China: 'Jap in a China Shop' Satirical British cartoon of the Sino-Japanese War (1894-1895) in which Qing China was defeated and forced to cede territories and pay a large indemnity of 340 million silver taels to Japan (Punch, 27 April, 1895)

The Jap in a China Shop: 'Now then, you pig-headed old pig-tail open your shop - and hand me the keys!' At the time of the First Sino-Japanese War, the Japanese were seen by many Westerners as 'plucky' rather than imperialist aggressors.

The First Sino-Japanese War (1 August 1894 – 17 April 1895) was fought between Qing Dynasty China and Meiji Japan, primarily over control of Korea. After more than six months of continuous successes by Japanese army and naval forces and the loss of the Chinese port of Weihaiwei, the Qing leadership sued for peace in February 1895.

Direct results of the war showed that the military strength and sovereignty of the Qing Dynasty had been severely weakened during the nineteenth century; and it demonstrated that forced reform had modernized Japan significantly since the Meiji Restoration in 1867, especially as compared with the Self-Strengthening Movement in China. Regional dominance in East Asia shifted from China to Japan; and the Qing Dynasty, along with the classical tradition in China, suffered a major blow. These trends would later manifest in the 1911 Revolution.

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