Essay: The One-Hundred days of Reform movement

After being carved into spheres of influence for decades and a crushing defeat in the Sino-Japanese wars, it became a humiliating realization to the Chinese people that they could no longer stand up to the powers who they once viewed as inferior. Reform was lingering in the minds of many, including the Guangxu Emperor who initiated the One-Hundred Days of Reform movement in 1898. Even though the movement was intended to improve the lives of the Chinese people, it ended shortly after a couple months. There were multiple obstacles preventing the success of the reforms, but the overarching cause of the failure was the Guangxu Emperor’s poor leadership and actions.
Getting rid of the Chinese examination system in the One-Hundred Days of Reform was an unthoughtful decision by the Guangxu Emperor that created a lot of backlash and growing dislike for the movement as a whole. The Chinese examination system became an important aspect of culture for the Chinese people because it had been around for over five-hundred years and was used to choose important figures in government (Richards 262). Some believed that the examination system brought cultural unity and peace because men from all over China were memorizing the same Four Books and Five Classics that also connected people to their history and roots (Schroeder). Without hesitation, the Guangxu Emperor abolished the system because he thought that “Changes must be made to accord with the necessities of the times” (Guangxu) or in other words, he viewed the Confucian ideas in the exam as an “outdated” in comparison to other countries. Aspects like “cultural unity” and  “peace” made people associate the exam with being a good, orderly part of society and since it worked for hundreds of years before, people saw no need to get rid of it. When Guangxu abolished the system without hesitation, it brought more concern on top of the people’s existing doubts in his leadership and ideas. The exam system had grown to become such a vital cherished part of Chinese history so the Guangxu Emperor’s reform and actions didn’t reflect the true values of many of the Chinese people. In addition, passing the exam in general was a difficult task. In 1889, three-hundred out of the fourteen-thousand test takers passed the exam which was roughly two percent (Chinese Imperial). As a reward, the successful people were given enormous benefits like being exempt from government forced labor (Schroeder). The small chance of succeeding made passing the exam a sense of honor, which was glorified by the benefits the government gave. Guangxu did not consider that he was taking away an opportunity for a sense of honor in China which created backlash from those who spent years studying for the exam and the people who prefered tradition over change. More and more people started to dislike the reform movement because of the Guangxu Emperor’s lousy decision to take away crucial and valued parts of Chinese culture.
The Guangxu Emperor’s presentation of ideas on Western culture and rapid reform prevented the large population of conservatives to support the movement. As the Qing dynasty was slowly falling apart, many Chinese people chose to solve their problems by looking at Western culture, which was flourishing at the time. The Guangxu Emperor was very fond of Western culture and in his decree to rid the Chinese examination system, he tried to convey his liberal ideas saying “[We must] obtain a knowledge of ancient and modern world history, a right conception of the present-day state of affairs…we must understand [Western] arts and sciences…We must establish elementary and high schools, colleges and universities, in accordance with those of foreign countries…” (Guangxu). The emphasis and repetition of “we must” shows the Guangxu Emperor’s urgency to change, but all of the reforms that he was trying to pass were presented in a way that was too overwhelming and fast paced for people on the opposite side of the political spectrum, the conservatives. Guangxu’s list of necessary actions to take failed to attract an important group of people because he was being too demanding and pressing. On the other hand, a Chinese scholar and translator named Yan Fu also contributed to the study of Western culture by devoting his time to translating Western books into Chinese. After years of studying and translating, Fu wrote an essay concluding that “We cannot force the two cultures ot be the same or similar. Therefore Chinese knowledge has its foundation and function; Western knowledge also has its foundation and function. If the two are separated each can be independent; If the two were combined, both would perish” (quoted in From Reform 2009). Yan Fu disagreed with the Guangxu Emperor because he viewed the two cultures uniting as a destructive event with words in his essay like “perish”. Yan Fu’s conclusions that countries should stay separate was the result of his lifetime devotion to studying Western culture, making his perspective more trustworthy and valued by the people. His perspective also justified the conservative’s beliefs to oppose the Guangxu Emperor’s urgency to adopt Western culture. While the two perspectives gradually drifted people further and further apart, the Guangxu Emperor’s actions further worsened the reform movement when he attacked the conservatives in one of his reform edicts explaining that “Officials influenced by conservative people, do not try to inform our people truly of what we are doing for reform while crafty and wicked persons try to spread unseemly rumours in order to stir up the people against this reform” (Guangxu: reform). The Guangxu Emperor isolated the conservatives and referred to them as the “wicked persons” in his edict. An edict was a declaration presented all over China so the Guangxu Emperor’s choice to blame the conservatives created more division and unrest in the country. Attacking the conservatives did not attract more people to his movement, rather, it upset more people which made the movement more and more unpopular.
The combination of the weak leadership from the Guangxu Emperor and Empress Dowager Cixi’s immense power in government changed the course of the movement negatively. The Guangxu Emperor was relatively inexperienced compared to Cixi who had been an influential figure in government and a leader for the conservatives in China for years before he came to power. When describing the Guangxu Emperor, author Jung Chang gave an analogy stating that “‘whenever an insufficient man happens to have command on deck, adieu to the discipline and safety of the ship … Emperor Guangxu was that ‘insufficient captain’. Cixi knew this all too well” (Chang 225).  The claim that the Guangxu Emperor was an “insufficient captain” was proven when a group of reformists drafted new reforms and sent them to the Guangxu Emperor who didn’t bother to read them, and sent them straight to Cixi, who,  “read the reform ideas very carefully” (Chang 224). Although the Guangxu Emperor was the face and symbol of the reforms, Cixi ultimately had the real power to change the course of the movement because her nephew was a passive leader and important ideas were filtered in a sense and ultimately landing up in her hands. As an “insufficient captain”, The Guangxu Emperor’s lack of care to read over reform ideas was alarming and harmful to the reforms because he was passing reforms that were thoroughly looked through by Cixi, who represented the conservatives. In addition, as the emperor was drafting more “wild schemes”, Cixi would often oppose them and was backed up by the conservatives who also believed that these changes would ruin China. The conservatives begged Cixi to take total control back from the Guangxu Emperor (Richards 263). The reform movement was liberal, trying to move people forward and modernize, but Guangxu’s leadership made people want to resort to the past which was shown when people begged Cixi to come back into power. Since the Guangxu Emperor and Cixi did not agree often, Cixi was the one who ultimately had power because the Guangxu Emperor was unassertive, unpopular (without a strong group of people to back him up like Cixi), and uninvolved at times, which lead the course of the reforms to favor Cixi and not the Guangxu Emperor.
Without a strong and effective leader, the One-Hundred days of Reform movement in China seemed like it doomed from the start. With other factors like people who wanted to return to the past, and a manipulative aunt, the Guangxu Emperor was leading short-term solutions to China’s long term problems. Although the reform movement only lasted a few months, it was the start for China to realize where they stood in the world, and of all the problems they needed to fix within.