Hundred Days Reform: China

The Singapore Indian community is much smaller than the Chinese community in the late nineteenth century and less organized.

By 1880 there are only twelve thousand Indians, including Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, and Christians, each group with its own temple, mosque, or church.

South Indians tend to be shopkeepers or laborers, particularly dockworkers, riverboatmen, and drivers of the ox carts that are the major transport for goods to and from the port area.

North Indians are usually clerks, traders, and merchants.

Both groups come to Singapore expecting to return to their homeland and are even more transient than the Chinese.

Malays continue to be drawn to Singapore from all over the archipelago, and will reach a population of thirty-six thousand by 1901.

Malay traders and merchants lose out in the commercial competition with Chinese and Europeans, and most Malay immigrants become small shopkeepers, religious teachers, policemen, servants, or laborers.

The leadership positions in the Malay-Muslim community go to the Jawi-Peranakan, because of their facility in English, and to wealthy Arabs.

In 1876 the first Malay-language newspaper of the region, Jawi Peranakan, had been published in Singapore.

Several other Malay-language journals supporting religious reform will begin in the early twentieth century, and Singapore will become a regional focal point for the Islamic revival movement that will sweep the Muslim world at that time.

China's ruling Qing dynasty begins to take an interest in the Nanyang Chinese in the latter part of the nineteenth century, and seeks to attract their loyalty and wealth to the service of the homeland.

Chinese consulates are established in Singapore, Malaya, the Dutch East Indies, and other parts of the Nanyang.

Hoo Ah Kay had been appointed Singapore's first consul in 1877.

He and his successors work diligently to strengthen the cultural ties of the Singapore Chinese to China by establishing a cultural club, a debating society, Singapore's first Chinese-language newspaper (Lot Pau), and various Chinese-language schools, in which the medium of instruction is Chinese.

One of the most important functions of the consul, however, is to raise money for flood and famine relief in China and for the general support of the Qing government.

With the upheaval in China following the Hundred Days' Reform Movement in 1898, and its suppression by the Qing conservatives, the Singapore Chinese and their pocketbooks are wooed by reformists, royalists, and revolutionaries alike.

Sun Yat-sen will found a Singapore branch of the Tongmeng Hui, the forerunner of the Guomindang (Kuomintang—Chinese Nationalist Party), in 1906.

Not until the successful Wuchang Uprising of October 10, 1911, however, will Sun receive the enthusiastic support of Singapore Chinese.

Opposition to the reform is intense among the conservative ruling elite, especially the Manchus, who, in condemning the announced reform as too radical, propose instead a more moder-ate and gradualist course of change.

Supported by ultraconservatives and with the tacit support of the political opportunist Yuan Shikai (1859-1916), Empress Dowager Cixi engineers a coup d'etat on September 21, 1898, forcing the young reform-minded Guangxu into seclusion.

Cixi takes over the government as regent.

The Hundred Days' Reform ends with the rescindment of the new edicts and the execution of six of the reform's chief advocates.

The two principal leaders, Kang Youwei (1858-1927) and Liang Qichao (1873-1929), flee abroad to found the Baohuang Hui (Protect the Emperor Society) and to work, unsuccessfully, for a con- stitutional monarchy in China.

The Qing emperor, Guangxu (1875-1908), orders a series of reforms aimed at making sweeping social and institutional changes in the one hundred and three days from June 11 to September 21, 1898.

This effort reflects the thinking of a group of progressive scholar-reformers who have impressed the court with the urgency of making innovations for the nation's survival.

Influenced by the Japanese success with modernization, the reformers declare that China needs more than "self-strengthening" and that innovation must be accompanied by institutional and ideological change.

The imperial edicts for reform cover a broad range of subjects, including stamping out corruption and remaking, among other things, the academic and civil-service examination systems, legal system, governmental structure, defense establishment, and postal services.

The edicts attempt to modernize agriculture, medicine, and mining and to promote practical studies instead of Neo-Confucian orthodoxy.

The court also plans to send students abroad for firsthand observation and technical studies.

All these changes are to be brought about under a de facto constitutional monarchy.

The Guangxu Emperor had been old enough in 1887 to begin to rule in his own right, but the previous year, several courtiers, including Prince Chun and Weng Tonghe, had petitioned Empress Dowager Cixi to postpone her retirement from the regency.

Despite Cixi's agreement to remain as regent, by 1886 the Guangxu Emperor had begun to write comments on memorials to the throne.

In the spring of 1887, he had taken part in his first field-plowing ceremony, and by the end of the year he had begun to rule under Cixi's supervision.

Eventually, in February 1889, in preparation for Cixi's retirement, the Guangxu Emperor is married.

Much to the emperor's dislike, Cixi selects her niece, Jingfen, to be empress.

She becomes known as Empress Longyu.

She also selects a pair of sisters, who become Consorts Jin and Zhen, to be the emperor's concubines.

The following week, with the Guangxu Emperor married, Cixi retires from the regency.

Empress Dowager Cixi has continued to influence decisions and actions of the Guangxu Emperor, even after had begun formal rule, despite residing several months of the year at the Summer Palace.

Weng Tonghe reportedly observed that while the emperor attended to day-to-day state affairs, in more difficult cases the emperor and the Grand Council sought Cixi's advice.

In fact, the emperor often journeys to the Summer Palace to pay his respects to his aunt and to discuss state affairs with her.

In March 1891, the Guangxu Emperor receives the foreign ministers to China at an audience in the "Pavilion of Purple Light", in what is now part of Zhongnanhai, something that had also been done by the Tongzhi Emperor in 1873.

That summer, under pressure from the foreign legations and in response to revolts in the Yangtze River valley that are targeting Christian missionaries, the emperor issues an edict ordering Christians to be placed under state protection.

The Guangxu Emperor tries to implement a series of draconian measures to reduce expenditures by the Imperial Household Department in 1892, which proves to be one of his few administrative successes—he had apparently had been instilled with the importance of frugality while growing up—but it was only a partial victory, as he has to approve higher expenditures than he would have liked to meet Cixi's needs.

Officials often ignore the Guangxu Emperor upon the outbreak of the First Sino-Japanese War, and instead sent their memorials to Cixi for her approval, even though is he nominally the sovereign ruler of the Qing Empire.

Eventually, two sets of Grand Council memoranda are created, one for the emperor and the other for the empress dowager, a practice that will continue until it is rendered unnecessary by the events in the autumn of 1898.