为什么古代中国从西方购买并仿制了武器后没有转变成为一支强大的军事力量呢？ [美国媒体]

[Quora]：Why did China fail to transform itself into a strong military after they purchased weapons from Western countries and manufactured their own at arsenals?

[Quora]：为什么古代中国从西方购买并仿制了武器后没有转变成为一支强大的军事力量呢？

Brandon Li, I have enough of an education to know how to use Google and the library
China never really made a whole hearted effort to modernize, mainly because of arrogance, corruption, and the fact that the ruling Manchus were a small minority within the country.
During the First Opium War, the Qing government was already rotting from within. At this point, China could have still overwhelmed its Napoleonic era opposition. However, different local governors pretty much held their own armies and the British faced the weakest areas which were in the south. Instead of calling for help, local leaders lied to the central government to save face, leading to the emperor not even knowing about the war’s existence until it had been going on for over half a year.

Brandon Li，接受了足够的教育懂得如何使用Google和图书馆
古代中国从来没有真正致力于现代化。这主要是因为傲慢，腐败以及执政的满人在国内只占少数。
在第一次鸦片战争期间，清政府已经从内部腐烂了。那时中国本来还能打败处于拿破仑时代的英军，然而，地方大员各自为战，而英国人面前是疲软的南方。为保住脸面，地方官员一直对中央政府撒谎，直到战争持续了半年后皇帝才知道打仗了。

When the British and French returned in greater numbers later, this was more significant, but was still viewed as secondary to the Taiping Rebellion, which was raging through the Chinese heartland, killing millions. China’s only attempt to improve its military in the mid 19th century paid dividends though, in the form of the Ever Victorious Army, a small but elite force of European trained and led soldiers that was feared across the battlefield. It was disbanded after the Taiping Rebellion. Afterwards, it spent decades building up a stockpile of modern weapons. So China did actually try to modernize a bit and on the surface it was a formidable country by the end of the century, although this facade would come crashing down when China faced a newly emerged Japan.

后来英法联军到来时，这种情况更严重。但相比于在中国核心地带肆虐，造成了数百万人死亡的太平天国之乱来说，中国仍将英国和法国视为次要的威胁。在19世纪中期，中国进行了一次提升军事水平的尝试，训练出了一支“常胜军”。这支得到欧式训练的小型精锐部队在战场上备受瞩目。但这支军队在太平天国之乱被平定后就解散了。之后中国花了数十年建立了一支现代化的军事力量，到19世纪末，中国成为了一个强大的国家。但强大的面具很快就被崛起的日本撕破。

In 1894, Japan and China went to war, and most Western observers predicted an easy victory for a Qing Empire that had spent the last 3 decades building up its military. It is only afterwards that people found out how much of a paper tiger Qing China was. The quality of its soldiers was terrible and its leadership matched. They had modern weapons, but none of the necessary modern ideas to achieve victory. As countless colonial wars earlier on had shown, especially in India where musket armed Europeans faced musket armed Indians, tactics and discipline were at least as important as equipment. Being that as it may, the Chinese didn’t exactly have stellar equipment either though. Although it had some of the most modern ships in the world for example, purchased from Germany, almost the entire budget to buy ammunition was embezzled, so poorly trained Chinese sailors had to resort to ramming after firing a few shots. And of course, all along the way, reactionary forces in the imperial court tried to limit modernization as much as possible. On the surface, none of this makes sense. No government would intentionally work to weaken itself and allow foreigners to run roughshod over it. But remember, the Qing were foreigners in China as resented as such. Modernizing the military would mean arming and training hundreds of thousands of Han Chinese people who hated them. Doing such a thing could very well lead to the overthrow of the Manchus. So, of course, when the Qing finally built a modern army, it did overthrow them in the form of Yuan Shikai and his Beiyang Army.

1894年，中日之间发生了战争。当时大多数西方观察者都预测，清王朝能凭借过去三十年建立起的军队轻易取胜。然而事后人们才知道中国只是一只纸老虎，士兵和指挥都一塌糊涂，虽拥有现代武器，但没有取胜所必须的现代理念。正如从前无数次殖民战争中体现的，战术和纪律与装备一样重要。举个例子，装备滑膛枪的英国人打败了同样装备的印度人。况且中国也没有最先进的装备。中国有从德国购买的世界一流船只，但购买弹药的预算都被贪污了，缺少训练的船员开几炮就只好换成实心弹。朝廷里的保守派也一直在阻止军队现代化。正常来说，不应该出现这种情况（指阻碍军事改革），因为任何政府都不会去刻意削弱自己，受外国蹂躏。但是要清楚一点，清政府是外族的政府，军队现代化意味着将武装和训练成千上万仇恨满族的汉人，这很可能导致满族人的统治被推翻。现实中当清朝最终建立起一支现代军队后，它就变成了汉人领导的北洋军，推翻了清朝。

Meanwhile, Japan did not have this ethnic conflict at play and could clearly see how behind it was. Its first military confrontation with the West in centuries was absolutely embarrassing, with the United States Navy simply steaming in and dictating terms. The Japanese knew what was at stake. It also helped that they were more willing to completely transform their nation and its institutions, not just buy a few weapons because weapons are only as good as the men who use them. As for Russia, that country was always in the loop with European technological advances. When it fell behind, it only fell behind as much as any other European country, like Italy or Austria-Hungary. The difference wasn’t vast.
*Matchlocks required gunners to hold a match or other flame source in order to manually ignite the powder in their weapons. This system was rather unreliable as can be imagined and was replaced with flintlocks in the early 1700’s. By the time of the Opium Wars, the West was already phasing out flintlocks too for an even more advanced musket mechanism, the caplock. This puts the most advanced Chinese soldiers at the time two generations between the Europeans. Even then, most soldiers didn’t even have these outdated guns and used swords and spears instead.

日本没有这种民族问题。他们面对杀气腾腾的美国海军和被迫签订条约时深感威胁，因此更愿意彻底改革国家和机构，而不仅仅是购买一些武器，他们知道好武器只有在好的使用者手上才能发挥最大的用处。至于俄罗斯，它一直处于欧洲技术进步的循环中，落后的时候也不过落后于意大利和奥匈帝国，差距并不大。
*火绳枪需要枪手用火柴或别的火源手动点燃火药。可想而知这个系统相当不可靠，所以在1700年左右就被燧发枪取代了。在鸦片战争时期，西方国家已经逐渐淘汰了燧发枪，选用更先进的雷管枪。这时候中国最先进的武器介于燧发枪和雷管枪之间，而大多数士兵没用过这些已经过时的武器，还在使用刀和矛。

Jason Li, lived in China
For the period in question, China was ruled by Manchus in the Qing dynasty.
The Qing court didn't want to create a modern standing army of Han Chinese, for they fear they'd be overthrown. They were right, for they were overthrown by the first modern army they created led by Yuan Shikai.
They couldn't create a modern army of Manchus, because they were few in number, and it goes against the explicit edict of the mighty Qianlong emperor, who conquered musket-armed Dzungars with an army of horse-riding archers. In the Qing political system, words of dead emperors are important, if not sacrosanct.
Both conundrums can be solved by political reform, but the reform itself carries political risks that could also easily remove them from power. I found this to be the most convincing explanation for much of the marches of folly we observe in history books.

Jason Li，住在中国
中国当时处于满族人掌权的清朝。
清廷不想建立一支由汉族人掌控的现代化军队，因为他们担心被推翻。他们是对的，因为接下来袁世凯率领的中国第一支现代化军队就把清朝推翻了。
他们也无法建立一支现代化的满族军队，因为满族人数量不多，而且这样违背了乾隆皇帝“骑射为我朝根本，一切技艺尤赖熟悉”的谕旨。乾隆曾以他的骑射军队打败了装备火绳枪的准格尔部。在清朝政治中，先帝留下的谕旨神圣而不可违背。
这两个问题都可以通过政治改革来解决，但是改革的风险很大，可能会把满族人赶下台。我认为，这是对于我们在历史书中所看到的，对清朝的那些愚蠢行径最合理的解释。

Ronald Hanson, A Chinese with a patriotic foreign mind; Deep interest in China's everything.
I think you are talking about the Qing Dynasty. The reasons are manyfold.
First, also the most fundamental, the political system then was outdated, which hinders the industrial development. Corruption was widespread in the government. They didn’t have the expertise to manage or encourage industrial development.
Second, China had long been implementing the policy of “closing the border”, very few people really know much about he industrila revolution happending in the west. Though later the government spent huge money on purchasing almost the most advanced weapons and equipment from western countries, they didn’t know how to use them to fight a war. These equipments were only trained for performance.
Third, the feudal system put great oppression on the farmers, that accounted for overwhelming majority of the Chinese populaiton then. Revolts were often and almost all of them were brutally oppressed, so the government could not focus on the external threats.
China has had too many lessons from history. That’s why she is trying her best not to repeat any one of them.

Ronald Hanson，具有外国思维的中国人，对中国的一切都深深着迷
我想你是在说清朝。原因很多。
第一，也是最根本的，清朝的政治制度已经过时了，阻碍了工业的发展。政府普遍存在腐败现象，他们没有管理或鼓励工业发展的专业知识。
第二，中国长期执行“闭关锁国”政策，很少有人真正了解西方发生的工业革命。虽然后来政府花费巨资购买了西方国家最先进的武器装备，但不知道如何使用它们来作战。
第三，封建制度对占当时中国人口绝大多数的农民造成了极大的压迫。起义频发，而且都受到残酷的镇压，所以政府不能集中精力处理外部威胁。
中国从历史中学到了太多教训，这就是为什么她尽全力不重蹈覆辙。

Pieter Buis
Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.
Short term military upgrading can be helpful but in the long run the economy of a state matters more. They could buy modern weapons and to a degree they adapted modern tactics but all that was going to be outdated in another few decades, the only option being to buy new weapons from other countries again.
By the time of the First Opium war the Chinese economy had essentially been stagnant for over three hundred years if not more, meanwhile the population boomed leading to mass poverty. While their economy didn’t decline there was no real incentive to modernize either. Investing in fixed assets to improve labor productivity was unnecessary because it was cheaper and more profitable to just hire more manual labor.
A few European countries and Japan experienced a rather natural industrial revolution with minimal loss of human lives. A country like China only industrialized when it was forced to do so despite food shortages and whatnot.

Pieter Buis
授人以鱼不如授人以渔。
短期的军事升级可能会暂时有所帮助，但长远来看，经济对一个国家更为重要。他们可以购买现代武器，并在一定程度上适应现代战术，但所有的这些在未来几十年后会过时，那时唯一的选择是再次从其他国家购买新的武器。
第一次鸦片战争时，中国的经济基本已停滞了三百多年。同时人口的暴增导致了大规模贫困。虽然经济没有下滑，但也没有任何现代化的动机。没必要通过投资固定资产来提高劳动生产率，因为雇佣便宜的劳工赚得更多
少数欧洲国家和日本经历了一场死伤较小的工业革命。像中国这样的国家只有面临粮食短缺这类生死攸关的问题时才会工业化。

Richard Choi
All of the answer are very well.
Here a addition, the center government in Beijing lose they power in controlling the country.
Since Taiping Rebellion began. “zhong-yang-ji-quan” (centralization) system had collapse, local government can hold their own military forces.
From than on, the warlords have very strong affect on the government.
Meiji reform
Which The Emperor get the power from The Tokugawa shogunate. The military belong to the Japan Emperor.

Richard Choi
所有的答案都很好。
另外，北京的中央政府失去了掌控国家的能力。自太平天国起义以来，中央集权制度崩溃，地方政府可以拥有自己的军事力量。从此之后，军阀对政府有很大的影响力。
明治维新
天皇从德川幕府那里继承了权力。军队属于天皇。