The First Sino-Japanese War was a conflict between China and Japan primarily over influence in Korea. There were bloody battles and massacres. The Port Arthur massacre took place during the First Sino-Japanese War from 21 November 1894 for three days, when advance elements of the First Division of the Japanese Second Army under the command of General Yamaji Motoharu (1841-1897) killed somewhere between 2,600 civilians and 20,000 including Chinese soldiers in the Chinese coastal city of Port Arthur (now Lüshunkou District of Dalian, Liaoning).

After more than six months of unbroken successes by Japanese land and naval forces and the loss of the port of Weihaiwei, the Qing government sued for peace in February 1895. The Treaty of Shimonoseki was a treaty signed at Shimonoseki, Japan on April 17, 1895, between the Empire of Japan and Qing China. The treaty ended the First Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895 as a clear victory for Japan.

The war demonstrated the failure of the Qing dynasty's attempts to modernize its military and fend off threats to its sovereignty, especially when compared with Japan's successful Restoration of the Maiji.

The reformers declared that China needed more than the Self-Strengthening Policy and that innovation must be accompanied by institutional and ideological change, which led to the Hundred Days' Reform. Opposition to the reforms was intense among the conservative ruling elite who condemned it as too radical and proposed a more moderate and gradualist alternatives. Conservatives like Prince Duan suspected a foreign plot; Duan wanted to expel foreigners completely from China.

In addition to the reforms, plans were made to forcefully remove the Empress Cixi from power. Yuan Shikai was to kill Ronglu, take control of the garrison at Tientsin, and then march on Beijing and arrest Cixi. However, Yuan had previously promised to support Ronglu; rather than kill him, Yuan informed Ronglu of the plot.

With the support of the conservatives and the armed forces commanded by Yuan Shikai and Ronglu, Cixi launched a coup d'état on September 22, 1898 and took over the government. Guangxu was put under house arrest in the Summer Palace until his death in 1908.

China had been decisively defeated by Japan in the First Sino-Japanese War. Intellectuals in China were divided into several factions. Constitutional monarchist reformers led by Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao took control initially, and orchestrated the Hundred Days' Reform in the Qing government. The reforms failed due to the Wuxu Coup by Cixi. Disillusioned with the monarchy and the Qing government, many revolutionary groups began emerging across the country. In 1905, revolutionary leaders such as Sun Yat-sen and Song Jiaoren met in Tokyo to discuss a merger between different revolutionary groups. A new group known as Tongmenghui was formed after this meeting.

Japan had for centuries had a middle class (the merchants) that had entered into a symbiosis with the feudal lords. For the middle class the transition to modern capitalism, and for the feudal lords the way to Western imperialism, was easy. In China there was only a weak middle class, vegetating under the dominance of the gentry; the middle class had still to gain the strength to liberate itself before it could become the support for a capitalistic state. And the gentry were still strong enough to maintain their dominance and so to prevent a radical reconstruction; all they would agree to were a few reforms from which they might hope to secure an increase of power for their own ends.

After the Treaty of Nanking and Treaty of Tientsin (Tianjin), discontent among the Chinese people began to emerge. In 1900, a militia known as the Boxers emerged and attempted to invade Beijing to force the government to go to war with the European nations that held China in trade slavery at the time. The Boxers held foreigners in Beijing under siege and when the European armies were initially defeated, those same nations sent 20,000 troops to China. Eventually, the European armies defeated the Boxers.

China was forced to pay reparations to the other nations involved, and the cost of yearly reparations was greater than the government collected in taxes in a year. To further weaken the Chinese, the Boxer Protocol (treaty) allowed for the stationing of foreign troops in China, in order to prevent further rebellions. The actions of the Chinese government in not fully supporting the Boxers caused many civilians to become angry with their government and begin thinking about the replacement of the monarchical form of government.

Meanwhile, inaction toward nationalization of railway lines in both Hunan and Hubei were criticized by the local press. Confidence in the Qing government among the populace continued to deteriorate in response to the escalation of the railway crisis, fuelled by the Railway Protection Movement.Conflict between Russia and Japan ended with the Treaty of Portsmouth in 1905.