New Army

The New Army (Traditional Chinese: 新軍, Simplified Chinese: 新军; Pinyin: Xīnjūn, Manchu: Ice cooha), more fully called the Newly Created Army (新建陸軍 Xinjian Lujun), was the combined modernised army corps formed under the Qing dynasty in December 1895, following its defeat in the First Sino-Japanese War. At first it consisted of a few experimental units, but after 1901 it was envisioned as a regular and professional fully trained and equipped according to Western standards with a reserve. In 1903 an imperial edict expanded it to 36 divisions of 12,500 men each, or total of 450,000 in peacetime supplemented by a further 523,000 reservists in wartime though it never achieved a strength above 300,000.