Empress Dowager Cixi

Empress Dowager Cixi (1835–1908) was a consort of the Qing dynasty who became the most powerful figure at the Chinese court in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Entering the imperial palace as a low-ranking concubine, she bore the only son of the Xianfeng Emperor and, through a coup in 1861 and a long series of regencies, held effective control of the state until her death. Her career spans the Opium Wars, the Taiping Rebellion, the self-strengthening movement, the Sino-Japanese War, the Boxer crisis and the first steps toward constitutional government.

Her significance lies less in personal rule than in the way she mediated the Qing state's responses to internal rebellion and external pressure. Her decisions shaped the balance between conservative court factions and reform-minded officials, the pace of military and industrial modernization, and the diplomatic settlements that followed each defeat. Her rule also raised enduring questions about gender, legitimacy and authority in a Confucian political order, and her reputation has been contested in Chinese, Western and popular accounts alike.

This entry proceeds chronologically from her origins and rise to power, through the regencies and factional struggles, the modernization and foreign-policy crises of the 1880s and 1890s, the Hundred Days' Reform and the Boxer episode, and the late Qing reforms. It then treats her patronage of arts and culture, the gendered image of female rule, the historiography of her reputation, her death and succession, her legacy in the fall of the dynasty, and her portrayal in film, theatre and popular culture.

Origins and identity

Birth and family

Cixi was born on 29 November 1835 and came from the Yehe Nara clan, a Manchu family whose members served within the Eight Banners system. Most biographies describe her as the daughter of a low-ranking Manchu official, Huizheng, and his principal wife, who belonged to the Fuca clan, although the exact origins of the family remain unclear. Huizheng was registered in the Bordered Blue Banner and later served in Shanxi before becoming a commissioner in Anhui. Her birth name is recorded as Yehe Nara Xingzhen, and "Cixi" was a later honorific rather than a name she was born with.

The birthplace is also contested. Some accounts list as many as six possible birthplaces, with Beijing, specifically a hutong in the Xisi district, the most widely favoured theory. The main documentary support for Beijing is that according to palace archives, her father, an ordinary official from the Manchu Yehenara clan, was working in Beijing in 1835. The Beijing birthplace is the one used in most reference works, including Britannica, which lists her as born in Beijing in 1835.

Selection and entry into the palace

Dating her entry into the palace is a further point of disagreement. The infobox of the English Wikipedia article gives September, 1851 as the start of her period as a concubine, while the detailed biography records that on 26 June 1852, Lady Yehe Nara left her widowed mother's residence and entered the Forbidden City, where she was placed in the sixth rank of consorts, styled "Noble Lady Lan". Popular biographies often round the event to her sixteenth year. Like other teenage girls of the time, she had to be presented by her family as a candidate for the newly crowned emperor, Xianfeng. Her selection as a low-ranking consort therefore fell in the early 1850s, and the sources differ by about a year on the exact stages.

Rank and the birth of the heir

The Qing consort system was graded in ranks, and advancement depended on favour and on producing children. Within a few years Cixi moved up several steps. In February 1854 Noble Lady Lan was raised to the fifth rank as Concubine Yi. Her position changed decisively with her pregnancy. On 27 April 1856 she gave birth to Zaichun, the emperor's first and only surviving son, and on the same day she was elevated to the fourth rank as Consort Yi. In 1857, when her son reached his first birthday, she was raised to the third rank as Noble Consort Yi, which placed her second in the harem after the empress, Lady Niohuru.

The birth of a son mattered more than rank alone, because the empress was formally regarded as the mother of all the emperor's children. Regardless of who gave birth to them, Lady Niohuru was nominally the mother of all the Xianfeng Emperor's children. Cixi's own child, however, was the one with a legitimate claim to the throne. Rivalry with other consorts was also present: Lady Tatara, Concubine Li, was said to be the emperor's favourite and most charming consort, and he spent most of his nights with her. Cixi's favour rose more slowly and became decisive only after Li's pregnancy.

Court culture and education

Cixi's education was unusual for a Manchu woman of her household. Unlike many other Manchu women in the imperial household, Noble Consort Yi was known for her ability to read and write Chinese. That skill had practical consequences. The Xianfeng Emperor had her read palace memorials to him and record instructions on them according to his wishes. Through this work she became well informed about state affairs and the art of governing.

Her daily life was spent in the crowded harem of the Forbidden City. Cixi lived in Chuxiu Palace, where her son was born, and shared living quarters with other consorts. One of them, Noble Lady Qing, moved to Chuxiu Palace and lived together with the future Empress Dowager Cixi. Her relationship with the chief consort, Empress Ci'an, was initially cordial: the highest-ranking of the emperor's wives, she became friends with Cixi. That alliance later became the basis of the joint regency.

Debates over the early life

Historians have to reconcile several sources that differ on dates, names and places. The palace archives used to fix her birthplace and her father's posting are only partial, and popular biographies often repeat dates from secondary compilations. The core facts, including the 1835 birth year, her rank progression and the birth of her son in 1856, are consistently recorded across the main reference works. The uncertainty chiefly concerns the years of selection, the exact place of birth and the family's pre-palace circumstances.

Rise in the Xianfeng court

The Second Opium War set the terms for the court's crisis in 1860. Anglo-French forces advanced toward Beijing, and the Xianfeng Emperor left the capital for the imperial hunting lodge at Rehe (today Chengde) in Hebei, while his younger brother Yixin, later Prince Gong, remained in the capital to face the foreign negotiators. The Old Summer Palace was looted and burned that autumn, in retaliation for the detention of a British diplomatic party. Prince Gong concluded the Convention of Peking with Britain and France, and the emperor, absent from the capital, was left with a court that had lost much of its authority over foreign affairs. The flight to Rehe also turned the imperial household into a closed circle at a remote estate, where personal relationships counted for more than the usual channels of government.

Cixi's place in that household had been built gradually. She entered the palace in 1852 with the rank of Noble Lady Lan, was promoted to Concubine Yi in 1854, and after giving birth to the emperor's son Zaichun on 27 April 1856 became Consort Yi. In 1857, when the boy reached his first birthday, she was raised to Noble Consort Yi, a third-rank imperial consort ranked just below the empress consort and the imperial noble consort. The birth of the emperor's only surviving son gave her a status that the consort ranks alone did not, but her rank remained subordinate to the Empress, Xianfeng's principal wife, who later became Empress Dowager Ci'an. Her personal name at court was recorded as Yehe Nara, and the honorific "Cixi" was conferred only after the emperor's death.

As the emperor's health declined during the Rehe years, the question of who could speak for the young heir became pressing. According to one account, the two consorts with sons or position proposed taking part in political affairs, and the regents rejected the idea as contrary to the rules of the imperial family. Cixi is also said to have used a trusted eunuch to carry a secret message to Beijing summoning Prince Gong, a step that later became central to the court's internal politics. Historians differ on how much of this activity reflected Cixi's own initiative and how much reflected the wider frustration of princes and officials with the emperor's advisers, and the surviving court records do not settle the matter.

Xianfeng died at Rehe on 22 August 1861, aged 30. His five-year-old son succeeded as the Tongzhi Emperor. Before his death, the emperor had named eight regents, led by Sushun, to govern on the boy's behalf, and had given the Empress and Cixi personal seals as a check on those regents. The seals proved a source of friction: without the seals of both dowager empresses, the regents could not carry out major policy decisions, which in practice made the two women indispensable to any settlement. Cixi was, by then, the mother of the reigning emperor, and her son's position gave her a claim to a role that the regents could not easily dismiss.

Cixi and Ci'an were close, having known each other since Cixi's arrival in the palace. Ci'an was childless and, as a lower-ranked dowager without a son of her own, Cixi had no intrinsic political power and her young son was not a political force in his own right. Both women therefore needed allies. Cixi proposed that they act as co-regent dowager empresses, and Ci'an initially cooperated with the regents before changing her position after Cixi's persuasion. Tensions with Sushun's group grew, and one account says Ci'an withdrew from audiences, leaving Cixi to deal with the ministers. Cixi's marriage tie to Prince Chun, whose wife was her younger sister Wanzhen and whose match was arranged in 1860, gave her another link to the imperial family outside the regents' circle. These connections formed the alignment that would soon challenge the eight regents.

The Xinyou Coup and the first regency

The regency council of 1861

The Xianfeng Emperor died in 1861 at Jehol, aged thirty, and was succeeded by his six-year-old son, who reigned as the Tongzhi Emperor. On his deathbed, the Xianfeng Emperor appointed eight men to a regency council to assist his young successor. The group was led by Sushun, who were adjutants general and grand councillors. The council's authority was limited from the start. Without the seals of the two empress dowagers, Ci'an and Cixi, the regency could not carry out any important policy decisions, which led to increased political friction in the imperial court.

The coup of November 1861

The coup took place on 2 November 1861 in Beijing. It was instigated by Empress Dowagers Cixi and Ci'an, along with Yixin (Prince Gong), to seize power after the death of the Xianfeng Emperor. The eight regents were stripped of official positions, and several of them were executed or forced to commit suicide. The event is also known as the Qixiang Coup, after the name it carried in some sources. Sources differ on the exact dating of the new arrangement. One source gives 2 November as the coup date, while the regencies of the two dowagers are dated from 11 November 1861, which marks the point at which their formal authority began.

Prince Yixuan (Prince Chun) is recorded as having sided with Prince Gong and the two dowager empresses against Sushun's faction. The rivalry therefore ran along lines of kinship and court rank, not only between the regents and the throne. Cixi's own rank as the mother of the heir gave her a claim to a place at the centre of the new arrangement.

Joint regency and the balance at court

Cixi assumed the role of co-empress dowager alongside Xianfeng's widow, Empress Dowager Ci'an. She and Ci'an ousted a group of regents appointed by the late emperor and assumed the regency together. Ci'an's own regency ran until 1873 and then again from 1875 to 1881, while Cixi's first regency lasted until 1873. The arrangement was a triumvirate. Prince Gong, the Xianfeng Emperor's brother, and the two empress dowagers staged the coup, establishing themselves as the only rightful regents of the Tongzhi Emperor. Prince Gong, who was a regent of the empire from 1861 to 1865, was also restored to the Grand Council on 8 November 1861. His formal role gave the new government its administrative continuity, while the two women held the seals that the regency council had lacked.

Justification and the child emperor

The coup was carried out in the name of the young Tongzhi Emperor, whose reign formally began after the coup with the era name Tongzhi from 1862. The regime's legitimacy rested on the claim that the regents had failed in their duties and that the throne needed proper guardianship. The precise wording of the edicts that announced the coup and the removal of the regents is not reproduced here; the surviving accounts agree on the outcome but differ in their emphasis.

The Grand Council and the Zongli Yamen

The new arrangement also produced institutional change. The Grand Council had existed in nucleus form since the Yongzheng Emperor created the nucleus of the Grand Council in 1729, and the Zongli Yamen was the first significant institutional innovation in the central Beijing bureaucracy since then. Its founding date is given differently across sources. One account states that it was established by Prince Gong on 11 March 1861 after the Convention of Beijing. Another dates its creation to January 1861. The idea was advanced by Prince Gong and Grand Councilor Wen Xiang.

The office was designed as an interim body. It was supervised by a controlling board of five senior officials, initially all Manchus, among whom Prince Gong was the de facto leader. Officials stressed that it was only to be a temporary institution, maintained until the current foreign and domestic crisis had passed. Its formal rank was modest, and its members held other posts at the same time. It remained the principal channel for foreign affairs until it was replaced in 1901.

Tongzhi Restoration and the self-strengthening movement

Suppression of the rebellions

The Tongzhi Restoration took its name from the reign of the Tongzhi Emperor, but its core was a military and administrative recovery led by provincial officials. The Taiping Rebellion, which had devastated the Yangzi region since the early 1850s, was the central challenge. The Qing banner and Green Standard armies had lost much of their fighting strength by then, so the court relied on regional forces raised by Han Chinese officials. Zeng Guofan built the Xiang Army to fight the Taiping, and Li Hongzhang, who had fought beside him, led the Huai Army. Li later served in the campaign against the Nian rebels, which ran on into the 1860s. Zuo Zongtang, the third of the leading provincial commanders, took on the later campaigns in the northwest. Historians often group Zeng, Li and Zuo, together with Zhang Zhidong, as the leading figures of the period. Their success gave them lasting authority in their provinces, and it also meant that the court owed its military survival to men who were not part of the central Manchu command.

Programs of the restoration

The restoration carried out a set of institutional projects that are usually grouped under the self-strengthening movement, a term the editors of this entry use for the broader effort. The first was the foreign office, the Zongli Yamen, set up in 1861 to handle relations with Western powers. Foreign-language schools followed in 1862, though enrollment stayed low because ambitious students still concentrated on the Confucian examinations, as discussed in the examination system section. Arsenals were built at Shanghai, Nanjing and Fuzhou, the Jiangnan Arsenal being the most prominent. A naval dockyard opened at Fuzhou in 1866, and a machine factory in 1870. In 1872 Li Hongzhang helped set up the China Merchants' Steam Navigation Company, which combined official management with merchant capital and was granted a monopoly on certain routes to ensure profitability. The first groups of students were sent to the United States in the early 1870s. Mining, including coal mines opened in 1877, was added later. Historians broadly agree that the projects were limited. Their products performed poorly against European powers but gave the government better firepower against internal uprisings. Academics remain divided on whether the restoration halted the dynasty's decline or only postponed it.

Hanjun elites and the decentralization of military power

The restoration also changed the regional balance of power. Hanjun, the Chinese bannermen who had been incorporated into the Eight Banners during the conquest, had long been more likely than Manchu or Mongol bannermen to be appointed to civil posts, especially as governors and governors-general. After 1851, however, fewer bannermen were appointed as provincial rulers, as the court came to rely on the Han "regional" armies and their commanders. Governors-general and governors gained greater control over their own troops, finances and appointments. Officers were also expected to be loyal to their immediate superiors, and units were often recruited from a single province, which encouraged regionalism. Han bannermen became an elite political class in Fengtian province in the late Qing period. This decentralization is one of the main reasons some historians see the restoration as a turning point in the balance between the throne and the provinces.

The death of the Tongzhi Emperor and the Guangxu succession

Cixi's control of the court was tested when the Tongzhi Emperor, who had assumed personal rule in 1873, came into conflict with his ministers and was reportedly outmaneuvered by the two dowager empresses. He died of smallpox at eighteen on 12 January 1875, without a son to succeed him. Empress Dowager Ci'an reportedly proposed a son of Prince Gong, but Cixi overruled her, and she chose her nephew, the son of her younger sister, who was enthroned as the Guangxu Emperor. Because the new emperor belonged to the same generation as his predecessor, the choice departed from the dynastic custom that successors come from the next generation. The decision inaugurated a second regency, with both empresses dowager sharing power, and Cixi continued to hold effective control after Ci'an's death in 1881. Accounts of the 1875 succession, including the fate of the late emperor's widow, Empress Xiaozheyi, have been contested and are not fully documented.

Court factions and the second regency

After the Xianfeng Emperor's death, the regency was shared by Empress Dowager Cixi and Empress Dowager Ci'an, and that partnership depended on a fragile alliance with the court's princes. In 1861, after the death of his elder brother, the Xianfeng Emperor, Yixin, in collaboration with Empress Dowager Cixi, launched the Xinyou Coup, seizing power from the eight regents appointed in the late emperor's will. Over the following decade, the alignment shifted. The two had already fallen out in 1875, when Cixi chose her nephew Guangxu for the throne. Prince Gong saw it as a violation of the dynastic law of succession. Fearing that her former ally might have become too powerful, Cixi publicly accused him of arrogance and stripped him of his authority in 1865. Although Prince Gong later recovered his power, his relationship with Cixi grew increasingly hostile.

Prince Chun, the father of the new emperor, occupied a different position. Zaitian's mother was Cixi's younger sister, and his father Yixuan had been a loyal supporter of Cixi, which made the boy's accession useful to her, since his youth allowed her to continue as regent. After giving up his military and civil posts, Yixuan was entrusted with the education of the young emperor. With the disgrace of Prince Gong, Yixuan unwillingly became the second most powerful figure at court after Cixi, and the empress dowager ordered officials to discuss matters with him before making decisions.

The death of Ci'an was the decisive turning point. On 8 April 1881, Empress Dowager Ci'an died of a brain haemorrhage at the age of forty-three. Her death left Cixi as the sole regent of imperial China. The balance of power now tipped completely in Cixi's favour, and Prince Gong's position was considerably weakened. Rumours that Cixi had hastened Ci'an's death circulated at the time, and Ci'an was rumoured to have been poisoned by Cixi. In the same period, the young emperor's position was constrained. Eunuchs at court often abused their influence over the boy emperor. The emperor had begun holding some audiences on his own in the early 1880s, but this stopped in 1883, when Cixi recovered from her illness.

The break with Prince Gong came in 1884. In 1884, Cixi removed him from all his positions, forcing him into political retirement. The immediate cause was a military setback: Cixi accused Prince Gong of incompetence after he failed to stop French incursions in Tonkin, a region under China's suzerainty. Gong had earlier held substantial influence in the Zongli Yamen and the Grand Council, so his removal reshaped the senior ranks of the central administration and left the decision-making circle closer to the regent.

The regency was formally wound down over the late 1880s. When the Guangxu Emperor reached adulthood in early 1887, Yixuan formally asked Cixi to prolong her regency. Several courtiers, including Prince Chun and Weng Tonghe, had petitioned Cixi to postpone her retirement from the regency. In February 1889, in preparation for her retirement, the emperor was married, and Cixi selected her niece Jingfen as empress despite his dislike of the choice. The following week, with the emperor married, Cixi retired from the regency. Cixi nominally relinquished control of the government and retired to the summer palace she had rebuilt northwest of Beijing.

Her retirement was not a withdrawal from power. She resided in the summer palace and declared her official retirement without losing influence at court. She was kept informed daily about developments, and replacements in the Council of State were not made without her consent. Officials often sought her advice on state affairs, sometimes bypassing the emperor. Historians therefore differ on how much authority the emperor exercised in the decade that followed. One widely cited summary holds that 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.

Modernization projects and their financing

Naval and military expansion

Naval and military modernization in the 1880s centred on the Beiyang Fleet, which Li Hongzhang directed. The court assigned Li to set up a shipyard at Dagu, near Tianjin, in 1880 to service the fleet's warships. The Dagu shipyard was the first shipyard in the north of modern China, and it was later counted among the fleet's three main bases alongside Lüshun and Weihai. Costs rose steeply. Before 1888 the fleet's budget was two million taels. The Lüshun naval base, completed in 1890, cost 3 million taels. One account of the period 1888 to 1890 gives a fleet allocation of 1.3 million taels, which could only cover daily expenses, leaving no money for updating warships and weaponry. The gap between operating budgets and capital needs became a recurring problem for the navy.

Railways, telegraphs and mining

Beyond the navy, provincial officials launched enterprises that were presented as part of the Self-Strengthening Movement. Projects included railways, shipping infrastructure, coal mines, cloth mills and the installation of telegraph lines and stations. The Kaiping mines, opened in 1881, supplied coal for factories and steamships, and the China Merchants Steamship Navigation Company and early self-financed railways were linked to the same network around Tianjin. Financing was mixed. The initial capital of the shipping company came from Shanghai merchants, from Li Hongzhang personally, and from Zhili military funds.

The mining company illustrates how state ambitions met budget limits. Planned as a government enterprise, it was later made government-supervised and merchant-managed because of the lack of funding. Telegraphs followed a similar model. In 1881 Li recruited the businessman Sheng Xuanhuai, and under the banner of government control with merchant management they founded the Imperial Telegraph Administration. By 1900 the company operated over 22,000 kilometers of telegraph wire and supervised another 30,000 kilometers under local control. Railway construction started at a smaller scale. A three-kilometre demonstration line at Tianjin, built by a French firm, had a contract value of 48,100 silver taels.

Strains on the treasury

Customs revenue carried much of this expansion. Customs duties rose from 7 million taels in the 1860s to 22 million in the early 1890s, and to 35 million in the early 1900s. Although the revenue financed modernizing projects such as government shipyards and arsenals, it was increasingly pledged to paying war indemnities and foreign loans. Foreign loans taken on after the wars of the 1890s and 1900 were secured against this income. After the Sino-Japanese War and the Boxer uprising, practically all customs revenue was pledged to meeting loans and indemnities. Estimates of the share of central revenue absorbed by foreign obligations differ, but some place it at least one third to one-half of China's central revenue. Because foreign management controlled collection, it was impossible for the Chinese to shield the revenue from disbursements that favored foreign interests.

The Summer Palace and the debate over naval funds

The most contested question concerns the Summer Palace. Its reconstruction was initiated by Empress Dowager Cixi in 1888, following its partial destruction in 1860. Popular accounts commonly state that about 30 million taels were redirected from naval modernization to the project, a figure that is widely repeated but rests on varied sources. Other accounts present a more specific mechanism. Prince Chun, who as head of the Naval Yamen controlled part of the navy's budget, diverted funds from the Naval Yamen's budget to the project. A separate "Naval Fund" was raised under the pretext of naval needs, and a total of 2.6 million taels was collected. According to one account, after funds from various localities were pledged, they were not allocated to the Summer Palace project; instead the entire sum was deposited in foreign banks and Western-style enterprises in Tianjin. Some scholars argue that the money used for the palace was not the fleet's own military expenditure at all. Chen Yue argues that the "naval" funds misappropriated for the Summer Palace project were not related to the Beiyang Navy's military expenditure but came from the Naval Yamen's budget.

Historians also disagree about how much these diversions explain the fleet's weakness. Some sources attribute the navy's problems to the court's choices. Weng Tonghe advised the Guangxu Emperor to cut all funding to the navy and army, because he did not see Japan as a true threat. Because of the lack of funding, the training of the fleet and personnel essentially came to a standstill, which eventually contributed to its defeat in the Battle of the Yalu River. Other accounts give different totals. One English-language summary puts the diverted naval money at a total of $12 mil between 1889 and 1894, which differs from the taels-based estimates above. Explanations that stress corruption, obsolete equipment and institutional rigidity are often weighed against the funding argument, and the relative weight of each remains a matter of scholarly debate.

Foreign relations and the wars of the 1880s and 1890s

The Sino-French War and the loss of Vietnam

France's push into Tonkin, a region that had long sent tribute to Beijing, became the central dispute of the mid-1880s. With the first shots fired in 1883 when the French seized Hanoi, the French and Chinese fought an undeclared war. A negotiated settlement came first. The Tianjin Accord of May 1884 was negotiated by Li Hongzhang for China and capitaine de vaisseau François-Ernest Fournier for France. It required Chinese troops to leave Tonkin in return for a later treaty on trade and the border. Court opinion was divided. The Zhang Zhidong-led "Purist" faction had pushed for full-scale war, and further French successes in the spring of 1884 persuaded Empress Dowager Cixi that China should come to terms.

The accord did not hold. On 23 August 1884, during the battle Admiral Amédée Courbet's Far East Squadron virtually destroyed the Fujian Fleet, one of the Qing dynasty's four regional fleets. Nearly all of its ships were elderly products of the Foochow Navy Yard. In December 1884, alarmed by Japanese ambitions in Korea, Cixi ordered her ministers to extricate China from the undeclared war. French victories at Tonkin and on Formosa in early 1885 hardened her wish for an end to fighting. A Chinese success at Bang Bo in late March 1885 was offset at once by the French capture of the Pescadores Islands. The Treaty of Tianjin, signed on June 9, 1885, officially ended the Sino-French War. Its Article 2 required China to recognize the French protectorate over Annam and Tonkin, which in effect ended Chinese claims to suzerainty over Vietnam. Historians often treat the episode as a sign that modernization had not solved deeper military and administrative weaknesses.

Defeat by Japan and the Treaty of Shimonoseki

Japan's challenge to Qing influence in Korea became a full war in 1894. After landing in the Liaodong Peninsula in early November 1894, Japanese troops advanced on the fortified naval base of Lüshunkou, prompting the Chinese to withdraw their Beiyang Fleet across the Yellow Sea to Weihaiwei. The fleet had been the core of the Qing navy's modern force, and in 1882, the Beiyang Fleet established a naval base and coaling station at Lüshunkou. Japanese forces then destroyed the Chinese fleet in the battles of the Yalu River and Weihaiwei. With the loss of its navy, China sued for peace.

Li Hongzhang again served as the Qing plenipotentiary. He negotiated with Itō Hirobumi and Mutsu Munemitsu, and the settlement was signed at Shimonoseki on 17 April 1895. By the terms of the treaty, China was obliged to recognize the independence of Korea, to cede Taiwan, the Pescadores Islands, and the Liaodong Peninsula to Japan, to pay an indemnity of 200,000,000 taels, and to open the ports of Shashi, Chongqing, Suzhou, and Hangzhou to Japanese trade. The indemnity was far larger than the total reparations paid under all earlier unequal treaties since the Opium War. Within days, Russia, France and Germany intervened. The Triple Intervention subsequently required Japan to retrocede the Liaodong Peninsula to China in return for an additional indemnity of 30,000,000 taels. The Taiwan cession, by contrast, was carried out: on 10 May, Admiral Kabayama Sukenori was appointed the first Japanese governor-general of Taiwan. Local notables led by Qiu Fengjia decided to resist the transfer of Taiwan to Japanese rule.

Diplomacy at the Qing court

Qing diplomacy was organized around institutions that were still being built. The Zongli Yamen was a central institution specially established by the Qing government to handle Western affairs and diplomatic affairs, and its remit later widened to finance, mining, railways and telecommunications. Before the Opium War, relations were governed by tributary protocol: envoys from Russia were received by the Lifan Yuan according to established protocol, while envoys from other countries were hosted by the Ministry of Rites. The Zongli Yamen's own location and manner also limited contact. It was located far away in the eastern part of the city, and its officials held only formal ritualistic meetings with the foreign diplomats.

Cixi herself rarely met diplomats in public. She kept herself and the emperor secluded from both foreigners and the Chinese population nearly all the time. Her few direct encounters were carefully staged. When she received the wives of foreign diplomats on December 19, 1898, the audience was recorded in foreign newspapers. The American minister's wife, Sarah Pike Conger, later praised her in print. Foreigners and some of Cixi's countrymen considered the Qing court to be conservative, corrupt, and incompetent. Diplomatic outcomes also depended on internal rivalries. In the case of the envoy Chonghou, one historian argues that he was poorly advised by the Zongli Yamen, and that Prince Gong was involved in a power struggle with Cixi regarding who would replace the Tongzhi Emperor, which left officials unsure of which faction would be in charge and thus unwilling to do any more than their immediate responsibilities.

A growing sense of crisis

Each defeat narrowed the Qing court's room to manoeuvre. The French episode showed that China could be forced to yield under military pressure. The Sino-Japanese War went further, because it was fought by the modernizing navy that the self-strengthening programme had created. Among officials and intellectuals, the question shifted from how to preserve tributary order to how to rebuild the state. Reform proposals in the years that followed, including the programmes to build railroads, found modern schools, and send students to study overseas, grew directly out of this sense of emergency. These proposals and their political consequences are discussed in later sections.

Hundred Days' Reform and the coup of 1898

Origins and program

Reform was driven by a sense of national emergency. The defeat of China by Japan in the first Sino-Japanese War, and the threat of partition by foreign imperialists, made it clear to Chinese intellectuals that China must reform its political and economic systems in order to survive. Kang Youwei's ideas shaped the thinking of the young Qing emperor. On June 12, 1898, Emperor Kuang-hsü issued a momentous edict proclaiming a new national policy of "reform and self-strengthening." Other sources date the first edicts to June 11. Spurred by the slow dismemberment of China by Western powers, the Guangxu Emperor, influenced by reformers like Kang Youwei, issued a series of edicts starting on June 11, 1898, to modernize Chinese society.

The decrees reached widely. These reforms aimed to revamp government administration, the law code, the military, and the educational system, as well as to promote Western industry, medicine, science, and commerce. Specific measures included encouraging private investment in industrial and mining enterprises, and the plan to abolish the stereotyped essay in the examinations. The number of edicts is disputed: Emperor Guangxu issued more than 40 edicts to transform Chinese society in one account, while another puts the total above 180 imperial edicts over the 103 days.

The coup of September 1898

Cixi's position was more nuanced than the reformers' rhetoric suggested. Reform principles found some favor with her, yet she feared that sudden implementation, without bureaucratic support, would be disruptive and that the Japanese and other foreign powers would take advantage of any weakness.

Conservative officials and military commanders gave her the means to act. With the support of the conservatives and the armed forces commanded by Yuan and Ronglu, Cixi launched a coup d'état on September 22, 1898, and took over the government. Most accounts date the move to 21 September, and one source states that she got the secret information from Yuan Shikai, which prompted the arrest.

The emperor's confinement is described inconsistently. Emperor Guangxu was imprisoned at Ying Tai (a tiny island in the middle of a lake) in Zhongnanhai, but other accounts place him under effective house arrest on Yingtai island within the Forbidden City or in the Summer Palace. He remained confined there until his death in 1908.

Arrests and executions

The purge went well beyond the six men who were executed. These executions were a part of the large purge in which about 30 men were arrested, imprisoned, dismissed from office, or banished. In many cases the family members of these men were arrested as well.

On 28 September, six reformers were put to death at Caishikou in Beijing, known afterward as the "Six Gentlemen." They were Tan Sitong, Kang Guangren (Kang Youwei's brother), Lin Xu, Yang Shenxiu, Yang Rui, and Liu Guangdi. Accounts differ on whether any hearing took place, but on 28 September Cixi ordered the beheading of the reformists without interrogation or trial. Tan Sitong is often described as the one who did not escape: Tan Sitong refused to flee and was executed.

Historians disagree on how much of the bloodshed was Cixi's own decision. The traditional view is that Cixi was the main instigator of these executions. However, evidence has surfaced that the conservative "Iron Hat" faction might have threatened her by having a Chinese-Muslim army close to Beijing. Biographer Jung Chang has stressed a different motive: Empress Dowager's action was also motivated by the assassination threat toward her. Some later accounts add that Tan Sitong had proposed a plan involving Yuan Shikai, which would have been directed against Ronglu.

Exile, foreign relations and consequences

Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao escaped abroad. The two principal leaders, Kang Youwei and his student Liang Qichao, fled to Japan to seek refuge where they founded Baohuang Hui (Protect the Emperor Society) and worked, unsuccessfully, for a constitutional monarchy in China. One source gives a different destination, saying Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao fled to France and Japan respectively. Historians also debate their motives: one view holds that the two wanted to not only justify fleeing China but to also solicit intervention by foreign powers like Britain or Japan to rescue Emperor Guangxu.

The coup reversed much of the program, but not all of it. The emperor was put under house arrest, six of the reformers were executed, and most of the reforms were rescinded. Many of them were reinstated during the following decade, but the failure of the reform movement had dramatic historical consequences. The Imperial University of Peking survived the purge; all the Reformation policies were abolished except for Jing Shi Da Xue Tang (京师大学堂), the first government-established tertiary educational institution in China's history.

Public memory of the executed men became politically charged. They are now referred to as the Six Gentlemen of the Hundred Days' Reform and are revered as martyrs to the Chinese nation. For the court, the episode confirmed how sharply reformist demands and conservative fears had diverged, a divide that the nationalist movements of the following decade would exploit.

Boxer Uprising and the Eight-Nation Alliance

The Boxer movement grew out of a peasant anti-foreign campaign that attacked and killed foreign missionaries, nationals and Chinese Christians across northern China in 1899 and 1900. The Boxers burned Christian churches, killed Chinese Christians, and intimidated Chinese officials who stood in their way. Convinced that they were invulnerable to foreign weapons, their fighters converged on Beijing in June 1900. Foreign powers had already pressed the court over the winter of 1899–1900 to suppress the movement and threatened to send troops.

The court's position shifted in stages. In January 1900 Cixi, with a majority of conservatives at court, reversed her earlier policy of suppression and issued edicts in the Boxers' defense. She was reportedly impressed by the militia's attacks on foreign railways and settlements and by its claims of invulnerability, and she called on the army and people to defend the country against an expected invasion. Historians still debate her motives; one interpretation combines genuine anti-foreign sentiment, political calculation, desperation and misinformation. Some provincial governors had urged suppression instead, and she chose to channel Boxer fury against the imperialists rather than suppress it.

On 19 June the court ordered foreign diplomats to leave the capital under escort within 24 hours, but most of the diplomats rejected the order, distrusting the Qing forces. Two days later, on 20 June, the German minister Baron Clemens von Ketteler was killed in the streets, and the legations fortified their compound. On 21 June Cixi issued a decree, in the name of the Guangxu Emperor, that amounted in effect to a declaration of war against the foreign powers. The wording was unofficial because the emperor himself was under house arrest, and the decree named eleven states, including the eight members of the alliance and Spain, the Netherlands and Belgium. Other accounts note that neither the Chinese nor the foreign allies issued a formal declaration of war, which is one reason the legal status of the conflict remains disputed.

The siege of the legations lasted from 20 June to 14 August 1900, or 55 days, marked by intense combat and a brief truce. Chinese regular troops and Boxers besieged the compound, but their attacks lacked consistent determination. Around 900 soldiers, sailors, marines and civilians of various nationalities, along with about 2,800 Chinese Christians, sought shelter in the Legation Quarter. Earlier, the powers had seized the Taku Forts on 17 June, which brought more foreign troops ashore. A first relief column of sailors and marines under Admiral Edward Seymour was turned back on 26 June. A second and much larger force, drawn from the eight nations of Britain, the United States, Japan, Russia, France, Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy, marched from Tianjin on 4 August. It defeated Chinese forces at Beicang and Yangcun before it arrived in Beijing on 14 August. The Alliance army, of about 20,000 troops under the British general Alfred Gaselee, then plundered the capital and surrounding countryside, and summarily executed those suspected of being Boxers. Germany's Alfred von Waldersee later took command of the Alliance forces in September 1900.

Cixi, the emperor and senior officials had already left the city. They fled Beijing for Xi'an once it became clear that the allied forces would take the capital. Li Hongzhang was sent back to negotiate with the Alliance.

The Final Protocol, usually called the Boxer Protocol, was signed on 7 September 1901 by Prince Qing (Yikuang) and Li Hongzhang, together with representatives of eleven nations. Its terms included punishment for officials who had backed the Boxers, the stationing of foreign troops in Beijing, the destruction of the Taku Forts, and a two-year ban on importing arms. Its most consequential provision was the indemnity. China owed 450 million taels of silver, to be paid in thirty-nine annual installments with an interest rate of 4 percent. The sum was calculated at one tael of silver per person, based on the population of the time. Because the Qing government could not pay the full amount at once, the debt was effectively converted into a long-term loan, and the total principal and interest reached 982,238,150 taels, secured by customs duties, inland transit duties and the salt tax.

The indemnity had lasting effects on Qing finances and governance. Its payments were drawn from revenue streams that foreign-supervised customs and salt administration already controlled, which deepened foreign control over Chinese fiscal sovereignty. The shares were uneven: Russia 28.97%, Germany 20.02%, France 15.75%, Britain 11.25%, Japan 7.73%, United States 7.32%, Italy 7.32%, with smaller portions for other states. One estimate put the sum at more than four times the annual revenue of the Qing state, and the annual payments at about one-fifth of the national budget. The debt also increased the Qing government's dependence on foreign loans in the following years, a pattern that linked indemnity obligations to the scramble for railway concessions. Some historians see the protocol's fiscal burden as one of the pressures that weakened the dynasty in the decade before its collapse. Later, the United States began returning part of its share in 1909, and the funds were used to finance scholarships for Chinese students.

New Policies and late Qing reform

The New Policies, usually dated from 1901, were the last major reform program of the Qing dynasty. Late Qing reforms started in 1901, and since they were implemented with the backing of the Empress Dowager Cixi, they are also called Cixi's New Policies. The program was launched after the Boxer defeat, and its aim was to keep the dynasty in power through changes in politics, the economy, the army, culture and education. Cixi's own position had shifted. In a January 1901 edict she had condemned the proposals of Kang Youwei as "mutinous laws [luanfa], not true reforms [bianfa]", yet the court soon asked senior officials for their own reform plans. Zhang Zhidong and Liu Kunyi put forth a series of reforms under the rubric of the "new policies." One account of her approach holds that the Manchu/Qing Dynasty be preserved and that all reforms must come from and be implemented and controlled by the central government.

The most consequential early step was the end of the traditional examination system. In 1905 the Qing announced the end of the examinations from the next year, abolishing the 1,300-year-old system as new-style schools grew rapidly. Some scholars have pointed to resistance from local gentry as a factor, and one reading holds that the decision was when this met resistance by local gentry a response to the spread of Western-style education. Others have argued that abolition was a symptom of the dynasty's decline rather than a cause of it. The government initially intended to replace the imperial examinations with a new form of civil service exam; however, little progress was made in its creation. In its place the court built a school system. The court established a modern school system of primary, secondary, and higher schools modeled on Western examples. A new Ministry of Education was created to oversee this national network. The government also sponsored thousands of students to study abroad (especially in Japan), a policy that later produced a generation of politically active graduates.

Constitutional reform was the most ambitious element of the late program. Following a 1905 decision to send ministers abroad to study foreign governments, the court moved in stages. On the 6th of June, 1906, an Office of Investigation of Governmental Methods was established, and five days later an edict was issued announcing the purpose of the Court to give the country a constitution. A decree of 1 September 1906 formally declared preparation for constitutionalism, although its title stressed bureaucratic reform as much as representative government. In 1907 the study body was reorganized as the "Constitutional Study Commission". The turning point came in 1908. On August 27, 1908, the Qing government promulgated the Outline of Imperial Constitution, establishing a constitutional monarchy framework. The accompanying timetable, which was declared by edict in 1908, with an opening of Parliament by 1917. Provincial assemblies followed, and the court promulgated the Provisional Provincial Assembly Charter and Member Election Regulations, ordering all provinces to establish them within a year. Reformist scholars and activists found the schedule too slow, and began pressing the Court to shorten the period of preparation.

Tensions between conservative and reform-minded officials ran through every stage of the program, and Yuan Shikai was at the center of many of them. Yuan had gained influence through the New Army, and Cixi moved to limit his power. It was Cixi who first stripped Yuan Shikai of his control over four of his six Beiyang divisions and turned them over to the Ministry of the Army. Personnel changes also shifted the balance at court. In 1907 the Empress Dowager appointed him as the Minister of Posts and Communications and allowed him to remain in the capital to Cen Chunxuan, which shifted the balance of power toward reformist and Cen-aligned officials. Some senior councillors resisted more drastic moves against Yuan; Grand Councilors Yikuang, Shixu, and Zhang Zhidong strongly argued against this, believing such an action might force the Beiyang Army to take drastic measures. The break came in late 1908. Prince Chun was prevented from executing his plan of having Yuan Shikai assassinated, but managed to have Yuan dismissed from office and sent home to Henan on an excuse of "curing his foot disease". Historians debate whether these dismissals reflected a coherent reform strategy or a series of reactive moves, and the sources differ on how far Cixi herself directed each step.

Arts, patronage and court culture

Theatre and performance

Cixi was one of the most active patrons of theatre at the late Qing court. Beginning in 1884, the Empress Dowager Cixi became a regular patron of Peking opera, cementing its status over earlier forms like Kunqu. She also supported both Kunqu and the younger Peking opera (Jingju). By the 1860s, Peking Opera was so ensconced at court that, under the supervision of the Empress Dowager Cixi, a school for training eunuchs to sing in the style was established at the Qing court. Her enthusiasm also shaped performance spaces. She even had two stages built in the Summer Palace, as well as a smaller stage in her private quarters, and often summoned the city's most gifted artists to the royal palace to perform for her. The largest of these, the Grand Theatre in the Garden of Virtuous Harmony, was constructed from 1891 to 1895 and was specially built for the 60th birthday of Empress Dowager Cixi. Accounts of how often she attended vary; one source states that the Empress Dowager Cixi watched some 260 operas at the grand theater in the Summer Palace.

Peking opera at this time was also a gendered institution. Peking opera was initially an exclusively male pursuit. There were bans on female performers and major limitations on female audience members, so the art form mainly catered to the tastes of male audience members. Cixi's court therefore promoted a form that was both nationally prominent and still shaped by the restrictions of its time. Stage imagery also fed into her self-presentation: photographs from the court were sometimes posed in staged vignettes that alluded to famous scenes in court theater.

Court photography

Cixi embraced photography, which had reached the Qing court within her lifetime. She embraced the new art of photography, commissioning many photographic portraits from 1903-1904. The principal court photographer was Yu Xunling (c.1880–1943), who dictated the composition and content of the photographs to her court photographer. Sitting in an outdoor studio, all were taken in the same makeshift outdoor studio in front of the Leshoutang in the New Summer Palace. Her costumes varied considerably, and Cixi's attention to appearance, ingrained from her days as as a young imperial concubine and heightened by her great love of theater, was central to the series. Some images were used diplomatically: Cixi's official portraits were bestowed on foreign leaders and, at times, her high officials. Others stayed in the palace; Cixi had the photographs she liked enlarged, mounted in elaborate frames, and hung in her bedroom. Photographs also drew on religious iconography. In her photographic portraits, Cixi similarly dressed as Guanyin and had her eunuchs play Weituo and other Buddhist supplicants.

Western-style and painted portraiture

Alongside photography, Cixi commissioned painted portraits in both Chinese and Western manners. She commissioned artist Katharine A. Carl to do the painting for the 1904 St. Louis Exposition, hoping to boost U.S.-China relations at a fraught time. Carl did the portrait in the Art Nouveau style. The sittings were not always easy for the sitter. With multiple painting sessions that differed greatly from Chinese approach, where painters were to paint after looking at the subject for only one session, the Empress soon started to voice how she found it extensively confrontational to be stared at for such a long time. Symbolic content was carefully specified: to foreground her position as the Empress Dowager, she insisted on including the phoenix and peacock in the imagery. China: Empress Dowager Cixi (1835-1908) painted by Hubert Vos (1855-1935) in 1903. Chinese-style works also survive, such as a scroll that presents her as a Guanyin figure, which the Empress Dowager Cixi was fond of having herself painted.

The Summer Palace reconstruction

The Summer Palace (Yiheyuan) was the most important architectural project of her later years. The original garden was first constructed in 1750. It was razed to the ground by the Anglo-French Allied Forces in 1860. Reconstruction dates given in sources vary: one gives 1886, with funds that it had misappropriated from the Imperial Navy and other sources, while another dates the work from 1884 to 1895. The renamed garden was intended as a summer retreat; renamed Yihe Yuan two years later—often rendered as the Garden of Nurtured Harmony—it was intended to serve as a summer resort for the Empress Dowager Cixi. The complex combined functions: the Summer Palace combined political and administrative, residential, spiritual, and recreational functions within a landscape of lakes and mountains. Its most elaborate restoration was the eight-tiered Tower of Buddhist Incense, the most elaborate and expensive restoration project of Cixi's grand redesign. Her living quarters and the Long Corridor, where thousands of artworks adorn every crossbeam, column and ceiling arch, depicting scenic views from around China, much-loved myths, Buddhist scenes and folk tales., displayed the court's taste. The site's meaning changed after 1900. On both occasions the palace was rebuilt by Empress Dowager Cixi, and to many Chinese people the palace became a symbol of national and cultural resistance in the face of foreign barbarism.

Collections and the preservation of court art

Court art under Cixi combined inherited traditions with new imports. Her reign expanded court decorative arts and opera in bold new ways. Court objects also carried rank: a 2010s exhibition of the holdings of the most powerful empresses included imperial portraits, narrative paintings, sumptuous furnishings, even gold chopsticks, that testify to a given empress's elevated rank. Attribution remains a difficulty. An opera diorama is purported to have belonged to the Empress Dowager Cixi (1835–1908), an avid patron of Peking opera. Surviving photographs are also scarce; few original photographs of Cixi survive. The collections of the museum institutions that hold her photographs, paintings and objects now form the main evidence for how the court presented itself, and how far its arts were preserved as part of the cultural heritage of the Qing.

Gender, power and the image of female rule

Cixi's authority has to be read against a Confucian framework that tied legitimate rule to men and assigned women to the inner, domestic sphere. Political action by women was regarded as improper, and the fear that female agency could disturb the cosmic order shaped how later writers described female rulers. Under this framework, the Han-era Empress Lü, who placed members of her own clan in key posts, and the Tang ruler Wu Zetian, who founded her own Zhou dynasty in 690 and styled herself emperor, became the standard negative examples. Cixi was later placed among these figures and often described in similar terms. The tradition also left a recognized path: a mother of the reigning monarch could exercise advisory influence without formally breaking the principle that women should not rule, and regency was an accepted, temporary channel for female power.

Cixi operated within and around these norms rather than openly against them. Her strongest claim rested on motherhood, since she had borne the only son of the Xianfeng Emperor, and she presented herself as the mother of both the young ruler and the state. She also drew on the cultural signs of the scholar-official class. Her practice of painting and calligraphy, traditionally tied to literati ink culture, was a deliberate alignment with male learning. Ying-chen Peng reads an 1865 portrait that includes a snuff bottle and a book, objects coded as male, as a claim to the capacity to rule like a man. Her religious self-presentation was equally deliberate. Court usage of "Old Buddha" (lao fo ye), a title borne by Qing emperors, was formally extended to her in 1894, and she had herself photographed and painted as Guanyin, the bodhisattva of mercy. Peng argues that the Guanyin images offered a model of fertility that did not depend on her sexuality, a model that had been available to older women in Buddhist iconography.

Her gender also shaped how foreign and domestic observers recorded her. Political opponents frequently framed their disagreements with her as a critique of her legitimacy as a woman, attributing policy failures to the supposed limits of her sex. Late Qing reformers such as Kang Youwei, who had been close to the Guangxu Emperor, circulated stories of scandal at the palace; these accounts were later repeated by British writers such as J.O.P. Bland and Edmund Backhouse, whose 1910 book helped fix a picture of a cruel, licentious ruler. Western cartoons pictured her as a bloated tyrant, a witch, or a murderess. Other accounts were more favourable. Princess Der Ling's 1911 memoir presented an aging woman who was fond of beautiful objects and reflected on her failures, and some officials had earlier praised her as a sage-like ruler, a "female Yao or Shun." Western-style portraits, including the work of the American painter Catherine Carl, and photographs sent abroad as diplomatic gifts were also reworked with retouching and Chinese brushwork, which complicated their claims to realism.

Recent scholarship has examined these images more closely. Peng's study of Cixi's image-making treats her portraits, commissions and art patronage as strategies for extending her political room to manoeuvre, while noting the difficulty of a biographer who has almost no primary documents written in her own hand. Daniel Barish has argued that the truth lies somewhere between saintly and villainous readings, and that a large part of the record comes from political enemies. Scholars also point to Cixi's sponsorship of women's talent. She employed women court painters, notably Miao Jiahui, and gave them official rank and salaries; her government's investigation of women's schools during the constitutional mission of 1905–1906 was followed by edicts on schools for girls. Others caution that these advances were limited and did not fundamentally alter the gender norms of the time. Work on queenship and the household has reframed the question: rather than treating Cixi as an anomaly, it asks how women used motherhood, ritual, household networks and the arts to build authority, and why their success was so often described as illegitimate.

Historiography and contested reputation

Early twentieth-century verdicts

Historians writing in the early twentieth century, many shaped by nationalist and revolutionary politics, mostly held Cixi responsible for the decline of the Qing dynasty. Early twentieth-century historians, influenced by nationalist and revolutionary perspectives, overwhelmingly condemned her as responsible for China's decline. A durable popular image of Cixi as a cruel and greedy ruler took shape in 1910, when two British journalists published a book on her. The image of Cixi as a cruel and greedy tyrant gained historical traction in 1910, when Backhouse and another British journalist, J.O.P. Bland, published the book China Under the Empress Dowager. Contemporary reviewers regarded the volume as rigorous scholarship, yet a later assessment found that many of its sources were fabricated by its author. It was praised at the time for being a thoroughly researched biography, but as Seagrave notes, Backhouse forged many of the documents he cited.

Mid-century scholarship in the United States also shaped the framing. One historian recalled that in the mid-1950s, Cixi was routinely presented as a reactionary figure while Mao Zedong was admired. In the textbooks of that time, leading American scholars characterized Cixi as cruel, imperious, and opposed to the Westernizing reforms championed by progressive officials, all of whom were Han Chinese.

Accounts by foreign residents

Writings by foreigners in Beijing diverge sharply. The missionary Isaac Taylor Headland described her as "the only woman that ever ruled over one-third of the human race." The wives of diplomats offered a warmer view. In 1898 Sarah Conger, the wife an American diplomat, described Cixi as "bright and happy and her face glowed with good will. " There was no trace of cruelty to be seen. After 1900, Cixi commissioned photographs to repair her image. The use of Western apples in the photos may have been a subtle message of conciliation to the foreign powers occupying Beijing after the Boxer Rebellion. Those images had limited effect at home: soon after their production, copies of Cixi's photographs were sold in the streets of Chinese cities. In any case, the portraits did little to improve Cixi's reputation.

Archives and recent scholarship

Recent work relies more heavily on court and state records. Access to Manchu-language and archival holdings has opened new readings of the Qing, a development that began with a small group of American scholars in the 1980s. A handful of American scholars began to learn Manchu in the 1980s and took advantage of archival holdings in this and other non-Chinese languages that had long been held in Taipei and Beijing but had previously attracted little scholarly attention. Scholars also debate how to read these materials. Pamela Crossley observes that Chang has made impressive use of the rapidly expanding range of published material from the imperial archives. But understanding these sources requires profound study of the context. Other recent work has sought to correct the record on the sources themselves. Daniel Barish argues that it has mainly been the voice of the male critic that has been admitted into the archive when thinking about the Empress Dowager. Recent analyses have also discredited many of the sensational stories and suggest a more complicated woman than this caricature.

Popular biographies and the Jung Chang debate

Jung Chang's 2013 biography, Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China, is the most prominent recent attempt to revise the image. Chang presents a sympathetic portrait of the Empress Dowager Cixi, who unofficially controlled the Manchu Qing dynasty in China for 47 years, from 1861 to her death in 1908. The book argues that earlier accounts were one-sided: Chang argues that Cixi has been "deemed either tyrannical and vicious, or hopelessly incompetent—or both", and that this view is both simplistic and inaccurate. Chang presents Cixi as a modernizer and portrays Cixi as proto-feminist and a modernizer who "brought medieval China into the modern age," and she cites an 1902 decree against foot-binding as evidence of progressive intent. Early in her research, Chang discovered that Cixi was, in fact, the first Chinese ruler to have ordered the banning of foot-binding, in 1902.

Reviews were divided. The historian Jeffrey Wasserstrom, writing in the Financial Times, wrote that Chang provided solid arguments for seeing Cixi as an unusual and extraordinary woman and for pushing back against histories that characterized her as an enemy of progress but failed to make a case for seeing Cixi as a "wise moderniser" ahead of her time. Critics also questioned the reformist label, noting that it was the empress who crushed the Hundred Days' Reform movement — a modernization drive that might have saved the Qing dynasty — in 1898. Popular perceptions, meanwhile, have remained much simpler. She remains best known for corruption, chaos and humiliations suffered at the hands of foreigners.

Death, succession and the final years

The Guangxu Emperor died on 14 November 1908, and Cixi followed him the next day, on 15 November, in Beijing. The Guangxu Emperor died on 14 November 1908, followed by Empress Dowager Cixi, who died one day after the emperor. Cixi was about seventy-two. He had spent his final years under restriction: he lost his ruling powers and was placed under virtual house arrest at the Yingtai Pavilion of Zhongnanhai until his death. Modern testing of his remains has been reported as showing arsenic poisoning, and people suspect that Cixi poisoned him, but no one knows for sure. Whether the death was a poisoning, and who was responsible, remains a matter of speculation rather than settled fact.

Cixi's last major act was to settle the succession. On the day the Guangxu Emperor died, she issued an edict naming Prince Chun's eldest son, Puyi, as the successor. Because the emperor had no children, Puyi was "adopted" as the Guangxu Emperor's son; like the Guangxu Emperor before him, he was no longer nominally his biological father's son. The empress consort Longyu, the late emperor's widow, later took the boy as her own child, since she did not have any children with the Guangxu Emperor. Accounts of Puyi's age differ: one source gives a two year old boy named Puyi, while another describes him as her three-year-old grandnephew. His birth year of 1906 points to a child of about two. Puyi's formal reign is dated from 2 December 1908, and Prince Chun was appointed Prince-Regent to assist the new emperor.

The regency passed to Zaifeng, who was young and initially viewed favourably by reformers. The task of dealing with the Manchu-Han question and other issues passed to the twenty-five-year-old Zaifeng, who became regent for his young son Puyi. Among the constitutionalist reformers, hopes ran high, especially when it seemed that Zaifeng intended to "reverse verdicts" on the 1898 reforms. His first decisive step was against Yuan Shikai. On 2 January 1909 Zaifeng issued an edict relieving this powerful official of his posts on the Grand Council and at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, on the stated excuse of a "foot ailment." The public reason for Yuan's resignation was that he was returning to his home in the village of Huanshang, due to a foot disease. Yuan's removal was closely tied to the court's earlier politics: the Hundred Days' Reformists accused him of betrayal for tipping Ronglu off to their coup plan, which brought Yuan into Empress Dowager Cixi's favor. Some accounts add that the late emperor's will had called for Yuan's execution, but avoiding a death sentence, in January 1909 Yuan Shikai was relieved of all his posts by the regent, Prince Chun. The dismissal was followed by a purge of many of his supporters within the metropolitan and provincial bureaucracies.

The transition also shows how much Cixi had already shifted power before her death. Historians note that it was Cixi who first stripped Yuan Shikai of his control over four of his six Beiyang divisions, so Zaifeng's actions largely extended a trend she had begun. Yuan's position revived in 1911, when, after the Wuchang Uprising, the court renewed offers for Yuan's return, and Yuan eventually accepted, leaving his village for Beijing. In that crisis, Zaifeng was forced to resign from his regency, making way for Yuan to compose a newly created, predominantly Han Chinese Cabinet of his confidants.

Cixi's funeral was among the most elaborate of the late dynasty. She died in the Hall of Ceremonial Phoenix, and the funeral activities continued for almost 12 months. According to an essay published by the Imperial Museum in 2002, she was buried with jewellery and other luxury items worth about 1.2 million taels of silver. Among the rites, the burning of a giant funeral boat on August 30, 1909 was one of the most notable. Her burial place was in the Eastern Qing Tombs, about 125 km (75 miles) east of Beijing, in the Dingdongling tomb complex, along with Empress Dowager Ci'an. Cixi's tomb lies in the Putuo Valley, while Empress Dowager Ci'an's tomb is located in Puxiang Valley. The tomb had been long in preparation: the project lasted 13 years and was only fully completed a few days before Cixi's death. She was interred on the fourth day of the tenth lunar month in the first year of the Xuantong reign (1909). By contrast, the Guangxu Emperor was buried in the Chongling at the Western Qing tombs. The imperial burial complex was later targeted by looters, as in the early hours of June 8, 1928, warlord Sun Dianying led his army into the Eastern Mausoleums of the Qing dynasty.

Legacy and the fall of the Qing

The Qing dynasty ended only about four years after Cixi's death in 1908. The Xinhai Revolution began on 10 October 1911, when a bomb being assembled by members of a secret revolutionary society in a Hankou safe house detonated prematurely. Qing authorities then raided the group, and soldiers in the Wuchang garrison faced arrest or immediate action. On the night of 10 October, the Eighth Engineering Battalion mutinied. Uprisings followed in other provinces, and the revolution was less a unified national uprising and more a cascade of provincial secessions, many led by the very New Army officers the Qing had trained. The court recalled Yuan Shikai to command the Beiyang Army, and he was named prime minister in November 1911. He then negotiated with the revolutionaries rather than defeating them. Sun Yat-sen resigned in favor of Yuan, who would become president of the new national government if he could secure the abdication of the Qing emperor. On 12 February 1912, the Empress Dowager Longyu signed the abdication decree on behalf of the six-year-old Emperor Puyi, framing the transfer of sovereignty as a voluntary gift to the Chinese people. The decree ended imperial rule, and Sun Yat-sen had been inaugurated as provisional president of the new republic shortly before.

Debates over responsibility for the decline

Historians disagree about how much of the dynasty's collapse should be attributed to Cixi. The traditional view, which has been influential in both Western and Chinese writing, is harsh. She has been portrayed as the 'Dragon Lady': a cunning, manipulative and often spiteful ruler; an arch-conservative who resisted and sabotaged reform, even though it may have prolonged the Qing dynasty. The 1898 Hundred Days' Reform is central to this account. Many historians believed that by reversing the planned reforms, Cixi's conservatism had effectively eliminated China's last chance to effect peaceful change, hastening the dynasty's downfall.

Revisionist scholars question this framing. Recent historians have challenged views that Cixi was the main agent of Qing corruption and conservatism. They compare her to figures such as Marie Antoinette, arguing that she became a focal point for problems that predated her and lay beyond her control. Her record also includes policies that later reformers would recognize. Late Qing reforms started in 1901, and since they were implemented with the backing of the Empress Dowager Cixi, they are also called Cixi's New Policies. Those reforms did not prevent the fall of the dynasty. Despite the reforms and other political struggles the revolutionaries led the 1911 Revolution which resulted in the fall of the Qing dynasty. Jung Chang's 2013 biography pushes the revisionist case further, arguing that 'He was returning to the model that had been created by the Empress Dowager' in the reform era associated with Deng Xiaoping. Specialists have also criticized this interpretation, as discussed in the section on historiography.

Institutional inheritance

The Republic that replaced the Qing inherited a divided state rather than a unified bureaucracy. The revolution established Asia's first republic but left China politically fragmented, setting the stage for decades of warlordism and civil conflict. The late Qing reforms had already begun to transform institutions that the Republic later used. These included the abolition of the examination system, the spread of modern schools, and preparations for constitutional government. The Republic's leaders, including the Kuomintang and later the Chinese Communist Party, evaluated the late Qing record in different ways. Their interpretations often depended on whether they stressed the dynasty's failures or the continuity of reform. Anti-Manchu sentiment shaped many accounts of the period. Chang's account does not simply repeat the familiar points that Cixi has been obscured by misogyny and orientalist stereotyping, and the anti-Manchu sentiment running through Chinese nationalist narratives. Revolutionary propaganda was often explicitly hostile. Zou Rong, an eighteen-year-old student, wrote an essay calling Cixi a whore and advocated killing Manchus.

Cixi as a symbol

Cixi's symbolic status has changed over time. Biographers and historians have treated her as an emblem of obstruction and as an example of female power in a male-dominated system. Jonathan Spence described her as 'the only woman to attain a high level of political power in China during the Qing, and was consequently blamed for many of the dynasty's woes by men who thought she should not have been in power at all.' Chang uses the same figure to argue for a more favorable reading. She describes Cixi as a proto-feminist limited by a xenophobic and deeply conservative imperial bureaucracy. Her reception has been mixed. The book has received positive reviews, but critics have also cautioned against the level of Chang's praise for a woman largely demonized by history. In discussions of modernization, reform and women's authority in China, Cixi remains a reference point, and her career is used to argue for different conclusions about what the late Qing reforms achieved and what they failed to do.

Depiction in film, theatre and popular culture

Film and television

Screen portrayals of Cixi began with a largely external image. In Hollywood, over-the-top characterizations of the Empress Dowager as a wicked Asian "dragon lady" became a staple, culminating in such performances as Flora Robson's "yellow face" rendering in the 1963 film 55 Days in Peking. Only in the last few decades of film, theater, and television has a more complex version of the Empress Dowager emerged.

Chinese-language productions from Hong Kong supplied a more detailed, court-centred picture. The Shaw Brothers historical film The Empress Dowager (1975), directed by Li Han-hsiang, starred Lisa Lu, who portrayed Cixi on at least two earlier occasions in the successive Chinese language biopics The Empress Dowager and The Last Tempest (dir. Li Han-hsiang, 1975, 1976). Its plot centres on the gap between Cixi's assurances of autonomy to her nephew and the Guangxu Emperor's failed attempts to act against the eunuchs and officials who served her. The sequel to The Burning of Imperial Palace, the film tells the story of Cixi's consolidation of power. It stars Liu Xiaoqing as Empress Dowager Cixi, in a 1984 follow-up, Reign Behind a Curtain. Liu's portrayal of the character as ruthless is one of the better-known in this cycle.

Western-produced cinema also turned to her in the late twentieth century. In Bernardo Bertolucci's The Last Emperor (1987), Lisa Lu's darkly haunting cameo presents viewers with a still-menacing but more humane Cixi. In Li Lianying, the Imperial Eunuch (1991), she is a nuanced and even sympathetic figure. Though still portrayed as xenophobic and selfish, Cixi now is seen with a vulnerable and empathetic side as well.

Television drama brought the story to a wider domestic audience and made the question of historical fidelity more visible. The Sino-Japanese serial The Pleiades was a 28-episode production set in the late Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), explores the power struggle in the imperial court between Emperor Guangxu and his mother, the Empress Dowager Cixi. Its producer maintained that the work was fiction rather than documentary, and sought to show the human part of the history, which is seldom seen on the Chinese screen. A comparative study of Chinese historiography and television drama notes that official Chinese historiography portrays the Empress Dowager Cixi (1835-1908) as a corrupt, conservative, deceitful, evil, and malicious woman, and that the TV series is framed with the aid of scientific methods and from the point of view of historical materialism.

Theatre and opera

Cixi's connection to the stage is also a matter of patronage rather than only of representation. In the beginning this new style was known only in the capital, where it gained great favour in the reign of the Empress Dowager Cixi (1835–1908). During the final decades of the nineteenth century, the Dowager Empress Cixi was a notable supporter of Beijing opera. The most famous stage was Deheyuan, built inside Beijing's Summer Palace in the late nineteenth century for Empress Dowager Cixi. Beijing opera's traditional repertoire includes more than 1,000 works, mostly taken from historical novels or traditional stories about civil, political and military struggles. The genre's heritage status was later recognized: in 2010 Peking Opera was declared an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO.

Novels, popular history and public memory

Popular histories and biographies have shaped how general readers encounter Cixi. Jung Chang's 2013 biography Empress Dowager Cixi attempts to revise this common portrayal, and a review of the book notes that Cixi's story is reinterpreted through a feminist lens. The same review observes that her methods, called 'crafty' by other historians are seen as 'resourceful' by Chang. What is 'manipulative' to some is reframed as 'political'. The book's reception illustrates how vocabulary alone can shift a reader's judgment.

Stage and screen works also reflect contested historical claims. Sorrows of the Forbidden City plays on what has become the common understanding of events, according to which Cixi was extremely reactionary and concerned with maintaining her own power, even at the expense of China. However, this narrative has been questioned by some historians.

Accuracy and the shaping of public memory

Several factors make the accuracy debate difficult to settle. Cixi left a small written record of her own: she left few written compositions to posterity and most of her daily affairs were handled orally. Dramatists and filmmakers therefore fill gaps with invention, and audiences may take those inventions as history. The Pleiades producer's distinction between drama and documentary is one attempt to address this. Other critics approach the problem from the reverse direction, arguing that official narratives themselves were shaped by political purposes, and that dramatic works can reopen those questions. Across the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, the shift from caricature to a more ambivalent figure, one who is both menacing and vulnerable, has been the most consistent change in how her image circulates.

References

1. Empress Dowager Cixi - New World Encyclopedianewworldencyclopedia.org
2. Empress Dowager Cixien.wikipedia.org
3. Empress Dowager Cixi（An important political figure of the late Qing Dynasty.）_Baiduwikibaike.baidu.com
4. Empress Dowager Cixi Biography - Facts, Childhood, Family Life & Achievementsthefamouspeople.com
5. Cixibritannica.com
6. Cixi, the controversial empress dowager who modernized Chinanationalgeographic.com
7. Empress Dowager Ci%27anen.wikipedia.org
8. Imperial Noble Consort Zhuangjingen.wikipedia.org
9. Consort Qing (Xianfeng)en.wikipedia.org
10. Consorts of the Xianfeng Emperoren.wikipedia.org
11. Tongzhi Emperoren.wikipedia.org
12. Prince Gong: A Life of Fortune and Misfortunesothebys.com
13. Yi Xin (Prince Kung) and Empress Dowager Cixisubsites.chinadaily.com.cn
14. Xianfeng Emperoren.wikipedia.org
15. Xinyou Coupen.wikipedia.org
16. Sushun (Qing dynasty)en.wikipedia.org
17. Yixuan, Prince Chunen.wikipedia.org
18. Empress Dowager Ci'anen.wikipedia.org
19. Wanzhenen.wikipedia.org
20. Qing dynastyen.wikipedia.org
21. Prince Gongen.wikipedia.org
22. Zongli Yamenen.wikipedia.org
23. (1) Strengthening the Nation via Emulating the Westchiculture.org.hk
24. Self-Strengthening Movementen.wikipedia.org
25. Sigh of His Highnessen.wikipedia.org
26. Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the Qing Dynastyenglish.visitbeijing.com.cn
27. Wenxiangen.wikipedia.org
28. Tongzhi Restorationen.wikipedia.org
29. Guangxu Emperoren.wikipedia.org
30. Empress Xiaozheyien.wikipedia.org
31. Zeng Guofanen.wikipedia.org
32. Li Hongzhang（Li Hongzhang was a politician, diplomat, and military commander of late Qing dynasty China.）_Baiduwikibaike.baidu.com
33. China's Self-Strengthening Movementebsco.com
34. tongzhi restoration and self-strengthening movement (1861-1894); Flashcardsquizlet.com
35. Eight Bannersen.wikipedia.org
36. Han Chinese Eight Bannersen.wikipedia.org
37. QING MILITARY INSTITUTIONS AND THEIR EFFECTS ON GOVERNMENT, ECONOMY, AND SOCIETY, 1640–1800cambridge.org
38. 1 / Separate and Unequaluw.manifoldapp.org
39. What Constitutes the Modern Multi-Ethnic Nation-State of China? An Analysis of How the Late Qing New Policies Shaped Modern Multi-Ethnic Chinamdpi.com
40. The Fall of the Scholar-Officials: Causes and Legacyexplaininghistory.org
41. Empress Dowager Cixi - Her Later Years (Part two) - History of Royal Womenhistoryofroyalwomen.com
42. Empress Dowager Cixi: Rightly Condemned or Wrongly Discredited?thecollector.com
43. Empress Dowager Cixi - Her Early Years (Part one) - History of Royal Womenhistoryofroyalwomen.com
44. Guangxu Emperor 光绪皇帝medium.com
45. Cixi (1835–1908)encyclopedia.com
46. Industry in Tianjinen.wikipedia.org
47. Beiyang Fleeten.wikipedia.org
48. Beiyang Fleet（Late Qing dynasty naval fleet）_Baiduwikibaike.baidu.com
49. The Self-Strengthening Movementalphahistory.com
50. Baoding, Zhili (Hebei) and Late Qing Industrializationsinocities.substack.com
51. Crossed Wirestheworldofchinese.com
52. Decauville railway Tianjin %E2%80%93 Jinnanen.wikipedia.org
53. Chinese, Imperial Maritime Customsencyclopedia.com
54. Working Paper No. 06/04 Imperialism, Globalization, and Publiclse.ac.uk
55. Summer Palace — Grokipediagrokipedia.com
56. Robert Hart and the Chinese Maritime Customs Service - The Gale Reviewreview.gale.com
57. Yuanmingyuan Revisited: The Confrontation of China and the Westsdonline.org
58. Li Hongzhangbritannica.com
59. Self-Strengthening or Self-Deception? China, 1861–1895explaininghistory.org
60. Sino-French Warhistorica.fandom.com
61. Tianjin Accorden.wikipedia.org
62. Battle of Fuzhouen.wikipedia.org
63. Fujian Fleeten.wikipedia.org
64. Treaty of Tianjin (1885)en.wikipedia.org
65. Sino-French Warfiveable.me
66. Treaty of Shimonosekiomniatlas.com
67. Kwantung Leased Territoryen.wikipedia.org
68. Treaty of Shimonosekibritannica.com
69. 1895 Japanese invasion of Taiwanen.wikipedia.org
70. Zongli Yamen（a specially established central institution of the Qing government for handling Western affairs and diplomatic affairs）_Baiduwikibaike.baidu.com
71. MIT Visualizing Culturesvisualizingcultures.mit.edu
72. The Empress Dowager Cixi with foreign envoys’ wives - Smithsonian's National Museum of Asian Artasia-archive.si.edu
73. Chonghouen.wikipedia.org
74. The Sino-French War: an Overviewchiculture.org.hk
75. Treaty of Shimonoseki — Definition &…modeldiplomat.com
76. (5) Signing of the Treaty of Shimonosekichiculture.org.hk
77. The Sino-Japanese War at Sea 1894en.wikipedia.org
78. Hundred Days of Reform - New World Encyclopedianewworldencyclopedia.org
79. Hundred Days of Reformbritannica.com
80. Hundred Days Reform_Baiduwikibaike.baidu.com
81. English Channelcctv.com
82. Hundred Days' Reformen.wikipedia.org
83. Liu Guangdien.wikipedia.org
84. Tan Sitongen.wikipedia.org
85. Hundred Days of Reform — Definition & Meaningmodeldiplomat.com
86. Six gentlemen of the Hundred Days%27 Reformen.wikipedia.org
87. China - The Hundred Days' Reform and the Aftermathcountrystudies.us
88. Pujunen.wikipedia.org
89. Lin Xuen.wikipedia.org
90. Hundred Days of Reformsalphahistory.com
91. Eight-Nation Alliancemilitary-history.fandom.com
92. The Boxer Rebellioncourses.lumenlearning.com
93. Boxer Rebellionebsco.com
94. The Boxer Rebellion: Causes, Siege of Legations, Eight-Nation Alliance & Impact [Complete Guide] - IAS NOVAiasnova.com
95. Qing Court Declares War (June 18, 1900) — History Tickerhistoryticker.com
96. ‘Destroy the foreigners’: The Boxer Rebellion, November 1899-September 1901the-past.com
97. Siege of the International Legationsen.wikipedia.org
98. (3) The Invasion of the Eight-Nation Alliancechiculture.org.hk
99. Boxer Rebellionen.wikipedia.org
100. The Boxer Rebellionorigins.osu.edu
101. America: The Boxer Indemnity Scholarship Programlink.springer.com
102. Boxer Uprisingencyclopedia.com
103. Boxer Indemnity_Baiduwikibaike.baidu.com
104. Boxer Protocol Definition and Impactmodeldiplomat.com
105. Boxer Protocolen.wikipedia.org
106. China Consortiumen.wikipedia.org
107. Siege of the International Legations (1900)britannica.com
108. Battle of Peking (1900)military-history.fandom.com
109. The Boxer Rebellionnam.ac.uk
110. Battle of Yangcunen.wikipedia.org
111. Late Qing reformsen.wikipedia.org
112. Late Qing Reforms - Wikidatawikidata.org
113. 2 / Cixi and the “Peculiar Institution”uw.manifoldapp.org
114. China Allows Some Western Reformsebsco.com
115. Abolition of the Imperial Examinations · China Through Timehistory.zhongshutime.com
116. 1909 Chinese provincial electionsen.wikipedia.org
117. The New Policies (1901–1911): Reforms and Resistanceexplaininghistory.org
118. Historical Documents - Office of the Historianhistory.state.gov
119. 107 WHY LATE QING CONSTITUTIONAL REFORM FAILED: ANtsinghuachinalawreview.law.tsinghua.edu.cn
120. 1 The Late Qing Political Consultative Assembly: Impeaching the Officials ofora.ox.ac.uk
121. Nineteen O Eight_Baiduwikibaike.baidu.com
122. 3 / Zaifeng and the “Manchu Ascendency”uw.manifoldapp.org
123. Cen Chunxuanen.wikipedia.org
124. Zaifeng, Prince Chunen.wikipedia.org
125. The Domino Effect: Abolishing the Imperial Examination System and the Downfall of the Qing Dynasty - NHSJSnhsjs.com
126. New Policies - Wikiwandwikiwand.com
127. Peking operaen.wikipedia.org
128. The origins of Peking Operathechinaproject.com
129. The History Of Peking Operatheculturetrip.com
130. Imperial delight[1]|chinadaily.com.cnchinadaily.com.cn
131. Presenting China's Last Empress Dowagersmithsonianmag.com
132. Empress Dowager Cixi - Loewentheil China Photography Collectionloewentheilcollection.com
133. PIETY & POWERvisualizingcultures.mit.edu
134. (#3203) AN IMPERIAL PORTRAIT OF THE EMPRESS DOWAGER CIXI AS GUANYIN ATTRIBUTED TO QU ZHAOLIN QING DYNASTY, GUANGXU PERIODsothebys.com
135. New Scholarship Is Revealing the Private Lives of China’s Empressessmithsonianmag.com
136. The Portrait of Empress Dowager Cixi by Katharine Augusta Carldailyartmagazine.com
137. 755 Cixi Stock Photos, High-Res Pictures, and Images - Getty Imagesgettyimages.com
138. Summer Palacesummerpalace.net.cn
139. Summer Palace - Imperial Garden of the Qing Dynastychinafetching.com
140. whc.unesco.orgwhc.unesco.org
141. Summer Palacelonelyplanet.com
142. Summer Palacebritannica.com
143. The Imperial Court - Nantucket Historical Associationnha.org
144. Piety and Power: The Theatrical Images of Empress Dowager Cixiquod.lib.umich.edu
145. Summer Palace, Beijing: Tickets, Opening Hours, Historytravelchinaguide.com
146. Evolution of Queenship as an Institution in Imperial China ...icsin.org
147. Gender Issues and the Distorted Narrative in - ProQuestproquest.com
148. Artful Subversion: Empress Dowager Cixi’s Image Making19thc-artworldwide.org
149. The Complex Image of Empress Dowager Cixi of the Qing Empire Daniel Barish - Columbia University Press Blogcupblog.org
150. Cixi and the Empowering of Women's Talent in Late Imperial China - Yale University Pressyalebooks.yale.edu
151. Power & Privilege: Facilitator Guidedenverartmuseum.org
152. Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China. By Jung Chang. (New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 2013. Pp. ix, 436. $30.00.) - Li - 2016 - Historian - Wiley Online Libraryonlinelibrary.wiley.com
153. Cixi: The Woman Behind the Thronesmithsonianmag.com
154. Cixi's Influence: Political Power and the Early Seeds of Women's Emancipation in Imperial Chinaryanfinancialdaily.com
155. (PDF) Women Rulers in Imperial Chinaresearchgate.net
156. Wu Zetian: A Female Emperor in a Male Stronghold » Martine Mussiesmartinemussies.nl
157. Beautiful, intelligent and power-hungry: how Wu Zetian became China’s only female emperorscmp.com
158. Old Buddha_Baiduwikibaike.baidu.com
159. A Picture Worth a Thousand Words — Coalition of Master's Scholars on Material Culturecmsmc.org
160. Was Empress Dowager Cixi the original cosplayerscmp.com
161. Princess Der Lingen.wikipedia.org
162. Sarah Pike Congeren.wikipedia.org
163. China’s iron ladyspectator.com.au
164. The Enigmatic Reign of Empress Dowager Cixi: Power, Controversy, and Legacy in Late Imperial China - Ancient War Historyancientwarhistory.com
165. cx essay03visualizingcultures.mit.edu
166. The Enigma of Empress Dowager Cixi: Power, Fortune, and Tragedy in Late Qing Chinaancientwarhistory.com
167. The Surprising Empressnybooks.com
168. Cixisites.asiasociety.org
169. POWER | PLAY: China’s Empress Dowagerasia.si.edu
170. powerplay chinas empress dowagertorch.si.edu
171. New Qing Historyen.wikipedia.org
172. Pamela Crossley · In the Hornets’ Nest: Empress Dowager Cixilrb.co.uk
173. Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern Chinaen.wikipedia.org
174. Jung Chang: A Grande Dame of China Writingchinabooksreview.com
175. 'Empress Dowager Cixi' Makes an Excellent Case for Historical Re-Evaluation » PopMatterspopmatters.com
176. Imperial Noble Consort Wenjingen.wikipedia.org
177. Empress Dowager Cixi: Her Life, Reign, and Mysterychinahighlights.com
178. Empress Dowager Longyuen.wikipedia.org
179. Cixiebsco.com
180. Puyien.wikipedia.org
181. Yuan Shikaimilitary-history.fandom.com
182. Yuan Shikaien.wikipedia.org
183. Yuan Shikai - New World Encyclopedianewworldencyclopedia.org
184. What you didn’t know about Cixiu.osu.edu
185. The Tomb of Cixi of the Qing Dynasty, east of Beijing. The tomb is a UNESCO World History Heritage Site Stock Photo - Alamyalamy.com
186. Dingdongling_Baiduwikibaike.baidu.com
187. Looting of the Eastern Mausoleumen.wikipedia.org
188. Cixi - Kidskids.britannica.com
189. The Guangxu Emperoralphahistory.com
190. 1909（Year）_Baiduwikibaike.baidu.com
191. Xinhai Revolutioncmcarchive.org
192. After the Fall: The Legacy of the Qing Dynasty and ...explaininghistory.org
193. 1911 Revolutionen.wikipedia.org
194. Dowager Empress Cixi: the 'Dragon Lady'alphahistory.com
195. The concubine who launched modern China - Taipei Timestaipeitimes.com
196. The Surprising Empresschinafile.com
197. Chinese Revolutionbritannica.com
198. Prime Minister of the Imperial Cabineten.wikipedia.org
199. Wuchang Uprisingen.wikipedia.org
200. Book Review: Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern Chinathediplomat.com
201. Empress Dowager Cixi - Explaining History Podcastexplaininghistory.org
202. Cixi’s Popular Legacy - Smithsonian's National Museum of Asian Artasia-archive.si.edu
203. Reign Behind a Curtainen.wikipedia.org
204. Behind the scenes with the Empress Dowager Cixi - China.org.cnchina.org.cn
205. Empress Dowager Cixiproject.zo.uni-heidelberg.de
206. “Theatre of the Capital” or the Peking Operadisco.teak.fi
207. L. Silverbergasianstudies.org
208. Peking Opera An Evolving Worldbeijing-visitor.com
209. The Cultural Heritage of China :: Entertainment :: Chinese Opera :: Beijing Operaibiblio.org
210. Sorrows of the Forbidden Cityen.wikipedia.org
211. Liu Xiaoqingen.wikipedia.org
212. The Empress Dowageren.wikipedia.org