Tributary System And The Late Qing Government's Diplomacy

Tributary system is the traditional diplomatic system of China. Since the Opium War,with the waves of Western expansion, it was unavoidable for china to end its own traditiondiplomacy system and initiate a new system. The establishment of the modern diplomacysystem was not only the requirement of the western country but also of the change of theQing government: the Western power, in order to obtain a peaceful and steady situation whichis favorable to trade development, try their best to make china desert its "Confucian dreamworld "and its centuries-old isolation policy and accept treaties which stipulated equal statusbetween the "son of Heaven"an Western heads of state before the Sino-Japanese War of1894-1895.With the stimulus of the capitalism expansion there are also some practicalknowledgeable people inside the ruling class who began to realize it was necessary to end theisolation policy and carry out reformation to adapt to the change of the internationalbackground. However the modern diplomatic system was finally established as a result ofchina's defeat of the War. So it's necessary to examine the influence of the traditionaldiplomatic system, which played an important role in the late Qing Government's diplomacy.This article answers the following question on the base of the historical materials andstudies at home and abroad: first, the policies and actions of westerns and their effects to themodernization of the china diplomacy; second, efforts and initiative of Qing government whowant to change and their effects; third, development and reasons of disintegration of thetradition diplomacy system; Fourth, The role of the tradition Tributary system weighed inthe modernization of the china diplomacy; Finally, the author examined the success, failure,gain and loss of transition from traditional diplomacy to modern diplomacy at large .