Entering ChinaIn the first year of the 20th century, the Qing Dynasty was spent in turbulent seas.
Cixi acquiesced in the influx of the Boxers into Beijing and Tianjin, “using their fists to suppress foreigners” in order to vent their personal anger, which provided a pretext for the foreign powers to intervene by force, which led to the invasion of the Eight-Nation Alliance. However, the “invulnerable” boxers and the weak Qing army were unable to repel the foreign enemy, Beijing was bloodied, and China sank into even darker places.
In the sound of artillery fire, Cixi, who had shouted “Wait for death, die in a war, not heal”, fled out of Beijing with Emperor Guangxu, passed Juyong Pass to Taiyuan, and fled all the way to Xi’an. This group of people ran day and night, “asking for a bowl of coarse rice, a cup of mung bean soup, but they couldn’t find a place”, there was no dignity at all. The royal face was lost in one fell swoop.
The overall situation collapsed to this point, Cixi had to think: “I have always been the person in charge of the house, and now that I am in trouble, it is always my fault, I am sorry for my ancestors, and I am sorry for the people.” Where can you tell your thoughts? After learning the hard way, she finally moved the idea of changing the law and improving herself.
Cen Chunxuan, who followed him all the way, later recalled: “Although the Queen Mother is in the dust, she still deliberately thinks of rejuvenation in her hardship. One day, the Queen Mother suddenly asked her ministers: “How can this shame be snowed?” ”
Everyone should not, only Cen Chunxuan stood up and said: “If you want to be ashamed, you must be self-reliant.” ”
Reforms are in the second year of the 20th century.
On January 29, 1901, the Qing court issued an edict, openly acknowledging that “those who have learned Western law in the late period are only the skins of Western arts, not the origin of Western learning”, and at the same time demanded that the ministers of military aircraft, scholars, six ministries, nine secretaries, ministers of various countries, and governors of various provinces offer reform policies in order to cheer up.
As Pu Yi said in “The First Half of My Life”: “Cixi is a person with a very strong desire for power, and she is never willing to give up any power in her hands. For her, the so-called Three Principles and Five Constants and the ancestral legal system can only be used to adapt to oneself, and must not be allowed to bind oneself. In order to maintain their authority and dignity, all their closest relatives and relatives, relatives and ministers, all those who obey me will prosper, and those who oppose me will die. ”
What she is best at is to override the political forces of various factions, manipulate them, and pull one faction to fight another faction to ensure that she has monopoly power. Whether it is the Manchu elite, the Han people, the stubborn and old, or the new scholars, they are just a few of her pawns. Whether she is a “diehard” or a “Westernist”, it is really difficult to say clearly, she is her – a politician who almost only has the heart of the emperor in her head.
After the Gengzi Incident, people’s hearts were greatly damaged, and the Qing Dynasty was in danger of overturning at any time. The “Southeastern Mutual Protection” is an example, where the Xinjiang ministers are insulted by foreign countries but not diligent to the king, and allowing foreign countries to bully the imperial court is treason in the past. The generation of “no king and no father” has sprung up like mushrooms after a rain. Sun Yat-sen launched the Huizhou Uprising in the year of Gengzi, although it failed, but he found that in the past, “the public opinion of the whole country was regarded as a chaotic minister and thief”, and now “people of insight and most of them sigh for our people, and hate it”.
The civil uprising is terrifying, but with the help of a soldier, it can be suppressed strongly. If the Shi changes, then the Qing Dynasty will no longer have a reason to survive. In order to maintain her power, Cixi had to get the imperial court to come up with a convincing “good prescription” to resist various “remedies and fierce medicines” such as royalism and revolution.
The New Deal was also for the Western powers. Compared with any previous historical period, the biggest difference of the late Qing Dynasty is that external forces are everywhere and cannot be digested. All changes in modern China, even the “change of dynasty”, will inevitably involve foreign interests and thus be strongly intervened. Internal affairs are external affairs, and external affairs are internal affairs. Sometimes, foreign countries don’t even need to intervene directly, and they stand here, exuding the brilliance of civilization, reflecting China’s decay, and making people unconsciously want to move closer to it. The opening of the New Deal was actually an open-minded and unconservative gesture to give an account to the great powers.
