Between Adoption and Resistance: China’s Efforts of ‘Understanding the West’, the Challenges of Transforming Monarchical Legitimacy and the Rise of Oriental Exceptionalism, 1860–1910

Qing officials and intellectuals were interested in European concepts of law, statehood, society, and the individual after China’s conflicting encounter with the ‘West’ in the two ‘Opium Wars’. The Marxist narrative of the Qing decline and the new Belt and Road programme ideologically highlight the lost harmonious vision of a Chinese world order facing European imperialism. As both interpretations do not pay adequate attention to Chinese adoptions of the ‘West’, this article argues that Chinese functional adoption of Western concepts served a Western-style ‘modernisation’ as long as it did not undermine the monarchical legitimacy of the Qing dynasty. Active Chinese import of ‘Western’ concepts to further modernise China only encountered official resilience when the concepts could undermine monarchical legitimacy and revolutionise the Empire.