To what extent did anti-foreign sentiment contribute to the collapse of the Qing Dynasty?

China was plagued by famine, natural disasters and economic problems which the government failed to recover from in the nineteenth century. Empress Dowager Cixi was a reluctant reformist and made sure China remained a monarchy till her last breath in 1908 which created anti-Qing feeling. Although the fall of the Qing Dynasty can argued as a result of its failure to reform and modernize China to keep its people content, perhaps the most significant factor was due to foreign intervention. A loser of the Opium War of 1842, the Qing government fully exposed its weakness and inefficiency when fighting against the foreign powers and signing the ‘Unequal Treaties’ afterwards. The Sino-Japanese War of 1895 and the Boxer Rebellion of 1900 further humiliated the imperial government. Defeat from the Japanese was followed by a period where foreign powers scrambled for privileges in China, exacting lease territories, railroad concessions and mining rights, and carving out their respective ‘spheres of influence.’ Therefore, it is important to understand whether foreign intervention in China was the most significant factor in exposing the Qing governments’ weaknesses which led to anti-foreign sentiment and would spark revolutionary ideas from key figures such as Sun Yat Sen to overthrow the dynasty. The revolt that toppled the world’s longest lasting empire had been developing for decades but, when it finally came in October 1911, it was sparked by accident when a bomb exploded in the office of a group of revolutionary soldiers in the Russian concession of the city of Hankou on the river Yangtze in central China. The events led to the abdication of the last emperor, Puyi, four months later on February 12th, 1912 and marked the end of the Qing Dy...

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...naries, Cixi’s death was a cue for reformers to act quickly and make the transformation to a democracy quicker, especially while the little 6 year old Puyi was made Emperor. Therefore, the backward ideologies of Cixi and the reluctance to reform did not go down well with the people and their national pride, especially at a time when China was being carved up by foreigners.

One may argue that the Qing Dynasty were unlucky to experince a series of natural catastrophes like drought and famine that hit China in the late 19th century and led to rebellions breaking out against the government. For instance, the Northern Chinese Famine of 1876–1879 killed about 10 percent, about 10 million people, of the population of several northern provinces.15 The great disaster and little aid provided by the Qing government made the people even more discontented with the Qing Dynasty.