Why did Qing lost so badly to Japan in 1894? They had superior numbers with better rifles, better cannons, better ships and tons of British/German instructors. This makes no sense
>>18448700I can't speak to the land war, but as to the naval war>better shipsthe chinese navy's vessels were older and inferior to Japan's, even though they had been built at astronomical expense. They also were doctrinally out of date, as the Japanese massed their forces into a single battle fleet to win a decisive battle, while the Chinese had split into a northern and southern fleet. Both of which were destroyed one by one by Japan's deathball.Though it was something of a scapegoat because it was far from the sole factor, one infamous part of this which was held up as emblematic for the failures of the Qing during the century of humiliation is that the Empress Dowager Cixi's palace had a marble pleasure boat built on a manmade lake, and the money to build it had been taken from the navy's budget. Meanwhile the Meiji Emperor had subsidized the Japanese Navy's warship building program with his own personal finances.
>>18448700Because the Qing did not have a centralized command. Most armies were autonomous, while they were fighting as a medieval force with modern weaponry, the Japs were fighting as a united entity.
>>18448700 A decade later the japanese navy would go on to also blow the shit out of the russian fleet during the russo-japanese war
