Northwest Development In The Late Qing Dynasty Thought

The Northwest inland of China was once very flourishing, however, the economic gap became broader and broader than the Southeast coast of china in the process of transition to modem time. The governors and average people ever strongly appealed for explore the Northwest of China since 1860. People paid much attention to the research of achievements of Westward exploration and neglected the study about the views and suggestions of it at that time. This article attempts to give a all-sidedly and systematical presentation about the opinions of exploring at this period. There are four parts as follow.Part one gives a brief introduction of the range of Northwest inland, natural conditions, national state, summary of historical situation and so on. It points out that we hadn't really explored this area until 1860 or 1870.Part two emphatics analyzes the historic background and subjective motive why people in late Qing Dynasty made the suggestions of westward exploration. There are three objective reasons. The first one is the civil war of Northwest inland. The other is the abrupt aggravation of foreigners' invasion. A third is the policies and actions of energetically developing modern industries which were made by the royal court of late Qing Dynasty to become rich. As for the subjective motive, it is to strengthen the national defence, balance the development of regional economy and protect the right in economy.Part three mainly discusses the specific views and actions about the Westward exploration. Chinese put the plan into practice from the following aspects: improving the system of administrative organization, devoting major efforts to developing agriculture, immigrating people tothe northwest of China, building railways, establishing the system of education, setting up the modern industry, and exploiting the mineral resource.Part four analyses the characteristic of views on northwest inland exploration. The views not only carried on the forefathers' experience in the motive, the ways, and the dependence, but also some views are very useful to the nowadays Westward exploration.