After the Second Opium War, at the time of the Taiping Rebellion, the Self-Strengthening Movement was organized in China. The movement's idea was to use the available Western technology in Asia to preserve the Confucian values of the empire. The movement worked on institutional reforms, which lasted from 1861 until 1895.

Zeng Guofan, like many of his Chinese compatriots, was humiliated by the country's defeats to the Western powers during the Opium Wars. Opium wasn't the issue; the issue was the fact that China didn't have enough military strength to be able to command respect and make demands of other counties in international crises.

In 1860, the British and the French had worked their way into Beijing, and China had little control over the unbridled freedoms these foreign powers were taking. Even the Christians, who had been granted the right to proselytize in 1846, were dodging tax obligations they had agreed to observe. While the Treaty of Tientsin was being finalized in 1860, the British and French were forcing China to accept more concessions and concluding with the Burning of the Summer Palace. Zeng Guofan worked with noted Chinese statesman Li Hongzhang to manufacture more powerful weapons and put China on an equal military basis with the Western countries.

Li was instrumental in the attempts to upgrade China. Many of the more conservative and studious Chinese preferred to return to the past and secretly wished that the West would "go away." Li's and Zheng's efforts were successful in convincing Chinese authorities that the country needed to be nationalized. China needed to be united as a country and avoid factional conflicts, as they would only serve to weaken the country from within.

From 1861 to 1894, leaders such as these, now turned scholar-administrators, were responsible for establishing modern institutions, developing basic industries, communications, and transportation, and modernizing the military. But despite its leaders' accomplishments, the Self-Strengthening Movement did not recognize the significance of the political institutions and social theories that had fostered Western advances and innovations. This weakness led to the movement's failure.

The effort concentrated on providing the armed forces with modern weapons, rather than reforming governance or society. The limitations of this approach were exposed by the First Sino-Japanese War (1894-1895) when China was defeated by Meiji Japan, which had undergone comprehensive reforms during the same period. The defeat led to additional unequal treaties as European powers took advantage of China's weakness. The imperial court was persuaded to undergo further reforms that became known as the Hundred Days' Reform