Empress Dowager Cixi’s Effect on the Movement

As the author of this study underlined many times till this period China was not aware of her weakness of military power. Being closed the outside deeply affected China and her society. When the conflicts started with the West, China saw the gap between their military and western military. West was using best weapons, trained personnel and advanced tactics against to China. Besides China was using outmoded

112 Hinnells, A Handbook of Living Religions, New York: Penguin Books, 1985, pp. 344–364.

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and traditional army which was trained with old method. Some of the regional leaders have understood the importance and danger of the situation and started to solve the problem a soon as possible. But it was not as easy as they thought.

Dowager Cixi (慈禧太后); Was born on the 29th November 1835, the daughter of an ordinary official. Her Manchu name was Yehonala, which originated from the combined name of two tribes, Yeho and Nala. Her father died when she was very young. As the eldest child, she felt mistreated, neglected and unloved. She once said;

“Ever since I was a young girl, I had a very hard life. I was not happy with my parents, as I was not a favorite. My sisters had everything they wanted, while I was, to a great extent, ignored altogether.”¹¹³

At the age of fourteen, she was nominated as a candidate-concubine. It was both an honor for her, and also a chance to escape from the misery she felt at her family home. At sixteen, she was chosen to be one of the concubines to Emperor Xian Feng, and on turning eighteen; she completed the ritual preparations necessary to become a royal concubine. Even during her early years, Cixi proved to be strong-willed. Her unhappy and competitive childhood inspired her determination to rise above her peers and head towards her dream of prowess.¹¹⁴

113 Society for Anglo-Chinese Understanding, (SACU)‟ Web site, please see:

http://www.sacu.org/cixi.html The Society for Anglo-Chinese Understanding (SACU) was founded over forty years ago to promote friendship and understanding between the peoples of Britain and China.

It is a registered UK charity and is the only friendship society of its kind in the country.

114 Philip W. Sergeant, The great empress dowager of China, New York: DODD, MEAD & Company, 1911, pp. 1-57.

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Emperor Xian Feng (咸豐帝) had many wives and concubines, but it was only Cixi who bore a son. After his birth she was soon raised in rank from a third-level concubine to a first-level one. When her son turned one, Cixi became a secondary consort - one of the emperor‟s wives. Cixi was now called the Empress of the Western Palace. And the emperor trusted her judgment and consulted her constantly on affairs of state.¹¹⁵

However, Emperor Xian Feng died in 1861 at the age of 30. His primary wife, Cixi‟s cousin Ci An, had a daughter, but no sons. Therefore Cixi's five year old son Tongzhi became the emperor. From then her greed for power became insatiable and finally in 1865 she seized the throne, removing another faction from the helm of politics.

She was a strong ruler and put down the rebellions which endlessly threatened her. During her years in power, the Western nations gained great influence in China. Many people thought that the best way to stop the outsiders from taking over completely was to strengthen China with modern inventions like trains and telegraphs. However, Empress Cixi and her advisors were conservative and resisted these changes.¹¹⁶

The empress usually put her own interests ahead of the nations. She squandered money on banquets, jewels, and other luxuries. She liked to use all the power she had. In her dinners were served 150 different dishes at a single banquet.

She used a jade cup for drinks and ate with golden chopsticks. She always loved luxury in her life. She used Navy funds to build herself a lavish summer palace. At the

115 SACU‟s History web data base, please see: http://www.sacu.org/cixi.html

116Society for Anglo-Chinese Understanding, (SACU) web site, please refer to:

http://www.sacu.org/cixi.html

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end of her life, her personal jewelry vault held 3,000 ebony boxes of jewels. She also let financial corruption run rampant in the Forbidden City (紫禁城).¹¹⁷

Cixi was the biggest obstacle in carrying out the reforms. Her opposition was the most important reason for the failure of the reforms. The Qing government was in her hands and she controlled all the process in the government. Doing something bad against to her was called dead penalty. From the beginning to the end, she was blind at modernization. In Self-strengthening Movement, she did not give any support to the reformers. Her support remained limited. The only thing she cared was her power in the Qing government. This attitude continued to the Hundred Days Reform (戊戌變法) . The coup d‟état took place and even increased her negative feeling towards the reform. It also enhanced her anti-foreign feeling. Even during the Late Qing Reform, she was not sincere. She was more concerned about her rule, not the strengthening of China. As she never gave her full heart to the reform, the reform movements could not succeed at last¹¹⁸.

The Empress Dowager Cixi was fighting with her own affairs to save her power on China. Many historians described Dowager Cixi as one of “the most formidable women in modern history” who could become a terrible enemy if she was antagonized¹¹⁹. She was described to be power hungry, ruthless and profoundly skilled in court politics. The regional leaders were trying to get the support of her because of the finance problem. China‟s loss in the Second Opium War was

117 This part was quoted from http://www.sacu.org/cixi.html and amended by the author.

118 This passage was quoted from History web base “Corner of the World”, more information can be found at: http://www.thecorner.org/hists/assign/chi-ref.htm

119中國文哲研究集刊 第三十期, 2007 年 3 月, 頁 355∼363, 中央研究院中國文哲研究所, The Clash of Empires: The Invention of China in Modern World Making. By Lydia He Liu. Cambridge:

Harvard University Press, 2004.

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undoubtedly a wake-up call for its imperial rulers. Cixi presided over a country whose military strategies, both on land and sea, and in terms of weaponry, were vastly outdated.

Besides, there were important difficulties in communications between China and the Western countries. Sensing an immediate threat from foreigners and realizing that China‟s agricultural-based economy could not hope to compete with the industrial power of the West, Cixi made a decision that for the first time in Imperial Chinese history, China would learn from Western powers and import their knowledge and technology. This was a key action from her. Thus China could have chance to follow foreigner‟s industrial process.

At the time, three important (here we can use the word key figures) Han Chinese officials, Zeng Guo Fan, Li Hong Zhang and Zuo Zong Tang, had all begun industrial programs in the country‟s southern regions. Cixi decided to support these modernization programs because she was getting angry and uncomfortable against to foreigners. The actions of foreigners were already turned into a humiliation as the author of this study emphasized already. Cixi‟s big support was decreeing the opening of Tongwen Guan (Interpreters College) in 1862. This was a university-like institution in Beijing that hired foreigners as teachers and specialized in new-age topics such as astronomy and mathematics, as well as the English, French, and Russian languages.

Groups of young boys were also sent abroad to the United States.¹²⁰

China‟s “Learn from foreigners” program quickly faced with many different troubles. China‟s military institutions were in desperate need of reform, and Cixi‟s solution, under the advice of officials at court, was to purchase seven warships from

120 A reference book about modern schools in China please see; Knight Biggerstaff,. The Earliest Modern Government Schools in China, New York: Cornell University Press, 1961.

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UK. When the warships arrived in China, however, they carried with them boatloads of British sailors all under British command and negotiations broke down between the two parties, and China returned the warships to Britain. Scholars sometimes contribute the failure of China‟s foreign programs to Cixi‟s conservative attitude and old methods of thinking, and contend that Cixi would learn only so much from the foreigners, provided it did not infringe upon her own power. Under the pretext that a railway was too loud and would disturb the Emperor‟s tombs, Cixi forbade its construction. The author thinks that the old Chinese customs and superstitions caused these actions in China. When construction went ahead anyway in 1877 under Li Hong Zhang‟s recommendation, Cixi wanted that they be pulled by horse-drawn carts. Cixi was observing her neighborhood and relations, especially alarmed at the liberal thinking of people who had studied in Western countries. She saw that it would be a new threat to her power.

In 1881, Cixi put a halt to sending children abroad to study, and withdrew her formerly open attitude towards foreigners. As we can see from the actions of Cixi, it was very hard to deal with the modernization smoothly. ¹²¹

China was in danger and time was running. Regional leaders all tried to have good relations with Empress Dowager Cixi so they could have her support for new military establishments. Empress was afraid to lost her power and unwilling to support the leaders. She was giving a limited support because of that military establishments have faced many financial problems. She was thinking about the power of regional leaders. She thought they could be powerful and overthrow her.

121 Chung, Sue Fawn, The Much Maligned Empress Dowager: A Revisionist Study of the Empress Dowager Tz'u-Hsi (1835-1908), Modern Asian Studies 13, no. 2, 1979, pp. 96-177.

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That‟s why military modernization of China started with the big financial problems.

Thus, the leaders have faced with many internal conflicts between them and Cixi.¹²²