Guangxu Emperor
The Guangxu Emperor, also known by his temple name Emperor Dezong of Qing, personal name Zaitian, was the tenth emperor of the Qing dynasty, and the ninth Qing emperor to rule over China proper. His succession was endorsed by dowager empresses Ci'an and Cixi for political reasons after the Tongzhi Emperor died without an heir. Cixi held political power for much of Guangxu's reign as regent, except for the period between his assumption of ruling powers in 1889 and the Hundred Days' Reform in 1898.
The Qing Empire's prestige and sovereignty continued to erode during Guangxu's reign with defeats in the Sino-French War, the First Sino-Japanese War, and the Boxer Rebellion. Guangxu engaged intellectuals like Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao to develop the Hundred Days' Reform program of 1898 to reverse the decline. Among the goals was removing Cixi from power. The program was too radical for the conservative ruling elite, and it failed to secure the support of the army. Cixi rallied the program's opponents to launch a coup in late 1898 that suppressed the reforms and secured her power. Guangxu lost ruling powers and was placed under virtual house arrest at the Yingtai Pavilion of Zhongnanhai until his death.
Guangxu died without children in 1908 of arsenic poisoning. He was buried in the Chongling at the Western Qing tombs.
Accession to the throne and upbringing
The Guangxu Emperor was born on 14 August 1871, receiving the name Zaitian, and was the second son of Yixuan, and his primary spouse Yehenara Wanzhen, a younger sister of Empress Dowager Cixi. He was the nephew of Cixi and the grandson of the Daoguang Emperor.On 12 January 1875, Zaitian's cousin, the Tongzhi Emperor, died without a son to succeed him. On that same day an imperial conference was held by the co-regents of the former emperor, the Empress Dowager Ci'an and the Empress Dowager Cixi. Breaking the imperial convention that a new emperor must always be of a generation after that of the previous emperor, candidates were considered from the generation of Tongzhi. The reason for this was that the empress dowagers wanted the candidate to take the place of the Tongzhi Emperor as the successor to the Xianfeng Emperor, whose only son had been Tongzhi.
The other proposed candidates besides Zaitian were the two sons of Prince Gong, Zaicheng and Zaiying, but they were of the same age group as the Tongzhi Emperor and were seen as having been a negative influence on him, so they were distrusted. Zaitian was younger than both of them and was the nephew of Cixi. His father, Prince Chun, was also more liked than Prince Gong and was known for being a scholar and a supporter of patriotic policies. These were the factors that led to the selection of Zaitian to become emperor.
A decree announced on 13 January that Zaitian had been chosen as the successor to the Xianfeng Emperor. The same decree also announced that Empress Dowagers Ci'an and Cixi would be his co-regents. He ascended to the throne at the age of four, on 25 February 1875, and adopted "Guangxu" as his regnal name, therefore he is known as the "Guangxu Emperor". His personal name Zaitian was no longer used after that point.
Beginning in March 1876, the Guangxu Emperor was taught by Weng Tonghe, who had also been involved in the disastrous upbringing of the Tongzhi Emperor yet somehow managed to be exonerated of all possible charges, and his education was also overseen by his father, Prince Chun. The emperor was taught calligraphy, the Chinese classics, and the Chinese, Mongolian, and Manchu languages. Starting in 1881 he began reading historical works, including the decrees of earlier emperors. Guangxu could work diligently and already knew some of the classics, but he was not always interested in his daily lessons. As part of the emperor's education he was taught that his main obligation as ruler was "keeping the state in order" and "maintaining universal peace", as stated in the Confucian classic Great Learning.
The Guangxu Emperor seemed to become a self-disciplinarian early on. In 1876 he told Weng Tonghe that he considered frugality to be more important than the accumulation of wealth, and in another instance in 1878, he insisted on walking through snow and told his servants not to clear it out of his way. He also said that he considered the Tao to be more important than his own views. But, Weng noted that the emperor sometimes had extreme mood swings and did not want to participate in their daily lessons.
Weng also instilled in the Guangxu Emperor a duty of filial piety toward the Empress Dowagers Cixi and Ci'an, which, aside from being a Chinese tradition, was also because Weng owed much of his successful career to the patronage of Cixi. In 1881, when the Guangxu Emperor was nine, Empress Dowager Ci'an died unexpectedly, leaving Empress Dowager Cixi as sole regent for the boy. In Weng's diaries during those days, Guangxu was reportedly seen with swollen eyes, had poor concentration and was seeking consolation from Weng. Weng too expressed his concern that Cixi was the one who had been suffering from chronic ill-health, not Ci'an. During this time the imperial eunuchs often abused their influence over the boy emperor. The Guangxu Emperor had also reportedly begun to hold some audiences on his own as an act of necessity in the early 1880s, though this stopped in 1883 when Cixi recovered from her illness.
Taking over the reins of power
His reign saw the outbreak of the Sino-French War in 1884 over influence in Vietnam. By the time the war ended in 1885, the French had destroyed the Chinese fleet at Fuzhou, patrolled the coast of southern China unobstructed, occupied part of Taiwan, and ended the status of Vietnam as a tributary of China. This prompted Britain to end the tributary status of Burma in 1886, which China did not oppose militarily, and encouraged Japan to do the same in Korea. The negotiations with the French were carried out by the Viceroy of Zhili, Li Hongzhang, by other ministers in Beijing, and by the head of Chinese Maritime Customs, Robert Hart. The Guangxu Emperor had not given an audience to foreign diplomats in Beijing up to this point, though in August 1886 his father Prince Chun hosted a dinner for the diplomatic corps. On 7 February 1887, the emperor was officially old enough to begin to rule in his own right, but the regency of Empress Dowager Cixi continued beyond that, and the foreign diplomats were not informed of either fact. The French minister requested an audience with the emperor twice, in November 1887 and in the spring of 1888, but this was denied both times.In 1886, several courtiers, including Prince Chun and Weng Tonghe, had petitioned Empress Dowager Cixi to postpone her retirement from the regency. Despite Cixi's agreement to remain as regent, that same year the Guangxu Emperor had begun to write comments on memorials to the throne. In the spring of 1887, he partook in his first field-plowing ceremony, and by the end of the year he had begun to rule under Cixi's supervision. By the mid-1880s the Guangxu Emperor also developed the ideas that he wanted guide his rule, including preserving the wealth of the country and avoiding selfishness or arrogance. Among his predecessors, he considered the Qianlong Emperor to be a model of good governance, and often visited places that the Qianlong Emperor had spent a lot of time at. He felt a sense of responsibility for following the example set by the Qianlong Emperor. Meanwhile, Prince Chun and the Grand Council prepared for the Guangxu Emperor to begin ruling directly by taking measures to make sure that the system that existed during the regency effectively remained intact.
Eventually, in February 1889, in preparation for Cixi's retirement, the Guangxu Emperor was married. Much to the emperor's dislike, Cixi selected her niece, Jingfen, to be empress. She became known as Empress Longyu. She also selected a pair of sisters, who became Consorts Jin and Zhen, to be the emperor's concubines.
The following week, with the Guangxu Emperor married, Cixi retired from the regency on 4 March 1889.
Years in power
Early rule
Even after the Guangxu Emperor began formal rule he found that the power structure of the Qing court still depended on Empress Dowager Cixi, and he did not know how far his own authority extended. The emperor tried to take a leading role in the government, especially after she began spending several months of the year at the Summer Palace starting from 1891, but he never became capable of skillfully managing imperial court politics. The decisions that he made and the administrative process continued to be overseen by the empress dowager. Weng Tonghe reportedly observed that while the emperor attended to day-to-day state affairs, in more difficult cases the emperor and the Grand Council sought Cixi's advice. She also decided on appointments to the Grand Council and the Six Ministries.In December 1890 the emperor issued a decree stating that he wanted to have an immediate audience with the foreign diplomatic corps in Beijing and to make this an annual occurrence going forward. They presented a list of conditions for the protocol at the ceremony, and it was accepted by the Qing. The audience took place on 5 March 1891, with the Guangxu Emperor receiving the foreign ministers to China at an audience in the "Pavilion of Purple Light", in what is now part of Zhongnanhai, something that had also been done by the Tongzhi Emperor in 1873. That summer, under pressure from the foreign legations and in response to revolts in the Yangtze River valley that were targeting Christian missionaries, the emperor issued an edict ordering Christians to be placed under state protection. The audience of foreign diplomats with the Gaungxu Emperor became more frequent after that. He received the new Austro-Hungarian minister in a special audience in October 1891, the British minister in December 1892, and the German and Belgian ministers in 1893.
The Guangxu Emperor followed his principle of frugality in early 1892, when he tried to implement a series of draconian measures to reduce expenditures by the Imperial Household Department, which proved to be one of his few administrative successes. This dispute over the budget continued until early 1894. But its other effects were humiliating and alienating senior Manchu officials in the bureaucracy, who remained in contact with Cixi, and reducing his potential allies at the imperial court. The Guangxu Emperor inherited the system of the Qing dynasty that had emerged in 1861, at the start of the Tongzhi Emperor's reign. The source of authority were the two empresses dowager, while the young emperor had a secondary role, and the princes and ministers were responsible for actually running the machinery of the government. When Empress Dowager Cixi retired, Guangxu had control over the administration of the empire and she did not interfere with his actions, but the princes and ministers advised him to bring back the old system in 1894, at the start of the tensions with Japan.