Re: Off Topic
This is one of the factors that lead directly into WWI; Germany had arrived late to the empire building game, and Africa had been almost entirely carved up (Mostly by France and England). If they wanted to expand, they would have to take it from the other great powers.
China I just did a lot of research on for my next book, Ghosts of Shaolin. In the 19th century the ruling dynasty was the Qing, Manchu invaders ruling over the native Han Chinese, and at the end of the century the true power was the Empress Dowager Cixi, who had full control over her son.
So for a time (until Victoria's death), the ruler of the British empire and the ruler of China were powerful women.
China's problem was that the Qing dynasty was ever looking backwards at the past, trying to relive past glories, and trying to ignore Europe. They were not expansionist; nothing outside China mattered. This left them unprepared. And for their part, the Europeans refused to follow Chinese customs, were frustrated by the many layers and traditions of the Chinese bureaucracy, and were generally unwilling to play nice.
And China had its internal problems to deal with. The secret societies that existed to overthrow the Qing dynasty and bring back the Ming. Many of the secret society members had studied in European universities, and desperately wanted to modernize China, which Cixi generally opposed.
All this lead to the Boxer rebellion, when members of the Righteous and Harmonious Fists lay siege to Beijing and murdered a bunch of Christians, forcing Cixi and the emperor to flee the city. The English chased them out, though, because kung fu will not actually save you from guns.
In 1912 a secret society warehouse containing guns exploded, and a bunch of secret society cells in the military decided to activate before the Qing investigation revealed them. This set off a massive revolution, leading to the overthrow of the Empire and the establishment of a Chinese Republic. Not the People's Republic of China, this was a democracy. Only lasted a few years, until the President, an old general who had defected to the rebellion because the Qing had snubbed him, tried to declare himself a new Emperor. China collapsed into a collection of warring warlord-states.
And the secret societies? Without the Qing as an enemy, they lost their focus. They already had ties to the criminal world, and eventually turned into what the Hong Kong police had labelled the Triads.