Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China (38 page)

After the audiences, one of Kang’s fellow plotters,
Tan Sitong, paid General Yuan a late-night visit on 18 September. Tan, one of the four newly appointed Grand Council secretaries, believed that reform could only be achieved through violence. ‘There has been no reform without bloodshed since ancient times; we must kill all those deadbeats before we can start getting things done.’ Known to General Yuan as a ‘newly risen VIP close to the emperor’, Tan claimed that he had come to express the emperor’s wish. General Yuan was to kill Junglu in Tianjin and take his troops to Beijing; there he was to surround the Summer Palace and capture the empress dowager. After that, said Tan, ‘to slay that rotten old woman will be my job, and need not concern Your Excellency’. Tan promised the General that the emperor himself would give him a crimson-inked edict to this effect in his third audience, in two days’ time, on 20 September. Yuan, who thought Tan looked ‘ferocious and semi-deranged’, was non-committal, but said that such a big thing would take time to arrange.

Arrangements were actually being made by the Wild Fox, who had devised a way to transfer General Yuan’s soldiers, numbering 7,000 and stationed outside Beijing, into the capital and position them next to the Summer Palace. He ghosted a proposal for another fellow plotter, Censor Shenxiu, to present to the emperor, claiming that
a haul of gold and silver had been buried in the Old Summer Palace, which might now be dug up to help alleviate the state’s financial crisis.
The proposal was timed to arrive on the emperor’s desk just before Yuan’s third audience, so that the emperor could give the job of excavation there and then to the General, who could therefore legitimately move his army onto Cixi’s doorstep.

As his diary later revealed, General Yuan was stupefied by Tan’s proposal. He was faced with the dilemma of choosing sides between Emperor Guangxu and the empress dowager. As he said to Tan, if the emperor really issued a crimson-inked edict telling him to do away with the empress dowager, ‘who would dare to disobey the slip of paper from the emperor?’ And yet that very night he went directly to one of Cixi’s trusted princes and denounced the plotters.
^fn1

Meanwhile, other events had been happening concerning a visitor in Beijing at the time, Itō Hirobumi, former Prime Minister of Japan, the architect of Japan’s war against China four years earlier and of the calamitous Treaty of Shimonoseki. Recently out of office, Itō was making a ‘private’ visit to Beijing, and Emperor Guangxu was scheduled to receive him on the same day of General Yuan’s third audience.

The mood among some educated Chinese in relation to Japan had swung from one of loathing to admiration and goodwill since the more recent encroachment by European powers in 1897–8. The Japanese actively cultivated influential men along this line: ‘The war between us was a mistake, and we both suffered. Now that white men are bearing down menacingly on us yellow people, China and Japan must unite and resist them together. We must help each other.’ Some officials were sympathetic to this argument and were eager for Japan to teach China how to become strong. There were petitions calling for the emperor to invite Itō to stay and be his adviser. The chorus was led by Wild Fox Kang, who ghosted several petitions for others to present. A widely read
newspaper in Tianjin, the
Guo-wen-bao
, owned by a Japanese and with backing from the Japanese government, promoted the idea, claiming it would lead ‘not only to good fortune for China and Japan, but also to the survival of Asia and the Yellow race’.

It was known that Emperor Guangxu intended to employ Itō as his adviser. The emperor had developed an extremely pro-Japanese attitude since falling under Kang’s influence. On 7 September, he had written in his own hand a letter to the Japanese emperor, opening with intimate language unique in diplomatic documents: ‘
My dearest and nearest friendly neighbour of the same continent’, and ending with a wish that the two countries would ‘support each other to defend and secure the Great East’. Itō himself seems to have been expecting to work with the Chinese throne. When he arrived in Tianjin,
he wrote to his wife: ‘I am leaving for Beijing tomorrow, where the emperor seems to have been awaiting my arrival for some time . . . In Tianjin, I am busy with banquets the whole time. Many Chinese have come and asked me to help China, and it is really impossible to say no. I’ve heard that the emperor seems to be able and bright, and only 27 years old . . .’ Indeed Emperor Guangxu would give an audience to Itō on 20 September and might well announce Itō’s engagement immediately afterwards. (Appointments were often announced straight after the audience with the appointee.) To enable the decree of employment to be seen as a response to popular demand, the Wild Fox ghosted two petitions pressing the emperor to engage Itō – one to be on His Majesty’s desk hours before Itō’s audience, and the other the day after.

Wild Fox Kang so keenly promoted the employment of Itō out of personal calculations. He was not so naïve as to believe that Itō would be working for the interests of China, not Japan, and that China could maintain its independence under his stewardship. Japan had not wavered in its ambition to control China. During Itō’s visit,
Japanese newspapers were talking about ‘the necessity’ of China ‘consulting the Japanese government’ on all its policies. When he heard about the emperor’s desire to employ Itō as his adviser, Earl Li wrote just one word in a letter:
‘Ludicrous’. Viceroy Zhang, the famed moderniser who had conceived the strategic Beijing–Wuhan railway, was
‘shocked’ and ‘rejected the idea outright’. The earl and the Viceroy were both ardent advocates of learning from Japan and employing Japanese advisers. But they knew that if Itō became the ‘adviser’ to Emperor Guangxu, there would be no way to prevent this former Japanese Prime Minister from becoming the puppeteer, and China from losing its independence.
^fn2

Wild Fox Kang was as shrewd as the two statesmen. And yet he was manoeuvring not only for the engagement of Itō, but also for creating a Sino-Japanese ‘union’ (
lian-bang
) or even a ‘merger’ (
he-bang
). The petitions he ghosted calling for Itō’s appointment also urged Emperor Guangxu to opt for one or other course. It is unlikely that he was sincerely trying to deliver China to Japan. More likely, he and the Japanese had struck a deal to advance each other’s interests. Indeed, ever since the Reforms began,
the Japanese-owned newspaper in Tianjin had devoted much space to reporting Kang’s opinions, which had hugely raised his profile and helped create the impression that the Reforms were entirely of his making. This impression was not restricted to readers of that particular paper. As its news items were copied by other papers throughout the Treaty Ports, Kang’s name acquired such prominence that people thought he was the leader of the Reforms. The Tianjin paper also promoted the idea of the Advisory Board – while Kang suggested to Emperor Guangxu that the Board should include Itō. But the greatest service the Japanese did for Kang was to link him up with Emperor Guangxu in the first place – through Sir Yinhuan, who was almost certainly their agent and working for their interests.

One of the most Westernised officials, Sir Yinhuan was outstandingly able, and shone in foreign affairs. He was Cixi’s flamboyant envoy to a string of countries (in Washington in the 1880s he was
‘the first Chinese Minister to give a ball at the official residence’, reported the
New York Times
), and was knighted in Britain, where he represented China at Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee. A
confidential report to Tokyo by Yano Fumio, Japanese minister to Beijing in 1898, shows that he was the minister’s regular source of top-secret information. When Grand Tutor Weng was dismissed, the minister went straight to Sir Yinhuan to find out the real reason, and he told the Japanese everything he knew. At the time some in the top echelon had brought impeachments against him for ‘passing secret state policies to foreigners’. Grand Councillors had
denounced him to the throne for ‘acting secretively and suspiciously’. But in those days there was no mechanism to investigate spying charges, and with Emperor Guangxu indignantly defending him,
nothing was done. Cixi had wanted to have Sir Yinhuan’s house searched for evidence but, largely because of his close relationship with the emperor, her order was not carried out.

It was Sir Yinhuan who engineered Kang’s initial entry into the top circle, through covert machinations rather than open recommendation. It was he who acted as the
secret middle man between Kang and Emperor Guangxu. And it was he who enabled Kang to gain control over the emperor. He did so much for Kang not because they had a long-standing, close friendship – indeed the evidence suggests the contrary, as he later quite gratuitously ran the Wild Fox down. Sir Yinhuan acted as he did at Tokyo’s behest – and he worked for Tokyo not out of a belief that China would benefit from Japanese domination. He knew how brutal the Japanese were, as he dealt with them in negotiations over the indemnity after the war. When China, crushed by crippling rates of foreign loans and struggling to cope with the Yellow River breaking its banks, requested that the three-year payment deadline be extended, Tokyo refused outright. Sir Yinhuan privately lamented that this showed ‘
the so-called Japanese desire to form a special relationship with China is only empty words’.

His most likely motive was money. A committed gambler, Sir Yinhuan was a well-known bribe-taker – to an extent that was deemed unacceptable even in this bribe-infested country. Accusations of him taking large kickbacks through foreign contracts that he’d negotiated were legion, and the bribes from Russia were on the record. The Japanese were shrewed and skilful bribers. Sir Yinhuan was also supremely cynical. When dealing with the German seizure of Qingdao, his indifference perplexed his colleague, Grand Tutor Weng, who himself felt as though he was being ‘tortured in boiling water and flaming fire’. In his diary Weng wrote:
‘When I go to his house [to discuss business], he is always lounging about and chatting and laughing as though nothing disastrous is happening. I really can’t understand him.’

Cixi did not have a full picture of the skulduggery involving Sir Yinhuan, Wild Fox Kang, the Japanese and her adopted son. She had been informed of Itō’s visit, the calls for his engagement and his scheduled audience with Emperor Guangxu. Well aware of the perils of Itō’s installation, she had in fact taken action: she made the emperor promise that Itō’s advice, which he would invite, would not be given to him in person, but would be passed on to him through the Foreign Office. This way, she believed, no harm could be done.

But on the night of 18 September, an urgent letter was delivered to her and made her apprehensive. Written by a Censor, Chongyi, who was related to Earl Li by marriage, the letter emphatically drew her attention to the danger of Emperor Guangxu engaging Itō, as well as to Wild Fox Kang’s extraordinary hidden access to the emperor. ‘
If the throne employs Itō,’ it warned, ‘it might as well be putting this country of our ancestors on a silver platter and offering it to [Japan] . . .’ The Censor entreated Cixi to take back power at once to prevent disasters from happening.

Cixi was unsettled. What if her adopted son ignored their agreement and installed Itō at his side with an edict written in crimson ink? She decided to go to the Forbidden City the next day, 19 September, in time for Emperor Guangxu’s audience with Itō on the 20th, to make sure this would not happen. After that, she planned to return to the Summer Palace. Having made this decision, she went to bed.

She was in her usual sound sleep in the small hours when General Yuan’s denunciation of the plot arrived. Cixi was thunderstruck. It was true that her relationship with her adopted son was fraught, but that he should be connected with a plot to kill her was still inconceivable.

Although, from General Yuan’s account, the emperor’s role in the plot was far from clear, there could be no doubt that he knew something about it. Why else would he make General Yuan his own personal commander, separate from the army – the very general whom the plotters then approached to harm her? And why was he so surreptitious about his association with Wild Fox Kang? That her adopted son knew about Kang’s plot, however tenuously, made him complicit and unforgivable – especially in a culture that put filial piety at the top of its ethical code.

In the morning Cixi left the Summer Palace as planned. Outwardly, everything was normal. She stepped onto a boat from the pier in front of her villa and was carried across the lake into the Imperial Canal that led to the city. Ten kilometres long, the canal was lined with willows and peach trees – and Praetorian Guards. At a sluice gate where a change of boat was necessary, she walked into the Buddhist temple on the bank and prayed. Where the canal ended, a sedan-chair bore her into the Sea Palace next to the Forbidden City. During that seemingly peaceful and leisurely journey her mind was in torment.

Emperor Guangxu learned of Cixi’s unexpected arrival and hastily rushed to the palace gate to greet her on his knees. Whatever anger erupted inside her at the sight of her adopted son, the empress dowager maintained a calm exterior. She did not want to cause alarm, especially as the audience with Itō was scheduled for the following day: any complication with Japan had to be avoided. She may not have known the full story of Kang’s relationship with Japan, but Itō’s appearance at this moment seemed too improbable a coincidence.

The following morning, 20 September, it appeared to be business as usual. First Emperor Guangxu had his arranged third audience with General Yuan. He did not produce any crimson-inked edict, as the plotter Tan had promised the General – though this may not mean that he had not intended to. Cixi was within earshot. During the audience the General unmistakably alluded to the plot, saying that His Majesty’s new friends were ‘
going about things in a careless and ill-thought-out manner’, and ‘if there was a slip, Your Majesty would be incriminated’. The emperor gazed silently at Yuan, looking as though something had touched him. That he understood what the General was talking about at all would have confirmed his guilt in Cixi’s eyes.