Kuang Hsu—As Emperor and Reformer

In 1891 the present Emperor Kuang Hsu issued a very strong edict commanding good treatment of the missionaries. He therein made the following statement: “The religions of the West have for their object the inculcation of virtue, and, though our people become converted, they continue to be Chinese subjects. There is no reason why there should not be harmony between the people and the adherents of foreign religions.”—Hon. Charles Denby in “China and Her People.”

IX

Kuang Hsu—As Emperor and Reformer

AS a man, there are few characters in Chinese history that are more interesting than Kuang Hsu. He had all the caprices of genius with their corresponding weakness and strength. He could wield a pen with the vigour of a Caesar, threaten his greatest viceroys, dismiss his leading conservative officials, introduce the most sweeping and far-reaching reforms that have ever been thought of by the Chinese people, and then run from a woman as though the very devil was after him.

He has been variously rated as a genius, an imbecile and a fool. Let us grant that he was not brilliant. Let us rate him as an imbecile, and then let us try to account for his having brought into the palace every ingenious toy and every wonderful and useful invention and discovery of the past twenty or thirty years with the exception of the X-rays and liquid air. Let us try to explain why it was that an imbecile would purchase every book that had been printed in the Chinese language, concerning foreign subjects of learning, up to the time when he was dethroned. Let us tell why it was that an imbecile would study all those foreign books without help, without an assistant, without a teacher, for three years, from the time he bought them in 1895 till 1898, before he began issuing the most remarkable series of edicts that have ever come from the pen of an Oriental monarch in the same length of time. And let us explain how it was that an imbecile could embody in his edicts of two or three months all the important principles that were necessary to launch the great reforms of the past ten years.

I doubt if any Chinese monarch has ever had a more far-reaching influence over the minds of the young men of the empire than Kuang Hsu had from 1895 till 1898. The preparation for this influence had been going on for twenty or thirty years previously in the educational institutions established by the missions and the government. From these schools there had gone out a great number of young men who had taken positions in all departments of business, and many of the state, and revealed to the officials as well as to many of the people the power of foreign education. An imperial college had been established by the customs service for the special education of young men for diplomatic and other positions, from which there had gone out young men who were the representatives of the government as consuls or ministers in the various countries of Europe and America.

The fever for reading the same books that Kuang Hsu had read was so great as to tax to the utmost the presses of the port cities to supply the demand, and the leaders of some of the publication societies feared that a condition had arisen for which they were unprepared. Books written by such men as Drs. Allen, Mateer, Martin, Williams and Legge were brought out in pirated photographic reproductions by the bookshops of Shanghai and sold for one-tenth the cost of the original work. Authors, to protect themselves, compelled the pirates to deliver over the stereotype plates they had made on penalty of being brought before the officials in litigation if they refused. But during the three years the Emperor had been studying these foreign books, hundreds of thousands of young scholars all over the empire had been doing the same, preparing themselves for whatever emergency the studies of the young Emperor might bring about.

One day during the early spring a young Chinese reformer came to me to get a list of the best newspapers and periodicals published in both England and America. I inquired the reason for this strange move, and he said:

“The young Chinese reformers in Peking have organized a Reform Club. Some of them read and speak English, others French, others German and still others Russian, and we are providing ourselves with all the leading periodicals of these various countries that we may read and study them. We have rented a building, prepared rooms, and propose to have a club where we can assemble whenever we have leisure, for conversation, discussion, reading, lectures or whatever will best contribute to the ends we have in view.”

“And what are those ends?” I inquired.

“The bringing about of a new regime in China,” he answered. “Our recent defeat by the Japanese has shown us that unless some radical changes are made we must take a second place among the peoples of the Orient.”

“This is a new move in Peking, is it not?”

“New in Peking,” he answered, “but not new in the empire. Reform clubs are being organized in all the great cities and capitals. In Hsian, books have been purchased by all classes from the governor of the province down to the humblest scholar, and the aristocracy have organized classes, and are inviting the foreigners to lecture to them. Every one, except a few of the oldest conservative scholars, are discarding their Confucian theories and reconstructing their ideas in view of present day problems. There is an intellectual fermentation now going on from which a new China is certain to be evolved, and we propose to be ready for it when it comes.”

The leader of this reform party was Kang Yu-wei, a young Cantonese, who had made a thorough study of the reforms of Peter the Great in Russia, and the more recent reforms in Japan, the history of which he had prepared in two volumes which he sent to the Emperor. He had made a reputation for himself in his native place as a “Modern Sage and Reformer,” was hailed as a “young Confucius,” was appointed a third-class secretary in the Board of Works, and as the Emperor and he had been studying on the same lines, Kang, through the influence of the brother of the chief concubine, was introduced to His Majesty. He had a three hours’ conference with the Foreign Office, in which he urged that China should imitate Japan, and that the old conservative ministers and viceroys should be replaced by young men imbued with Western ideas, who might confer with the Emperor daily in regard to all kinds of reform measures.

This interview was reported to Kuang Hsu by Prince Kung and Jung Lu, who both being old, and one of them the greatest of the conservatives, could hardly be expected to approve of his theories. Kang, however, was asked to embody his suggestions in a memorial, was later given an audience with the Emperor, and finally called into the palace to assist him in the reforms he had already undertaken. And if Kang Yu-wei had been as great a statesman as he was reformer, Kuang Hsu might never have been deposed.

The crisis came during the summer of 1898. I had taken my family to the seashore to spend our summer vacation. A young Chinese scholar—a Hanlin—who had been studying in the university for some years, and with whom I was translating a work on psychology, had gone with me. He took the Peking Gazette, which he read daily, and commented upon with more or less interest, until June 23d, when an edict was issued abolishing the literary essay of the old regime as a part of the government examination, and substituting therefor various branches of the new learning. “We have been compelled to issue this decree,” said the Emperor, “because our examinations have reached the lowest ebb, and we see no remedy for these matters except to change entirely the old methods for a new course of competition.”

“What do you think of that?” I asked the Hanlin.

“The greatest step that has ever yet been taken,” he replied.

This Hanlin was not a radical reformer, but one of a long line of officials who were deeply interested in the preservation of their country which had weathered the storms of so many centuries,—storms which had wrecked Assyria, Babylonia, Media, Egypt, Greece and Rome, while China, though growing but little, had still lived. He was one of those progressive statesmen who have always been found among a strong minority in the Middle Kingdom.

The Peking Gazette continued to come daily bringing with it the following twenty-seven decrees in a little more than twice that many days. I will give an epitome of the decrees that the reader at a glance may see what the Emperor undertook to do. Summarized they are as follows:

1. The establishment of a university at Peking.

2. The sending of imperial clansmen to foreign countries to study the forms and conditions of European and American government.

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

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

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

6. Censured those who attempted to delay the establishment of the Peking Imperial University.

7. Urged that the Lu-Han railway should be prosecuted with more vigour and expedition.

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

9. Ordered the establishment of agricultural schools in all the provinces to teach the farmers improved methods of agriculture.

10. Ordered the introduction of patent and copyright laws.

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

12. Special rewards were offered to inventors and authors.

13. The officials were ordered to encourage trade and assist merchants.

14. School boards were ordered established in every city in the empire.

15. Bureaus of Mines and Railroads were established.

16. Journalists were encouraged to write on all political subjects.

17. Naval academies and training-ships were ordered.

18. The ministers and provincial authorities were called upon to assist—nay, were begged to make some effort to understand what he was trying to do and help him in his efforts at reform.

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

20. Commercial bureaus were ordered in Shanghai for the encouragement of trade.

21. Six useless Boards in Peking were abolished.

22. The right to memorialize the throne in sealed memorials was granted to all who desired to do so.

23. Two presidents and four vice-presidents of the Board of Rites were dismissed for disobeying the Emperor’s orders that memorials should be allowed to come to him unopened.

24. The governorships of Hupeh, Kuangtung, and Yunnan were abolished as being a useless expense to the country.

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

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

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

I have given these decrees in this epitomized form so that all those who are interested in the character of this reform movement in China may understand something of the influence the young Emperor’s study had had upon him. Grant that they followed one another in too close proximity, yet still it must be admitted by every careful student of them, that there is not one that would not have been of the greatest possible benefit to the country if they had been put into operation. If the Emperor had been allowed to proceed, making them all as effective as he did the Imperial University, and if the ministers and provincial authorities had responded to his call, and had made “some effort to understand what he was trying to do,” China might have by this time been close upon the heels of Japan in the adoption of Western ideas.

As the edicts continued to come out in such quick succession my Hanlin friend became alarmed. He came to me one day after the Emperor had censured the officials for trying to delay the establishment of the Imperial University and said:

“I must return to Peking.”

“Why return so soon?” I inquired.

“There is going to be trouble if the Emperor continues his reform at this rate of speed,” he answered.

It was when the Emperor had issued the sixth of his twenty-seven decrees that this young Chinese statesman made this observation. If his most intimate advisers had had the perspicuity to have foreseen the final outcome of such precipitance might they not have advised the Emperor to have proceeded more deliberately? When one remembers how China had been worsted by Japan, how all her prestige was swept away, how, from having been the parent of the Oriental family of nations, a desirable friend or a dangerous enemy, she was stripped of all her glory, and left a helpless giant with neither strength nor power, one can easily understand the eagerness of this boy of twenty-seven to restore her to the pedestal from which she had been ruthlessly torn.

Another reason for his haste may be found in the seizure of his territory by the European powers. A few months before he began his reforms two German priests were murdered by an irresponsible mob in the province of Shantung. With this as an excuse Germany landed a battalion of marines at Kiaochou, a port of that province, which she took with fifty miles of the surrounding territory. As though this were not enough, she demanded the right to build all the railroads and open all the mines in the entire province, and compelled the Chinese to pay an indemnity to the families of the murdered priests and rebuild the church and houses the mob had destroyed. China appealed to Russia who had promised to protect her against all invaders. Instead of coming to her aid, however, Russia demanded a similar cession of Port Arthur, Talienwan and the surrounding territory which she had refused to allow Japan to retain two years before. Not to be outdone by the others, France demanded and received a similar strip of territory at Kuang-chou-wan; and England found that Wei-hai-wei would be indispensable as a kennel from which she could guard the Russian bear on the opposite shore, but why she should have found it necessary also to demand from China four hundred miles of land and water around Hongkong was no doubt difficult for Kuang Hsu to understand.

When the Empress Dowager turned over the reins of government to her nephew she did it very much as a father would place the reins in the hands of a child whom he was teaching to drive an important vehicle on a dangerous road—she sat behind him still holding the reins. Among the things reserved were that he should kotow to her once every five days whether she were in Peking or at the Summer Place, and she reserved such seals of office as made it necessary for all the highest officials to come and express their obligations to her at the same time they came to thank the Emperor. While Kuang Hsu may have been reconciled to the performance of these duties at eighteen, they became irksome at twenty-seven and he demanded and received full liberty in the affairs of state.

We have seen how he used his liberty,—not wisely, perhaps, as a reformer, and yet the reformation of China can never be written without giving the credit of its inception to Kuang Hsu. He was very different from Hsien Feng, the husband of the Empress Dowager, before whose death we are told “the whole administrative power was vested in the hands of a council of eight, whilst he himself spent his time in ways that were by no means consistent with those that ought to have characterized the ruler of a great and powerful nation.” Whatever else may be said of Kuang Hsu, he cannot be accused of indolence, extravagance, or indifference to the welfare of his country or his people.

Appreciating the difficulty of securing an expression of opinion from those opposed to his views, and thus getting both sides of the question, in his fourth edict he requested the conservatives to send in their objections to his schemes for progress and reform, and then as if to get the broadest possible expression of opinion he adopted a Shanghai journal called Chinese Progress as the official organ of the government. But lest this be insufficient, in his twenty-second edict he gave the right to all officials to address the throne in sealed memorials.

There was at this time a third-class secretary of the Board of Rites named Wang Chao who sent in a memorial in which he advocated: