It would be thus that many of the inherently independent aspects of China's cultural makeup would find ways to retain and even advance autonomy under a central leadership. Indeed, the cause for China's long struggle against factionalism would be due to its geographical scale and the variations in its population. Under the long stretch of Qing rule, the conditions were diminished by a perceptive approach to delegation which did not seek to fully drive out local form of leadership. In fact, throughout the course of its rule, "the Qing dynasty (1644-1911) was forced to rely on chieftainship administrative space and its tribal inhabitants as unreliable bulwarks against incursions by 'wild' tribals and Myanmar primarily because Han Chinese vulnerability to malaria precluded a more stable and direct Qing official presence." (Bello, 283) And yet, all of the ingredients which maintained this unlikely balance would ultimately conspire to the end of the imperial rule. The collective advance of individual societies beneath the rule of the dynasty would be underscored by the ability of such societies to access technologies and opportunities independently of imperial distribution. This was a product of the resource realization inherent to global industrialization.
When the fact of this new economic mobility would be merged with a cataclysm resulting in the decline in reliance upon central authority, the rulership of the Qing would inevitably come to be seen as little more than a vestigial...
Therefore, though the seeds for the downfall of the Qing Dynasty, and with it the whole dynastic system, would be sown through the opening of international trade waters and the intercession with a rapidly industrializing western culture, it would take a disastrous of terrible proportions to force the final change. To this extent, amongst historians, "the most widely accepted version begins with a malaria epidemic that struck Beijing in 1899. The city's residents, like many modern urbanites, showed great susceptibility to new medical fads." (Hansen, 20) In this context, with confidence in the Qing shaken, infrastructure and settlements devastated and individual opportunities becoming more apparent, the Qing had seen its own influence subside to the din of new voices. The intellectualist aristocracy had essentially spread its ideology and progressivism beyond its own control or usefulness. Still, more than anything else, China's interaction with the rest of the world would put it on pace with a world that was increasingly scaling down the relevancy of authoritarian imperialism, with industrial development and an enlightenment-based political progressivism bleeding into the long splintered nation.
Works Cited
Bello, D.A. (2005). The go where no Han could go for long. Modern China, 31(3), 283-317.
Hansen, V. (2000). The Open Empire: A History of China to 1600. W.W. Norton.
Waley, C. (2000). Sextants of Beijing. W.W. Norton.
