Oversea Learning-travelling Policy Of Late Qing Dynasty

After the Opium war, the Qing dynasty government began to realize the big gap between the East and West, so that learning advanced science and technology from the western countries to fight against became the most important thing at that time. Under this special circumstance, the Oversea Learning-Travelling policy in late Qing dynasty underwent five historical stages which were sprouting, generating, developing, climaxing, and stabilizing. Because of the different social environment, different stages had different features. Under the lead of this policy, a big number of Chinese oversea students went to America and Europe and other developed countries to broaden their knowledge, to promote study and tours simultaneously.The main content in the Oversea Learning-Travelling policy included three sub-policies which were candidate selecting, destination countries selecting, management and reward. The candidate selecting related to the agency which would do this, the fund issue, and the qualification of the candidates. The destination countries mainly referred to the European countries, American and Japan and the reason that why finally picked those countries. The management policy consisted of management organization and management measures. The reward policy indicated that the government could bestow titles to them and other things in order to encourage them go out to other countries to study. The sprouting-generating-developing stage of learning-travelling policy in the late Qing dynasty, this policy experienced the course of development from the scratch. This was of great historical significance, but at the meantime, this policy showed us its drawbacks such as none of regulation, instability, and unhawkishness. From the Sino-Japanese War to 1905, before the department was founded, the Qing dynasty speeded the policymaking and policy-implementing process as well as increased the intensity of the policy and completed the system. Even though the government had done so much to make the policy perfect, it was still in shortage of unified management, which meant there was no full-time organization to execute the management. Along with the abolition of the civil service examination system and the establishment of the study department, the department and the Ministry of the External Affairs became the main agencies to supervise the oversea learning-travelling policy. Up to that time, the policy began to show its stability, normative, and the maturity.The concept of"application of the western technology in Chinese social system"became the most outstanding feature and guiding principle of Oversea Learning-Travelling policy. From the restriction of the candidates'qualification to the selection of the destination countries, from the set-up of the oversea students management agency to the management measures, the thought of"application of the western countries in the Chinese social system"worked for it persistently. Although the policy exposed the limitation of feudal society in terms of guiding ideology, it still laid a significant influence to the Chinese modern history.