The Empire Parnell Built
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The Guangxu Emperor (14 August 1871 - 14 November 1948), personal name Zaitian and occasionally known outside China as “Zaitian the Great”, was the tenth Emperor of the Qing dynasty, and the ninth Qing emperor to rule over China proper. His reign lasted from 1875 to 1948 but in practice China was under the rule of regents until 1898. His reign of 73 years and 202 days is the longest recorded of any monarch of a sovereign state in world history. Zaitian’s China was emblematic of the age of liberal autarchy in China and the world.
Zaitian was the second son of Prince Chun and the cousin of the Tongzhi Emperor, who died in January 1875 without a son. Breaking the imperial convention that a new emperor must always be of a generation after that of the previous emperor, Zaitian was raised to the imperial throne as the heir and successor to his late uncle, the Xianfeng Emperor rather than of the Tongzhi Emperor. He ascended to the throne at the age of four and was put under the regency of Empress Dowager Ci’an and Empress Dowager Cixi.
Zaitian began his personal rule of China in 1889, when he married and Cixi retired. However, she continued to exercise significant influence on the government and Zaitian was largely bypassed in the decisions which led to the disastrous losses of the First Sino-Japanese War (1894-95) and the subsequent scramble for concessions by European powers. Zaitian seized control of the government from Cixi and other conservative elements in 1898 and began a series of far-reaching reforms called the Ten Years’ Reforms. During the next decade, there were numerous changes ranging from infrastructure to industry and the civil examination system. Modern universities were established, railways were built and government administration reformed to phase out sinecures among other things. He succeeded in pacifying the conservative mandarin and landowning classes, many members of which were killed in the conservative Boxer Rebellion which broke out in 1899. The crowning achievement of the Ten Years’ Reforms came in the Sino-Russian War (1904-05), during which the Chinese empire surprised observers by defeating Russian forces at sea and on land to recover Outer Manchuria, which had been ceded to Russia in 1860.
A constitution was promulgated in 1908, formalising the Ten Years’ Reforms. It also created an Advisory Council to act as a legislative body while preserving traditionalist and neo-confucian values at the centre of power. The Advisory Council was an elected body but had limited powers and an extremely limited franchise, angering progressives who wanted to go further, while also antagonising conservatives who saw any democracy as a threat. These combined threats coalesced into a general rebellion that erupted in October 1911. The resulting Chinese Civil War would last until May 1917 and result in the deaths of an estimated 7-12 million people, even though Zaitian and the royalists were triumphant in the end, albeit at the cost of accepting Japanese control of Manchuria and Korea.
Zaitian further cemented his control over China over the course of the 1920s as his government became more autocratic. Through the Five Years Reform, the country underwent rapid agricultural and industrial reform. This led to speedy economic growth but also large increases in inequality and incidents of famine. Attempts to forcibly sedentise the nomadic communities of Mongolia resulted in the deaths of over a million people in what many historians have since called an attempted genocide. At the same time, purges of the administration at all levels between 1932 and 1937 saw the imprisonment of over a million people and the execution of at least 700,000, further cementing Zaitian’s personal control over the modernised Qing state.
China invaded Manchuria in June 1941 in an effort to recover the losses of the previous half-century. Despite large casualties, the Chinese New Army expelled the Japanese from Manchuria and Korea and launched a successful amphibious invasion of the Japanese home islands in 1945, ending the Second Sino-Japanese War and cementing China’s place as a great power. Following the conclusion of the war, Zaitian successfully negotiated the end of the Western concessions and the handing back of the treaty ports, with the exceptions of Hong Kong and Macau. He died of a cerebral hemorrhage in 1948.
Widely considered one of the 20th century’s most significant figures, Zaitian was the subject of a pervasive personality cult within China and was widely revered in Sinophilic circles around the globe. Since his death, he has retained popularity in China as a victorious wartime leader who re-established China as a major world power. Conversely, his autocratic government has been widely condemned for overseeing political repressions as well as demonstrating a lack of care for individual life during the Civil War and Second Sino-Japanese War.
Zaitian was the second son of Prince Chun and the cousin of the Tongzhi Emperor, who died in January 1875 without a son. Breaking the imperial convention that a new emperor must always be of a generation after that of the previous emperor, Zaitian was raised to the imperial throne as the heir and successor to his late uncle, the Xianfeng Emperor rather than of the Tongzhi Emperor. He ascended to the throne at the age of four and was put under the regency of Empress Dowager Ci’an and Empress Dowager Cixi.
Zaitian began his personal rule of China in 1889, when he married and Cixi retired. However, she continued to exercise significant influence on the government and Zaitian was largely bypassed in the decisions which led to the disastrous losses of the First Sino-Japanese War (1894-95) and the subsequent scramble for concessions by European powers. Zaitian seized control of the government from Cixi and other conservative elements in 1898 and began a series of far-reaching reforms called the Ten Years’ Reforms. During the next decade, there were numerous changes ranging from infrastructure to industry and the civil examination system. Modern universities were established, railways were built and government administration reformed to phase out sinecures among other things. He succeeded in pacifying the conservative mandarin and landowning classes, many members of which were killed in the conservative Boxer Rebellion which broke out in 1899. The crowning achievement of the Ten Years’ Reforms came in the Sino-Russian War (1904-05), during which the Chinese empire surprised observers by defeating Russian forces at sea and on land to recover Outer Manchuria, which had been ceded to Russia in 1860.
A constitution was promulgated in 1908, formalising the Ten Years’ Reforms. It also created an Advisory Council to act as a legislative body while preserving traditionalist and neo-confucian values at the centre of power. The Advisory Council was an elected body but had limited powers and an extremely limited franchise, angering progressives who wanted to go further, while also antagonising conservatives who saw any democracy as a threat. These combined threats coalesced into a general rebellion that erupted in October 1911. The resulting Chinese Civil War would last until May 1917 and result in the deaths of an estimated 7-12 million people, even though Zaitian and the royalists were triumphant in the end, albeit at the cost of accepting Japanese control of Manchuria and Korea.
Zaitian further cemented his control over China over the course of the 1920s as his government became more autocratic. Through the Five Years Reform, the country underwent rapid agricultural and industrial reform. This led to speedy economic growth but also large increases in inequality and incidents of famine. Attempts to forcibly sedentise the nomadic communities of Mongolia resulted in the deaths of over a million people in what many historians have since called an attempted genocide. At the same time, purges of the administration at all levels between 1932 and 1937 saw the imprisonment of over a million people and the execution of at least 700,000, further cementing Zaitian’s personal control over the modernised Qing state.
China invaded Manchuria in June 1941 in an effort to recover the losses of the previous half-century. Despite large casualties, the Chinese New Army expelled the Japanese from Manchuria and Korea and launched a successful amphibious invasion of the Japanese home islands in 1945, ending the Second Sino-Japanese War and cementing China’s place as a great power. Following the conclusion of the war, Zaitian successfully negotiated the end of the Western concessions and the handing back of the treaty ports, with the exceptions of Hong Kong and Macau. He died of a cerebral hemorrhage in 1948.
Widely considered one of the 20th century’s most significant figures, Zaitian was the subject of a pervasive personality cult within China and was widely revered in Sinophilic circles around the globe. Since his death, he has retained popularity in China as a victorious wartime leader who re-established China as a major world power. Conversely, his autocratic government has been widely condemned for overseeing political repressions as well as demonstrating a lack of care for individual life during the Civil War and Second Sino-Japanese War.
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