China into "spheres of interest", obviously as the prelude to annexation
of the whole country.

In Europe at that time the question was being discussed over and over
again, why Japan had so quickly succeeded in making herself a modern
power, and why China was not succeeding in doing so; the Japanese were
praised for their capacity and the Chinese blamed for their lassitude.
Both in Europe and in Chinese circles it was overlooked that there were
fundamental differences in the social structures of the two countries.
The basis of the modern capitalist states of the West is the middle
class. Japan had for centuries had a middle class (the merchants) that
had entered into a symbiosis with the feudal lords. For the middle class
the transition to modern capitalism, and for the feudal lords the way to
Western imperialism, was easy. In China there was only a weak middle
class, vegetating under the dominance of the gentry; the middle class
had still to gain the strength to liberate itself before it could become
the support for a capitalistic state. And the gentry were still strong
enough to maintain their dominance and so to prevent a radical
reconstruction; all they would agree to were a few reforms from which
they might hope to secure an increase of power for their own ends.

In 1895 and in 1698 a scholar, K'ang Yo-wei, who was admitted into the
presence of the emperor, submitted to him memoranda in which he called
for radical reform. K'ang was a scholar who belonged to the empiricist
school of philosophy of the early Manchu period, the so-called Han
school. He was a man of strong and persuasive personality, and had such
an influence on the emperor that in 1898 the emperor issued several
edicts ordering the fundamental reorganization of education, law, trade,
communications, and the army. These laws were not at all bad in
themselves; they would have paved the way for a liberalization of
Chinese society. But they aroused the utmost hatred in the conservative
gentry and also in the moderate reformers among the gentry. K'ang Yo-wei
and his followers, to whom a number of well-known modern scholars
belonged, had strong support in South China. We have already mentioned
that owing to the increased penetration of European goods and ideas,
South China had become more progressive than the north; this had added
to the tension already existing for other reasons between north and
south. In foreign policy the north was more favourable to R