The Qing dynasty did not have a unified national army, but was made up of three main components, with the so-called Eight Banners forming the elite. The Eight Banners forces were segregated along ethnic lines into separate Manchu, Han Chinese, Mongol, Hui (Muslim) and other ethnic formations. Bannermen who made up the Eight Banners got higher pay than the rest of the army while the Manchu received further privileges. In total, there were 250,000 soldiers in the Eight Banners, with over 60 per cent kept in garrisons in Beijing, while the remaining 40 per cent served as garrison troops in other major Chinese cities. The Green Standard Army was a 600,000-strong gendarmerie-type force that was recruited from the majority Han Chinese population. Its soldiers were not given any peacetime basic military training, but were expected to fight in any conflict. The third component was an irregular force called the Braves, which were used as a kind of reserve force for the regular army, and which were usually recruited from the more distant or remote provinces of China. They were formed into very loosely organised units from the same province. The Braves were sometimes described as mercenaries, with their volunteers receiving as much military training as their commanders saw fit. With no fixed unit organisation, it is impossible to know how many battle-ready Braves there actually were in 1894. There were also a few other military formations, one of which was the Huai Army, which was under the personal authority of Li Hongzhang and was created originally to suppress the Taiping Rebellion (1850–1864). The Huai Army had received limited training by Western military advisors; numbering nearly 45,000 troops, it was considered the best-armed military unit in China.
The Qing dynasty did not have a unified national army, but was made up of three main components, with the so-called Eight Banners forming the elite. The Eight Banners forces were segregated along ethnic lines into separate Manchu, Han Chinese, Mongol, Hui (Muslim) and other ethnic formations. Bannermen who made up the Eight Banners got higher pay than the rest of the army while the Manchu received further privileges In total, there were 250,000 soldiers in the Eight Banners, with over 60 per cent kept in garrisons in Beijing, while the remaining 40 per cent served as garrison troops in other major Chinese cities. The Green Standard Army was a 600,000-strong gendarmerie-type force that was recruited from the majority Han Chinese population. Its soldiers were not given any peacetime basic military training, but were expected to fight in any conflict. The third component was an irregular force called the Braves, which were used as a kind of reserve force for the regular army, and which were usually recruited from the more distant or remote provinces of China. They were formed into very loosely organised units from the same province. The Braves were sometimes described as mercenaries, with their volunteers receiving as much military training as their commanders saw fit. With no fixed unit organisation, it is impossible to know how many battle-ready Braves there actually were in 1894. There were also a few other military formations, .one of which was the Huai Army, which was under the personal authority of Li Hongzhang and was created originally to suppress the Taiping Rebellion (1850–1864). The Huai Army had received limited training by Western military advisors; numbering nearly 45,000 troops, it was considered the best-armed military unit in China.