Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China (36 page)

The young monarch had become fascinated by
medals – just as he had fallen for European watches and clocks. He spent an inordinate amount of effort supervising the medal for the Kaiser, tirelessly discussing the colour, the size, the jewels, the craftsmanship, and innumerable other minute details with the Foreign Office and the project manager. The colour – gold, royal yellow or golden-red – was the subject of many a conference, and of much fretting. Then there was the question of what sort of pearl should be set on the medal. The emperor wanted a large one, and was disappointed that it would not fit. When he agreed to a smaller size, it turned out that no pearl of that size was of the finest quality. More discussions ensued before the right pearl and other design details were settled. The emperor himself took to wearing the medals given to him by foreign monarchs and on a whim awarded one each to Earl Li and Sir Yinhuan – although the earl was in disgrace and both were being bombarded with accusations of taking bribes. The emperor had seen medals being worn by Western diplomats.

While His Majesty’s reformist initiatives extended no further, the grandees were at a total loss. When he asked them what to do, according to Grand Tutor Weng,
‘Prince Gong was silent – and then said it must start with the administration. I said quite a few words, but the other Grand Councillors were all silent.’ Prince Gong soon died, on 29 May 1898. On his deathbed he had nothing but tears for the shattered empire.

With the survival of his dynasty at stake, Emperor Guangxu turned to Cixi. Sir Yinhuan, who was very close to the emperor at the time, observed (and told the Japanese):
‘The roller-coaster of events in the past few years has shaken the emperor very much and made him understand the need for reform . . . The Empress Dowager always likes reformers. So, given that the emperor has changed, and has come round to the idea of reform, he is becoming closer to the Empress Dowager. This inevitably increases her power.’

Emperor Guangxu now positively sought Cixi’s guidance and she responded with affectionate enthusiasm. His office forwarded proposals about
reforms to her, and she studied them, looking for ideas. Residing in the Forbidden City, he would travel in a sedan-chair for three hours each way to the Summer Palace every few days to consult her, and from time to time she would visit him in the Forbidden City. Altogether they spent more than two-thirds of their time together, when they would discuss state affairs. He was the pupil, and she was the teacher. It was after one such trip by the emperor to the Summer Palace that, upon returning to the Forbidden City, he announced a decree from Cixi to the Grand Council. Grand Tutor Weng recorded the moment in his diary entry of 11 June 1898:

Today His Majesty relays a decree from the Empress Dowager [
shang-feng-ci-yu
]: what Censor Yang Shenxiu and Learning Companion Xu Zhijing said in the past few days is absolutely right. The fundamental policy of our state has not been made clear to all. From now on, we should comprehensively adopt Western ways. Make an unequivocal and unambiguous public announcement, etc. . . . The Empress Dowager is utterly determined. I ventured my view to His Majesty that of course Western ways should be adopted, but it is more important not to abandon our own sages’ teachings in ethics and philosophy. Then I withdrew and drafted the imperial edict.

The subsequent edict, the ‘Announcement of the Fundamental Policy of the State’, drafted by Grand Tutor Weng according to Cixi’s instructions, relayed by Emperor Guangxu and issued on that day, launched an historical movement, the Reforms of 1898. History books celebrate it as a milestone in Chinese history, but invariably credit it to Emperor Guangxu and condemn Cixi as an ultra-conservative opponent. The plain fact is that it was she who initiated the Reforms.

Drafting the Announcement was Grand Tutor Weng’s last political act. Within days he was dismissed from the court by his pupil, Emperor Guangxu.

Breaking with the old man came at considerable personal cost to the emperor, as the Grand Tutor had been a father figure to him since his childhood: indeed, he had been closer to the tutor than to anyone else. The young monarch had relied on the older man for advice in all matters, especially during the war with Japan. After that disaster, as misfortune begot misfortune, the tutor’s lustre dulled in his pupil’s eyes. Then the relationship became intolerable as the emperor opted for reform while Weng stuck in the past. There had been many emotional disagreements. It was all too obvious that in a reformist court there was no place for the Grand Tutor, even though he was an outstanding scholar and calligrapher, and was upright and loyal. Emperor
Guangxu wrote in his hand in crimson ink an edict ordering Weng to retire to his home. The old tutor was devastated and was heartbroken when the emperor refused to see him to say goodbye. Weng hurried to a gate inside the Forbidden City, which he had heard the emperor was about to pass through, in the hope of catching a glimpse of him. When the young man’s sedan-chair went by, the elderly tutor prostrated himself, touching his forehead on the stone pavement. He later wrote: ‘His Majesty turned round and gazed at me without a word. I felt as if I was in a nightmare.’

The decision undoubtedly had Cixi’s approval. She had tried to reduce the emperor’s dependency on Weng in state policy, but had had to tread gingerly, mindful of their intimacy. Now she could not but feel relieved and pleased. But she remained solicitous towards Weng. The day after the dismissal happened to be the occasion when the empress dowager routinely bestowed her
summer gifts on the Grand Councillors. Weng declined his, saying to the eunuch bearing the special silk that he was no longer a Grand Councillor. Through the eunuch Cixi insisted, and he finally accepted it without writing a letter of thanks. His former colleagues thanked her on his behalf.

For the first time in their lives, Cixi and her adopted son
collaborated remarkably well. From the palaces came a cascade of reformist decrees. Although issued in the emperor’s name,
all the decrees had Cixi’s endorsement. They were based on proposals from officials throughout China. Top of the list for change was the educational system, which was central to producing the ruling elite. By focusing narrowly on esoteric Confucian classics, it left them ill equipped for the modern age, as well as ensuring that more than 99 per cent of the population remained illiterate. As the astute American missionary W. A. P. Martin remarked,
‘The future of China depends on’ its reform. As the system was the foundation of the state, its replacement by a Western one was nothing short of a seismic shift.

As a first step, the most arcane subjects in the Imperial Examinations were abolished, to be substituted the following year by tests in current affairs and economics. Emperor Guangxu edited the edict in his own hand, showing how keenly he felt about it. Western-style primary and secondary schools and universities, which taught Western-style natural and social sciences, were to be established across China. Their sites, funding, staff and teaching materials were carefully considered and planned. Beijing University was founded to lead the way.

Many of the projects either took up or developed Cixi’s earlier modernising efforts. These included sending students abroad to study. It was announced that Their Majesties were going to take the train to Tianjin in the autumn to inspect the army, which had been receiving modern training. This was a symbolic gesture intended to demonstrate the importance they placed on railways and on up-to-date defence. The newer schemes embraced modern agricultural methods, Western-style commerce, new publications and technological innovations, for which patent regulations were being written. One precise and brand-new idea that would have far-reaching implications seems certain to have come from Cixi (she directed her loyal follower
Junglu to carry it out): importing machines to process raw materials and turn them into manufactured goods for export. As an example, camel hair and lambswool, two traditional export items from north China, were to be made into fine textiles and blankets to increase their value. The prospect of expanding exports had been the clincher that had persuaded Cixi to build a railway network in the first place.

Their working relationship went smoothly for more than two months and the modernising zeal of the court was felt across the country. Support for it among the officials was estimated at
‘six or seven out of ten, while those who stubbornly clung to the old ways are no more than one or two out of ten’. Some decrees were implemented at once, including the establishment of Beijing University. But before most could be carried out, a dramatic event forced the reform to an abrupt halt – an event brought on by a wily and unconventional man, Kang Youwei, nicknamed Wild Fox Kang.

A forty-year-old Cantonese from a family of officials, Kang grew up in an open port, Nanhai, where there was a strong Western presence. He acquired many reformist ideas, and was keen to put them into practice. He was a man of supreme self-confidence. In his manuscript, tellingly entitled ‘The History of Me’, he declared that he was already showing signs of greatness by the age of five. At twenty, one day as he was sitting alone he suddenly saw that ‘the heaven and the earth and everything else became one with me, and this entity sent out spectacular rays of light.
I knew I was the Sage, and I smiled joyfully.’ The Sage was Confucius, of whom he believed he was the reincarnation. For some time he had tried to reach the throne so that his views would be known and acted on; indeed, he wished to direct the throne. As he was a very junior official, he met with many frustrations, but none deterred him.

Continuing to cultivate people of influence, Kang made a crucial friend who changed his fortunes: Sir Yinhuan, who was a fellow Cantonese and the principal official in the Foreign Office, and who had been taken on by the emperor as his confidant, in spite of accusations of bribe-taking. On 24 January 1898, through his machinations, Kang was interviewed by five of the empire’s top grandees. Immediately after the interview he wrote a letter to the emperor, which Sir Yinhuan delivered. Thus the Wild Fox was introduced to the very highest circle and the throne.

Kang followed up by presenting other writings, which were all forwarded to Emperor Guangxu by Sir Yinhuan. The emperor
sent them straight on to Cixi, not reading all of them himself. Cixi read the papers carefully and was impressed. She kept a pamphlet on the transformation of Japan and
drew her adopted son’s attention to it. Cixi had discovered a remarkable reformer with fresh ideas, who was also eloquent and fearless in expressing them. Soon she detected the same inspired thinking in the petitions of two officials, Censor Shenxiu and Learning Companion Xu – the two men she referred to in the decree that launched the Reforms on 11 June. Unbeknownst to her, these petitions had both been ghost-written by Kang. Evidently, Kang and Cixi were thinking very much alike.

As Learning Companion Xu was cited in the imperial decree, Kang ghosted another petition for him, which urged the emperor to install Kang
‘as a close adviser on all new policies’. The ventriloquist then did the same for Kang’s most-noted associate, a brilliant essayist called Liang Qichao.
With Cixi’s blessing, Emperor Guangxu gave Kang an audience in the Summer Palace on 16 June; the Wild Fox thus became one of the first very junior people interviewed by the emperor for a high-up position. Afterwards Kang was offered a post as a staff member in the Foreign Office, but he did not take up the job. Privately, he dismissed the offer as a ‘
humiliation’ and ‘ludicrous in the extreme’. He was intent on being by the emperor’s side, making decisions for His Majesty. To this end he had, since the beginning of the year, advocated forming a kind of ‘Advisory Board’ to the throne that would be vested with some executive power.

Of all his ideas, this in fact seems to have been the one that really struck a chord with Cixi. There was no such body in the court, as the Qing dynasty explicitly ordained that the emperor alone should make all decisions: the Grand Council could advise, but could go no further. Kang thus identified a fundamental defect in the dynastic system – one that Lord Macartney had recognised 100 years earlier after visiting the eighty-year-old Emperor Qianlong.
Macartney asked a prescient question: ‘Who is the Atlas destined by him to bear this load of empire when he dies?’ On ‘whoever [
sic
] shoulders it may fall’, he remarked, the shoulders had better be of superhuman strength. The Chinese empire was like a ‘first-rate Man of War, which a fortunate succession of able and vigilant officers has contrived to keep afloat for these hundred and fifty years past . . . But whenever an insufficient man happens to have command on deck, adieu to the discipline and safety of the ship . . . she may drift some time as a wreck, and will then be dashed to pieces on the shore . . .’ Emperor Guangxu was that ‘insufficient’ captain and needed some first-class minds to help him. Cixi knew this all too well. In fact, she was to observe that Britain was a world power not so much due to Queen Victoria herself, but to
‘the able men of parliament’ who collectively made decisions.

Cixi invited a number of top officials to
debate the idea of an Advisory Board. They were against it. She told them to reconsider – to ‘give the matter serious thought and detailed discussions’, warning that ‘no lip service is permitted’. After months of toing and froing, the consensus was still negative. The objection lay in an insurmountable problem: who should sit on the Board and share power with the emperor? There was no selection procedure and the fear was that ‘evil’ people could worm their way onto the Board through crooked ways like banding together to promote each other clandestinely, in which case the dynasty could well fall into their hands. Wild Fox Kang was foremost in the minds of the doubters. Word had gone round that Kang was paying for others to petition on his behalf – an accusation that was almost certainly true. A petition by Learning Companion Xu for Kang reportedly cost him
4,000 taels, and other petitioners were paid 300 taels a month as retainers. People in the capital were scandalised and called the Wild Fox ‘shameless’. They also speculated about the source of his money, as his family was not wealthy. The emperor’s old reformist tutor,
Sun Jianai, argued that the Advisory Board could only succeed with a Western-style ‘election’ that subjected the candidates’ characters to public scrutiny. As an ‘election’ was so absolutely unthinkable at the time, the idea of an Advisory Board was abandoned at the end of July.