None of this mattered until politicians and professors got into the act. C oming down through the same 19 th century, the Chinese empire had its own problems. The clunky, Confucianist bureaucratic regime ran up against population pressures and foreign devils. Covert aid from Western powers helped sustain the imperial state. After all, the Western imperialists needed some kind of regime in China to collaborate with them, even if they did not wish it to be powerful enough to resist their encroachments in the name of trade and Christianity.
History rocks along in funny paths.
This was so helpful that a lot of Americans of my generation were killed or maimed dealing with some of the results. C est rire . Anyway, although the Chinese imperial system survived the shock of the T ai-p ing rebellion, China came under increasing Western pressure. The Germans, the Brits, the French, the Russians, and others could count, too, and they all wanted to sell that same pair of shoes to every Chinaman. They too had missionaries.