at considerable expense, the Chinese were reluctant to hazard it in battle, even though concentrating their forces would have given them the best chance of challenging France's local naval superiority. The Empress Dowager Cixi and her advisers responded in October 1885 by establishing a Navy Yamen on the model of the admiralties of the European powers, to provide unified direction of naval policy. The benefits of this reform were largely nullified by corruption, and although China acquired a number of modern ships in the decade after the Sino-French War, the Chinese navies remained handicapped by incompetent leadership. The bulk of China's steamship fleet was destroyed or captured in the Sino–Japanese War (1894–95), and for decades thereafter, China ceased to be a naval power of any importance. Historians have judged the Qing dynasty's vulnerability and weakness to foreign imperialism in the 19th century to be based mainly on its maritime naval weakness, the historian Edward L. Dreyer said that "Meanwhile, new but not exactly modern Chinese armies suppressed the mid century rebellions, bluffed Russia into a peaceful settlement of disputed frontiers in Central Asia, and defeated the French forces on land in the Sino-French War (1884–85). However the defeat of the fleet, and the resulting threat to steamship traffic to Taiwan, forced China to conclude peace on unfavorable terms." See also France–Asia relations Franco-Siamese War of 1893 References Citations Sources Armengaud, J., Lang-Son: journal des opérations qui ont précédé et suivi la prise de cette citadelle (Paris, 1901) Bonifacy, A propos d’une collection des peintures chinoises représentant diverse épisodes de la guerre franco-chinoise de 1884–1885 (Hanoi, 1931) Chere, L. M., 'The Hong Kong Riots of October 1884: Evidence for Chinese Nationalism?', Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 20 (1980), 54–65 Chere, L. M., The Diplomacy of the Sino-French War (1883–1885): Global Complications of an Undeclared War (Notre Dame, 1988) Clodfelter, M. (2017). Warfare and Armed Conflicts: A Statistical Encyclopedia of Casualty and Other Figures, 1492–2015 (4th ed.). Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland. Duboc, E., Trente cinq mois de campagne en Chine, au Tonkin (Paris, 1899) Eastman, L., Throne and Mandarins: China's Search for a Policy during the Sino-French Controversy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967) {{citation|last=Elleman|first=B.|year=2001|title=Modern Chinese Warfare, 1795–1989|publisher=New York|isbn=9780415214742 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=cFCEw6CsiKAC&pg=PA89}} Garnot, L'expédition française de Formose, 1884–1885 (Paris, 1894) Harmant, J., La verité sur la retraite de Lang-Son (Paris, 1892) Huard, L., La guerre du Tonkin (Paris, 1887)