The Taiping Rebellion is one of the forerunners of China's awakening. It is one of the early tremors of a Communist earthquake, and the ultimate rise of a dynasty of the people, rather than the conquerors. China had been slowly breaking away from tradition for several hundred years, and the Taipings only widened the rift between modern China and its ancestors. Secret societies like the Taipings had existed in China for as long as there were Emperors to oppose. However, the Taipings were perhaps the most successful of any that had gone before them. The scale of the Rebellion was such that it merited complete imperial attention for a time. Not only did the Chinese elite take notice of the Taiping Rebellion, but there were foreigners watching as well. England and Japan waited in the wings as they vied for the key to absolute control of China. The country had ceased to be the sleeping dragon tucked behind the Himalayas and inside their Great Wall. The Taiping Rebellion marked the birth of China as a country among others, rather than the only nation under Heaven.
During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries Chinese culture began to move away from the traditional beliefs of the past. Western culture and beliefs moved slowly into the foreground in China, especially the Christian doctrine spread by missionaries which found itself at the center of the Taiping ideology. The Chinese were beginning to realize the present glory of the Western nations, which stirred a brief resurgence in traditional thinking. Even radical quasi-Christian movements like the Taiping Rebellion made use of Confucian, Taoist, and Buddhist ideas to develop its tenets.
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