1895 In February, at the last moment when the Chinese and Japanese navies were in a decisive battle and beiyang fleet was in a desperate situation, Tomohiro Ito, commander of the Japanese navy, wrote the above surrender letter to the prefect of China Beiyang Navy. This letter is Niu Ito Sukehiro in the word "knowledge". The central idea of this letter is "put down the gun and don't kill people", but the value of this letter lies not in surrender, but in revealing that "the strength of the country is the foundation". In the letter from the commander-in-chief to the commander-in-chief, the winner talked about politics, not navigation technology and achievements. Between the lines, it is revealed that Japanese soldiers have a very good understanding of "the power of the country"-the failure of the Sino-Japanese War in China was not the failure of warships, but the failure of the system. China's navy is finished. Because "the root of a country's survival" lies not in the skill of "building a strong ship and sharpening guns", but in the strategy of "getting rid of the old and innovating, and looking at the overall situation".
This surrender book also made a non-military and non-technical but political summary for the complete defeat of the China navy and the complete victory of the Japanese navy. It also means telling your opponent why Japan is China's natural enemy. Because in the contest of "New Deal", Japan is far better than China. After the Meiji Restoration, a large number of elite officers appeared in Japanese military camps, who could seek enemies from outside and the country from inside. The essential difference between them and the officers of the Qing Dynasty in China lies first in their "political level" rather than their ability to direct operations. For example, Yamagata Aritomo, the commander-in-chief of the Army, always instructed him to draft a notice for his people when he captured a major town in the Northeast during the Sino-Japanese Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895, declaring that Japan was "punished in the Manchu court, not in the land of your people" and calling on the Japanese people to "follow the direction of heaven and man, follow the general trend of the world, drive the Manchus out of the country one by one, and then carry out political reform". In the eyes of these Japanese generals, the "talents" in the world contain the most important thing, not technology, but politics-small talents talk about technology and big talents talk about politics.
Modern Japanese confidence in China was built on this basis-the "old government" country must be weak and the "New Deal" country must be strong. China, the "old government", is bound to lose to the Japanese "New Deal". Don't say that the "weak China" in19th century is the "Great Mongolia" that conquered Eurasia in the Middle Ages and was later driven out of the Central Plains by the revived Han people, and gradually became a nomadic tribe on the grassland. The complete truth lies there: Mongolians don't lack war horses and BMWs, but the Mongolian empire didn't understand politics, and even eventually collapsed, laying down territory or spitting. /kloc-In the middle of the 9th century, China and Japan, both struggling in the ranks of backward countries, were at the same starting line, and China even started a little earlier than Japan-eight years earlier than the Meiji Restoration of the Westernization Movement. However, due to the different understanding of "talent", one pays attention to technology and the other to politics, resulting in different results. When learning from the West, Japan put forward the slogan of "Harmony with foreign talents". Literally speaking, Japanese "foreign talent" is similar to China's "learning from foreigners". The difference between the two lies not in literal expression, but in the grasp of content and means.
Later generations also saw the limitations of the content when evaluating the history of "learning from foreigners" in the late Qing Dynasty. For example, Wei Yuan, the author of Atlas of the Ocean, has limited vision. He is talking about "skill". When discussing the content of "skills", Wei Yuan said: "The skills of foreigners are three: one warship, two firearms and three training methods." It can be seen that weapons and art of war are the key concerns of Wei Yuan. At this time, although he is broader than ordinary China people, his breadth is limited. When you only stay on military hardware and don't understand the political software behind it, you can't really defeat the enemy; When you don't know the source of "technology", you can't get the true biography of "technology". The "skill" of "learning from foreigners to control foreigners" itself determines the limitations of "learning from foreigners". As for the origin of "foreign art", most of the rulers and ministers of the Qing Dynasty have a little knowledge. From the content of "learning from foreigners", they defined "learning from foreigners" as "advanced weapons" and "advanced technology". Obviously, they only look at "small talents" and have no concept of "big talents".
While neighboring Japan jumped out of the well. By infinitely expanding the extension of "foreign talents", Japan not only firmly grasps the word "teacher" in "learning from foreigners" (not "buying"), but also broadens its horizons in "learning from foreigners" and expands from science and technology to politics. In terms of "learning from foreigners", Japan has indeed grasped the essence of "learning from foreigners". They know that vinegar is sour and salt is salty, and the fundamental reason for upgrading science and technology lies in changing the domestic political system environment. Therefore, although they were not the first people in East Asia to put forward the idea of "learning from foreigners to control foreigners", they did turn this slogan into reality. They not only learn from the essence of foreigners, but also re-create applications, thus coming from behind and becoming powerful among foreigners. China's reform in the late Qing Dynasty failed to achieve the goal of strengthening the country because of "grasping small and enlarging"; The reason why Japan's reform is immediate is because it "stresses the big and puts the small". Broadly speaking, "talent" is indispensable to the super container of "political power". It is precisely because the Japanese regard "political power" as a country's greatest talent that the Meiji Restoration was essentially a political revolution, which naturally achieved the goal of enriching the country and strengthening the people. However, the Westernization Movement in the late Qing Dynasty was at best a limited technical imitation, so it continued to weaken despite all its efforts, and they would never admit that a weak country was weaker than politics until their death.