Regionalism in China can easily result in military defeat. On August 23, 1884, a French fleet under Admiral Courbet entered Fuzhou Harbor and attacked the Nanyang fleet. In a matter of hours it sank nine of the eleven modern Chinese-built ships while they were still in port. When the south requested assistance from China's northern navy, called the Beiyang fleet, Li Hongzhang, the Viceroy of Zhili province, refused to place his own ships in danger, which guaranteed that France could dominate China's southern coastal waters. In the end, China was forced to sue for peace and accept France's terms, which included granting Vietnam its independence from China. The stripping away of a major tributary state like Vietnam was a crucial step in the incremental dismemberment of the Chinese empire.

Summary of Chinese Tensions with France

The Sino-French war was fought over French control of Annam (Vietnam), an on-again off-again Chinese tributary state from the Han dynasty onward. The French hoped to split Annam away from China and make it a French protectorate. China possessed a modern navy— on paper at least— by the early 1880s, but it was not a united and well-coordinated force. While its four fleets possessed a variety of modern ships, each fleet was designed to defend only its specific region, and so refused to come to another fleet's aid. Although the impact of regionalism may appear slight in peacetime, it can make all of the difference during periods of warfare.

One of the most important Chinese naval bases during the early 1870s was at the Fuzhou shipyards. On August 23, 1884, a French fleet of eight ships under Admiral Courbet conducted a surprise attack against the southern fleet's base at Fuzhou. The French fleet destroyed all but two of the eleven modern Chinese-built ships while they were still anchored at port. Within the space of less than one hour, naval bombardments destroyed not only the cream of China's southern fleet but also the Fuzhou shipyard, which had been built with French aid beginning in 1866. Approximately three thousand Chinese were killed, and damage to ships and docks were estimated at USD 15 million.