The First Sino-Japanese War, fought between Qing Dynasty China and Meiji Japan over the control of Korea, will come to symbolize the degeneration and enfeeblement of the Qing Dynasty and demonstrate how successful modernization has been in Japan since the Meiji Restoration as compared with the Self-Strengthening Movement in China.

The principal results are a shift in regional dominance in Asia from China to Japan and a fatal blow to the Qing Dynasty and the Chinese classical tradition.

These trends will result later in the 1911 Revolution.