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1. The Influence of the Qing Terminal New Deal on Later Generations清末新政对后世的影响
清末新政是清朝末年的一次经济和政治改革运动，是中国现代化的重大事件之一（高，2003）。它对后代的影响既是积极的，也是消极的。
首先，从经济学的角度来看，晚清新政的最大成就是增加经济自由。根据当时欧美国家的观点，传统或中世纪的中国在现代意义上没有经济自由（Ni和Van，2006）。在晚清改革期间，法律开始认识到私有财产的合法性和合法性（Li，2008）。在此期间，工厂数量和投资总额大大超过了前几代人（Gao，2003）。与此同时，交通，商业和金融业也有了明显的发展。在此之后，中国的经济发展开始具有资本主义的要素，中国的民族资产阶级也开始发展壮大（Ni和Van，2006）。
从法律角度来看，在新政时期，现代社会的法律框架开始初步确立（Gao，2003）。民国初期，北洋政府基本上遵循了晚清新政制定的一系列法律和审判制度，即使在1924年以后，民法，刑法等基本法仍然在很大程度上继承了清末新政（李，2017）。
Qing Terminal New Deal was an economic and political reform movement in the last years of the Qing dynasty, it was one of the major events in China's modernization (Gao, 2003). Its impact on future generations was both positive and negative.
First of all, from an economic point of view, the biggest achievement of the New Deal in the late Qing Dynasty was to increase economic freedom. According to the point of view of the European and American countries at that time, traditional or medieval China did not have economic freedom in the modern sense (Ni and Van, 2006). During the reform in the late Qing Dynasty, the law began to recognize the legitimacy and legitimacy of private property (Li, 2008). During this period, the number of factories and the total amount of investment greatly surpassed those of the previous generations (Gao, 2003). At the same time, the transportation, commerce and finance had a clear development. After that, China's economic development began to have the elements of capitalism, China's national bourgeoisie has also begun to develop and grow (Ni and Van, 2006).
From a legal point of view, during the period of the New Deal, the legal framework of modern society began to be initially established (Gao, 2003). During the early Republic of China, the Beiyang government basically followed a series of laws and trial systems formulated by the New Deal of the late Qing Dynasty, even after 1924, the basic laws such as civil law and criminal law still largely inherited the achievements of the New Deal in the late Qing Dynasty (Li, 2017).
From an educational point of view, during the reform in the late Qing Dynasty, the system of imperial examination was abolished and a large number of new schools were newly established (Li, 2008). Many Chinese began to study abroad and the modern Western ideas, culture began to spread in China, which laid the foundation for the spread of democratic ideas in the future (Kung and Ma, 2014).
From a military point of view, during the reform in the late Qing Dynasty, the Qing government led the founding of the new army (Li, 2017). The new army has a significant impact on the future military system, combat operations, training and preparation of the Chinese army (Gao, 2003). It was an important advance of China's military modernization.
From a historical perspective, the New Deal prompted the spread of democratic thought in China, some Chinese began to awaken, plus many factors such as the growth of the New Army and the national bourgeoisie, which led to the outbreak of the 1911 Revolution and eventually overthrew the Qing Dynasty (Wang, 1998; Miller, 2013).
The negative implications include, in order to implement the New Deal, the state collected a large amount of tax revenue, which increased the burden on the people and promoted the birth of the new warlord, it laid the foundation for the future civil war in China and created the issue between the Han and the ethnic minorities in China's border areas, laid the root cause for separatism (Ni and Van, 2006; Miller, 2013).
2. The Initiator, Purpose and Investment of the Qing Terminal New Deal
After the heavy blows and insults of the Eight-Power Allied Forces, the Qing authorities finally realized the importance of reform (Ni and Van, 2006). Compared to the past reforms which were led by enlightened people and prevented by the conservatives, the Qing Terminal New Deal was in a different way (Li, 2008). For the sake of safeguarding their own dominance and interests, the conservatives took the initiative to make changes (Gao, 2003). In 1901, with the tacit approval of the Empress Dowager Cixi, the Qing government carried out the reform (Li, 2017). The government has invested huge sums of money in establishing new types of military bases, new schools, industrial undertakings, etc. The government renounced some of the traditional systems which safeguarded its own rule over thousands of years, such as the examination system and allowed private businesses to be run (Miller, 2013). They gave up some of the rights, such as: reform of the official system, binding the rights of officials, achieving constitutional constitution and so on.
3. Reasons for failure of the Qing Terminal New Deal
In the late Qing Dynasty, the sense of crisis and cultural frustration in Chinese society was stronger than ever before in Chinese history, people never felt that the "death of the nation" would be so imminent (Kung and Ma, 2014). Therefore, when the rulers and social elites were looking for prescriptions for treatment, they often impatiently use the social systems that they considered good. In general, political reform should be linked with the cultural and economic development levels and the actual situation at the time, the late Qing government reform did not match the situation in China at that time (Kung and Ma, 2014). The economic level, the culture and democratic accomplishments of the people and officials failed to meet the requirements. For example, due to lack of funding, implementation of the reform greatly increased the burden on the people, corruption had been flooding in the reform process, all of which led to the failure of the reform (Ni and Van, 2006).
Success of reform requires the support of people. At that time, the main purpose of the reform was only to safeguard the rulers' own dominance. They did not thoroughly reform the political system and still tried to defend their own rights, they refused to allow the people to enjoy more democratic rights (Li, 2017). The rulers repeatedly postponed the establishment of the monarchy constitutional time, the cabinet mostly consisted of royal family, which greatly affected the people's expectations for the reform (Wang, 1998). At the same time, the reform not only failed to benefit the vast majority of the grassroots people, but also caused more suffering for the people than before, thus losing the people's support. The direct cause of the overthrow of the Qing Empire was the mandatory implementation of the railway state policy in 1911 (Li, 2017). This measure directly infringed upon the rights and interests of the general public, which finally led to the indirect outbreak of the 1911 Revolution (Wang, 1998).
At that time, the top elites were still naive. Many of the policies they formulated were good, but they lacked of a sufficiently good supporting system and lacked of people's supervision, which led to many problems in the implementation of many seemingly good policies. Their policies had many loopholes and were instead used by corrupt officials as a tool for making money (Ni and Van, 2006). The Manchu aristocrats took advantage of the chaos at that time to seek benefits for themselves and the reform measures came out in vain. It took a great deal of money but there was no substantive progress. In order to deal with the reform decrees one after another, the local officials had to collect money locally and caused great resentment, making the reform totally fail to achieve the desired purpose (Wang, 1998; Miller, 2013).
References
Gao, W. (2003).Political transformation in late Qing in China. China Social Sciences Press, 102-121.
Kung, J. K. and Ma, C. (2014). Can cultural norms reduce conflicts? Confucianism and peasant rebellions in Qing China. Journal of Development Economics, 111(11), 32-149.
Li, G. (2008).The last ten years of the Qing Empire. Contemporary China Press, 215-220.
Li, K. W. (2017). Chapter 14: China’s 1911 Revolution and Sun’s Legacy. Redefining Capitalism in Global Economic Development, 321-330.
Miller, I. M. (2013). Rebellion, crime and violence in Qing China, 1722–1911: a topic modeling approach. Poetics, 41(6), 626-649.
Ni, S. and Van, P. H. (2006). High corruption income in Ming and Qing China. Journal of Development Economics, 81(2), 316-336.
Wang, H. (1998).Modern significance of the New Deal in the late Qing Dynasty. Zhongzhou Journal, 1(12), 405-412.
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