An Exploration into the Reasons of the Retardedness of Chinese Sea Defence after the Opium Wars

In the Opium Wars the Chinese generals in front were at first very confident of their victory.Only after heavy losses did they realize the inportance of advanced warship and guns.Most of them changed their idea about sea fight and proposed to “learn form the foreigners their advanced weapons in order to defeat them”.But officials who were far from the batlle fields did not realize this and attributed the defeat of Qing army to the miscommanding of high rank military officers.Because the proposal of “learning from the foreigners to defeat them” was not accepted,the modernization of military industry postponed endlessly.