The Last Empress: The She-Dragon of China (29 page)

The Viceroy of Hangzhou, Chang Chih-tung, sponsored the setting up of a Shanghai chapter of the Ch’iang Hsueh Hui (The Society for the Study of National Strengthening), of which Kang was a leading light. The Beijing branch had many influential members, including Yuan Shi-kai, who was later to play a ruinous role in the reform movement. With such influential friends to help him, Kang’s second petition finally reached the Emperor.

Kuang Hsu was impressed by the reformer’s analysis of the situation, which paralleled his own. Kang’s petition did not play down the danger from Japan, but placed it in context, as part of a pattern; it saw the main threat as nothing less than the total dismemberment of China, the partition of the Empire among all the Powers, and concluded that ‘China is confronted with the greatest danger in her history’. Kuang Hsu ordered three copies of the document made, and sent one to Yehonala. In July, an Imperial decree ordered the governors and viceroys of all Chinese provinces to modernise. This can only have had the tacit approval of the Empress Dowager and seems to indicate that, at that time, Yehonala too was a supporter of the reform process.

Unfortunately, the congenital inertia of the Chinese system meant that most governors did nothing, and the decree became just another worthless parchment in the mountain of pious words and exhortations that had issued intermittently from the throne since the Dynasty had come to power, some two hundred and fifty-one years before. The vested interest of the literati was too deeply entrenched in Chinese society to be diverted by mere words, and the river of bureaucracy continued to meander slowly along its accustomed and ineffective course. Disillusioned, Kang Yu-wei returned to Canton in1896, where he continued to write and agitate for the reforms he believed were integral to China’s survival.

Just two years later Germany’s occupation of Kiaochow began the Powers’ scramble to occupy Chinese land. Vindicated in his predictions, Kang returned to Beijing, having penned yet another memorial to the Throne. An Imperial decree was issued ordering that he be allowed to expound his views to the Tsungli Yamen (China’s ‘Foreign Office’). In addition, all Kang’s books were to be collected and sent to the Emperor for his perusal. Kang’s subsequent presentation before the Tsungli Yamen impressed its members, and piqued Kuang Hsu’s interest anew. He wished to meet the man in person, but was dissuaded by Prince Kung, the old conservative war-horse, who argued on traditional grounds that it was beneath the Imperial dignity for Kuang Hsu to meet so lowly an official. Unwisely, Kuang Hsu acquiesced, but commanded instead that the reformer be given the unprecedented favour of memorialising the Emperor directly. Kang used this privilege to submit, on 29th January 1898, a detailed exposition of his reform plans. Only total reform would save the country, Kang insisted; half-measures would always fail. The Emperor must come out unequivocally for just such a root and branch programme. A loyalty pledge by all high officials, guaranteeing their support for the reforms, was a necessity; those refusing the oath must resign their offices. Once this was accomplished, a committee of ‘Twelve Wise Men’ (the Committee on Institutions) should be set up to block out the reform package for the Emperor’s ultimate approval.
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Kuang Hsu was cautious. He knew that his formidable aunt seemed to be in favour of the reform process; but she would give no real indication of the scale or pace at which she wished modernisation to proceed. It is possible that Yehonala may have seen in Kuang Hsu a useful tool with which to experiment with the further remodelling of Chinese society. There is no doubt that she understood the need for reform as well as anyone; however, her power base lay not among the reformers, but with the conservative scholar-gentry and reactionary nobles, who were more concerned with their own perquisites and privileges than with China’s place in the political firmament. She may have decided to remain purposely silent, and to keep her opinions blurred. Should matters go awry with Kuang Hsu’s reforms, the Emperor would take the blame, and she could claim to be as shocked as anyone by the problems that had arisen. If everything progressed satisfactorily, then as ‘overseer’ of Kuang Hsu’s attempts at governing the Middle Kingdom, she would claim at least an equal share of the credit. In modern terms, Yehonala had a win–win situation, and her nephew was the fall guy.

In an Imperial proclamation on 11th June the Emperor gave KangYu-wei the first of his demands, and declared forthrightly for reform. On 16th June, ignoring the squeals of protest from the conservatives, he granted Kang a personal audience, conversing animatedly with the ‘lowly official’ for nearly three hours. What Kuang Hsu heard at that unprecedented meeting seems to have steeled his resolve: the Emperor embraced the whole of Kang’s political philosophy. There would be no more delay, no more prevarication. The process of reform would begin in earnest.

Then began the almost continuous issuing of Imperial edicts that was to become known as the ‘Hundred Days of Reform’. In the first two months Kuang Hsu issued twenty-seven decrees, all aimed at abolishing the worst of the old system of government and taking China into the modern era (see “EDICT” below).

EDICT

1. The establishment of a university at Beijing.

2. Imperial clansmen to visit foreign countries to study the forms of European and American government.

3. The encouragement of the arts, sciences and modern agriculture.

4. The Emperor willing to hear the objections of the conservatives to progress and reform.

5. The literary essay abolished as a prominent part of the governmental examinations.

6. Censure of those attempting to block the establishment of the Beijing Imperial University.

7. Construction of the Lu-Han railway to be expedited.

8. Advised the adoption of Western arms and drill for all Manchu troops.

9. Ordered agricultural schools established in all provinces to teach improved agricultural methods.

10. Ordered the introduction of patent and copyright laws to encourage inventors and authors.

11. The Board of War and Foreign Office both ordered to report on the reform of military examinations.

12. Special rewards offered to inventors and authors.

13. Officials ordered to encourage trade, and to assist merchants.

14. Ordered the establishment of school boards in every city in the Empire.

15. Ordered the establishment of the Bureau of Mines, and the Bureau of Railroads.

16. Journalists encouraged to write on all political subjects.

17. Naval academies and training ships were ordered.

18. A plea to all ministers and provincial authorities to make an effort to understand what the Emperor was trying to accomplish, and to help him in his efforts at reform.

19. Schools ordered at all Chinese legations in foreign countries for the benefit of Chinese children in those places.

20. Commercial bureaux ordered in Shanghai for the encouragement of trade.

21. Six bureaucratic boards in Beijing designated irrelevant and abolished.

22. The right to memorialise the Throne in sealed memorials granted to all who desired to do so.

23. Two presidents and four vice-presidents of the Board of Rites dismissed.

24. The Governorships Hubei, Canton and Yunnan abolished as being useless to the expense of the country.

25. Schools of instruction in the preparation of tea and silk were ordered to be established.

26. The traditional slow courier posts were abolished in favour of the Imperial Customs Post.

27. A system of budgets, as in Western countries, was approved.

It is hard to find fault with even a single one of Kuang Hsu’s proclamations. Indeed, had they been implemented in their entirety, there is no doubt that they would have effected China’s reawakening as a world power. The problem lay not so much in the content of the edicts, but in the quality of the advisers who now counselled the Emperor. Like their leader, Kang Yu-wei they were to a man visionaries and theorists. Lacking the experience of practical government, and painfully conscious of both China’s backwardness and the imminent danger of the Empire’s dismemberment, they encouraged the avalanche of reform edicts. Isaac Headland, who was living in northern China throughout the ‘Hundred Days’, describes how a Chinese friend, a member of the prestigious Hanlin Academy, predicted unrest after only the sixth edict had been published, commenting that ‘There is going to be trouble if the Emperor continues his reform at this rate of speed’.
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It is a tragedy that none of the Emperor’s advisers were able to view the future with such perspicacity. Had the nation’s bureaucracy been given time to assimilate the changes (each of which, to the old-time literati, were epoch-making readjustments) the shock of the new might have been dissipated. But the very speed with which they were issued was guaranteed to stiffen resistance among the old guard. Nevertheless, while Kuang Hsu simply contented himself with creating new ‘Western-style’ offices, and their own interests remained immune, the conservatives were at first content to lie still, keeping a jealous, self-serving watch on his activities.

Unfortunately, the enthusiasts for reform compounded their errors with Imperial edicts 21, 23, 24 and 26. These were, in effect, an immediate, frontal assault on the perquisites and sinecures of the country’s most powerful bureaucrats and nobles. The reactionaries began to stir. Things came to a head at the beginning of September, when Hsu Ying-k’uei, the President of the Board of Rites, blocked the passage of a memorial from a junior secretary, Wang Chao, to the Emperor in direct defiance of Imperial edict 22. Previously, several other high officials had ignored the Imperial decrees with impunity, and Hsu, no lover of the reform movement, no doubt believed his own disobedience would be similarly overlooked. He was wrong. To general wonderment, the Emperor acted with uncharacteristic ruthlessness: Hsu, together with all senior officials at the Board of Rites, were summarily dismissed from their posts. A few days later, on 5th September, Kuang Hsu appointed four young pro-reform secretaries to the Grand Council, ‘practically to take over the duties of the Grand Councillors’. Two days afterwards he dismissed the veteran Li Hung-chang from his post at the Tsungli Yamen. The gauntlet had been thrown down before the old guard. They would not be slow to take it up.

The dismissed members of the Board of Rites begged an audience with Yehonala. Accompanied by sympathetic members of the court, they laid out their complaint against the Emperor and pleaded on their knees for her to take up the reins of government. Yehonala listened to their request impassively, then closed the audience with no indication of her views. A past master of intrigue, she was keeping her own counsel and none knew which way she might move.

Kuang Hsu, however, was convinced that he could divine his aunt’s intentions, and the knowledge terrified him. On his ritual visits to perform his obeisance before Yehonala he had found her now implacably opposed to reform. Nothing he could say would move her. Rumours spread that Kuang Hsu’s inspection of the Imperial troops at Tientsin, scheduled for 19th October, was the date set for his arrest and imposed abdication. On 13th September he sent a decree (written for safety in his own hand) via a trusted secretary to Kang Yu-wei:

In view of the present difficult situation, I have found that only reforms can save China, and that reforms can only be achieved through the discharge of the conservative and ignorant ministers and the appointment of intelligent and brave scholars. Her Graceful Majesty the Empress Dowager, however, did not agree. I have tried again and again to persuade her, only to find Her Majesty more angry. You, Kang Yu-wie, Yang Jui, Lin Hsu and Tan Ssu-t’ung should deliberate immediately to find some ways to save me.

With extreme worries and earnest hopes.
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The Emperor asked too much of his zealous, but naive, cadre of reformers. Theoreticians to a man, they were tiros in the game of power politics and unsuited to the subtle manoeuvrings of the court. But the Emperor had begged their aid and they sought desperately to devise some scheme to ‘save’ him, and the reform programme. From the Emperor’s letter it was obvious that Yehonala was the reef upon which all their hopes would founder. Reasoned argument had failed to convince the Empress Dowager; force now seemed the only remaining option. After much discussion, it was decided that only a
coup d’état
, and Yehonala’s confinement, could guarantee China’s renewal.

Kang and his academic colleagues cast about them for a man of action to put their plan into effect. Increasingly desperate, they lighted upon Yuan Shi-kai, an army officer who had been a long-time member of the Ch’iang Hsueh Hui, the ‘Society for the Study of National Strengthening’, who now commanded the best-trained and most modern section of the Chinese armed forces. Short, shaven-headed and muscular, Yuan ‘gave...the appearance of great energy’
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and by his exemplary record in Korea and his incorporation of the best of Western military techniques, had gained the admiration, and perhaps the trust, of the Emperor. It seems that Kuang Hsu was informed of the proposed plot and agreed to its implementation. On 16th September he granted Yuan Shi-kai an audience and promoted the general to honorary vice-president of the Board of War, a high rank for so young an officer. The next day Yuan saw the Emperor again, though it is not known for certain what passed between the two men at this meeting.

Ever watchful, Yehonala was certainly bothered by these events. Unsure of the junior officer’s sympathies, she arranged for Jung Lu to telegraph Yuan Shi-kai from Tientsin, and to feed him a plausible, but completely fabricated, story of heightened tension in the area, which required Yuan’s immediate return to the port (and would effectively isolate him from the Emperor). But the conspirators too were on the move. That same night, Yuan Shi-kai was visited by Tan Ssu-t’ung, one of the four men the Emperor had charged with finding ‘some ways to save me’. The son of the Governor of Hubei, he had repudiated the easy life his family connections offered and, as often occurs when privileged youth turns revolutionary, of all the reformers his views were the most extreme. Tan boldly informed Yuan of the plot, and exhorted him to save the Emperor, ‘eliminate the rebels, and discipline the palaces’. Tan suggested that Yuan should return to Tientsin as ordered, but he should immediately arrest and execute his superior officer, Yehonala’s former lover, Jung Lu. His troops were then to march on Beijing, surround the Summer Palace, and isolate the Empress Dowager from her conservative allies. In some accounts, Tan explicitly states the need to execute Yehonala and offers to dispatch her himself. The Emperor would then be free to continue his programme of reforms.