On national defense education from the death of Beiyang navy

The Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895 was a far-reaching war in China's modern history. Before the war, few people predicted that after decades of military transformation, the Chinese Empire would lose to "Ile Island". However, when a Beiyang navy with modern military equipment was defeated by Japan, people began to reflect for a long time. In addition to weapons and equipment, organizational system, strategy and tactics, political corruption and many other reasons, the difference between the two cultural traditions has to be said to be an important reason for the collapse of Beiyang Navy in the late Qing Dynasty.

In a sense, the military is a cultural phenomenon. Every nation has its own unique culture. This culture permeates all aspects of the military field and has a complex and extremely subtle impact on military development.

Cultural differences are deep-seated differences. Looking at the failure of Beiyang Navy in the late Qing Dynasty from the perspective of culture seems to better explain the deep connotations that are often ignored and give people a new hint. As we all know, the Beiyang government spent more manpower, financial resources, material resources and time on naval construction than Japan in the late Qing Dynasty, but the result was that "China was inferior to Japan"-China was defeated in the Sino-Japanese War. Some people blame the corruption of the Qing government, some blame the strategic mistakes in the development of the navy, and some blame the low management level of the navy. All these statements have their reasons, but by exploring the deep reasons, we will see more clearly that the difference of cultural concepts is the core factor leading to the above problems, and the backwardness or lack of culture leads to weak concepts, outdated concepts, weakened management, accumulated defects in the system and damaged rights and interests, which is the fundamental crux of the collapse of Beiyang Navy in the Sino-Japanese War. A complete cultural form should generally include material culture, institutional culture and spiritual culture. We will discuss the specific reasons and deep-seated reasons for the failure of Beiyang Navy in the Sino-Japanese War from three aspects of cultural form.

First, material and cultural differences are the fundamental reason for the failure of Beiyang Navy.

Looking back at the modern naval history of the world and comparing the naval construction of China and Japan before the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895, it should be said that the navy has many advantages. First, more investment. The Qing government spent more than 30 million taels of silver on the construction of naval vessels alone. In addition to other expenses, the Qing government collected about 70 million taels of silver in the name of naval coastal defense construction. In the 20 years before the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895, the Qing government spent about 600 million taels of silver on naval construction, accounting for 3.5% of its annual fiscal revenue on average. This was a high investment at that time. Japan was not strong at that time, and the actual naval funds raised were not much. According to statistics, from 1868 to 1894, the Japanese government invested about 94.8 million yen in the navy, which was less than that of the Qing government. Second, the scale is large. By the eve of the Sino-Japanese War, the Qing navy had 78 warships and 24 torpedo boats with a total displacement of more than 80,000 tons. The Japanese navy has 3 1 warship, 24 torpedo boats and 4 armed merchant ships with a total displacement of 59,898 tons. Obviously, the Qing navy was larger than the Japanese navy. In addition, the Qing navy has obvious advantages in base facilities and training time for officers and men.

However, this obvious advantage showed low efficiency before the war and in the battle. First of all, although there were hundreds of Qing navies before the war, they did not have an advantage in military weapons. In fact, there were only 25 Qing navy warships directly participating in the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895, and only 13 torpedo boats, with a displacement of only over 44,000 tons. Why didn't other warships of the Qing navy take part in the battle? This question is thought-provoking. The Japanese navy has 26 warships and 24 torpedo boats, but it is superior to the Qing navy in the total number of ships and the total displacement. Secondly, although the Qing navy invested a lot, its equipment was not more advanced than that of the Japanese navy. On the contrary, the speed and shipborne firepower of Japanese ships have surpassed that of China. Third, although the Qing navy had well-equipped bases, it could not effectively protect its naval vessels in wartime, but instead funded the enemy to harm itself and was subject to the enemy. Fourth, although the training time of the Qing navy was long, it was not in harmony with the generals, the contradiction between officers and men was great, the discipline of the troops was slack, the tactical adaptability was lacking, and the artillery hit rate was low. On the surface, the reasons for the above drawbacks are military, but the deeper reasons are cultural. It was the cultural differences that led the Qing navy to formulate a backward and negative coastal defense strategy; It is cultural differences that led to the use of backward equipment and technology by the Qing navy. Therefore, although the number of ships is better than that of Japan, the quality is not as good as that of Japan, especially in ship speed and shipborne firepower. In particular, due to cultural differences, the government and the army are corrupt and backward, and their ability is low, so that the combat effectiveness of the army is weak.

Second, the difference of institutional culture is an important reason for the failure of Beiyang Navy.

The concept of China's traditional military system culture is mainly manifested in not pursuing the combat effectiveness of the army, but how to make the army obey and be loyal to the emperor. In the late Qing Dynasty, this traditional military culture was still the prevailing mainstream culture at that time. "Westernization Movement" actively introduced advanced equipment under the guidance of the idea of "taking middle school as the body and western learning as the application", but only introduced "equipment" but not "control", which basically limited military reform to the military technology level, that is, it often stayed at the level of "equipment" reform. However, it is impossible to carry out drastic reform on the security system of the state and the army, because it touches on feudal ethics and patriarchal ideology, and even concerns the vital interests of feudal upper-level officials. As far as the navy is concerned, due to the incomplete reform of the high-level military leadership system by the Qing government, the problems of the naval leadership management system have never been straightened out, resulting in scattered naval construction, short-sighted planning, numerous disadvantages, long-standing chronic diseases, more serious internal friction and low efficiency. The result of this system is that the "Shantou" army and the "Jiazihao" army are fragmented, which leads to the unsatisfactory leadership system and poor command. There is no closely coordinated combat system between naval fleets, and between the army and the navy. They fight in their own way and are finally defeated by the enemy.

Faced with various problems in naval construction, the Qing government set up the Prime Minister's Naval yamen in 1885, trying to make some changes. However, on the premise of not touching the "Chinese style", the Prime Minister's naval yamen not only failed to put the naval construction on the right track, on the contrary, as a typical feudal yamen, it also participated in the corrosion of the modern navy. It can be seen that the feudal "style" remained unchanged, the traditional cultural concept of the military system remained unchanged, and the development of modern navy finally failed. This reasoning and conclusion were well verified in the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895.

On the other hand, Japan, in the naval construction, not only learned from the western "strong ships and powerful guns", but also learned from and imitated the advanced systems and organizational management methods of modern western navies earlier. For example, the Meiji government's strict formal education system for naval personnel and the budget system for naval funds were all learned from the West. In order to effectively manage the navy, the Meiji government paid special attention to adjusting and reforming the leadership and management system of the navy. During the 27 years from the first year of Meiji in 1868 to the Sino-Japanese War in 1894- 1895, the leadership and management organization of the Japanese navy underwent 23 major changes, and its system was constantly improving. In addition, during the Meiji Restoration, the Japanese quickly realized the value of western military regulations and actively and seriously learned from them. Therefore, in the Meiji military reform, improving the legal system was placed in a very important position. From 1868 to 1895, more than 100 laws and regulations have been promulgated and implemented, and several new military laws and regulations come into effect or several revised laws and regulations are promulgated almost every year. By the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895, Japan had established a complete modern military legal system. This ensures the high concentration and unification of Japan's modern military system from the legal point of view. The Japanese army can realize the unification and standardization of equipment in the case of difficult military expenditure, can enlist a large number of conscripts in the case of small population, and Japanese soldiers can show a spirit of loyalty and courage in the Sino-Japanese War, all of which stem from these laws and regulations.

The rumble of guns in the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895 showed us that both the Qing army and the Japanese army were equipped with foreign guns, but China people were defeated by the Japanese. One of the reasons is the difference in system and culture between the two armies.

Third, spiritual and cultural differences are the main reasons for the failure of Beiyang Navy.

On the surface, the failure of the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895 was a war failure, but from the deep-seated reasons, it also reflected the shortcomings and defects of China's traditional military culture. The core and distinctive feature of China's traditional military culture is the traditional cultural psychology of pacifism and passive defense. Looking back at the history of Ming and Qing dynasties, we can see that the maritime armed forces were in a leading position in the world in the early Ming dynasty, and the negative coastal defense concept of "preventing them from entering the customs" was implemented in the late Ming dynasty. In the early Qing Dynasty, the coastal defense strategy of forbidding sea "defense" greatly restricted the development of China navy technology. By the early stage of the 1840 Opium War, the technical performance and weapons and equipment of the Qing army were too different from those of the British army, and they had almost no competitive ability, which led to the Qing army completely losing its maritime mobile combat capability in the first Opium War. After the defeat of the Second Opium War, Li Hongzhang and other leaders of the Westernization School began to realize the power of the West to build strong ships and guns, chose Lushun and Ahava as their naval bases, and began to set up the Beiyang Navy to rebuild the triangular fortress battery systems around the Bohai Sea, such as Dagu Lake, Luda and Weihai. However, in the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895, under the guidance of the wrong operational policy of "avoiding war and protecting ships", Beiyang Navy did not dare to take the initiative to find opportunities to wipe out the enemy and command chaos, which led to the total annihilation of Beiyang Navy. After the total loss of mobile combat capability at sea, the coastal defense with fortress as the main body was completely hit by the enemy's maritime fire and fell into a state of isolation and helplessness. In the end, all the coastal fortresses fell, and the coastal defense system collapsed, and finally ended in the failure of the Sino-Japanese Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895.

Judging from the military strategy and culture of the two dynasties, the defense line of the North Great Wall in Ming Dynasty was insufficient in mobile combat power, especially the gap between the mobile combat power of cavalry was serious, which led to the defense line of the North Great Wall being broken many times. This long-term defense operation can't stop the mobile key attack, which declares the failure of this "passive defense" idea. In the early Qing dynasty, there was a gap between the coastal defense navy and the European maritime forces, and the traditional fortification idea moved from the north to the southeast coast. Although the Beiyang Navy with considerable strength was established, its operational idea was not to seize the right to control the sea, but to control its own port and coast. As a result, the whole Beiyang Navy was wiped out in the Sino-Japanese War in the late Qing Dynasty. Due to the lack of mobile combat power at sea, the coastal defense line collapsed and the war failure was inevitable.

The Ming Dynasty and the Qing Dynasty, two feudal dynasties, suffered repeated wars and defeats due to passive defense, especially the maritime defense in the late Qing Dynasty, which deserves our deep consideration today. China's farming people have long pursued the military cultural concept and strategy of "controlling the sea by land" and "passive defense", which led to the failure of the Sino-Japanese War and the absence of the national marine strategy, which damaged China's maritime rights and interests and could not get out of the shadow of maritime humiliation for a long time. This is a historical lesson that we must learn.

Culture is an important foundation for a nation to achieve leap-forward development. If a nation wants to revive, it must revive first. If a country wants to have strong coastal defense, it must be supported by advanced coastal defense culture. This is the inevitable conclusion that we review the history of coastal defense in the late Qing Dynasty and think about the failure of Beiyang Navy. (China Ocean News)