What is the cause and effect of the self-strenthening movement in china?

Ause - 

The people had enough, after several European semi-colonisations, unjustified treaties to sell Chinese lands signed, 2 Sino-Japanese Wars that robbed millions of innocent Chinese lives and to date still reverberates its horrors, the Chinese are no longer willing to be powerless peasants, and undergone the lightning-fast industrialisation that if happened sooner like in the Japanese incidence, could have avoided all the massacres, and China would've had a good chance against the Japanese. 

Imagine Russians coming in from the North, Japanese from the East, Europeans from every possible directions and invading your country, acts of utter brutality carried out by the thousands right in front of your eyes, everyday, yet you're vulnerable and unable to do a thing, what would you do after the invaders have gone to strengthen their own depleted worlds after WWII? 

Effect - 

China, powered by its only advantage left after the depleting WWII, actively engaged its agricultural population to rapidly convert the nation into a industrialised, modern one to keep with the western advancements. An army was formed to defend its borders and in the Cold War, with the embargo imposed on China by the US, and with the Space race underway, not to mention immensely threatened by the Atomic Bomb under the American belt, China had to simultaneously research all these to at least have a chance to defend herself. 

Overall the corrupt Qing and Nationalist governments nearly destroyed China, but the purpose of history was served and the people, fuelled by determination to hold its own ground in the world, rapidly industrialised China at impossible speeds, and laid the foundation of the modern China you see today.