Kuo, Ting-yee and Kwang-Ching Liu. "Self-Strengthening: the Pursuit of Western Technology", In The Cambridge History of China, Vol.10, Late Ch'ing, 1800-1911, Part 1, edited by Denis Twitchett and John K. Fairbank. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978.

Kuo, Ting-yee and Kwang-Ching Liu. "Self-Strengthening: the Pursuit of Western Technology", In The Cambridge History of China, Vol.10, Late Ch'ing, 1800-1911, Part 1, edited by Denis Twitchett and John K. Fairbank. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978.

• The expression 'self-strengthening' 自強 began to appear in Qing discourse beginning in 1861, recognizing that China needed to undergo some sort of transformative process to meet the challenges of the modern world. In time, it quickly became a term used to justify expenditure by vested interests, but some groups still honestly hoped for renewed strength (491).
• The movement was largely a reaction to the Anglo-French occupation of Beijing during the Second Opium War of 1860, which the Qing saw as caused by a disparity in technology that could be solved by adopting European technology. Although China sought to maintain peace with the Western powers, it also believed that correcting the power disparity would help preserve that peace (492).
• The main advocates of self-strengthening were Wenxiang 文祥 and Prince Gong, senior members of the imperial household, although their views were also supported by leading officials in the lower Yangtze and many high-ranking members of the imperial academy and bureaucracy (492).
• They argued that Western interest in China was fundamentally different from the interest of previous conquers in that instead of wanting conquest, the Western powers wanted profit. This could be observed through their general observance of treaties and the limits actions taken after the conquest of Beijing (492-493).
• Recognizing that contact with the West was impossible to avoid, they argued that it must take place on terms beneficial for China. There were many opportunities for this, as many foreigners apparently held good will towards the Qing rulers and could be employed usefully in many tasks, like suppressing revolt or collecting customs (492-493).
• They proposed that the only way to end the cycle of internal disorder and foreign intervention was self-strengthening, preferably through the modernization of the army. They particularly focused on the use of Western firearms with either British or Russian assistance (493-494).
• Li Hongzhang 李鴻章 in particular was instrumental in this move towards Western munitions and arms, as from his position in Jiangsu he had in 1863 and 1864 managed to start manufacturing Western ammunition (495).
• Zeng Guofan 曾国藩 was another major force in the self-strengthening movement, having purchased foreign cannons from 1854 onward for use against insurgents in China. Although he opposed direct Western intervention, Zeng Guofan was impressed by the firepower of Western ships and artillery and supported learning from the 'barbarian intellect' in the construction of cannons and steamships (496).
• Li Hongzhang had experienced the power of Western military might firsthand on board a steamship in Shanghai during the period of Anglo-French aid to the Chinese during the Taiping Rebellion, and supported the full adoption of Western weaponry into the Qing armies. He noted that Russia and Japan had both westernized recently and that China needed to do so if it did not want to be subject to foreign aggression (497).
• While camped at Shanghai, Li Hongzhang noticed that the Western powers had different ways of selecting personnel than China did, and called for a reform of the Qing education system based on Western ideas. He criticized Qing examinations for testing only literary knowledge to the exclusion of useful sciences or foreign language (497-498).
• He placed the blame for repeated military defeats at the hands of the West on this deficiency in the education and recruitment systems, which ignored any skills that might allow China to engage in a study of firearms like the West did (498).
• Despite support for his plans for a separate examination system to produce skilled engineers by Prince Gong, Li Hongzhang was unable to convince the emperor to establish his education system and thus reduce Qing dependence on foreign expertise (499). 
• Li Hongzhang noted that Japan, even under the Tokugawa shogunate, had sent young nobles to Europe to observe factories and study industrial technology. To him this was especially damning of China, because it was going to reform after Japan (498).
• The most important successes of Li Hongzhang's efforts to include Western technology in the Qing army were his prediction that Western technology would spread to the civilian population and make China wealthy, and the creation of the Jiangnan Arsenal in 1865 in Shanghai (499).
• Zuo Zongtang 左宗棠 , the governor of Fujian and Zhejiang during the 1860s, also supported the incorporation of Western technologies into the Qing military, with a particular focus on building steamships. Like others, he was first impressed while traveling with a French contingent assisting in the Taiping Rebellion. The ship he was on did not, however, have modern artillery, possibly explaining his emphasis on naval technology rather than artillery (499).
• He also emphasized the need for China to develop its own human capital independent of the West by promoting the study of engineering. He managed to get a modern naval base established at Fuzhou in 1866, and created a woolen mill in Lanzhou for commercial industry (500).
• Guo Songtao 郭嵩焘 , a Hanlin scholar at the time, was a major advocate for reform as a method managing disorder and advocated a foreign policy promoting reconciliation and understanding of Western aims and mindsets. He became an adviser to Li Hongzhang during his cantonment in Shanghai, and consistently advocated understanding the motivation of the West in dealing with them (500-501).
• Another Hanlin scholar, Feng Guifen 馮桂芬 , was even more influential in the self-strengthening movement, setting out radical reform plans in his treatise. He also proposed a new method of dealing with the West, arguing that must be accepted or rejected on principle: if they are arguing about ports, he should not oppose them on minutia, but on the principle of free trade as a good (501).
• Feng Guifen argued that a current balance of power existed between Britain, France, Russia, and the USA, and that this kept China relatively safe. China needed to self-strengthen, however, since this situation was not permanent and China should not let its security be determined by outside factors (501-502).
• He especially advocated reform in the educational system as a method of acquiring additional human capital. He is one of the first people to call for serious introspection, noting that, "When methods are faulty, we should reject them even though they are of ancient origins; when methods are good, we should benefit from them even though they are those of the barbarians" (502).
• It is assumed that Li Hongzhang suggested educational reform on the recommendation of Feng Guifen, although Feng Guifen's criticisms when much further, proposing that all requirements of traditional literature be removed from the exams and replaced with knowledge of the modern sciences (502-503).
• A number of Qing officials recommended that the standard infantry forces be reduced and their revenues redirected towards the purchase of modern arms. The first success was in August 1866, when permission was granted to modernize the equipment and military staff of the Zhili army. The Governor of Jiangsu received similar permission in 1869 (503).
• Prince Gong and Wenxiang were both senior administrators until 1884 in the Zongli Yamen 總理衙門 , the office responsible for Qing foreign policy, created in 1861, and used this position to lead most of the self-strengthening reform programs (504).
• Prince Gong enjoyed particular influence for much of this period with the imperial house, serving directly under the Emperor and acting as a major ally of Empress Dowager Cixi, who depended on his advice in foreign policy matters. After 1865, however, his maverick reforms earned the ire of the Empress Dowager and lost him significant support, with the anti-Western faction of the court gaining influence (504-506).
• Prince Gong has also infamous for rejecting court protocol and composure, disrespecting both Empress Dowager Cixi and the young Emperor Tongzhi. He once publicly rebuked the Emperor for wanting to rebuilt the summer palace and for his trips to brothels are putting too much strain on the treasury (506-507).
• The position of the Zongli yamen in court declined further after the Tianjin massacre of 1870, when Prince Gong agreed to pay an indemnity after the murder of several nuns in Tianjin. His anti-Western opponents severely criticized him for his deference to the West and for 'selling out China' to 'barbarians'. After this incident, all decisions were made by the court rather than the Zongli yamen alone (506).
• After the Second Opium War, the Qing had divided control of the treaty ports between two different officials: one Commissioner for the South and Yangtze, and one for the Northern ports of Tianjin, Yingkou, and Yantai. In practice, they were heavily involved in the importation of Western technology (507-508).
• The Southern Commissioners directed the programs through which foreign officers training Qing soldiers and directed the construction of the Jiangnan arsenal. The Northern Commissioners played the same role, building the Tianjin arsenal in 1867 and establishing a foreign language school (508-511).
• Despite the power and influence of the commissioners, the limits of their actions still depended on broader governmental support. They directly depended on provincial governors for support of their modernization programs, but the governors demanded that all controversial reforms be approved by the palace first (511).
• A number of foreign, primarily British, officials were influential in developing Qing policy towards the West. British diplomats, Rutherford Alcock and Thomas Wade, and Robert Hart, the British director of the Qing maritime customs authority, were in frequent communication with the Zongli yamen and recommended a number of reforms to the Qing court, especially Western investment in railroads, telegraphs, and mining (513).
• The Qing court occasionally listened to their recommendations, as did the Zongli yamen, but some suggestions, like European private investment in mines of railroads, were flat-out rejected by the Qing court (513).
• Robert Hart was heavily involved in the Qing government, having been appointed the head of maritime customs in 1863. He was directly responsible for the transformation of the maritime customs service from the byword for corruption in Qing rule, to an efficient and organized civil service staffed by professionals. The increased revenues derived from the professionalized service paid for many of the self-strengthening reforms and diversified an imperial budget previously dependent on land taxes (513-515).
• Inspector-general Hart was handsomely rewarded by the Qing court for his brilliant work in professionalizing the customs service and was given a salary and privileges which allowed him to enjoy a lifestyle far surpassing most Qing officials and all other British officials in China (515).
• He was undoubtedly the most important European voice in the Qing court, although most of his ideas for reform met with rejection similar to Chinese voices. His proposal for a modern postal service was adopted in the 1870s, but his ideas for a modern mint and reform of the examination system were not seriously considered (516).
• Inspector-general Hart was instrumental in the negotiations for the Qing purchase of warships and steamers from Great Britain, and played a large role in encouraging the development of a modern Qing navy (516).
• Despite his sympathies towards his native Britain and a strong belief that the two countries could be allies, Inspector-general Hart took his responsibilities to the Qing government very seriously, and entered into several lawsuits against the UK on behalf of the Qing Empire for treaty violations (516-517).
• Most of the early Qing modernization programs were undertaken under the aegis of specially-created agencies operating directly under either the provincial governor or one of the port commissioners. The special agencies were normally well organized, and sometimes under foreign control, but faced interference from bureaucratic rivals (517-518).
• Early enterprises faced serious issues regarding financing and technical expertise, as they often lacked the funds to buy necessary equipment or the personnel to operate it; often the skilled engineers had to be imported. Only serious influence at court could actually guarantee a facility would receive the necessary funds (518).
• The first modern arsenal in China was built in 1862 when Zeng Guofan recaptured Anqing from the Taiping army. Under the direction of Qing mathematicians, the arsenal began producing both older matchlock rifles and building percussion caps for use in caplock rifles. In 1864, the arsenal was given funds to start building steam engines (519).
• Li Honhzhang had established two other arsenals during this period, in Shanghai and Suzhou. In 1865, he also negotiated the government purchase of an American shipyard in Shanghai, which the Qing government utilized in its ongoing attempts to build Western technology (519).
• Although the number of arsenals and shipyards operated by the Qing government increased throughout the 1860s and 1870s, only two main facilities focused on the training of domestic technical skills: the Fuzhou shipyard and the Jiangnan arsenal (520).
• Despite these attempts, especially during its early years the Qing arsenals and shipyards were overwhelmingly dependent on European personnel and officers, who usually ran the facilities and filled most professional and technical roles (520).
• By the late 1860s, Chinese arsenal production had expanded massively and modern arms were being produced. The Qing were now producing an older model of musket, artillery, and munitions for both. The quality of these arms was often poor, however, and were not used widely until the 1870s (520-521).
• The first attempts to build steamships began in 1867, when the Jiangnan Arsenal was tasked with building a steamship. The first of five ships was completed in 1868. The project was finally abandoned, however, in 1875, because of extreme cost. The Qing steamships required more coal than British counterparts and were prohibitively expensive to create and maintain (522).
• Another 16 steamships were build at the Fuzhou shipyards under French supervision. The costs of production here were kept lower by the creation of iron mills and factories near the facility in 1867. The ships produced were less expensive, but still had wooden hulls and were obsolete by contemporary standards (523-524).
• The extremely high costs of shipbuilding or munitions manufacture at the Jiangnan arsenal are explained by the need to import nearly all material and personnel for the construction. In addition to the costs of transporting materials to China, corruption in procurement made the programs massively costly (522-523).
• The first government school teaching foreign languages, English, French, and Russian, was created in 1862 by the Zongli yamen. In 1864, Li Hongzhang received permission to establish similar schools in Shanghai and Guangzhou, which would teach mathematics and science in addition to foreign languages (525-526).
• These schools faced continued issues of interest from the Qing population, as those who could afford them were not generally interested in the subject matter since examination for civil service still depended on the ability to write Confucian essays and poetry. Those attending the school in Beijing were able to become the lowest level of civil servant, but those at other schools did not receive any career benefits (527).
• Wenxiang and Prince Gong had recommended in 1866 that graduates of the imperial examinations be encouraged to apply to the modern academy in Beijing, but this reform was not adopted. It was killed by the Qing court, which argued that technical knowledge and good moral character were incompatible, and thus opposed the idea on the grounds that it would corrupt the newest cadre of officials (528-530).
• A successful military school was established at the Fuzhou shipyard in 1867, where more than 100 pupils learned steamship construction, navigation, naval design, physics, and mathematics. The graduates of the school were promised service in the military at higher rank. The Fuzhou naval academy was a remarkable success at producing a cadre of naval officers and engineers to oversee the construction and use of Qing steamships. By the mid-1870s, most Qing steamships were commanded by graduates of the Fuzhou academy (532-533).
• Another military school was established in 1869 at Shanghai, but had less resounding success. This is mainly placed down to the fact that although science and mathematics were taught, they were still secondary to traditional Confucian literature, taking much of the students' time away from technical learning (535-537).
• In 1870, the governor of Jiangsu, Ding Richang, asked permission to send Qing officials and scholars to Western liberal arts, military, and naval colleges. He received permission in 1871, along with a stipend for the students and a promise that they would receive official rank when they returned from their studies (538-539).
• A number of graduates from the Fuzhou naval academy also went to school abroad in the 1870s, receiving placements in either French or British naval academies and learning more about the command and operation of steamships (541).