Cixi

Chinese dowager empress (r. 1861-1908)

• Born: November 29, 1835
• Birthplace: Beijing, China
• Died: November 15, 1908
• Place of death: Beijing, China

Cixi was one of the most powerful women in China’s history. As empress dowager, she dominated imperial China for more than fifty years from “behind the curtain.”

Early Life

Cixi (tsee-shee) may have been the daughter of a minor Manchu official; however, recent Chinese scholarship has suggested that she was ethnically Han Chinese. In 1851, when she was about sixteen, she became one of the many concubines of Emperor Xianfeng (r. 1851-1861). Fated to govern during the Taiping Rebellion that almost destroyed the Qing Dynasty , the weak and ineffective Xianfeng died at the age of thirty. His only significant accomplishment was to father a son, Tongzhi, by Cixi, who remained his favorite concubine after the son was born in 1856. On Xianfeng’s death, Cixi placed the five-year-old Tongzhi on the Chinese throne. Cixi herself was only twenty-six years old at that time.

Life’s Work

Because of Tongzhi’s youth, Cixi served as regent for the young emperor, along with Prince Gong, the boy’s uncle. In 1861, imperial China seemed on the verge of disintegration, but the Tongzhi Restoration, as it is known, reversed the process by attempting to emulate the West, particularly its technology, under the banner of “self-strengthening.” Nevertheless, at the time of Tongzhi’s early death in 1874 at the age of eighteen, China still lagged behind. Not only were nations such as Great Britain and France militarily stronger, but to some the increasing presence of Christian missionaries also was a threat to traditional Chinese culture.

Officially, Tongzhi died of smallpox, but according to some rumors, Cixi was responsible for his death because she believed that her son’s young wife, Alute, would reduce her own influence. After Tongzhi died, his widow empress was made to commit suicide, and Cixi installed her four-year-old nephew, Guangxu, as emperor. When she did that, she ignored the laws of royal succession because the new emperor was of the same generation as Tongzhi and could not perform the filial or ancestral rituals. Guangxu’s mother, Xiao Chen, was Cixi’s sister, and the two dowager empresses controlled the government and the young emperor together. After Xiao Chen died in 1881, Cixi continued to rule as regent for Guangxu until 1889.

As the only woman to achieve significant power in China during the long Manchu reign that had begun in 1642, Cixi was extremely capable but also cruel and callous. Referred to as the Venerable Buddha, a term usually reserved for men, she was both literate and charismatic and was Machiavellian enough to manipulate government ministers and advisers despite her diminutive stature. She was five feet tall but wore five-inch heels to increase her height. Like most upper-class Manchu women, Cixi had long fingernails, and she was known to scratch the faces of servants when she was displeased. She also used a great amount of makeup, whitening her face and rouging her cheeks. Her power and perhaps her sexual charms attracted to her side ambitious young men, whom she often rewarded with political office.

Given her position and rank, it was to be expected that Cixi would be conservative in maintaining Manchu power and the status quo in Qing China. However, that was not easily accomplished while Western nations were making inroads into China during the nineteenth century. As a result of the 1839-1842 Opium War with Great Britain, Britain and then other nations obtained commercial and legal privileges in China. In 1860, Cixi and Emperor Xianfeng were forced to flee the capital of Beijing ahead of its capture by British and French troops.

China’s situation improved somewhat as a result of the self-strengthening movement, which Cixi supported, but not sufficiently to resist Western and Japanese economic, political, and religious demands. By most accounts, Cixi diligently heard reports and made decisions, but from behind a screen to satisfy the needs of propriety in male-dominated China. However, in her royal isolation it is impossible to know if she truly understood the state of her country. Because of Prince Gong’s suspected involvement in the execution of one of Cixi’s favorite eunuchs, Cixi had him politically marginalized, and most of her other advisers were as conservative as she was.

France’s defeat of China’s weak navy in 1884 in a struggle over French ambitions in Indochina and China’s defeat a decade later at the hands of a modernizing Japan emphasized China’s continuing weakness. Cixi contributed to some of these problems. An example of her occasionally irresponsible use of authority occurred in 1893, when she spent money that was supposed to be employed in modernizing China’s navy on the construction of a full-sized marble boat resembling a paddle-steamer.

The 1895 Treaty of Shimonoseki that ended the Sino-Japanese War forced China to abandon its long-term influence in Korea, making Korea a de facto Japanese protectorate. China also had to cede the island of Taiwan and other Chinese territories to Japan. Afterward, a new reform movement emerged in China. It was led by Kang Youwei, who claimed that the ancient philosopher Confucius—whose teachings remained the inspiration for Chinese government philosophy during the nineteenth century—was not the conservative so often claimed. Instead, the reformists argued, Confucius had believed in progress and reform.

By that time, Cixi had given up her day-to-day political involvement, which allowed her nephew, Emperor Guangxu, to assume more power. Sympathetic to Kang and other reformers, Guangxu, although often cowed by his fierce aunt, was well educated, spoke some English, and was aware of China’s weakness and the need to modernize. The culmination of Guangxu’s efforts culminated in the Hundred Days’ Reform between June and September, 1898, during which the emperor issued edicts reforming the educational system, strengthening the army, and modernizing the economy.

The young emperor apparently believed that Cixi would support his reforms, but she did not, fearing foreign influence and the possible weakening of Qing rule. In mid-September, 1898, when rumors circulated that a coup was developing to remove Guangxu, Cixi returned to Beijing from her semiretirement. Two days after her return she issued a proclamation stating that Guangxu had asked her to assume power. Several reformers were executed, but Kang managed to escape, and the hapless Guangxu was restricted to royal palaces for the rest of his life.

Western nations and Japan continued to infringe upon China’s sovereignty, carving out spheres of influence from Manchuria in the north to the island of Hainan in the south. Missionaries were also actively engaged in converting Chinese to Christianity. The response was the antiforeign Boxer movement, which began in 1898. Fueled by floods and droughts and eclectic religious beliefs, many of the so-called Boxers believed they were impervious to bullets. Most were peasants, and their targets were the missionaries and their Chinese converts as well as other Westerners.

By 1900, violence was reaching Beijing and other cities. The Western nations seized Chinese forts and attempted to send troops to relieve Beijing. On June 21, 1900, Cixi, believing she had to keep the support of the people—who were represented by the Boxers—issued a declaration of war against the foreigners. However, the weak Qing forces could not stop the Western and Japanese troops, who arrived in Beijing on August 16. Cixi and her nephew fled to Xi’an in the west, and a peace treaty, the Boxer Protocol, was signed in September. Leading Boxers and Qing officials who supported the Boxers were executed, and China was required to pay an indemnity of 333 million dollars to the invading powers.

Cixi and Guangxu returned to Beijing’s Forbidden City in January 1902, but the emperor continued to play no political role. In a gesture of reconciliation, Cixi received the foreign ambassadors and held a reception for their wives. Meanwhile, Chinese opposition to the Qing increased. Some Chinese regarded the Manchus as foreigners, even though they had been ruling China for centuries. Others resented the weakness of the government in the face of Western and Japanese incursions. Cixi and her ministers grudgingly began to institute reforms, such as abolition of the examination system based upon the Confucius and other ancient sages. In 1908, Cixi announced constitutional reforms that would take nine years fully to implement. However, these reforms came too late. On November 15, 1908, Cixi died at the age of seventy-two.

Significance

After Cixi died, it was announced that Emperor Guangxu had died the previous day. Before her death, Cixi named her three-year-old grandnephew, Puyi, as the new emperor. Two years later, the Revolution of 1911 swept Puyi and the Qing from power, and imperial China ended with the establishment of the Republic of China, under Sun Yatsen.

Cixi dominated China for almost fifty years. Historically, only Empress Wu rivaled her power and influence. Cixi was ruthless in dominating her ministers, destroying her enemies, and reducing the titular emperors to mere ciphers. She was a conservative in the desire to maintain her authority and Manchu rule in the face of the need to modernize and reform China. She was also an able politician. However, because she was a woman and perceived to be a foreigner—a Manchu—she became a scapegoat for many of China’s problems that were beyond the capability of any single person to solve, as evidenced by the failure of republican China in the decades that followed.

Bibliography

Laidler, Keith. The Last Empress. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2003. A well-written biography of “The She Dragon of China,” filled with anecdotes.

Paludan, Ann. Chronicles of the Chinese Emperors. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1998. An excellent account of China’s emperors, including an acute portrayal of Cixi.

Seagrave, Sterling. Dragon Lady. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1992. This sympathetic biography is the classic account of Cixi’s life and her legend.