Hundred Days’ Reform

In the First Sino-Japanese War of 1894–1895 the main forces of the Qing dynasty were annihilated, and the Qing government was forced to sign the Treaty of Shimonoseki with Japan.⁠[1]

The Treaty of Shimonoseki is dated April 17, 1895: the Qing recognised the independence of Korea, ceded Taiwan, the Pescadores and the Liaodong Peninsula to Japan, agreed to pay Japan an indemnity of 200,000,000 taels and opened Shashi, Chongqing, Suzhou and Hangzhou to Japanese trade; Russia, France and Germany later obliged Japan to return the Liaodong Peninsula in exchange for a further 30,000,000 taels.⁠[2]

The Academy of Chinese Studies writes that from 1895 to 1898, as the foreign powers intensified their aggression, the country faced the crisis of national subjugation; BritannicaEncyclopædia BritannicaEncyclopædia Britannica is a general English-language encyclopedia first published in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1768; the name also refers to its publisher, Chicago-based Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. (which presents itself as The Britannica Group). The print edition ended in 2012, and the company’s main businesses since then have been the online encyclopedia Britannica.com, digital education products for schools and libraries, and Merriam-Webster dictionaries.Open the full entry’s article on the reform writes that after the war a series of clubs sprang up across the country urging reform on the Western model.⁠[1][3]

In April 1895, when Japanese victory appeared inevitable, Kang Youwei began to advocate institutional reform. He led provincial graduates (juren) in Beijing in a joint petition to the Guangxu Emperor protesting against the Treaty of Shimonoseki and calling for reform, and Liang Qichao took part; the Academy of Chinese Studies puts the signatories at some 3,000 juren from 18 provinces, while Britannica’s article on Kang speaks of hundreds of provincial graduates then in Beijing.⁠[4][5][6]

The Qing government ignored the petition. The Academy of Chinese Studies writes that on the following day the American diplomat Charles Denby acquired a draft of it; the episode later came to be called the Public Vehicle Petition and, although rejected, had a great social impact.⁠[3][5]

In his Further Studies of the History of the 1898 Reform, Mao Haijian concludes that the joint petition of graduates from eighteen provinces organised by Kang Youwei was not refused by the Censorate: Kang never went to deliver it, and the effort was abandoned midway. Kang’s own chronological autobiography, Wo shi, claims that more than 1,200 people signed and that when it was presented on the eighth day of the fourth lunar month the Censorate refused it because the peace treaty had already been sealed; Mao judges Wo shi’s account of the petition to be wrong in many places and highly unreliable. He counts 31 separate petitions by graduates in the same period, with 1,555 signatures in all, and distinguishes two things: a broad “Public Vehicle Petition” instigated at the top of the government, organised by Beijing officials and joined by graduates from the provinces, and the multi-province petition organised by Kang that was never submitted.⁠[7]

Mao also sets out earlier views: Huang Zhangjian concluded that there had been no attempt to obstruct the petitions, and Jiang Ming pointed out that the opposition to the peace treaty came mainly from officials and that the graduates’ petitions met no obstruction.⁠[7]

The Academy of Chinese Studies writes that the Guangxu Emperor (reigned 1875–1908) had a better understanding of the humiliation the country had suffered; with the help of his tutor Weng TongheWeng TongheWeng Tonghe (1830–1904) was an official, calligrapher and diarist of the late Qing dynasty, tutor to two emperors, Tongzhi and Guangxu, and at various times president of the Board of Revenue, Grand Councillor and Associate Grand Secretary. He was dismissed soon after the Hundred Days’ Reform began in 1898 and stripped of his ranks after the coup that ended it; the diary he kept for nearly half a century is counted among the four great diaries of the late Qing.Open the full entry (1830–1904) and other courtiers, he ordered in July 1895 that local officials submit reform proposals within a month.⁠[1]

Kang Youwei, Liang Qichao and other reformers founded the Society for the Study of National Strengthening in Beijing; Britannica’s history of China dates it to August 1895, the Academy of Chinese Studies to November 1895. Hummel’s Eminent Chinese of the Ch’ing Period writes that Kang organised the society in Beijing and Shanghai in 1895, with Liang as its chief secretary.⁠[4][5][8]

The Academy of Chinese Studies calls the society the first political organisation set up by the reformist camp and says it gradually brought reform into public discussion; Britannica’s article on Kang calls it the archetype of political parties in modern China and writes that it was suppressed in 1896. On January 12, 1896, Kang released in Shanghai the first issue of Qiangxuebao, the official publication of the society’s Shanghai branch.⁠[5][6]

Britannica’s history of China writes that although the society was soon closed down, many study societies were created in Hunan, Guangdong, Fujian, Sichuan and other provinces.⁠[4]

Shiwu Bao (Chinese Progress) was launched on August 9, 1896, with Wang Kangnian as its chairman; the Academy of Chinese Studies calls it one of the most influential newspapers of the reform period.⁠[5]

The Academy of Chinese Studies writes that a climate of reform prevailed in Hunan after the war largely thanks to Chen Baozhen, who became governor of the province in 1895; Britannica’s history of China calls the Hunan movement the most active of the local reform movements.⁠[5][4]

Hummel’s Eminent Chinese of the Ch’ing Period writes that in 1897 Tan SitongTan SitongTan Sitong (1865–1898) was a Chinese thinker and reformer of the late Qing from Liuyang, Hunan, and the author of the Renxue (A Study of Benevolence). He took part in the reforms in Hunan in 1897–1898 and served as a secretary of the Grand Council during the Hundred Days’ Reform of 1898; after the coup of that year he refused to flee and was arrested and executed, one of the “Six Gentlemen of 1898.”Open the full entry was recalled to Hunan to help Chen Baozhen carry out reforms; Chen hoped to make Hunan the starting point of a modernised administration in South China, and as a result steamships were introduced, the police system was modernised, industries were developed and railways were projected. The province’s first newspaper, Xiangxue xinbao, first issued on April 22, 1897, was edited by Tan, who was also chairman of the Southern Study Society and spoke at its gatherings.⁠[8]

In 1897 a modern school, the Shiwu Xuetang (Academy of Current Affairs), was established in Hunan as one of the initiatives planned by Chen Baozhen; Huang ZunxianHuang ZunxianHuang Zunxian (1848–1905) was a late-Qing poet, diplomat and reformer who served as counselor of the Chinese legation in Japan, consul-general in San Francisco, counselor of the legation in London and consul-general in Singapore. He wrote the Riben guozhi (Treatises on Japan) and the Riben zashishi (Poems on Miscellaneous Subjects from Japan), and his collected poems, which brought colloquial language and new subjects into Chinese verse, made him a leading figure of the revolution in poetry; in 1897–1898 he took part in the reforms in Hunan, and after the coup of 1898 he was dismissed and returned home.Open the full entry and Xiong Xiling were tasked with setting it up, and Xiong Xiling, Liang Qichao and Li Weige were appointed to head it. Hummel’s Eminent Chinese of the Ch’ing Period writes that it was located in Changsha and that Liang was invited to be its chief lecturer.⁠[5][8]

Britannica’s history of China writes that journals and schools were begun in Hunan after 1896 for popular enlightenment, but that Kang’s radical reformism aroused strong opposition and the Hunan movement shattered at the end of May 1898.⁠[4]

Between 1888 and 1898 Kang Youwei set out the desperate need for reform in seven successive memorials; the one submitted in January 1898 attracted the most attention. It argued that for the nation to survive it must reform the polity, change old practices and bring in new ones, and it proposed a dozen political initiatives that became the framework of the Hundred Days’ Reform. Britannica’s article on the reform writes that in the same month Kang met a group of high government officials.⁠[5][3]

The Academy of Chinese Studies writes that Kang gained the support of the emperor’s tutor Weng Tonghe, who presented this Memorial on Coping with the Overall Situation in Reply to an Imperial Proclamation to the emperor and passed on seven of Kang’s memorials in turn; Kang also presented the emperor with A Study of the Meiji Restoration.⁠[9]

Britannica’s article on Kang writes that in 1898, when foreign powers threatened to partition the country, Kang and his followers suggested an alliance with Britain and Japan to check Russia and insisted that only institutional reform could save it; he urged opening channels for public opinion and convening assemblies, and even the acceptance of popular sovereignty and the separation of powers.⁠[6]

Feng Tianyu writes that Zhang ZhidongZhang ZhidongZhang Zhidong (1837–1909) was an official, scholar and educator of the late Qing dynasty and one of the leading figures of the Self-Strengthening movement. He served as governor of Shanxi and as governor-general of Guangdong and Guangxi and of Hubei and Hunan, founded iron and steel, arms and textile enterprises and modern schools in Hubei, wrote the Quanxue pian (Exhortation to Learning) in 1898, and in his last years was a grand councillor and grand secretary in Beijing.Open the full entry, aware that real power at court lay with the empress dowager’s faction opposed to reform, wrote Exhortation to Learning in April 1898 to protect himself in advance. The book has twenty-four chapters and more than 40,000 characters; its inner chapters address fundamentals to set people’s minds right and its outer chapters address practical knowledge to open up the atmosphere, holding that Chinese learning is inner learning and Western learning outer learning, Chinese learning for cultivating the self and Western learning for dealing with the affairs of the world.⁠[10]

Zhang’s protégé Huang Shaoji presented the book to the throne, and on July 25 the Guangxu Emperor, having read it closely, ordered it printed and distributed widely. Feng argues that the book fought on two fronts, criticising the conservatives for not understanding change and the reformers for not understanding fundamentals, and that this double character won it praise from both the emperor and the empress dowager in 1898; it went through three editions in ten days, and through it the formula “Chinese learning as substance, Western learning as function” became a catchphrase. Yan FuYan FuYan Fu (1854–1921) was a translator, thinker and educator of the late Qing and early Republican period. Trained at the Fuzhou Navy Yard School and the Royal Naval College at Greenwich, he served for many years at the Beiyang Naval Academy in Tianjin; his translations of Thomas Henry Huxley, Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill and others, above all the Tianyan lun, introduced Western thought to China, and he set out faithfulness, comprehensibility and elegance as the standards of translation. In 1912 he became the first president of Peking University, and in 1915 his name was listed among the founders of the Chouanhui.Open the full entry and others criticised it for splitting substance and function into two unrelated halves.⁠[10]

On April 12, 1898, Kang Youwei founded the National Preservation Society in Beijing to safeguard the nation, its people and its traditional teachings and to marshal support for reform; the Academy of Chinese Studies calls it a key political organisation of the Hundred Days’ Reform period.⁠[5][4][6]

Zhang Chi writes that Liang Qichao came back to Beijing, spoke at the society and joined more than a hundred provincial graduates in a petition calling for the abolition of the civil service examinations.⁠[11]

On June 11, 1898, the Guangxu Emperor issued the Imperial Edict on National Affairs proclaiming reform; it was published in the newspaper Jing Bao.⁠[12][9][13]

Britannica’s article on the Guangxu Emperor writes that in 1898, at the age of 27, he finally tried to assert himself, gathering progressively minded officials around him and issuing a broad series of reform edicts, to the outrage of conservative officials; its history of China writes that from June 11 the emperor began to issue a stream of radical and probably hastily prepared reform decrees.⁠[14][4]

Mao Haijian writes that on the 25th day of the fourth lunar month (June 13), two days after the edict, the Hanlin Academy reader Xu Zhijing submitted a secret memorial recommending five men—Kang Youwei, Huang Zunxian, Tan Sitong, Zhang Yuanji and Liang Qichao—in the highest terms of any recommendation he found from the period; Hummel’s Eminent Chinese of the Ch’ing Period dates Xu’s memorial recommending Kang, Tan, Liang, Huang and others to June 11.⁠[15][8]

Mao counts more than a hundred men recommended to the throne during the reform; the emperor ordered almost all of them to be received, and by the time of the coup he had received 26.⁠[15]

Hummel’s Eminent Chinese of the Ch’ing Period writes that Weng Tonghe’s tutorship of the emperor had been ended in 1896 by order of Empress Dowager Cixi, but that as an official he still had access to the emperor and in 1898 helped him decide on a policy of reform; an edict of June 15 charged him with mismanagement of state affairs and with displaying temper in the presence of the throne, and on these vague charges he was ordered to retire to his native town. The book judges that the edict was doubtless written by Cixi and that the emperor was powerless to countermand it.⁠[16]

The Academy of Chinese Studies likewise writes that he was removed by the empress’s faction headed by Cixi, and Feng Tianyu quotes Liang Qichao’s Account of the 1898 Coup, in which the emperor trembled and turned pale on seeing the edict and lost his right-hand man with Weng’s departure. Luke S. K. Kwong and Young-tsu Wong, in their exchange in The Journal of Asian Studies, both hold that it was the emperor and not Cixi who dismissed Weng, and Wong argues that Kang Youwei was the major factor in his sudden ouster.⁠[9][10][17]

On the same day, scarcely four days into the reform, Cixi appointed her trusted follower Ronglu as Viceroy of Zhili and Minister of Beiyang.⁠[18]

Because Kang Youwei did not hold high office, court custom barred him from approaching the emperor; on June 16, 1898, the Guangxu Emperor received him at the Renshoudian. Hummel’s Eminent Chinese of the Ch’ing Period writes that Tan Sitong, Liang Qichao and others were then summoned from Hunan to Beijing.⁠[9][3][8]

Britannica’s article on the reform writes that thereafter the officials who had been advocating moderate reform were pushed to the background.⁠[3]

The measures and proposals listed by the Academy of Chinese Studies include, in politics, consolidating offices with fragmented or overlapping functions, eliminating sinecures and lifting newspaper censorship, with Kang Youwei also calling for a constitutional monarchy modelled on Japan; in the military, disbanding the Green Standard troops and other superfluous forces; in the economy, a Central Bureau for Railways and Mines; and in culture and education, abolishing the eight-legged essay in the imperial examinations, converting local academies into modern schools, setting up small and medium-sized local schools and translation bureaux, and giving people the freedom to found newspapers and learned societies.⁠[9][12]

Britannica’s article on the reform writes that the emperor issued more than 40 edicts in all: the old civil service examination based on the Chinese Classics was ordered abolished, a new system of national schools and colleges was established, Western industry, medicine, science, commerce and patent systems were promoted and adopted, government administration was revamped, the law code was changed, the military was reformed and corruption was attacked; Britannica’s article on Kang also lists the promotion of local self-government.⁠[3][6]

Another Academy of Chinese Studies article writes that Kang, as the key planner, submitted thirty-six memorials to the emperor, who issued 111 edicts and decided to close useless government agencies and dismiss redundant personnel. Scholars differ on how many memorials Kang wrote in 1898: Young-tsu Wong holds that he delivered no fewer than seventy memorials, memoranda and notes, noting that Tang Zhijun’s 1981 selection already included fifty of his 1898 memorials, while Luke S. K. Kwong criticises Wong for ascribing to Kang as many memorials as the slightest suspicion of his authorship would permit.⁠[1][17]

The Imperial University of Peking was established during the Hundred Days’ Reform and placed under Sun Jianai, the first Grand Minister of Schools; Song Junwei writes that the court assigned the long-unused mansion of Princess Hejia on Shatan Back Street to the university as its premises.⁠[9][19][20]

Zhang Chi writes that after his audience on July 3 Liang Qichao was given the sixth official rank and put in charge of the translation bureau.⁠[11]

Mao Haijian writes that on the 15th day of the sixth lunar month (July 23) the emperor decreed that junior officials of the boards with proposals should have them forwarded by their superiors and that commoners wishing to submit their views should present them at the Censorate. Counting from the Grand Council’s registers, he finds that junior officials and commoners (including middle- and lower-ranking local officials) submitted at least 567 memorials, from 457 individual submitters counted per occasion, during the reform, and concludes that the reform had no deep intellectual foundation.⁠[21]

In August 1898 Tang Caichang, Tan Sitong’s good friend and old classmate and an ardent supporter of reform, wrote in a letter that Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao were being attacked nationwide.⁠[9]

Mao Haijian writes that on the 16th day of the seventh lunar month (September 1), when the Board of Rites forwarded two memorials by Wang Zhao together with its own impeachment of Wang, the emperor flew into a rage and issued a stern edict the same day; on the 19th day of that month an edict in the emperor’s own hand dismissed all six senior officials of the board—the presidents Huaitabu and Xu Yingkui, the senior vice-president Kunxiu, the acting senior vice-president Xu Huifeng, the junior vice-president Puting and the acting junior vice-president Zeng Guanghan.⁠[21]

On September 5, 1898, the emperor gave Tan Sitong, Yang Rui, Lin Xu and Liu Guangdi the fourth official rank and made them secretaries of the Grand Council to take part in the new policies, so as to press the reform forward.⁠[8][13][15]

Mao Haijian traces who recommended the four: Yang Rui and Liu Guangdi were recommended by the Hunan governor Chen Baozhen, Lin Xu by the junior supervisor of instruction Wang Xifan, and Tan Sitong by the vice-president for granaries Li Duanfen.⁠[15]

Hummel’s Eminent Chinese of the Ch’ing Period gives Yang Rui’s birth year as 1857, Liu Guangdi’s as 1859 and Lin Xu’s as 1875. Wen Dao writes that Yang Rui became a secretary of the Grand Secretariat by examination in 1889 and served in the capital; that Liu Guangdi, from Fushun in Sichuan with family roots in Wuping, Fujian, spent ten years as a secretary of the Board of Punishments without obtaining a substantive post; and that Lin Xu came from Houguan, Fujian, of a family of officials.⁠[8][22]

Takii Kazuhiro writes that Itō Hirobumi reached Tianjin on September 11 and Beijing on the 14th; on September 18 Kang Youwei went to the Japanese minister’s residence to beg him to persuade Cixi to support the reform, and on September 20 Itō had an audience with the Guangxu Emperor, who seated him at his side as a mark of exceptional favour. Ma Yong writes that Kang and Itō talked for three hours but that Itō never met Cixi, so his promise came to nothing.⁠[23][24]

Hummel’s Eminent Chinese of the Ch’ing Period writes that Cixi resolved to end the reformers’ rising menace by forcing the emperor to abdicate, and that on September 14 the emperor sent a note to Kang Youwei and the four secretaries.⁠[8]

Mao Haijian writes that on the 3rd day of the eighth lunar month (September 18) an irregularity in the exercise of political power appeared in the Grand Council’s report to Cixi, and that a memorial by Yang Chongyi dated that day begged her to resume rule that very day and summon the ministers.⁠[25]

Ma Yong writes that on the night of September 18 the new Grand Council secretary Tan Sitong went alone to the Fahua Temple in Baofang Hutong, at the north end of Wangfujing Street, where Yuan ShikaiYuan ShikaiYuan Shikai (1859–1916) was a Chinese army leader and reformist minister of the late Qing dynasty and the first president of the Republic of China, from 1912 to 1916. The modern army he trained at Xiaozhan, Tianjin, grew into the Beiyang Army; in 1915–1916 he proclaimed a monarchy with himself as emperor, cancelled it in March 1916 and died on June 6 of that year.Open the full entry was staying, and asked two things of him: to kill Ronglu and to surround the Summer Palace; a note Tan wrote said that with half the troops surrounding the Summer Palace and half guarding the palace the great affair would be settled. Yuan was then training troops at Xiaozhan near Tianjin. Hummel’s Eminent Chinese of the Ch’ing Period places the meeting at midnight on the 17th.⁠[24][18][8]

The Academy of Chinese Studies writes that on September 19 Cixi suddenly left the Summer Palace for the Forbidden City; Mao Haijian writes that she returned to the West Park on the 4th day of the eighth lunar month and that the decision had been made on the evening of the 3rd.⁠[18][25]

Zhang Chi writes that Kang Youwei left Beijing on September 20 and the next day sailed from Tianjin for Shanghai.⁠[11]

On September 21, 1898 (the 6th day of the eighth lunar month), Cixi staged a coup, resumed rule as regent, imprisoned the Guangxu Emperor on Yingtai, an artificial island in Zhongnanhai, and ordered the arrest of the reformers, ending the new policies.⁠[12][18][13][4][25]

Britannica’s article on the Guangxu Emperor writes that with the aid of the top imperial military commander, Ronglu, Cixi returned to the capital, confined the emperor to his palace and spread rumours that he was deathly ill; foreign powers, who let it be known that they would not take kindly to his death or dethronement, saved his life, but thereafter he had no power over the government.⁠[14]

Ma Yong writes that early that morning Ronglu came to see Yuan Shikai, who had returned to Tianjin, and Yuan gave a fairly truthful account of Tan Sitong’s night visit; that evening a telegram arrived from Beijing announcing that Cixi had resumed rule and ordering the arrest of Kang Youwei and his brother Kang Guangren.⁠[24]

Zhang Chi writes that when the coup came Liang Qichao was with Tan Sitong at the Liuyang Guild Hall; the two went to the residence of the British missionary Timothy Richard to discuss how to protect and rescue the emperor, and met there Yung WingYung WingYung Wing (1828–1912) was a Chinese educator and diplomat of the late Qing period who graduated from Yale University in 1854 and is described as the first Chinese student to graduate from an American university. He proposed and led the Chinese Educational Mission, which brought 120 Chinese boys to study in the United States from 1872 to 1881, served as the Qing associate minister to the United States, Spain and Peru, and wrote the memoir My Life in China and America (1909).Open the full entry, who had returned to China after the war to take part in the reform. Liang then went to the Japanese legation, where the counsellor Hayashi Gonsuke was talking with Itō Hirobumi, and asked the Japanese to intervene to rescue the emperor and help Kang Youwei. Tan refused to flee, telling those who urged him that no one in China had yet been heard of shedding blood for reform, which was why the country did not prosper, and that if there must be such a one, it should begin with him; on the evening of the 21st Liang, having failed to persuade him, bade him farewell and returned alone to the legation. Hummel’s Eminent Chinese of the Ch’ing Period writes that Tan declined his Japanese friends’ urging to take refuge in Japan and calmly awaited arrest, after trying in vain to rescue the emperor with the help of professional boxers.⁠[11][8]

Yung Wing writes in his memoir that he had often met Kang Youwei and his disciple Liang Qichao in Beijing the previous year and that his headquarters became the rendezvous of the leading reformers of 1898.⁠[26]

Accounts differ on when Tan Sitong and the others were arrested: Hummel’s Eminent Chinese of the Ch’ing Period gives September 25 for Tan; Mao Haijian, following Ma Zhongwen’s research, gives the 8th day of the eighth lunar month for Tan and the others and the 9th for Lin Xu; Huang Zhangjian placed the arrests of Tan and the others at dawn on the 9th.⁠[8][25]

Takii Kazuhiro writes that on September 25, during a banquet for Itō Hirobumi at the residence of the Japanese chargé d’affaires Hayashi Gonsuke, an attendant of the British minister brought news that Zhang Yinhuan would be executed the next day; Itō wrote in a letter that he had asked Li HongzhangLi HongzhangLi Hongzhang (1823–1901) was a Chinese statesman, military commander and diplomat of the late Qing dynasty, the founder and commander of the Huai Army and one of the principal promoters of the Self-Strengthening Movement. From 1870 he served for many years as governor-general of Zhili and superintendent of trade for the northern ports, sponsored modern enterprises such as the China Merchants Steam Navigation Company, the Kaiping mines, railways, telegraphs and the Beiyang Fleet, and signed treaties including the Treaty of Shimonoseki and the Boxer Protocol for the Qing government; judgments of him, in his lifetime and since, have been sharply divided.Open the full entry to do all he could to help Zhang. Zhang was not executed but exiled to Xinjiang. Itō left Beijing on the 29th.⁠[23]

On September 28, 1898, Tan Sitong, Kang Guangren, Lin Xu, Yang Shenxiu, Yang Rui and Liu Guangdi were beheaded at Caishikou in Beijing; they are known as the Six Gentlemen of the Hundred Days’ Reform. Zhang Chi writes that they were executed without judicial trial because the court feared foreign intervention; Ma Yong said in a 2018 interview that no one has ever seen any record of a trial of the six.⁠[13][18][8][11][27]

Kang Guangren was Kang Youwei’s younger brother; the Academy of Chinese Studies quotes his comment on the reform’s failure: “Yet the emperor has no power, so how could the reform possibly succeed?” Yang Shenxiu, from Wenxi County in Shanxi, passed the metropolitan examination in 1889, became a secretary of the Board of Punishments and in 1897 was appointed censor for the Shandong circuit.⁠[18][22]

In the same interview Ma Yong argued that Cixi was not the only one who wanted the six dead: the Guangxu Emperor, he said, probably also wished them killed quickly.⁠[27]

Hummel’s Eminent Chinese of the Ch’ing Period writes that Kang Youwei escaped to Tianjin and Hong Kong and Liang Qichao fled to Japan; the Academy of Chinese Studies writes that the two escaped with help from Britain and Japan and that after the coup the Japanese Miyazaki Tōten travelled to Hong Kong to escort Kang to Japan; Britannica’s article on Kang writes that both escaped to Japan and that Kang was unable to persuade the Japanese and British governments to intervene for the emperor.⁠[8][18][19][6]

Yung Wing writes that, implicated by harbouring the reformers and in deep sympathy with them, he had to flee for his life, escaped from Beijing and took up quarters in the foreign settlement of Shanghai, where he organised the Deliberative Association of China and was chosen its first president.⁠[26]

Britannica’s article on the reform writes that after the coup the examination system was re-established and most of the reform edicts, which had never been enacted anyway, were repealed, while some moderate measures such as the establishment of modern schools were retained; a 2018 Xinhua article writes that apart from the Imperial University all the new policies were cancelled.⁠[3][13]

The Imperial University of Peking survived the coup and was later renamed Peking University; Song Junwei calls it the only fruit of the reform to survive.⁠[19][20]

Hummel’s Eminent Chinese of the Ch’ing Period writes that other supporters such as Chen Baozhen and Xu Zhijing were cashiered or imprisoned; on December 4, 1898, Weng Tonghe was denounced for having recommended Kang Youwei to the throne, deprived of all his ranks and confined to his home under the surveillance of local officials.⁠[8][16]

The Academy of Chinese Studies writes that Liu Kunyi, the Viceroy of Liangjiang, respected both in China and abroad, warned Cixi against deposing the emperor—“The people are seriously concerned, and we are being watched by powerful neighbours”—and that she abandoned the plan.⁠[18]

In 1899 Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao founded the Chinese Empire Reform Association in Canada, led by Kang and supported by some of the overseas Chinese there; its primary objective was to free the Guangxu Emperor and push for constitutionalism. Britannica’s article on Kang calls it the China Reform Association (Zhongguo Weixinhui), popularly known as the Save the Emperor Association and renamed the Constitutional Party in 1907.⁠[18][6]

Tang Caichang organised the Independence Army to overthrow the Qing government; after the rising failed he and 11 other rebels were executed. Another Academy of Chinese Studies article dates the failure of the rising to 1900.⁠[18][19]

Hummel’s Eminent Chinese of the Ch’ing Period writes that the policies of the conservatives who took power after the coup culminated in the Boxer Uprising of 1900. The Academy of Chinese Studies writes that when the Eight-Nation Alliance entered Beijing in 1900, Cixi, before leaving, ordered a eunuch to kill the emperor’s beloved Concubine Zhen by throwing her into a well.⁠[8][18]

Britannica’s history of China writes that the final settlement of the Boxer affair was signed in September 1901; Cixi then declared that she had been misled into war by the conservatives and that the court, neither anti-foreign nor anti-reformist, would promote reforms—a statement the article calls seemingly incredible in view of the court’s suppression of the 1898 reform movement. She reluctantly issued a series of reforms, including abolishing the civil service examination, establishing modern schools and sending students abroad; these could never repair the damaged imperial prestige and instead inspired more anti-Manchu feeling and raised the revolutionary tide.⁠[4]

The Academy of Chinese Studies regards the reform as the forerunner of the Late Qing Reform of 1901: from 1898 Qing soldiers began to organise their own learned societies; the reform’s failure, however, also fuelled the rise of the anti-Qing revolutionary forces.⁠[19]

Cixi died on November 15, 1908; the previously healthy Guangxu Emperor had been announced as having died the day before, aged 37, and from the beginning it was widely believed that he had been poisoned. In 2008, after a five-year study, Chinese researchers and police officials issued a report confirming that he had been deliberately poisoned with arsenic; the Academy of Chinese Studies notes that the finding came 110 years after the coup.⁠[14][18]

The Academy of Chinese Studies and a 2018 Xinhua article count the reform from June 11 to the coup of September 21, 103 days in all; Britannica’s article on the reform gives its dates as June 11 to September 16, 1898; Britannica’s history of China says the decrees lasted for about 100 days, until September 20. The Academy of Chinese Studies writes that the reform peaked from June to September 1898 and lasted 103 days, hence the name Hundred Days’ Reform.⁠[12][13][3][4][1]

The Academy of Chinese Studies names among the reformers Yan Fu (1854–1921), who had studied in England, Zheng Guanying (1842–1921), a former comprador engaged in foreign trade, and Kang Youwei (1858–1927) and Liang Qichao (1873–1929), who gradually became the leaders of the movement; another of its articles calls Kang and his student Liang the main advocates and leaders of the Hundred Days’ Reform, known together as “Kang-Liang”.⁠[1][5]

The Academy of Chinese Studies writes that the reformers sought Yuan Shikai’s aid in killing Ronglu and placing Cixi under house arrest, that Yuan betrayed the plan to Ronglu, who revealed all to Cixi, and that the reformers were naive to trust him; Hummel’s Eminent Chinese of the Ch’ing Period writes that Yuan is said to have agreed at first but later revealed the entire scheme to Ronglu, who informed Cixi.⁠[18][8]

Ma Yong wrote in 2012 that the popular view blaming the deaths of the six on Yuan’s betrayal rests on rumour, not history, and that the accusation that Yuan’s report set off the coup is hard to sustain.⁠[24]

In a 2002 article in Qing History Journal, Guo Weidong rejects both the older view that Yuan informed on the plan after returning to Tianjin on the 5th day of the eighth lunar month (September 20) and thereby set off the coup the next day, and the newer view that the report did not cause the coup but only led to the deaths of the six; he argues that Yuan did inform on the plan, but on the 4th (September 19), after seeing Tan Sitong, and that this was the most direct cause of Cixi’s early return to the palace and the coup.⁠[28]

Mao Haijian notes that Huang Zhangjian’s 1970 book Studies in the History of the 1898 Reform includes an essay arguing that the coup was not triggered by Yuan’s report, which, Huang held, reached Beijing through Yang Chongyi on the 7th day of the eighth lunar month, Cixi learning of it only on the 8th. Mao concludes that although the coup did not happen because of Yuan’s report, the news of it greatly intensified the coup and gave Cixi the charge that the reformers had planned to surround the Summer Palace and seize her—a charge the emperor did not accept; he also regards the coup as a process made up of many related events, and holds that Cixi’s restriction of the new secretaries’ drafting powers on the 3rd day of the eighth month was not the day of the coup.⁠[25]

In the August 1992 issue of The Journal of Asian Studies, Young-tsu Wong published “Revisionism Reconsidered: Kang Youwei and the Reform Movement of 1898,” re-examining revisionist studies of Kang’s role. Luke S. K. Kwong replied in a letter that Kang remained at the periphery of the imperial power structure—in Wong’s summary, more onlooker than prime mover. Wong answered that Kang played a central role in the reform without being its mastermind, comparable in influence, though not in official status, to Lord Shang or Wang Anshi.⁠[17]

They also disagree over whether there was a plot to use force in 1898: Kwong finds Liang Qichao’s remark in a letter of 1908 vague to the point of ambiguity, while Wong calls its language crystal-clear; Kwong questions the origins and motives of Bi Yongnian’s account, written several months after the coup, and says it ought to be thoroughly analysed before it is accepted.⁠[17]

Mao Haijian concludes that without Kang Youwei and his party there would have been no Hundred Days’ Reform: they created the situation, even though in the end they could not control it.⁠[15]

Britannica’s article on the reform judges that its failure marked the last attempt at a radical revolution by the imperial regime in China; Britannica’s history of China writes that the movement produced no practical results, that the conservatives reacted sharply when they learned of a reformist plot to remove Cixi, and that the immediate cause of the failure lay in the power struggle between the emperor and Cixi.⁠[3][4]

One Academy of Chinese Studies article judges that the content of the reform was in step with the times, but that the emperor and reformers were eager to modernise the country overnight; their policies seriously infringed the interests of courtiers holding real power, who took part perfunctorily, so that few resolutions were carried out. It holds that the failure can hardly be blamed on one or a few people: Cixi and the other conservatives embodied the old-fashioned aspect of traditional culture, the naivety of the reformers practically precipitated the coup, and with the failure the country missed an important opportunity to modernise.⁠[1]

Other Academy of Chinese Studies articles write that the reform ended in tragedy but introduced new ideas that facilitated the Late Qing Reform, so that its influence on China’s early modern history was positive, and that it was born of a patriotic desperation to save the country from partition and inspired the generations that followed. The academy also compares it with the Self-Strengthening Movement of 1860–1894, describing the 1898 reform as an attempt to emulate Japan’s Meiji Restoration through complete political reform.⁠[12][19][9]

After reading the Zhang Zhidong archive, Mao Haijian concludes that the reform was a reform within the system, which could succeed only with the participation or support of the system’s main political factions, whereas Zhang Zhidong’s group and the leading political figures of the time were hostile to Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao. Ma Yong said in a 2018 interview that the ideal would have been a moderate but firm reform, but that history tends to go to extremes.⁠[29][27]

The Academy of Chinese Studies describes Liang Qichao’s Account of the 1898 Coup as his first-hand record of the origins, course, results and failings of the reform.⁠[18]

Mao Haijian began studying the reform in 1998, its centenary, and published Studies of the History of the 1898 Reform (2005, renamed First Collection in later editions), a Second Collection (2011) and The Other Side of the 1898 Reform: Reading Notes on the “Zhang Zhidong Archive” (2014); he regards Kang Youwei’s handwritten memoir Wo shi as an unavoidable key source, spent five full years annotating it to sort truth from falsehood, and consulted the manuscript held by the National Museum of China.⁠[30]

The Zhang Zhidong archive Mao read is held by the library of the Institute of Modern History of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences: 492 cases containing more than two thousand volumes and thousands of loose sheets, most of it donated to the institute in the 1950s by Zhang Zhidong’s great-grandson Zhang Zunliu.⁠[29]