The rise of Empress Dowager Cixi

This Week in China’s History: November 2, 1861

Last month’s Party Congress was noteworthy for many reasons, but one is that it demonstrated, again, that the senior leadership of the Communist Party in China is an exclusively male preserve. China is, of course, not alone in this. Currently, only about 10% of the world’s nations have a female leader, with most countries having never had one (including the United States). A reminder that this is the 21st century.

All of which is to say that in 19th-century China, it was an extraordinary feat for a woman to attain political power. So it was in November of 1861, when the Empress Dowager Cixi (慈禧太后 Cíxǐ tàihòu) engineered a coup that brought her to the head of the Qing dynasty — and saving it, in many ways.

To say China was in crisis in 1861 puts it too gently. The Taiping rebels were at their strongest, claiming half of China from their capital in Nanjing. Two other rebellions — the Nian in the east and the Panthay in the southwest — were at full throttle, taxing Qing armies to their limits and beyond. Treaties signed in 1858 and 1860 had ceded half a million square miles of Qing Manchuria and Eastern Siberia to Russia. The Second Opium War had ended the year before, confirming the power of Europeans in China and leaving Beijing’s grand Old Summer Palace a smoldering ruin. Most of the royal family had fled the capital to escape the fighting, including the Xianfeng emperor, whose leadership was as weak as his appetite for indulgence was strong. In mid-August, it became clear that the emperor — just 30 years old — was failing, and his heir was just six years old.

The day before he died, the Xianfeng emperor arranged for the succession to his child heir: An eight-person regency of generals and grand councilors, headed by the Manchu noble Sùshùn 肃顺, would supervise the affairs of government until the heir was ready to rule in his own right. Regencies were not controversial, and more than once, senior advisers had overseen Qing child emperors. Both the Shunzhi and Kangxi emperors had come to the throne before age 10, for instance.

Facing internal rebellion, foreign invasion, a crumbling economy, and the prospect of a toddler on the throne, there was little cause for optimism about the dynasty’s future. But one person took matters into her own hands: the new emperor’s mother.

Although she would become the face of the Qing dynasty — caricatured in the West as “the Dragon Lady” — for nearly half a century, the Empress Dowager Cixi had little claim to power in 1861. She had given birth to the heir, Zàichún 載淳, but she was not empress — the title typically given to the emperor’s chief consort. The chief consort was not always politically influential, but was generally the most important woman at court, and sometimes had the emperor’s ear. In this transitional period, the empress — Empress Dowager Ci’an — might wield more influence than usual. Moreover, Cixi had become friends with Ci’an, and negotiated with her to see how they might gain power.

But the path to power would require more than just these two. In the months and years leading up to Xianfeng’s death, Cixi cultivated relationships with several high-ranking officials, chief among them Prince Gong, also known as Yìxīn 奕訢. Prince Gong had been left to negotiate with the French and British when the royal family fled to the summer residence in Rehe, and was widely seen as one of the most capable and ambitious nobles in the dynasty. That reputation notwithstanding, factionalism at court had left Prince Gong on the outs when Xianfeng had named the regents for his heir. It also left Prince Gong as an obvious ally for the marginalized empresses dowager.

In her biography of Cixi, Jung Chang describes how Cixi invited Prince Gong to the summer residence — against the wishes of the deceased emperor — where she raised questions about the planning for a regency. The eight men who were appointed to oversee the young monarch had shown themselves to be spectacularly inept in their response to the foreign invasion of Beijing. Cixi arranged for Prince Gong to have a petition sent to the new regents suggesting that the two empresses dowager be given roles.

When the regents, predictably, refused to entertain this new arrangement, Cixi confronted them (Ci’an shied from public disagreements, leaving Cixi to conduct these meetings herself, further enhancing her power). Although Cixi formally acquiesced to the regents’ insistence on observing the late emperor’s wishes, in the process she provoked the regents to raise their voices, frightening the toddler-monarch. The breach of decorum would prove essential.

Cixi used her familiarity with court protocol to advance her plans. The emperor had died several hundred miles from Beijing, and of course his body had to be returned to the capital so that the proper funerary rites could be observed. Transporting an imperial corpse was no simple matter; it required an auspicious time. While the imperial astrologers settled on the right date to bring the body south, Cixi went ahead to make arrangements, ostensibly to prepare for the funeral, but those were not the most important preparations in Beijing.

In the capital, Cixi worked with both Prince Gong and one of Xianfeng’s brothers who had been similarly excluded from the regency. While Sushun accompanied the funeral procession, Cixi and Prince Gong politicked, dividing the regents’ allies and winning support for a new arrangement that would empower Ci’an and Cixi with the support of Prince Gong and his allies. Cixi used the regents’ abuse of the young emperor to discredit them, with support from Prince Gong and Xianfeng’s other brothers. Formally, they were charged with having bungled the negotiations with foreign powers and allowing both the invasion of the capital and the burning of the Yuanmingyuan. In this version of events, the eight advisers had spirited the emperor away from Beijing against his will and imposed their desire that they be appointed regents.

Soon, they were not just out of power: Sushun was beheaded — considered a mercy in contrast to the “death by a thousand cuts” that some called for. Two others were “given an offering of silk”: a length of cloth with which to hang themselves with. The five who remained were sentenced to exile. On November 12, 1861, an imperial edict declared that “all state matters will be decided personally by the two Empresses Dowager, who will give order to the Grand Adviser and the Grand Councilors to carry them out.”

Not yet 26 years old, Cixi was the de facto ruler of China, and would remain so for nearly 50 years. Her position remained fraught with irony: when her son was coronated as emperor, she was not present because the ceremony took place in a part of the palace forbidden to women.

Cixi’s rise to power was not without controversy. Conservative officials unhappy with a woman in control portrayed her as ruthless and immoral. To maintain power, she moved swiftly against anyone who challenged her rule, including Prince Gong, who was removed as regent in 1865 and purged again in 1874. She ruled behind the scenes throughout the tumult of the late 19th century, but resumed control of the government when she felt that the 100 Days’ Reforms of 1898 went too far and jeopardized the dynasty. Imprisoning her nephew, the Guangxu emperor, she resumed her role as regent.

When she died in 1908, just a day after the Guangxu emperor, the Qing had just three years left to it. Cixi has endured much criticism for her role in the dynasty’s decline, though others celebrate her as a reformer hemmed in by patriarchy. Needless to say, a political career that spanned nearly half a century is complex, but Cixi’s ability to navigate elite politics and rise to power in 1861 was a feat that, 150 years later, no woman has been able to replicate.

This Week in China’s History is a weekly column.