110 China in World History
the Philippines in 1899, the U.S. government became worried that the
European powers and Japan might start fi ghting colonial wars with
each other in China. In September 1899, John Hay, America’s secretary
of state, issued a series of “Open Door Notes” to Britain, France, Ger-
many, Russia, Italy, and Japan, calling on all foreign powers in China to
allow free trade in all spheres of infl uence. The scramble for concessions
soon subsided, not because of Hay’s Open Door Notes but because the
foreign powers decided to ease pressures on the Qing court since they,
too, feared the breakup of China.
The humiliating defeat of Qing forces at the hands of Japan pushed
some Chinese to begin to call for the overthrow of the Qing dynasty, while
others called for radical reforms within the dynastic system. In the summer
of 1898, Kang Youwei, a brilliant Confucian scholar who admired Japan
for its rapid adoption of Western institutions and industrialization, gained
an audience with the young Guangxu Emperor, who was growing impa-
tient with his subordination to the Empress Dowager Cixi. The emperor
was so taken with Kang that within the short space of one hundred days,
he issued edict after edict announcing sweeping reforms, including the
introduction of Western subjects in Chinese education, the abolition of
thousands of sinecure positions, a crackdown on government corruption,
and a crash program of industrialization and Westernization.
Conservative offi cials quickly grew alarmed at the direction of these
pronouncements and approached the empress dowager to intervene.
When disciples of Kang Youwei countered by asking Yuan Shikai, the
leading military offi cial in the empire, to back the reformers in any con-
fl ict with conservatives at court, General Yuan reported this move to
the empress dowager, who immediately ordered the reform movement
crushed. The Guangxu Emperor was in effect imprisoned on the small
island in the lake of the Summer Palace, and Kang Youwei and his clos-
est disciple, Liang Qichao, fl ed to Japan to escape arrest and execution.
Six of Kang’s closest followers, including his younger brother, were
arrested and executed. One of them, Tan Sitong, refused to fl ee when
offered the chance, saying that effective change in China would require
the blood of martyrs.
With the reformers crushed after only one hundred days, conserva-
tives now seized control of the court, a dangerous turn of events that
happened to coincide with the boiling over of a sense of rage and frus-
tration in the north China countryside. During the severe drought of
the summer of 1899, secret society groups of peasants and illiterate day
laborers called the Boxers went on a rampage, capturing and killing any
foreigners they could fi nd. Most of this anger was directed at Western