1898: 103 Days, Hundreds of Edicts — Why Did Only One University Survive?
《神州大地》第 11 集 · 語言：English · 時長：17:00
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1898. Beijing. A group of scholars tried

to remake an empire that had run

for more than two hundred years

one imperial edict at a time.

They had a young emperor behind them,

and a great deal of paper.

One hundred and three days later,

it was all undone.

This episode does not go back over

what happened before. It stays inside those

hundred and three days: what they actually

did, and why they lost.

The man who led them was called

Kang Youwei. The war with Japan had

been lost, Taiwan ceded, and two hundred

million taels of silver paid in indemnity

we have covered that in earlier episodes.

One line is enough here: this reform

was not conjured from nothing.

It was forced by defeat.

Kang passed the provincial exams only after

several attempts, and took the highest degree

at thirty-six. His books are, academically,

contested. Scholars Liao Ping and Qian Mu

have argued that his reading of the

New Text classics forced the evidence

he liked to cast Confucius as a

precursor of institutional reform, to give reform

a theoretical root. That is an academic

judgment, and it is a separate matter

from the role he played in 1898.

One thing, though, is not disputed:

he could move a room, and he

had nerve. A man who failed the

examinations repeatedly, then rewrote the meaning of

the sage's texts to suit a programme,

had a certain audacity.

In 1895 he drafted a ten-thousand-word memorial overnight

and gathered examination candidates to petition against

the peace and for reform.

It came to be called the " Gongche

Shangshu" memorial. To be precise: that memorial

never actually reached Guangxu.

It circulated among the literati and became

a gesture. Checking the attendance register,

Mao Haijian (A Textual Study of the

Events of the 1898 Reform) puts the

actual number of signatories at around eighty.

Both accounts stand; neither is privileged here.

In June 1898, Guangxu received Kang Youwei in

audience. The emperor was twenty-seven; he had

reigned twenty-four years, but real power had

remained with Cixi all along — we have

covered that, so it gets one clause

here. After the audience, Kang did not

get into the Grand Council.

The Manchu grandees would not have it.

What he did get was a privilege:

the right to memorialise directly, bypassing the

ministries and reaching the emperor himself.

That was the opening.

From then on, reform edicts could bypass

the regular bureaucratic ladder and come straight

from the emperor's brush.

On 11 June, Guangxu issued the edict " Mingding

Guoshi" — establishing the national policy.

The reform had formally begun.

From that day, over the hundred and

three days, the court issued well over

a hundred edicts: abolish the eight-legged essay,

open schools, train a new army,

set up bureaus of agriculture, industry and

commerce, allow commoners to publish newspapers.

It was the first time in two

thousand years that anyone had tried to

refit the whole system at the institutional

level. But the more edicts there were,

the clearer the problem became.

An edict is not the same thing

as power. Those below could decline to

carry it out, could delay, could comply

in form and not in substance.

The provincial governors-general of the day

men like Zhang Zhidong and Liu Kunyi

mostly watched and waited.

Edicts flew out of Beijing; the provinces

stayed quiet. This was what many at

the time had not thought through:

an order on paper only becomes real

when someone carries it and pushes it.

Yet only days before Kang's audience,

Cixi had already issued three decrees of

her own. First: dismiss Weng Tonghe,

the emperor's tutor. Second: officials of the

second rank and above must present themselves

at the Summer Palace to thank the

empress dowager for their appointments.

Third: Ronglu becomes governor-general of Zhili,

commanding the Beiyang forces.

On their face these were routine arrangements.

In substance they returned the power of

appointment — and the troops — firmly to Cixi's

hands. The decisive point of a reform

was never how fine the edicts read.

It was who could appoint whom,

and who held the soldiers.

On that, Guangxu's side had already lost

ground.

Kang went further. He proposed a Bureau

of Institutions, with twelve specialised sub-bureaus beneath

it, which would bypass the Six Ministries

and draft regulations and drive the new

policies directly for the emperor.

To Kang this was efficiency.

To the entire court it was the

dismantling of a ministerial system that had

stood for centuries. The Six Ministries,

the Grand Council, the governors-general — all of

them were the ones being routed around.

So the opposition was not simply conservatism.

It was material interest.

The bureau was never established.

But the mere proposal had already turned

the whole officialdom against them.

Of the hundred and three days,

exactly one thing survived: the Imperial University.

On 3 July 1898 its charter was approved.

Sun Jianai became its first director of

studies; W. A. P.

Martin served as head instructor in Western

learning. Its site was the Hejia Princess

Mansion on Jingshan East Street — the area of today's

55 Shatan Houjie in Beijing's Dongcheng District.

The charter drafted by Liang Qichao called

it "the model for the schools of

all the provinces. " After the coup,

every other decree was annulled.

This school alone was kept.

It became the predecessor of Peking University.

Walk down Shatan Houjie today and those

old buildings are still standing, with a

heritage plaque marking the site associated with

Peking University's Red Building.

It is the one reform of 1898

still alive.

To see who was alienated, look at

where power actually lay.

The Manchu grandees were the first group

made uncomfortable. Abolishing sinecure offices, drawing in

military authority, requiring bannermen to earn their

own living — every cut pointed at their

livelihood. Ronglu was the key figure among

them. He held the Beiyang troops,

and he had Cixi's confidence.

The reformers wanted to go around him;

they could not go around the guns

he held. Then there were the unbending

conservatives — men like Gangyi and Xu Tong

who simply despised these "wild scholars" and

held that the ancestors' institutions could not

be changed. These people did not have

to end up on the other side.

It is a pity that the reformers'

manner left them no way down.

Start with the cut of offices.

What was cut was not only bureaus,

but the people inside them.

Remove one official and behind him stands

a household, disciples, old associates.

These people were not necessarily enemies.

They could have been won over,

placated, absorbed slowly. Reform in most dynasties

settled the old guard first and pushed

the new measures afterwards.

The reformers chose the fastest route:

one clean cut. Before they had worked

out where these people would go,

they had already taken away their posts.

The officials who were cut went straight

to the Summer Palace to complain.

And so the opposition was delivered to

the other side by the reformers' own

hands.

Then there is Kang Youwei himself,

and how he appeared at court.

Weng Tonghe's diary records that Kang was

"exceedingly wild" in company — he left no

room in argument, and even Weng,

the emperor's own tutor, was talked back

to. He gave little thought to tactics.

Grand Council members such as Sun Jianai

and Ronglu were men who could have

been managed; he made enemies of them

without need. It is recorded that he

even told Guangxu: do not abolish the

old offices, only add new appointments.

The words were right.

The manner pushed people away.

A man who wanted to do great

things turned everyone who could have helped

into people on the other side.

That is not a story about the

enemy being too strong; it is about

being too hurried. Too hurried to remember

that whether a reform succeeds often depends

less on how right your thinking is

than on how many people you can

hold together.

Money. Reform needed schools, a new army,

new enterprises. Every one of them burned

silver. Qing annual revenue in these years

is estimated by scholars at roughly eighty-three

to eighty-nine million taels of silver:

land-poll tax over twenty million, salt tax

over ten million, likin internal transit dues

over ten million, and maritime customs seventeen

to twenty-three million. (Source: scholarly estimates such

as Peng Yuxin, A Fiscal History of

the Qing.)But after 1895 the Qing was

already carrying heavy foreign debt.

Between 1894 and 1898, new foreign borrowing for indemnities and

loans accumulated to roughly three hundred and

fifty million taels. (Source: compilations of Qing

fiscal materials.)By 1899, servicing that debt

principal and interest — took close to thirty

percent of government revenue.

Guangxu also tried to raise money from

the public. In 1898 the government issued a

public bond of one hundred million taels.

It sold about one million before the

issue was halted. Credit is also a

resource of reform. When a bond will

not sell, it means the court's capacity

to borrow from its own people is

gone.

The reformers did not live in the

palace. Most of them lived in the

guild-hall quarter outside Xuanwu Gate.

Kang Youwei lived at the Nanhai guild

hall, on Mishi Hutong; Tan Sitong at

the Liuyang guild hall, on Beibanjie Hutong;

Liang Qichao at the Xinhui guild hall,

on Fenliuli Street. A few alleys apart,

within walking distance. Argument, drafting, night visits

all of it happened under these lamps.

Nearby were the Guangheju restaurant, the Heniantang

pharmacy, the courtyards of Fayuan Temple:

where they ate, bought medicine, and walked

off their moods. Most of these guild

halls no longer stand, or have become

private housing. At the Liuyang guild hall

site on Beibanjie Hutong a heritage plaque

still stands, marking that Tan Sitong once

lived here.

The reformers held edicts.

The other side held something else

troops, authority, and decades of accumulated weight.

Where was the opening?

Guangxu grew desperate, and sent a secret

edict to Kang Youwei and Tan Sitong:

the situation is critical, find a way,

quickly. Tan Sitong thought of a desperate

move: go to Yuan Shikai.

We have covered Yuan — the troops he

trained at Xiaozhan were the most presentable

modern force of the day.

One night Tan went to see Yuan

and asked him to bring his troops

up, surround the Summer Palace, and protect

the emperor. What passed that night,

no one can fully reconstruct.

The surviving accounts do not agree:

Yuan's own diary reads one way,

Liang Qichao's account another.

The version that spread widest is this:

Yuan went straight to Ronglu and informed,

and that triggered the coup.

Treating that as settled fact is what

many popular history programmes do.

But scholars have disputed it throughout.

Mao Haijian and other revisionists point out

that Cixi and Ronglu had already been

positioning themselves — Ronglu had already moved Nie

Shicheng's and Dong Fuxiang's troops toward Beijing,

which was not something that happened overnight.

Even if Yuan had done nothing,

that move would probably have gone ahead

anyway.

On 21 September 1898, Cixi resumed the regency and

placed Guangxu under confinement at Yingtai.

The reform, one hundred and three days

long, was over. Tan Sitong, Kang Guangren,

Lin Xu, Yang Shenxiu, Yang Rui and

Liu Guangdi — six men — were executed at

Caishikou. Tan could have left.

He did not. Liang Qichao records that

he was chivalrous by nature, careless with

money and loyal to friends, generous to

the point of extravagance.

When someone urged him to flee before

the end, he left a line:

" Reform in every country has come through

bloodshed; in China none has yet been

heard of who shed blood for reform,

and that is why the nation does

not flourish. " That was not a speech.

It was where his mind was before

he died. Caishikou is where the six

were killed; the Qing execution ground was

here. Go there today and you will

find a metro station, a shopping district,

and the old Heniantang pharmacy sign.

Nothing of the execution ground remains

even the archway that witnessed countless beheadings

has been pulled down.

Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao escaped

one to Japan, the other by a

long route overseas. Kang raised money among

overseas Chinese in the name of "rescuing

the emperor, " and the response was large.

But Feng Ziyou's Reminiscences of the Revolution

and related accounts record that a good

part of these sums went to his

own housing and expenses, and that he

lived rather grandly: a man in exile

keeping a fine house and travelling in

style, set against the stated aim of

saving his sovereign — a jarring contrast.

It should also be said that he

kept publishing newspapers abroad and maintained the

Protect the Emperor Society, carrying the reformist

case to a wider audience.

Back to the question at the start:

why did this reform fail?

The answer is not in the words

"the enemy was too strong. "

It is this: the thinking was right,

the path was rushed; the edicts were

many, the people were not secured;

there were friends available, and they were

pushed into being enemies.

Watching any reform today, the rule has

not changed: first count who is on

our side, and who we have pushed

to the other. Who holds the guns,

who holds the money, who holds the

appointments — those three are more solid than

a hundred edicts.

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