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According to Changdu Literature Research Institute, in the documentary "The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers", the director quoted statistics from economic historian Belloc that it was not until 1890 that China was the world's largest economy by the United States. Grab it.

The prediction of Angus Maddison, a famous British economic historian and economic statistician: From the end of the 17th century to the beginning of the 19th century, China's economic performance under the rule of the Qing Dynasty was quite outstanding. From 1700 to 1820, China's GDP not only ranked first in the world, but its proportion in the world also increased from 22.3% to 32.9%. At the same time, China's population has grown from 22.9% to 36.6% of the world's total.

But; is the world's largest GDP in the late Qing Dynasty really reliable? How was it distorted?

GDP is a concept of modern economy and is often considered to be a measure of the national economy. Indicators of condition. However, you need to be careful when using GDP to study history. According to documentary records: in 1820, the fiscal revenue of the Qing Dynasty was 40 million taels of silver, and the British fiscal revenue was equivalent to 150 million taels of silver. In addition, the pillar industries of British industry were machinery, textiles, steel, etc. China, on the other hand, has no industry and is purely agricultural or handicraft industry, with silk, porcelain, and tea as its major commodities.

According to Changdu Literary Research Institute, Madison did propose in his book "A Thousand Year History of the World Economy" that China accounted for approximately 33% and 11% of the world economy in 1820 and 1900, respectively. point of view. But he also clearly stated in the book that because he believed that using exchange rate conversion to convert the GDP of various countries and regions into the same base currency could not satisfactorily measure actual value, the conversion method he adopted was purchasing power parity. Conversion coefficient, and the GDP here is not the same concept as the GDP of the modern economy.

The Qing Dynasty's disastrous defeat in the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1894 was caused by many factors.

Military: After decades of Westernization Movement, the Qing Dynasty began to be complacent and underestimate the enemy. Thinking that Westerners are not beneficial to the people of our land, they just want to take advantage of trade, so they relax their armament awareness. The Beiyang Navy has not added any ships since its official establishment in 1888. The ships are gradually aging. Compared with Japan's newly added warships, they have weak firepower, slow firing rate, and slow sailing speed. Even after 1891, the Beiyang Navy stopped purchasing even guns and ammunition. The army's establishment was backward, its management was chaotic, its training was lax, and its combat effectiveness was low. Although it was large in number, the Huai army was the main force that actually participated in the war, with only more than 100,000 troops, which was far inferior to the Japanese army.

Domestic and foreign affairs: The Qing Dynasty’s Tongzhi ZTE did not reform the national system like Japan did, and failed to make China rich and powerful. Moreover, the Qing Dynasty was politically corrupt, people lived in poverty, and various factions in the officialdom fought openly and secretly, and engaged in intrigues. The world's major capitalist countries are gradually transitioning to imperialism, and Japan's aggressive behavior has been supported by Western powers to a certain extent.

So on the eve of the Sino-Japanese War, what was the economic gap between China and Japan?

In the 1890s, the Qing government’s annual income was 80-90 million taels of silver, which was equivalent to 5- 600 million francs, 30 million pounds. . The Japanese government's annual revenue is 150 million yen, which is equivalent to about 80-90 million taels of silver. On the eve of the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1894, the fiscal revenue between China and Japan was already evenly matched.

Because Japan started the process of modernization and industrialization after the Meiji Restoration, its mercantilist policies and the government’s modern financial system made the government’s tax revenue greatly exceed that of China, which remained an agricultural society. At the same time, China has not yet established a modern financial system, nor does it have a well-established, Western-style financial and national debt system. Therefore, when it comes to war, it cannot compete with Japan, which has established corresponding systems.

There is another detail:

After the Sino-Japanese War, Li Hongzhang went to Shimonoseki, Japan, to negotiate peace, and received detailed information; for the first time, the national debt was 150 trillion yuan, There are 50 trillion yuan worth of shares that have not yet been sold. Although 80 trillion yuan worth of shares have been sold, Yin Yang has not collected all of them. This shows that during the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1894, the Japanese government issued national bonds as military expenditure. It can be seen from the intelligence that if the war continues, Japan will still have sufficient finances to cope with it.

In contrast, in the Qing Dynasty, military expenditures came from foreign debts. In 1894, Hurd, an Englishman who served as the General Taxation Department of China Customs, was entrusted by the Qing government to submit a document to the Bank of England with 6% interest and customs tax as a guarantee. Loan application to finance the war effort. As a result, the Bank of England rejected the Qing Dynasty's loan on the grounds that it did not know the inside story of the Sino-Japanese war and the war risks were difficult to assess. In the end, the Qing Dynasty had no choice but to obtain a loan of 10 million taels of silver from HSBC Bank with an interest rate of 7%, which was the HSBC bank loan, at a higher interest rate. Borrowing foreign debt will undoubtedly make things worse for the Qing government, which is increasingly financially depleted.

The final battle in the war was national power. Logically speaking, the Qing Dynasty’s national power was far superior to that of Japan. However, judging from the data, the Qing Dynasty’s national power even fell behind Japan, which was a tiny country. This has to be heartbreaking.