Abstract: Judging from the world situation in the second half of the19th century, the East lags behind the West. In this particular era, it is decided that the Westernization Movement and the Meiji Restoration Movement are facing the same topic-they must learn from the West. How to study? They formulated different policies of "taking middle school as the main body, spreading western learning to the east" and "leaving Asia and entering Europe" respectively.

Historical view: the reform steps of Meiji Restoration in Japan: culture-politics-economy-military. First, let the people accept the advanced western culture, identify with the west, and achieve people-oriented. Then reform politics to pave the way for the country's prosperous economic development, then start economic reform and finally start military development. At that time, Japan's slogan: total westernization, civilization and industrialization.

China Westernization Movement Reform: Military-economy (limited reform for military development). At that time, the slogan of the Westernization Movement was: middle school is the body and western learning is the use.

Judging from the world situation in the second half of the19th century, the East lags behind the West. In this particular era, it is decided that the Westernization Movement and the Meiji Restoration Movement are facing the same topic-they must learn from the West. How to study? They formulated different policies of "taking middle school as the main body, spreading western learning to the east" and "leaving Asia and entering Europe" respectively. Although these two programs have their own characteristics, that is, they both advocate learning from the west, but more importantly, they take a completely opposite attitude towards the old feudal system.

The Westernization School, represented by Li Hongzhang, was a comprador feudal bureaucrat as part of the organizational system of the Qing government, and some of them made a fortune by suppressing peasant uprisings. Therefore, the westernization faction and the die-hards have the same fundamental attitude towards the feudal system. They think that "China's civil and military system is far superior to westerners in all aspects" [1], that is, China's feudal system and its political system are perfect, while the capitalist system in Europe and America is barbaric and backward, so we must fully safeguard China's feudal rule. However, the Westernization School is different from the die-hards who turn a blind eye to western material civilization. Especially after the failure of the two Opium Wars and the suppression of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Revolution, they deeply felt the power of foreign guns and guns, and thought that "foreign Qiang Bing's weapons were 100 times stronger than China's" [2]. If China wants to be strong, it must learn from the West. Of course, the Westernization School has gradually deepened its understanding of learning from the West: first, it buys foreign guns, and then it establishes military enterprises to manufacture them themselves. Later, with the upsurge of learning from the West and the difficulties encountered in organizing military industry, people further realized that the reason why the West is strong is that it has strong economic strength besides "building strong ships and guns", and the only way to achieve the goal of "making the soldiers rich and powerful" is to introduce western military technology and technology. Obviously, this spirit of "competition" and enterprising exploration is a denial of the die-hards' regard of western advanced science as "strange skills and cunning", which undoubtedly objectively adapted to the modernization trend of the world at that time. However, as a result of practice, China has not embarked on the road of modernization. The crux of the problem is that they have formulated the wrong guidelines.

Take Li Hongzhang, the leader of the Westernization School, as an example. In the process of learning from the west, he has always adhered to the theory of putting the cart before the horse. He believes that China's feudal civil and military system is the foundation, and the advanced western military equipment and technology are the purpose. The relationship between foundation and purpose is to "consolidate the foundation with purpose", that is, to learn foreign professional knowledge to govern the dining table. It can be seen that the Westernization School really has no intention of transforming feudal China into capitalist China. Their ultimate goal of learning from the west is to use the fur of western capitalism to maintain the decadent feudal body. This is the essence of the guiding ideology of the Westernization School, and it is also the root cause of the tragedy of the Westernization Movement.

Since the purpose of the Westernization School is to maintain and consolidate the feudal autocratic rule, they will not and cannot touch the feudal political system. This fatal weakness of the Westernization School was exploited by reactionary forces at home and abroad: the die-hards in the Qing court ruling group tried their best to resist and oppose the introduction of advanced western productive forces by maintaining the feudal system, which created various obstacles for the Westernization School to advocate learning from the West; On the other hand, European and American capitalist invaders, under the banner of "fostering" the feudal rule of the Qing government, tried their best to expand the export market of goods and capital and crush and destroy modern enterprises in China by virtue of various privileges seized from the Qing court. In this regard, although the Westernization School is alert, it thinks that China has been "an enemy that has never been seen for thousands of years" [4], "The situation of mixed residence between China and foreign countries has become a reality, and how can our generation draw a clear line between them?" [5], we must take contingency measures-holding a group for Westernization, but under the wrong guidelines, they always pin their hopes on the "support" and "help" of the West. Its end can only be humiliating the country and being controlled by others. This fully shows that any capitalist reform will be futile unless the semi-feudal and semi-colonial social system that hinders China's modern economic development is changed. Therefore, the Chinese nation has lost another opportunity to take off economically and even politically. This cannot but be said to be the misfortune of our nation!

The Meiji Restoration in Japan was the opposite. Its guiding principle of "leaving Asia and entering Europe" was put forward by the once bourgeois middle and lower class warriors. They clearly see from the "changes" in the world that the feudal society of Asian countries obviously lags behind that of Europe. Japan must first get rid of the ugliness of Asia, turn to "western civilization" as soon as possible, and transform its feudal society into a western-style capitalist society, otherwise it will be difficult to occupy a place in Asia and the world. Under the guidance of this strong sense of hardship, the Japanese reformers made full use of the favorable opportunity of the civil war, and first completed the transformation of the feudal shogunate system with the greatest determination, and established the Meiji regime headed by the emperor and controlled by the reformist warriors. Although it was the joint dictatorship of the landlords and the bourgeoisie, the forces of innovative fighters prevailed. This provides a reliable guarantee for the smooth development of domestic capitalism.

During the ten years from 1868 to 1980s, Japan carried out a series of top-down reforms under the slogans of "enriching Qiang Bing", "industrialization" and "civilization", which accelerated the transition to the capitalist system. In less than half a century, Japan has completed the modernization process that western capitalist countries took almost 200 years to complete, thus realizing the policy of "leaving Asia and entering Europe" and becoming the only independent modern bourgeois country in Asia. This cannot but be said to be the luck of the Japanese nation!

References:

Comparison between Westernization Movement and Meiji Restoration