In the long history of history, there is a famous saying that is still deeply relevant today: "* There is oppression, ** there is resistance." Especially in ancient societies, this truth was even more profound and became a direct driving force for the reform of feudal society. In this process, the broadest forces of resistance came from the largest peasant class in our country, which was the main force of social change.
Li Shimin, Taizong of the Tang Dynasty, once said: "The king is the boat, the people are the water, the water can carry the boat, and it can also overturn the boat." This sentence profoundly illustrates the inevitability of the ruling class not being able to guarantee that the people will live and work in peace and contentment, and will lead to revolt. Historically, such as the peasant uprisings in the last years of the Qin Dynasty and the peasant uprisings in the last years of the Yuan Dynasty, the oppressed peasants rebelled and built a new social order.
However, not all peasant uprisings succeeded in overthrowing the old rule. The Taiping Rebellion is a case in point. In this peasant uprising, the social context drove the inevitable outbreak. After the Opium War, the Qing Dynasty increased taxes due to high indemnities, leading to social unrest. The peasants rebelled, and Hong Xiuquan founded the Taiping Movement with his religious leadership. However, this peasant revolt ended in failure.
The doomed failure of the Taiping Rebellion was due to its leadership's total rejection of traditional Chinese culture and its unrealistic construction of the social structure. The "God Worship Religion" founded by Hong Xiuquan was in great conflict with traditional Chinese culture, and the subsequent "integration of politics and religion" integrated superstition into politics, which was contrary to traditional religion. Hong Xiuquan's "absolute egalitarianism" and the rejection of the traditional social structure in his rule led to the loss of vitality of society and the loss of enthusiasm of the peasants. He even proposed that the capitalist system should be used to administer the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, which was contrary to the actual situation of the peasant class and was doomed to be unfeasible.
All in all, the Taiping Rebellion was detached from the reality of Chinese society in terms of governance, and whether it was a total rejection of traditional culture or an absolute egalitarian idealism, it was out of touch with social reality and therefore could not succeed.