous scholars to speak at the Institute.
On the forum, Professor LEI Yi presented a vivid illustration on a series of events in modern China and provoked a question: why the system of the Qing Dynasty was so lagged behind other comparatively advanced powers at that time that it fell. Professor LEI thought the main reason was that the rulers of the Qing Dynasty had a cultural Chauvinism and thought the world should change and learn from the Chinese culture instead of the other way around. The lock-down of the country and the great constraint of people’s mind posed crisis for Qing Dynasty which further led to the loss of credibility of the ruling group and the end of the dynasty.
For example, when George Macartney, the first envoy of Britain to China, came to China on the occasion of the eightieth birthday of Qianlong Emperor and refused to kneel in front of the emperor as requested. Chinese people back then thought this was because westerners’ could not kneel because of physical disabilities. George Macartney was required to go back to Britain from the land route instead of by sea. This enabled him to get to know more about China. His previous views of China as a strong and wealthy country changed after his voyage. In 1816, he was sent to China again for Jiaqing Emperor’s birthday. He, on behalf of Britain, requested to establish trade relations with China. In order to do this, he brought opium which later led to a huge outflow of China’s silver. Subsequently, the Opium War between China and Britain was witnessed. Britain, blessed with advanced weaponry technology, won the war, whereas China impressed the world with less advanced weapons such as cannons that could not even aim accurately or go off at all. At that time, many Chinese thought it was useful to defend the British army by hanging the bodies of beheaded naked women and monks on the city walls.
This was just one example of how closed and disadvantaged Qing Dynasty was. Professor LEI Yi also talked about the mentality of Chinese people in modern Chinese history.
