![]() Would she move to quash the emperor’s ambitious reforms and perhaps force his abdication? Or, if she chose not to act, would the emperor be replaced by a coup d’etat orchestrated by conservative military leaders? Much of this talk focused on the likely response of the Dowager Empress. The response was a widespread but potent campaign of whispers and intrigues against the Guangxu emperor. The reforms also threatened the position of powerful ministers and bureaucrats and created much work and disruption for others. The Guangxu Emperor’s decrees outraged traditionalist Confucian scholars, who considered them impetuous and believed they tried to do too much too soon. Conservative reactionĪs might be expected, many conservatives opposed these sweeping reforms, arguing that they were rushed, too extensive and fundamentally dangerous. The emperor also summoned ministers, generals and officials to the Forbidden City, to receive his edicts and to discuss how reform might be developed and implemented within their respective departments. The English language newspaper The Peking Press gave point-form summaries of these reform edicts as they were handed down. Over the following 100 days, the emperor issued even more reform edicts, more than 180 altogether. In mid-June 1898, the Guangxu emperor gave an audience where he unveiled dozens of broadly-worded edicts, each ordering the reform of a particular branch of government or policy: from the military to money, from education to trade. Kang’s proposal went on to detail some specific reforms: the drafting and adoption of a constitution, the creation of a national parliament, a review of the imperial examination system and sweeping changes to provincial government and the bureaucracy. ![]() Your Majesty knows that under the present circumstances reforms are imperative and old institutions must be abolished.” To reform in this way is as ineffective as attempting a forward march by walking backwards. If the charge is not “using barbarian ways to change China” then it is “upsetting the ancestral institutions.” Rumours and scandals are rampant, and people fight each other like fire and water. “Our present trouble lies in our clinging to old institutions without knowing how to change… Nowadays the court has been undertaking some reforms, but the action of the emperor is obstructed by the ministers, and the recommendations of the able scholars are attacked by old-fashioned bureaucrats. In his May 1898 memorial Kang told the emperor: They called not just for superficial changes but a fundamental constitutional overhaul – including the destruction and replacement of government ministries and bureaucracies. Kang’s proposed reforms, submitted to the emperor in May 1898, were quite radical. Whatever the case, Kang was certainly consulted about reform and invited to submit a package of detailed proposals. There is some historiographical debate about whether Kang Youwei changed the emperor’s views or simply reinforced them.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |