In 1901, China's government began an educational reform program that still reverberates today. Only ten years later, the empire collapsed. Is this a contradiction? Close examination of the educational reform program in the province of Guangdong show the ways that its success accelerated that downfall. Although initiated by the Qing dynasty itself, the new techniques and yardsticks first revealed just how bad things were under the old regime.

Hajo Frölich, Freie Universität Berlin