by Chang, Jung
The proclamation generated tremendous waves. Newspapers printed special editions devoted to the subject. When he read about it in Japan, Liang Qichao, Wild Fox Kang’s closest colleague, felt that a new epoch had arrived and immediately set about organising a political party – one of many political organisations that began to spring up. Cixi’s government engaged in a huge amount of preparatory work: drafting laws, spreading educational opportunities, informing the public about the new political system, founding the police and training them in how to keep order the modern way, and so on. Two years later, on 27 August 1908, a draft outline of the constitution was published with Cixi’s endorsement. This historic document combined the political traditions of the East and the West. Continuing the age-old oriental custom, it gave real political power to the monarch, who would still head the government and retain the final say. Parliament would draw up laws and proposals, but all were subject to the approval of the monarch, who would then issue them. The inviolable power of the throne was stressed in the draft outline, not least through its opening line: ‘The Qing dynasty shall rule over the Qing empire for ever, and shall be honoured through all ages.’ Drawing from Western practices, the people were guaranteed a number of fundamental rights, including the ‘freedoms of speech, writing, publication, assembly and association’ – and the right to be ‘members of parliament as long as they were qualified by law’. A parliament was to be founded, where elected representatives of the people would have a significant say in state affairs, including the budget. The draft outline omitted to say what would happen in the inevitable event of a clash between the throne and parliament. But the drafters’ letter to Cixi indicated a solution: ‘the monarch and the people would both make concessions’.
A Preliminary Assembly, Zi-zheng-yuan, had been set up in 1907 to act as a transitional parliament. It spent ten months working out a draft regulation for the founding of the future parliament, including the composition of its members. The document was approved and announced by Cixi on 8 July 1908. Roughly half of the members would sit in an Upper House and would be appointed by the throne from these sections of society: Manchu princes; Manchu and Han aristocrats; Mongolian, Tibetan and Hui (Muslim) aristocrats; medium-rank officials, eminent scholars and the highest taxpayers. The other half, in the Lower House, would be elected by members of the Provincial Assemblies, which were being set up across China, and whose members would themselves be directly elected by the provinces’ citizens. A draft Electoral Regulation, for the election of the Provincial Assemblies, was made public by Cixi with her endorsement on 22 July 1908.
In this great historical document, the franchise was based on contemporary Western practice. In Britain, for instance, the vote was extended to adult males who owned property or paid at least ten pounds in rent a year, so the electorate comprised about 60 per cent of the British adult male population. For the Chinese electorate (male and over twenty-five), the property qualification was defined as owning 5,000 yuan in business capital or property. Alternative qualifications were added: men who had run public projects for more than three years with distinction; graduates of modern secondary schools or higher institutions; literati from the old educational system; and so on. All these people could vote, even if they were poor and without property. Mentioning their deviation from the current Western models, the writers of the Regulation argued that if property-owning were the sole qualification, people would be encouraged only to seek profit and wealth.
The eligibility of parliamentary candidates also largely followed Western practice, except that they had to be at least thirty years old (as in Japan), which, according to Confucius, was the age of full maturity. One group of men excluded from standing was unique to China: primary school teachers. The argument was that they, of all people, bore the responsibility for training citizens. Their energy must therefore be totally devoted to this worthiest cause. Among those disqualified from voting (and standing) were officials of the province and their advisers, as they were the administrators, who had to be separated from the legislators in parliament, in order to prevent corruption. Military men were also ruled out, because the army must not be involved in politics.
Cixi approved the Electoral Regulation and asked for a timetable to be set for elections and the calling of parliament. Prince Ching, head of the Grand Council, who oversaw the drafting of the Regulation, argued against a specific schedule. Their task was unprecedented and daunting, and unforeseen problems were bound to emerge, he advised – not least the danger of leaving open loopholes that would enable bad characters to seize power. Cixi vetoed Prince Ching’s recommendation. Without a time frame, there would be no momentum and the whole thing might not even happen. Many officials feared and opposed this particular change, finding it impracticable, and unthinkable, in so vast and populous a country, where levels of education were so low. Without a deadline they would simply be paying lip service. Only a timetable could spur them on and bring the venture to fruition.
A nine-year timetable was drawn up and endorsed, together with a list of work to be done and objectives to be achieved in each of the years. The list included preparations for the elections; law-making; a census; a taxation programme – and the specification of the rights, duties and financing of the throne. Literacy was a prominent issue. The percentage of the population who could read and write (in Chinese) at the most elementary level at the time was below 1 per cent. The writing of new textbooks, together with a drive for modern education, would begin in the first year. By the end of the seventh year, 1 per cent of the population must qualify as ‘literate’, and by the end of the ninth the target was 5 per cent. The fulfilment of each objective was made the responsibility of a specific ministry, and Cixi had the timetable inscribed on plaques and hung in government offices. In her decree she invoked ‘conscience’ and the ‘omnipotent Heaven’ to warn sluggish officials. Her passion and determination were in no doubt. If all went according to plan, in the ninth year after 1908 millions upon millions of Chinese would be able to vote. (Voters in Britain in 1908 numbered more than seven million.) The Chinese would for the first time in their history have a say in state affairs. W. A. P. Martin, the American missionary who had spent decades in China, exclaimed, ‘What a commotion will the ballot-box excite! How suddenly will it arouse the dormant intellect of a brainy race!’
In Cixi’s version of constitutional monarchy, the Chinese electorate did not have the same power as their Western counterparts. But she was bringing the country out of unquestionable autocracy and opening the business of government to the ordinary people – citizens, as they were now called. She was restricting her own power and introducing a negotiating forum into Chinese politics, where the monarch and the representatives of the people, including different interest groups, would confer, bargain and, doubtless, fight verbal battles. While Cixi lived, given her sense of fairness and her penchant for consensus, there was every chance that the wish of the people would continue to gain ground.
Conceding that ‘it is premature to speculate’ on the outcome of the empress dowager’s initiative, Martin had faith in her. ‘During her lifetime she could be counted on to carry forward the cause she had so ardently espoused. She grasped the reins with a firm hand; and her courage was such that she did not hesitate to drive the chariot of state over many a new and untried road.’ All in all, he remarked: ‘It is little more than eight years since the restoration, as the return of the Court in January, 1902, may be termed. In this period, it is safe to assert that more sweeping reforms have been decreed in China than were ever enacted in a half-century by any other country, if one except Japan, whose example the Chinese profess to follow, and France, in the Revolution, of which Macaulay remarks that “they changed everything – from the rites of religion to the fashion of a shoe-buckle.”’
Cixi’s ‘important innovations or ameliorations’, wrote Martin, went all the way back to the moment she seized power, and they ‘made the reign of the Empress Dowager the most brilliant in the his
tory of the Empire. The last eight years have been uncommonly prolific of reforms; but the tide began to turn after the peace of Peking in 1860. Since that date every step in the adoption of modern methods was taken during the regency of that remarkable woman, which dated from 1861 to 1908.’ Out of those forty-seven years, Cixi effectively ruled for thirty-six (her son for two and her adopted son for nine). Given how much she had achieved during her period in power, and the colossal odds she had faced – and overcome – it does not seem far-fetched to expect that suffrage would have been introduced into China in 1916, if the empress dowager had lived.
30 Coping with Insurgents, Assassins and the Japanese (1902–8)
A CONTEMPORARY HAN official remarked that Cixi’s revolution was ‘advantageous for China, but hugely disadvantageous for the Manchu government’. Indeed, many Manchus were anxious about what was happening. It was only Cixi’s authority that made them put their faith, and fate, in her hands. She herself was seeking to preserve her dynasty – not least by introducing her version of constitutional monarchy. But in the end, the exclusively Manchu throne proved to be her Achilles heel. Although she took many steps to dismantle Han–Manchu segregation, she wished the throne to remain Manchu. The decree that lifted the ban on intermarriage in 1902 had added that the imperial consorts should still only be chosen from among the Manchus (and the Mongols). There were signs that she would eventually bow to the inevitability of an ethnically inclusive throne, but she never quite reached that point in her lifetime.
Cixi had a strong sense of Manchu identity, made stronger by the fact that the Manchu were such a small minority, always at risk of being overwhelmed by the Han. To her court ladies, mostly Manchu, she always talked of ‘we Manchu’. Although she could not speak the Manchu language she compensated by sticking religiously to other outward signs of belonging: Manchu customs were unfailingly observed in the court, and Manchu clothes and hairstyles were worn without exception. Her diplomats, mostly Han, wished they could swap their Manchu costume for Western suits, but their request was rejected. Their desire to be rid of the queue was not even mentioned. Cixi was not prejudiced against the Han; indeed, she promoted Han officials in an unprecedented way, appointing them to key positions previously reserved for the Manchu. Nor did the Han have fewer privileges or lower standards of living. It was simply the Manchu throne that she desperately wanted to preserve.
It was for this reason that for a long time Cixi resisted allowing first-rate Han statesmen into the heart of the court. Earl Li, for all his unique relationship with Cixi and his singular importance to the empire, was never a member of the Grand Council. Indeed, the Council did not have the cream of Han officials until as late as 1907, when Cixi finally appointed General Yuan and Viceroy Zhang. She had, on several occasions, not least in spring 1898 when her Reforms began, contemplated appointing Viceroy Zhang to the Grand Council, but had always decided against the idea, fearing that the throne itself might be lost to this supremely able man. By clinging to the notion that the throne must be occupied by a Manchu, Cixi undermined the desirability of a parliamentary monarchy and made Republicanism an attractive alternative.
Sun Yat-sen, loosely the leader of the Republican movement, was the most persistent advocate of military action to overthrow the Manchu dynasty. He had tried to organise an armed uprising in 1895 and had been active in the new century with a series of insurrections. Their scale was small, but Cixi treated them with the utmost seriousness. She berated provincial chiefs for underestimating ‘these flames that could spark off a prairie fire’, and cable after cable urged them to ‘extinguish them; do not let them spread’.
Assassination was very much a part of Republican tactics, as demonstrated by the suicide bomber on the train in 1905. Two years later a local police chief in Zhejiang province in eastern China, Xu Xilin, gunned down at close range the governor of the province, a Manchu named Enming, who had come to inspect the police college. Enming had regarded Xilin as a kindred reformist spirit and had plucked him out of obscurity and entrusted him with the police force. By the traditional ethical code, Xilin ought to be grateful to his benefactor; but he killed him instead – because the governor was Manchu. After his arrest, Xilin declared in his testimony, which was published in the newspapers, that his goal was ‘to slaughter every Manchu, to the last one’. He was beheaded. Troops loyal to the dead governor ripped out his heart as a sacrificial offering – a grisly old ritual symbolising ultimate revenge. Decades earlier, the assassin of Viceroy Ma had been subjected to the same treatment.
The killing of the governor was part of a planned insurrection, one of whose leaders was a woman. Once a student in Japan and now a teacher in a girls’ school back in the province, Miss Qiu Jin was beautiful and elegant – and was one of the pioneers of feminism in China. Defying prescribed behaviour for women, she paraded herself in public, dressed in men’s clothes and sporting a walking stick. She started a feminist newspaper and gave public speeches that won applause ‘like hundreds of spring thunders’, wrote admiring journalists. Violent action appealed to her, and she attempted to make bombs for the insurrection, in the process of which her hands were injured. Miss Qiu was arrested, and executed in a public place – but before dawn.
If this had happened just a few years earlier, the average man would not have raised an eyebrow. Summary execution of armed rebels was taken for granted. But this time a barrage of press condemnation greeted the execution. They asserted that the weapons found with Miss Qiu had been planted and her confession that had been made public was faked. Even the most moderate newspapers described her as being completely innocent, a victim of a vendetta by local conservative forces. They heaped eulogies on her, credited beautiful poems to her and turned her into a heroine – an image that has lasted to this day. Her comrade, the police chief, also enjoyed almost unqualified sympathy. The press asked how it came about that his heart had been cut out, given that barbaric forms of execution had been outlawed and torture in interrogation banned. The press flexed its muscles and shaped public opinion: its naming and condemning of the officials involved in the Miss Qiu case turned those involved into hate figures. When some were transferred to other regions, the authorities there declined to accept them. The county chief who sentenced Miss Qiu to death hanged himself under the pressure.
The newly gained influence and confidence turned the press into an awesome force, especially as a watchdog over the government. Cixi never attempted to suppress it, in spite of its overwhelmingly anti-Manchu sentiment (it had not a word of sympathy, for example, for the slain Manchu governor). However, she responded to violent actions with utter ruthlessness. After receiving detailed reports about the case of Miss Qiu, which showed unmistakably that she had been one of the insurrection leaders, Cixi endorsed the handling of her case, and continued with other tough measures to do with stamping out insurgency. As a result, while she was alive, the New York Times reported in 1908: ‘no general disorders are apprehended. China is quieter now than at any time since 1900.’ Still, Republicanism remained potent, waiting for the moment when she was gone.
Fending off the Republicans with one arm, with the other Cixi wrestled with Wild Fox Kang. After his failed plot to kill her in 1898, Kang had fled to Japan. Under heavy pressure from the Qing government and, in particular, from Viceroy Zhang, whom the Japanese were keen to cultivate, Tokyo soon had to ask him to leave. But the Wild Fox was not cast into the wilderness. He left Japan to travel the world, accompanied by a Chinese-speaking Japanese intelligence man, Nakanishi Shigetaro, who had trained in Japan’s espionage institute, which was specifically targeting China. He now acted as Kang’s interpreter and bodyguard – and contact man with Tokyo. Kang left behind in Japan his disciple and right-hand man, Liang Qichao, who carried out Kang’s orders. Overseas, Kang continued to pursue the restoration of Emperor Guangxu. This was also what Japan wanted, as it was the easiest way to control China. The Wild Fox thus worked in conjunction with, if not entirely on behalf of, Japan.
Wild Fox Kang now organised repeated attempts on Cixi’s life, and a series of assassins sailed from Japan to Beijing. One of them was Shen Jin, who had embarked on such a mission in 1900 with a pirate gang. But then their whole enterprise had failed and he had gone into exile. In 1903, he arrived in the capital to try again, and made friends with senior policemen and eunuchs. News of the would-be assassin got to the ears of Cixi’s devotees and he was arrested.
A public decree charged Mr Shen with involvement in an armed rebellion and ordered his immediate execution. As Emperor Guangxu’s birthday fell within that month, and a Qing convention enjoined that the birthday month should be free of public executions, the decree instructed the Ministry of Punishments to carry out the death sentence in prison by bastinado. This medieval form of execution, which meant beating the convicted to death, was normally reserved for offending eunuchs behind the thick gates and walls of the Forbidden City, and the state prison did not possess the required equipment or expertise. Long wooden bats had to be specially made, and inexperienced executioners took quite some time to end the life of Mr Shen, who was a big man with a tough constitution. The story reached the newspapers, and the horrific detail revolted readers, especially Westerners. The English-language North China Herald called the execution ‘a monstrous perversion of even Chinese justice’ and denounced Cixi directly: ‘only she whose word is law would have dared to do it’. The British Legation boycotted Cixi’s reception that autumn.fn1