Discussion On The Course And Impact Of Military Drill Japanization Of New Army In The Late Qing Dynasty

Since the17th century, in the context of eastward spread of western culture and diffusion of hot weapon, China’s old army has begun to transform slowly. After the Opium War, China’s old army began to learn from the west and seek revolution, impacted by the advanced Western military system. After the Sino-Japanese war, the new army, self-esteem army and other new style armies were trained for becoming armies, which commenced their modern transition of internal mechanisms. The training of new style armies led by Yuan Shikai and Zhang Zhidong promoted the process of early Chinese Army’s modernization from the breadth and depth. In the process of training and practicing the new armies, the Qing government originally learned from the British, French and German military drills. Later on Qingdao was invaded by Germany, with accompany of the penetration of Japanese forces, the new style army began to generally imitate the Japanese military drill, thus the dominant position of Japanese military drill was finally determined. For the military drill Japanization of new army, on the one hand, the Japanese military was inclined to rope in China and manipulate the new army based on the diplomatic and military isolation at that time, so they dispatched military advisers and instructors to teach new drills in China, invited the Qing government officials to watch and study drills in Japan and promulgated plans to allow Chinese army students to study military in Japan and so on. On the other hand, under the impact of revolution trend of modern times, the Qing government and far-sighted personages began to change their ideas and insight to study from Japan, initiatively sending students of defense preparations to study military in Japan, translating Japanese military books and adopting Japanese military training methods, etc. The comprehensive military drill Japanization of new army had a certain influence on the Chinese society at that time and subsequent. First of all, it promoted the modernization process of China’s military, and then the gymnastics, as a P.E. subject, transformed from the military drill was popularized in school, which improved the quality of the nation. In addition, the national and democratic thoughts began to rise in the process, becoming an important factor to push the revolution. However, military drill Japanization led to over-reliance on Japan’s new military trainers and technology, which not only could not be truly independent of the modern transformation of the military, but also bred a number of pro-Japanese military forces, providing convenience for Japan to invade China. The paper takes the military drill of new army in the late Qing Dynasty as the research object, starts with the military contacts between China and Japan as the starting point, and tries to study the evolution and impact of the military drill of new army from the perspective of modern times.