Hundred Days' Reform (1898): China's Failed Modernisation Drive

The Hundred Days’ Reform was a short-lived attempt in 1898 to modernise China’s Qing dynasty from the top down. Between 11 June and 21 September 1898 the young Guangxu Emperor, inspired by the scholar Kang Youwei, issued a flood of decrees on education, government and the economy, until a coup by the Empress Dowager Cixi brought it to an abrupt end. Its failure is often seen as a lost chance for peaceful reform before the dynasty fell in 1911.

Background: a dynasty in crisis

By the 1890s the Qing dynasty had faced half a century of defeats and rebellions. The Self-Strengthening Movement had built arsenals, shipyards and a modern navy, but it had left the political system and the examination-based education of officials largely unchanged.

The weakness of this approach was exposed in the First Sino-Japanese War of 1894–1895, when China lost to Japan, a country it had long regarded as a lesser power. The Treaty of Shimonoseki in 1895 cost China Taiwan, a huge indemnity and its influence over Korea.

Worse followed. In November 1897 Germany seized Jiaozhou Bay in Shandong after two German missionaries were killed. In 1898 Russia leased Port Arthur and Dalian, Britain took Weihaiwei and a 99-year lease on Hong Kong’s New Territories, and France claimed Guangzhouwan. Many educated Chinese feared that their country was about to be “carved up like a melon”. To reformers, the contrast with Japan, which had transformed itself since the Meiji Restoration of 1868, made the need for change seem urgent.

Kang Youwei and the reformers

Kang Youwei (1858–1927), a scholar from Guangdong, argued that Confucius had himself been a reformer, and that the classics could justify sweeping institutional change. In 1895 he led a petition by examination candidates in Beijing against the peace terms with Japan, signed by more than a thousand scholars. He also founded study societies and newspapers to spread reformist ideas.

His most famous student, Liang Qichao (1873–1929), became one of China’s most influential journalists. Tan Sitong (1865–1898), a radical thinker from Hunan, called for an end to many traditional hierarchies. Kang pointed to Peter the Great’s Russia and Meiji Japan as models of what a determined ruler could achieve.

The emperor’s hundred days

The Guangxu Emperor (1871–1908) had come to the throne as a small child in 1875 and had formally begun personal rule in 1889. Real authority, however, still rested largely with his aunt and adoptive mother, the Empress Dowager Cixi, who had dominated the court for decades.

On 11 June 1898 the emperor issued an edict declaring reform state policy. On 16 June he received Kang Youwei in audience. Over the following weeks a stream of decrees, often several in a single day, ordered:

• replacing the rigid “eight-legged essay” in the civil service examinations with questions on current affairs;
• founding the Imperial University of Peking and converting temples and academies into modern schools teaching Western subjects;
• promoting railways, mining, commerce and agriculture, and translating foreign books;
• modernising the army along Western lines;
• abolishing many sinecure offices and redundant government departments;
• allowing ordinary officials and even commoners to submit proposals directly to the throne.

Resistance and the coup

The decrees threatened the jobs and status of many officials, and provincial governors often ignored them. Conservatives were alarmed when the emperor dismissed his long-time tutor, Weng Tonghe, in June and later sacked senior officials of the Board of Rites for blocking a memorial. Many looked to Cixi and to her trusted ally Ronglu, viceroy of Zhili, who commanded the main armies around Beijing.

In September rumours spread that the reformers planned to move against Cixi. The arrival in Beijing of the former Japanese prime minister Ito Hirobumi, whom the emperor received on 20 September, added to conservative fears that the reformers wanted to bring foreign advisers into the government. On 18 September Tan Sitong reportedly visited the general Yuan Shikai to ask for his support. What Yuan then did is debated, but historians agree that by 21 September Cixi had resumed power as regent. The emperor was confined on Yingtai, a small island palace in the lake of Zhongnanhai, for much of the rest of his life.

Aftermath

On 28 September 1898 six reformers, later known as the Six Gentlemen, were beheaded in Beijing without trial: Tan Sitong, Kang Guangren (Kang Youwei’s younger brother), Lin Xu, Yang Shenxiu, Yang Rui and Liu Guangdi. Tan had refused to flee, reportedly saying that change required the shedding of blood. Kang Youwei escaped to Hong Kong with British help, and Liang Qichao fled to Japan. In exile Kang founded the Protect the Emperor Society to campaign for Guangxu’s restoration.

Most of the decrees were cancelled, though the Imperial University survived and later became Peking University. The scholar-official Sun Jianai was placed in charge of it, and it opened its doors at the end of 1898 as China’s first modern national university. The conservative reaction at court helped pave the way for the Boxer Rebellion of 1899–1901. After that disaster Cixi herself launched the New Policies, which adopted many measures of 1898 and went further, abolishing the old examinations in 1905. Guangxu died on 14 November 1908, one day before Cixi; tests carried out in 2008 on his remains found very high levels of arsenic, suggesting poisoning.

Debates and interpretations

For much of the 20th century the story of 1898 was told largely through Kang Youwei’s and Liang Qichao’s own writings, which cast the emperor as a heroic reformer and Cixi as a villain. Later historians have shown that Kang revised some of his memorials after the event, and that his influence at court may have been smaller than he claimed; he had only one formal audience with the emperor.

Cixi’s role has also been reassessed. She had approved the opening edict of June 1898, and her quarrel seems to have been less with reform as such than with the speed of the changes, the reformers’ growing influence and the fear of a plot against her. Some recent writers present her as a moderniser in her own right, a view that remains contested.

Most historians agree that the reformers were few in number, inexperienced and isolated. They had little support among provincial officials or the army, which left them powerless once the court turned against them.

Key people

• Guangxu Emperor (1871–1908): Qing emperor who issued the reform decrees.
• Kang Youwei (1858–1927): scholar and chief architect of the reform programme.
• Liang Qichao (1873–1929): Kang’s student, journalist and later a leading constitutionalist.
• Tan Sitong (1865–1898): radical reformer executed after the coup.
• Empress Dowager Cixi (1835–1908): the dominant figure at court, who ended the reforms.

Timeline

• 1895, 17 April: Treaty of Shimonoseki ends the First Sino-Japanese War.
• 1895, May: Kang Youwei leads the examination candidates’ petition in Beijing.
• 1897, November: Germany seizes Jiaozhou Bay.
• 1898, 11 June: The Guangxu Emperor proclaims reform as state policy.
• 1898, 16 June: Kang Youwei receives an imperial audience.
• 1898, 21 September: Cixi resumes power; the emperor is confined.
• 1898, 28 September: The Six Gentlemen are executed.
• 1905: The traditional civil service examinations are abolished.
• 1908, 14–15 November: Guangxu and Cixi die a day apart.

Why it matters

The Hundred Days’ Reform showed both the urgent demand for change in late Qing China and the strength of resistance to it. Its collapse discredited reform from above in the eyes of many, and pushed a new generation towards the revolution that ended imperial rule.