Hello, classmate, I would like to ask why the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895 caused China to sink 5 warships and cause thousands of casualties, and why it failed.

Before the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War, the Japanese Army established 6 field divisions and 1 Guards Division, with an active strength of 123,000 troops. During the Sino-Japanese War, Japan actually mobilized 240,616 troops, of which 174,017 participated in the war abroad. Before the war, the Japanese Navy had 32 warships and 24 torpedo boats, with a displacement of more than 62,000 tons. A large number of spies were also dispatched to China and North Korea to collect military intelligence and draw detailed military maps.

Before China’s Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1894, three major bases of the Beiyang Fleet were built: Dagu, Weihaiwei (now Weihai, Shandong) and Lushun (now Dalian, Liaoning). However, the Qing Dynasty was politically corrupt, and the military reform basically stayed at the low stage of improving weapons and equipment. Although the total strength of the army and navy reached more than 800,000, the system was not smooth, the organization was backward, the management was chaotic, the training was lax, and the combat effectiveness was low.

No one can tell the specific casualties after that~~especially the number of casualties of the Qing army; the reasons are as follows: First, due to political needs and the need for military morale, it is impossible to announce the details to the public. Second, at the end of the Qing Dynasty, the Qing government had gone to the extreme of decline and corruption, and the Qing army was generally underrepresented; the actual number of deaths during the war was likely to always be smaller than the reported number. Third, the Japanese casualties were also covered up by the right-wing forces at the time for their political purposes. Fourth, domestic archives have historical archives of the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1894. I can say with certainty that they can only be approximate. The National Archives of Japan should have information on Japanese casualties.