- #HUNDRED DAYS OF REFORM DEFINITION AP WORLD HISTORY PLUS#
- #HUNDRED DAYS OF REFORM DEFINITION AP WORLD HISTORY SERIES#
Details remain unclear, but amid rumours of a possible coup, on September 21, she issued an edict declaring that the emperor had asked her to resume power. Yet many officials were unimpressed, seeing the reforms as harmful to “China’s true inner values,” writes Spence.Ĭixi also feared that they would weaken the ruling Qing dynasty. Modernisation and streamlining were the goals, to develop a more flexible and more powerful government.
#HUNDRED DAYS OF REFORM DEFINITION AP WORLD HISTORY SERIES#
From June to September that year he issued a series of edicts touching on many areas of government including the bureaucracy, armed forces, education and the economy. Guangxu decided to “act on the country’s behalf,” Spence writes in his masterly book, The Search for Modern China. He had even been studying English, as part of his efforts to assert his independence from the Empress Dowager Cixi, who hovered in the background. The Emperor Guangxu, notes historian Jonathan Spence “undoubtedly had a wider view of the options facing China than any of his predecessors”.
Faced with powerful neighbours like Japan, and Western powers including Britain and Russia, it was clear that China was failing fast. But politically the empire remained backward. It’s thought that the treatise frightened conservative officials, who had blocked the memorial’s progress through the bureaucracy for three years.įor nearly four decades the Qing had been trying to modernise economically, with some success. In the summer of 1898, Guangxu, aged just 24, launched his Hundred Days’ Reform after reading a memorial presented to the imperial court in 1895 by a group of influential scholars led by Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao. But if the experiences of the young Emperor Guangxu are anything to go by, would-be reformers had better step carefully.
#HUNDRED DAYS OF REFORM DEFINITION AP WORLD HISTORY PLUS#
Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose: reform was also in the air over a century ago, at the end of the Qing Dynasty. For good measure Wen added that China risked losing the gains of decades of economic reform if it didn’t change politically.
Reform – or talk of it – is in the air, with Premier Wen Jiabao issuing another call in mid-March for political change, “particularly” within the Communist Party and state leadership system.
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