So the 20th century was pretty big for China because it saw not one, but two revolutions. China's 1911 revolution might be a bigger deal from a world historical perspective than the more famous Communist Revolution of 1949, but you wouldn't know it because one, China's communism became a really big deal during the Cold War, and two, Mao Zedong, the father of Communist China, was really good at self-promotion. Like you know his famous Book of Sayings? Pretty much everyone in China just had to own it. And I mean had to. So as you no doubt recall from past episodes of Crash Course, China lost the Opium Wars in the 19th century, resulting in European domination, spheres of influence, etc., all of which was deeply embarrassing to the Qing Dynasty and led to calls for reform. One strand of reform that called for China to adopt European military technology and education systems was called self-strengthening, and it probably would have been a great idea considering how well that worked for Japan.