Some time before the tables began to dance, China this living fossil started revolutionizing. By itself there was nothing extraordinary in this phenomenon, since the Oriental empires always show an unchanging social infra-structure coupled with unceasing change in the persons and tribes who manage to ascribe to themselves the political super-structure. China is ruled by a foreign dynasty. Why should there not be initiated, after 300 years, a movement to overthrow it? From the start, the movement possessed primarily a religious character; but this it had in common with all Oriental movements. The immediate causes for the emergence of the movement were close at hand: European intervention, Opium Wars, consequently a shattering of the existing government, the outflow of silver into foreign lands, disturbances of the economic balance through import of foreign goods, etc. Paradoxically, it seems to me, opium acted as a stimulant, not as a tranquilizer. What is original in this Chinese revolution are only its bearers. They are not conscious of any task, except the change of dynasty. They have no slogans. They are an even greater scourge to the population than the old rulers. It seems that their vocation is nothing else than to set against the conservative disintegration [of China], its destruction, in grotesque horrifying form, without any seeds for a renaissance. For the characterization of these God s Advocates the following excerpts from a letter of Mr. Harvey (English Consul in Ningpo) to Mr. Bruce, the English Ambassador in Pekin, will suffice. Doubtless the Taiping impersonates the devil in the manner in which he has been represented in Chinese phantasy. But only in China was such a sort of devil possible. It is the consequence of a fossil form of social life.
Colonialism and Modernization by Karl Marx 1862