Guangxu Emperor

Zaitian (載湉), who reigned as the Guangxu Emperor, was the eleventh ruler of the Qing Dynasty counting Nurhaci and Hong Taiji, and the ninth to rule China proper. He was the second-to-last emperor of China, succeeded only by his nephew Puyi, the Xuantong Emperor. His era name, Guangxu (光緒), usually translated as "glorious succession", ran from 1875 until his death in 1908. His temple name is Dezong.

He came to the throne as a small child, and for most of his reign real power lay with his aunt, the Empress Dowager Cixi. In 1898 he launched the Hundred Days' Reform, an ambitious attempt to modernise the empire. It was ended by a coup in which Cixi resumed control, and the emperor spent the last ten years of his life as a virtual prisoner.

Succession to the Throne

Zaitian was born in 1871, the second son of Yixuan, Prince Chun, a son of the Daoguang Emperor. His mother was a younger sister of Cixi.

In January 1875 his cousin, the Tongzhi Emperor, died without a son. By custom the new emperor should have come from the next generation, so that he could be adopted as Tongzhi's heir. Instead Cixi secured the choice of her three-year-old nephew, who belonged to Tongzhi's own generation. The co-regent, Empress Dowager Ci'an, is said to have favoured a son of Prince Gong, but she was overruled.

To preserve the line of succession, Zaitian was adopted as the son of the Xianfeng Emperor, Cixi's late husband. Ci'an and Cixi again acted as regents.

Childhood Under Cixi

From 1876 the young emperor was taught by Weng Tonghe, a leading Confucian scholar who had also tutored Tongzhi and who became his closest adviser. When Ci'an died suddenly in 1881, Cixi was left as sole regent.

Guangxu formally came of age in 1887, but at the request of senior courtiers Cixi continued to supervise the government for two more years. In 1889 he was married. Cixi chose as empress her own niece, Jingfen, later known as Empress Longyu, and two sisters of the Tatara clan as consorts, Consort Jin and Consort Zhen. Shortly after the wedding Cixi formally retired, although she remained the most powerful figure at court.

The First Sino-Japanese War

In 1894 rivalry over Korea led to war with Japan. The emperor and his advisers favoured fighting, but China's modernised forces proved no match for the Japanese. The Beiyang Fleet was defeated at the Battle of the Yalu in September 1894 and destroyed at Weihaiwei early in 1895.

The Treaty of Shimonoseki, negotiated by Li Hongzhang and signed in April 1895, recognised Korean independence, ceded Taiwan and the Penghu Islands to Japan and imposed an indemnity of 200 million taels. Japan was also granted the Liaodong Peninsula, but had to return it after pressure from Russia, France and Germany.

The defeat was a profound shock. It showed the limits of the Self-Strengthening Movement, which had tried to adopt Western military technology without wider reform, and it encouraged the foreign powers to press for further concessions.

The Hundred Days' Reform of 1898

In the spring of 1895, while the treaty awaited ratification, the scholar Kang Youwei led more than a thousand candidates for the metropolitan examinations in a petition to the throne, urging the emperor to reject the peace and to reform the state. Kang and his student Liang Qichao became the leading voices of reform, and the emperor read their writings closely.

On 11 June 1898 Guangxu issued an edict announcing a programme of reform. Over the following hundred days or so he issued a stream of decrees. Among other things they:

• replaced the rigid "eight-legged essay" in the civil service examinations with questions on practical and current affairs;
• founded the Imperial University of Peking and ordered the conversion of old academies into modern schools;
• called for the modernisation of the army and the promotion of industry, commerce, railways and mining;
• abolished redundant government offices and sinecures;
• allowed ordinary officials and citizens to address memorials directly to the throne.

The reforms were drafted in haste and threatened many officials, who stood to lose their posts, their privileges or the value of their classical learning. Much of the bureaucracy ignored them, and conservatives looked to Cixi for protection.

The Coup and the Emperor's Confinement

As tension grew, the reformers sought military support from the general Yuan Shikai. Yuan is generally believed to have revealed their plans to Ronglu, Cixi's trusted ally. On 21 September 1898 Cixi returned to power. Most of the reforms were cancelled, although the Imperial University survived. Six reformers, among them Tan Sitong, were executed, while Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao escaped to Japan.

The emperor kept his title and continued to appear at audiences and to perform the great state sacrifices, but he never ruled again. He was confined to the Yingtai, a small island pavilion in the palace lake of Zhongnanhai.

His health was poor, and he had no children. In 1900 Cixi named Pujun, the son of Prince Duan, as heir to the late Tongzhi Emperor. Prince Duan was a leading supporter of the Boxers, and after the Boxer Rebellion and the occupation of Beijing by foreign troops in 1900 he was exiled and Pujun lost his position. During the flight from the capital in 1900, the emperor's favourite, Consort Zhen, died in a palace well, reportedly on Cixi's orders.

The Death of the Guangxu Emperor

The Guangxu Emperor died on 14 November 1908, aged thirty-seven. Cixi died the following day. Before her death she named the emperor's two-year-old nephew Puyi, son of his half-brother Zaifeng, as the new emperor.

The timing aroused suspicion from the start, and it was long rumoured that the emperor had been poisoned so that he could not outlive Cixi and return to power. In 2008, after a five-year investigation, Chinese forensic scientists and police reported that his hair and remains contained very high levels of arsenic, consistent with acute poisoning. The study did not identify who was responsible. Cixi, Yuan Shikai and the eunuch Li Lianying have all been suspected.

Porcelain of the Guangxu Reign

The imperial kilns at Jingdezhen, destroyed during the Taiping Rebellion and rebuilt in the 1860s, were productive through the Guangxu reign. Much of their work reproduced the classic forms and decoration of the Kangxi, Yongzheng and Qianlong periods, and the best pieces are carefully potted and painted. Large services were ordered for court occasions such as the emperor's wedding in 1889 and Cixi's sixtieth birthday in 1894.

The standard mark is the six-character Da Qing Guangxu nian zhi (大清光緒年製), usually written in regular script in underglaze blue. Guangxu-marked wares are found in quantity, and quality varies widely, so each piece has to be judged on its own merits. Our Qing dynasty porcelain collection includes pieces from the late Qing, among them an enamelled porcelain cup set.