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  • Empress Dowager Cixi The Concubine Who Launched Modern China by Jung Chang
  • James Biedzynski
Chang, Jung. Empress Dowager Cixi The Concubine Who Launched Modern China. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2013, pp. 436.

Historical revisionism has become common across Chinese history in recent decades. Now, it is the turn of the infamous Empress Dowager Cixi (1835–1908) of the late Qing dynasty. Jung Chang has produced a well written, but controversial biography of the Dowager Empress. This book is provocative and definitely worth reading even if one does not agree with the author’s conclusions.

Jung Chang maintains that Cixi was a modernizer who selectively brought in Western technology to make China stronger. Cixi is also presented as a proto-nationalist who was mistrustful of Western powers and Japan in particular. The author tries to demolish the famous stories that Cixi opposed all railroad building and misused naval funds to build a palace shaped like a ship. Chang uses a considerable amount of archival sources in the book both in Europe and China. Numerous Chinese languages works appear in the bibliography. Despite its strengths, Empress Dowager does have some drawbacks.

Cixi was the concubine of Emperor Xianfeng (1861–1861) and bore him a son who became Emperor Tongzhi (1862–1875). After his death, Cixi’s nephew Guangxu (1875–1908) became Emperor. Both Emperors came to the throne as toddlers and died at a relatively young age. Cixi did regency work during their minority period and then stepped aside. Neither Emperor was particularly effective once they assumed power. Cixi did play a role in both Emperors’ education. We might ask how well she supervised either ruler. In the end, China might have been better off if Cixi assumed the throne in her own right.

In 1898, Cixi intervened to halt the infamous Hundred Days Reform. Chang depicts Kang Yu Wei as a schemer who sought power. Guangxu mishandled the Sino-Japanese War (1894–1895) very badly. Foreign intrusions accelerated in China over the next five years, which enraged the [End Page 318] Empress Dowager. Ultimately, she backed the Boxer movement in 1900, which resulted severe loss of life and a foreign invasion. China was in danger of partition thereafter. After 1901, Cixi pursued Western style reforms very avidly and was moving towards a constitutional government when she died in 1908.The Qing dynasty was gone four years later. At first glance, Cixi’s reforms seemed fruitless.

Chang presents Cixi in a far more positive light than earlier authors. She has caused me to rethink some of my assumptions regarding the late Qing period. I hope Sinologists and anyone interested in China will read this book and reflect upon it. Sometimes we do not know famous Chinese historical figures as well as we think we do. Perhaps somewhere, Cixi is smiling because of that.

James Biedzynski
Middlesex County College
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