>>/36158/
Britain did because they wouldn't want to trade with India, which included opium. Portugal did centuries before and they were fine with that, you did as well, you got your shit beat in in Taiwan. Japan beat China in the Sino-Japanese war, which allowed them to take over Korea which was previously Chinese. It was in-fact the attack on the German embassy that was a part of the Boxer Rebellion, which is why they led the attack, and the Meiji restoration that led to Japan conquering Korea was Prussian influenced with the addition of the old Samurai honour system. Technically it was the US that forced the Shogunate to become weak, but they had nothing to do with the Meiji restoration otherwise, it was a German-influenced monarchy and culture (which is why they were so similar before WW2, and why the Germans and Japs are still both a pair of faggots today). Anyways, The Germans, Japs, Austro-Hungarians, Russians, and Frenchmen all teamed up to take out the Qings after Chinese massacres of westerners was used as a casus belli, and they succeeded in taking giant cities in China. Thus, the Qings were weak and susceptible to rebellion.
About the Wuchang rebellion, it's wholly Chinese. Not only was it performed by people already from the Qing government, but it was done by HAN CHINESE people from the Qing government. You see, the Qing dynasty wasn't Han Chinese, it was Manchu, quite like how the Yuan dynasty was Mongol, or how Charlemagne was actually not French or German but a jew, etc.; now the Qings were literally a continuation of the Jurchen Jin dynasty, and the emperor Hong Taiji even called himself the Great Khan. The Chinese "revolutionaries" weren't overthrowing China, they were overthrowing Manchu rule of China. This culminated in mass-massacres of Manchus by Han and other groups like Hui Muslims, Mongols, etc. Thus, the Republic of China was established as a Chinese republic, for Chinese people. Taiwan is a direct continuation of this state, but all that war left a power vacuum for Mao Zedong to take over.
>>/36166/
Both the Mings and Qings had pretty advanced breechloaders in the 16th century, don't underestimate their technology.