100 Days of Reform Flashcards
1
Q
Emperor Guanxu
A
- took throne in 1898
- shy and withdrawn, speech impediment, panic attacks, health problems
2
Q
Reasons for 100 DR
A
- ‘China is in imminent peril’ Kang
- Imperial institutions and conservative officials to blame for China’s lack of progress
- ‘if the institutional reform is undertaken now it can avert future disaster’ kang
3
Q
100 DR outset
A
On 11 June 1898, an edict told officials to commit themselves to propelling China towards ‘wealth and power’
- 40 decrees in 103 days June-Sep
4
Q
100 DR education
A
- The ‘eight-legged’ examination system would be overhauled, with more attention paid to practical subjects and less to poetry, which was dismissed in an edict as ‘the hollow, useless and unpractical method’ of an obsolete age.
- Youths were to be sent abroad to be trained in subjects for which there were no teachers athome.
- each district town getting a primary school
- questioning of Sons of Heaven through new knowledge
- “challenged the foundations of the Chinese world” Fenby
- Between 1895 a n d 1898, 103 study societies, 183 modern schools and 62 publishing houses were set up
5
Q
100 DR military
A
- Armyschools were opened, and foreign instructors recruited.
- A fleet of thirty-four warships was to be built (funds diverted to pay for marble boat)
- Soldiering was no longer looked down on as it had been for centuries, and the new armies, much influence by the Japanese example, became seedbeds for reformist and revolutionary movements.
6
Q
100 DR bureacracy
A
- streamlined
- national cash currency introduced
- write freely on political subjects, those who denounced others for putting forward reform ideas were punished
7
Q
100 DR reason for failure - opposition
A
- Manchu nobles outraged to learn that they would lose their privileges
- end of the examination system would destroy the defining feature of the gentry-scholar class.
- Changes in the administrative structure would cost thousands of bureaucrats their jobs.
- Freedom of information and greater accountability would undermine the power of the civil service.
- Emperor had ordered astudy of opening the whole of the coast and the Yangzi to international trade
8
Q
100 DR reason for failure - Guanxu lack of power
A
- Most seriously, the senior court official, Weng Tonghe, was dismissed four days after the promulgation of the edict of 1 1 June launching the Hundred Days, which he had drafted
- he had neither the strengthnor the administrative apparatus to make reform stick, made some bad political mistakes, and had to cope with the lurking presence of Cixi at the Summer Palace
9
Q
100 DR reason for failure - role of foreigners
A
- Kang = cantonese
- seek counsel from the Japanese politician Ito Hirobumi,
- the reformer Tan Sitong had meetings with armyofficers from Tokyo, while two of Kang’s associates produced proposals for an alliance between China, Britain and Japan.
- led critics to allege that the reformers wereready to sell out the nation.
10
Q
100 DR reason for failure - wrong approach
A
The 1898 reformers might speak of democracy, but their prime aim was to strengthen China by decree without bothering to seek popular support, following in the age-old pattern of top-down authority – Fenby
11
Q
Cixi coup
A
· At first, Cixi offered cautious support of the initiatives “As long as you do not cut off your queue, I will not interfere.”
- 21 September 1898
- Cixi received petitions from conservative officials self-pityingly pleading for action
- nobody to stage a counter-coup on his behalf.
12
Q
100 DR Undermining of reforms
A
- not that bad says Fenby: progressive governor of Hunan was sacked;but so was the hardline Manchu governor of Hubei
- further modernized under the influence of the ubiquitous ZhangZhidong, with the traditional curriculum removed from its pedestal and classes taught in medicine, law, agriculture and scienc
- t the heart ofthe new philosophical line was the ti-yong system, set out by Zhang, which embraced the study of Western ways but insisted that Chinese learning was essential
