Here we go, grinding back into gear with this year's episodes. This episode's title addresses one of the main actual insights in the episode, not quite what it's about.

Hong Rengan is working on planning the modern government structure of the future of the Taiping government apparatus. He follows the pattern of the contemporary Chinese state to show order and continuity, to give confidence to the people they'd have to be governing.

Hong Rengan, clearly smart and competent, runs into the trouble of the old guard Taiping leadership. They had been there from the beginning, but his only connection was his family relationship with the "Heavenly King," Hong Xiuquan.

As the Taiping Rebellion stretches on, the actual Taiping ideology is decreasingly the thing they'll turn to, to appeal to the people of China. All of China has seen what foreign powers have been able to do to China, and messaging about who should be the legitimate dynasty had to address that.

A central bit of the messaging was race-based, ethnic conflict-based. The Qing were foreign invaders, not native Han. That was something all native Han could understand and get onboard with.

The Qing Dynasty, by its continued existence, threatens the success of the Taiping Rebellion. Zeng Guofan, dogged, duty-driven enemy of the Taiping, still has his small force working its way toward defeating the Taiping.

We'll be coming back to him shortly

I'm going to figure out how to get to the end of the Taiping Rebellion. I've answered a lot of the questions I had for myself about what this rebellion shows for the central thesis of the podcast, so I'm going to try to jump toward the end in not too many more episodes.

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