Chinese Empire

The Boxer Rebellion and Late Qing Reform: The Last Stand and the Constitutional Movement

Between 1895 and 1911 the Qing dynasty attempted a series of reforms designed to preserve itself by modernizing. The most spectacular episode of the period was the Boxer Rebellion of 1899–1901, a popular anti-foreign and anti-Christian uprising that the Qing court briefly supported and that ended in the invasion of Beijing by the Eight-Nation Alliance and the imposition of the Boxer Protocol. The most ambitious reform was the Hundred Days’ Reform of 1898, a brief attempt to transform the dynasty into a constitutional monarchy on the Japanese model. The most ambitious long-term reform was the late Qing constitutional movement, which set up provincial assemblies, prepared a constitution, and tried to put a constitutional monarch on the throne. For the comprehensive account, see the [history of the fall of imperial China] (../). For for the deeper background of late imperial China, see [history of the Qing and Ming] (../../pillar-history-of-imperial-china/cluster-late-imperial-china/).

The Boxer Rebellion and the reform attempts are not separate stories. The Boxer Rebellion was a reaction to the failure of self-strengthening and the apparent helplessness of the central government in the face of the scramble for concessions. The Hundred Days’ Reform was an attempt to learn from Japan’s Meiji Restoration. The late Qing constitutional movement was an attempt to salvage the dynasty by adopting the symbols and institutions of constitutional government. All three failed. The wider crisis of the late Qing state is the context in which the failures played out.

The Aftermath of the Sino-Japanese War (1895)

The Sino-Japanese War of 1894–1895 was the immediate background of the Boxer Rebellion and the late Qing reforms. The Treaty of Shimonoseki required China to cede Taiwan and to pay a 200-million-tael indemnity. The resulting financial pressure was compounded by the scramble for concessions, in which Russia, Germany, Britain, France, and Japan leased Chinese ports, claimed spheres of influence, and forced the Qing to grant foreign-controlled railways and mining rights. By 1898, the foreign powers had effectively partitioned the Chinese coast. The history of the late Qing crisis is the wider context.

The defeat discredited the Self-Strengthening Movement of the 1860s and 1870s, which had tried to combine Western technology with Confucian values. The dynasty, having failed to modernize, faced a crisis of legitimacy. The Empress Dowager Cixi, who had been regent since 1861, was at the height of her power. She was 59 years old in 1895 (turning 60 in November), and she was determined to maintain the Manchu monopoly of power. The history of the Qing court and its politics is the institutional context.

The Hundred Days’ Reform (1898)

The Hundred Days’ Reform (戊戌变法, wuxu bianfa) was a brief but intense attempt to transform the Chinese state in the summer of 1898. It was inspired by the Meiji Restoration of 1868, in which the Japanese emperor had been restored to actual power and a generation of young samurai had carried out a sweeping modernization. The Chinese reformers wanted to do the same: restore the Guangxu emperor to real power, transform the school system, modernize the army and navy, abolish sinecures, and establish a constitutional government.

The reform was championed by a small group of officials, led by Kang Youwei and his student Liang Qichao, with the support of the Guangxu emperor. The reform edicts poured out in the summer of 1898 — more than 110 of them in 103 days, in fields ranging from education to industry to military reform. The edicts abolished the traditional eight-legged essay as a requirement for the civil service examination, ordered the establishment of modern schools in every province, and proposed the creation of a modern university in Beijing. They called for the modernization of the military on the Japanese model, the construction of railways, the development of mining and industry, and the reform of the legal code. The history of imperial Chinese government is the institutional context.

The reform edicts were far-reaching, but their implementation was blocked at every turn. The conservative officials in the bureaucracy simply refused to enforce them. The new schools that were to be established in every province were, in most cases, never set up. The army reform was undermined by the fact that the conservative Manchu general Ronglu, the Empress Dowager’s closest ally, controlled the central army. The economic reforms — the establishment of modern banks, the regulation of foreign trade, the protection of Chinese industry — were similarly stymied. By September 1898, the reform was in trouble.

The reform was conservative in its goal. Kang Youwei did not propose a republic; he wanted a constitutional monarchy on the Japanese model. The reform was radical, however, in its means: it required the displacement of the conservative Manchu aristocracy and of the old-style Confucian scholar-officials, who were the political base of the Empress Dowager Cixi. The reform met fierce resistance from the court, from the Confucian officials who would lose their positions, and from the Empress Dowager, who feared being displaced from power.

The reform was crushed in a coup on 21 September 1898. The Empress Dowager, supported by the conservative Manchu prince Ronglu, took control of the government, placed the Guangxu emperor under house arrest in the Ocean Terrace of the Forbidden City, executed six of the leading reformers, and forced Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao to flee into exile. The Guangxu emperor remained formally on the throne until his death in 1908, but he had no real power. The wider history of the late Qing crisis is treated at length in the section overview.

The failure of the Hundred Days’ Reform had several consequences. It discredited the reformist movement, and it pushed many of the radicalized young intellectuals, including the young Mao Zedong, into the revolutionary camp. It strengthened the conservative Manchu faction at court. And it deepened the popular sense that the dynasty was no longer capable of reform. The philosophical context of the reform movement shows how the failure of reform shaped Chinese thought.

One of the most important of the executed reformers was Tan Sitong (谭嗣同), a 32-year-old Hunanese scholar-official and member of the reform circle. Tan refused to flee when given the chance, saying that “since the ages past, no reformer has escaped with his life; the blood of martyrs is the seed of the reform.” His death, and the deaths of the five other reformers, made them into martyrs of the republican cause, and Tan’s philosophical writings — a syncretic mixture of Christian, Buddhist, and Confucian elements — became widely read in the revolutionary movement. The intellectual history of late Qing reform treats the reform thinkers.

The Rise of the Boxers (1899–1900)

The Boxer Rebellion (义和团运动, yihetuan yundong) was the most violent expression of the popular anti-foreign feeling that the failure of self-strengthening and the scramble for concessions had created. The Boxers, who called themselves the Yihetuan (Righteous and Harmonious Fists), were a popular movement of northern Chinese peasants, workers, and demobilized soldiers. They practiced a ritual martial arts, believed that they could become invulnerable to bullets through chanting and postures, and directed their rage against the foreign missionaries, Chinese Christians, and the foreign legations.

The Boxers emerged in the late 1890s in the poor, drought-stricken rural areas of Shandong and Zhili (modern Hebei). In November 1897 two German Catholic missionaries were murdered in the Juye incident; Germany used the killing as a pretext to seize Jiaozhou Bay in March 1898, a direct violation of Chinese sovereignty. The Boxers, who had been fighting the German-supported Catholic community in Shandong, were initially banned by the Qing. After a Chinese attempt to suppress them produced a disastrous defeat at the hands of disciplined German troops, the Boxers fled northward and the policy changed. The wider crisis of the late Qing state explains how the European powers had been carving up Chinese territory for the previous three decades.

The Boxer War and the Boxer Protocol (1900–1901)

The Boxer war, the siege of the legations, the Eight-Nation Alliance, and the Boxer Protocol are treated in detail in the history of the Boxer Rebellion. The uprising entered Beijing in May 1900, the legations were besieged from 20 June to 14 August 1900, the Eight-Nation Alliance invaded and took Beijing, and the Boxer Protocol of September 1901 imposed a 450-million-tael indemnity and the execution of reform-minded officials. The Protocol was the harshest of the unequal treaties, and it effectively ended the Qing as an independent power. The wider crisis of the late Qing is the context in which the Protocol was imposed.

The Boxer Protocol marked the nadir of late Qing fortunes. The dynasty, which had once ruled the largest empire in the world, was now a tributary of the foreign powers, paying indemnities that consumed a quarter of its annual revenue. The army was defeated. The court had lost its prestige. The only force that kept the dynasty in power was the loyalty of the Beiyang Army under Yuan Shikai and the disorganization of the revolutionaries. The history of the late Qing crisis treats the Boxer Protocol as the moment when the dynasty ceased to be a sovereign state.

The destruction of the Old Summer Palace (Yuanmingyuan) by the Eight-Nation Alliance in October 1860 had been a defining moment of the previous generation; the sacking of Beijing in August 1900 was its parallel. The allied troops looted the city systematically, taking what they could and burning what they could not. The Peking Field Force and the Seymour Expedition were soon joined by further columns, and the city was occupied for more than a year. The history of the imperial architecture of Beijing describes the buildings that were destroyed.

The Late Qing Constitutional Movement (1901–1911)

The Boxer Protocol of 1901 was followed by a series of reform edicts, many of which were inspired by the Japanese model. In 1901 the Qing court issued a “New Policies” (新政) reform program, which included the establishment of modern schools, the abolition of the civil service examination in 1905, the creation of a new cabinet system, and the preparation of a constitutional monarchy on the Japanese model. In 1906 the court announced that a constitution would be prepared, and in 1908 the Outline of Imperial Constitution (钦定宪法大纲) was promulgated. Provincial assemblies were established in 1909, and a national assembly in 1910.

The late Qing constitutional movement had several features. It was a top-down reform, in which the dynasty was trying to preserve itself by adopting the symbols of constitutional government. It was inspired by the Meiji Restoration and by the constitutional movements in Japan and Germany. It was, in part, a response to the foreign pressure: the powers had demanded reforms in the Boxer Protocol, and the Qing were keen to demonstrate that they were now a “responsible” state. It was, in part, a response to the rising tide of Chinese nationalism, which could not be satisfied by the old Manchu autocracy. The wider history of the late Qing crisis treats the constitutional movement in context.

The constitutional movement was slow, cautious, and largely insincere. The Guangxu emperor had died in November 1908 — possibly murdered on the orders of Cixi, who had died the previous day — and the throne had passed to the boy emperor Puyi, the Xuantong Emperor, with the Guangxu emperor’s brother Chun, Prince Chun, as regent. The Empress Dowager Longyu, Cixi’s sister, played a secondary role. The promised constitution was delayed; the provincial assemblies, established in 1909, became platforms for the constitutional movement; the national assembly, established in 1910, was given only a consultative role.

The constitutional movement had two important effects. It created a constitutionalist faction, including Zhang Jian and Tang Shaoyi, who pressed for genuine constitutional government and who would play a role in the 1911 revolution. And it created a constitutionalist-revolutionary split in the anti-Qing movement, between those who wanted to reform the dynasty and those who wanted to overthrow it. The wider context of the revolutionary movement is treated in the third section.

The Crisis of 1911

The late Qing reforms came too late. The dynasty had lost the support of the gentry, the merchant class, the army, and the new provincial assemblies, and it had lost the confidence of the people. The Wuchang Uprising of 10 October 1911, triggered by an accidental bomb explosion in the Wuchang garrison, set off a cascade of provincial declarations of independence. By the end of November, fifteen of the eighteen provinces of “China proper” had broken with the Qing. The regent Prince Chun, who had no military power of his own, was forced to negotiate with the Beiyang general Yuan Shikai, who had the loyalty of the best Qing army. The wider context of the 1911 revolution is the political background of the abdication.

The Empress Dowager Longyu signed the abdication edict on 12 February 1912, on behalf of the boy emperor Puyi, the Xuantong Emperor. The boy emperor was allowed to remain in the Forbidden City as a private citizen, and a small imperial household was maintained for several years. The long imperial age, which had begun with the Qin unification of 221 BCE, was over. The history of the fall of imperial China treats the constitutional failure as a turning point.

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