Hundred Days' Reform

Hundred Days' Reform
Traditional Chinese	戊戌變法
Simplified Chinese	戊戌变法
Transcriptions Standard Mandarin Hanyu Pinyin wùxū biànfǎ
Alternative Chinese name
Traditional Chinese	百日維新
Simplified Chinese	百日维新
Literal meaning	Hundred Days' Reform
Transcriptions Standard Mandarin Hanyu Pinyin bǎirì wéixīn

Transcriptions
Standard Mandarin
Hanyu Pinyin	wùxū biànfǎ

Transcriptions
Standard Mandarin
Hanyu Pinyin	bǎirì wéixīn

The Hundred Days' Reform (the Hundred days’ Reform movement) was a failed 103-day national cultural, political, and educational reform movement from 11 June to 21 September 1898 in late Qing dynasty China. It was undertaken by the young Guangxu Emperor and his reform-minded supporters. The movement proved to be short-lived, ending in a coup d'état ("The Coup of 1898", Wuxu Coup) by powerful conservative opponents led by Empress Dowager Cixi.

Guangxu (born 1871, reigned 1875–1908) ordered a series of reforms aimed at making sweeping social and institutional changes. He did this in response to weaknesses exposed by China's defeat by Japan in the First Sino-Japanese War in 1894-1895, not long after the First (1839-1842) and Second (1856-1860) Opium Wars; this blow came as a major shock to the Chinese, because Japan had been regarded as a tributary state, was much smaller than China, and was regarded as inferior. China also fought France in the Sino-French War from 1884 to 1885. Moreover, the defeat of China by Japan led to a scramble for "privileges" in China by other foreign powers, notably by the German Empire and Russia, further awakening the conservatives.

Before the First Sino-Japanese War, China engaged in technological modernization only, buying modern weapons, ships, artillery, and building modern arsenals to produce these weapons, and only giving their soldiers modern weapons without institutional reform, all the while declining to reform the government or civil society according to western standards - unlike Japan, which adopted western-style government with a Parliament and completely reorganized its army along western lines.

With the help of certain senior officials of the Qing court who supported reform, Kang Youwei was permitted to speak with the Emperor, and his suggestions were enacted. Some of Kang's students were also given minor but strategic posts in the capital to assist with the reforms. Essential preconditions of reform included:

The reformers declared that China needed more than "self-strengthening" and that innovation must be accompanied by institutional and ideological change.

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Wikipedia