Results of Taiping Rebellion

["Dixie" <Dixie@singnet.com.sg>]

Under the Taipings, the Chinese language was simplified, and equality
between men and women was decreed. All property was to be held in common,
and equal distribution of the land according to a primitive form of
communism was planned. Some Western-educated Taiping leaders even proposed
the development of industry and the building of a Taiping democracy. The
Ch'ing dynasty was so weakened by the rebellion that it never again was
able to establish an effective hold over the country. Both the Chinese
Communists and the Chinese Nationalists trace their origin to the Taipings.

The Taiping Rebellion changed the face of China. Every revolution that it
inspired brought the country closer and closer to the rest of the world.
Although the Taipings had heard neither of Karl Marx nor of Communism, they
shared many of the same ideals. The Heavenly Kingdom of the Taipings is not
so distant from the commune-oriented Marxist utopia. The Taiping leaders
had attempted to establish a caste-free society based on egalitarian
precepts. They did carry out this primitive Communism. Land was evenly
distributed. Slavery and the sale of women was outlawed, as were
foot-binding, prostitution, arranged marriages and polygamy. The Taipings
were strongly against opium, alcohol, and tobacco. In short, the Communist
Revolution may have been but a realization of an underground movement in
China which began in the mid eighteen-hundreds. 

The Taiping Rebellion played a significant role in ending China's
isolationist outlook. The Nian Rebellion, Boxer Rebellion, and the
Communist Revolution all stem from the emotions and ideas which emerged
from the Taiping vision. The influx of strange, new things had started in
China an unsettling movement, away from the old ways of the ancestors and
into the Western sphere of influence. The attempts of the Taipings to end
this unrest and to reinstate a golden era are similar in many points to the
Communist attempts in the same direction. After the Taiping Rebellion,
China would never again be a realm unto herself. With the failure of the
Taiping movement, the age of the emperors was finished. 

The Taiping movement itself was a product of the clash between the East and
the West which took place in the nineteenth century. The people of China,
on the verge of joining the forming world community, took refuge briefly in
their unique blend of traditional culture and modern idealism. For a time
they fended off the foreigners, the weak Emperors, the crowding countries
and strange cultures with this faith. When the Taiping Rebellion was
crushed, the Chinese once again fled to an idealistic society, listening
eagerly to the promises of Mao and Communism. In each of these cases, there
was an inherent wish to return to the golden age of China, when the only
threat to the unity of their lives was nature itself. The Taiping Rebellion
was a reaction against progress, more importantly against change. That
action continues to mold the current events in China, a sign that the
people, not the central authority, can control the future of China.


(extracted from Britainnica)