Analyze and compare the differing responses of China and Japan to western penetration in the nineteenth centuryI'm not asking you to write my essay...

Both China and Japan had faced similar challenges from the West
(both faced severe challenges from Western imperial powers and ended up signing unequal treaties
with the West, with the new foreign presence instilling new waves of domestic turbulence) but had
responded in very different ways. The elites of both countries responded to the challenges posed
by Western penetration by initiating reforms. In Japan, the Meiji regime chose to remake
themselves entirely through Westernisation, while in China, the Qing government chose instead to
hold on to traditional Chinese values and institutions. China’s efforts at reforms, including the
Self-Strengthening Movements and the Tongzhi Restoration, were in essential traditional answers
to traditional problems. There was no significant, large-scale industrialisation in China and the
Machus displayed little willingness to abandon traditional imperial institutions that were
incapable to dealing with contemporary problems. Chinese cultural pride was just too deeply
ingrained, so much so that it became an impediment, blinding many Chinese and preventing them
from recognising the need to learn from the barbarians and for fundamental change. On the other
hand, Japanese efforts to adopt foreign technology to meet their military and industrial needs
were largely successful. The Meiji regime, however, saw that military technology and
industrialisation could not be separated from institutional structures that had produced and
accompanied such developments in the West, and showed little hesitation in transforming or
abolishing traditional institutions in favour of those that could give Japan the modernity it
needed to survive. Overall, the Meiji Restoration was a tremendous success for the Japanese and
allowed them to join the ranks of Western new imperial powers.