Effects of the Taiping Revolution
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Secret Societies, always a factor in Southern China, now rose to prominence

• Suddenly, the people of China realized that the Ch'ing was no longer an absolute power.
• With that act, the Taipings awakened a nation to rebellion.
• The Taiping ideology came to be a conglomerate of Christianity and the golden age of Chinese culture. The Taiping goal was simple: destroy the Manchus and restore to China her past greatness.
• The leader of the Taipings, Hung Hsiu-Ch'uan, shaped the entire rebellion and thus much of modern China
• Hung tried to pass several times until 1843.
• This incident may have fed his hostility towards the Ch'ing and China's condition.
• Hung spent two months studying the bible doctrines under the missionary. Some years before, in 1835, Leang-afa, the first protestant Christian in China, had given Hung several papers also about religion.

Confucianism had a large influence on the Taiping religion

• The Taiping fatalist outlook also stems from Confucianism.
• Though severely factionalized and having changed leaders several times, they managed to install a Taiping government in Nanking, stressing egalitarian values and claiming to be in the process of restoring China's glory.
• By 1863 the Taiping Rebellion was falling apart. Hung Jen-kan, the third and final leader of the Rebellion, had attempted during his rule to reevaluate the tenets and beliefs of the Taipings, as well as salvage the Taiping cause.

Manchu Response

• The initial response of the Manchus to the Taiping Rebellion was fairly straightforward.
• The Manchu government, weak from a "debauched" emperor and the Opium War, could ultimately not withstand such a severe earthquake as the Taiping Rebellion.

Long Term Effects of the Rebellion

• Although a technical failure, the Taiping Rebellion changed the way the Chinese government functioned.
• The Chinese economy in every respect increasingly became a subsidy of Japan, especially North and Northeast China.
• China was pushed into the modern world by force. Soon Japan began to take Chinese territory.
• China was taken from the inside out.
• The Taiping Rebellion changed the face of China
• The Taiping Rebellion played a significant role in ending China's isolationist outlook.
• After the Taiping Rebellion, China would never again be a realm unto herself.
• With the failure of the Taiping movement, the age of the emperors was finished.
• The people of China, on the verge of joining the forming world community, took refuge briefly in their unique blend of traditional culture and modern idealism.
• The Taiping Rebellion was a reaction against progress, more importantly against change. That action continues to mold the current events in China, a sign that the people, not the central authority, can control the future of China.

Other Notes in this Category

1. Effects of the Taiping Revolution
2. Factors Behind the 1851 Taiping Rebellion
3. The Course of the Taiping Rebellion

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