Boxer and Qing Reforms

(1900-1911)
Reform from above, the failure of reforms and Qing downfall.
By 1900, the forms of imperialism were many and various. After Britain’s victory in the Opium War,
extraterritoriality protected foreigners from Chinese law everywhere, and treaty ports fell under foreign
administration.8 By 1890 thirty-three cities were open to foreign trade and residence, and between 1894 and
1917, 59 more were added to the list (missionaries could legally set up missions anywhere after the 1860s,
while businessmen were supposed to get a passport to travel inland). Not all the treaty ports housed sizeable
foreign populations, but sixteen cities contained concessions which foreigners and their home governments
directly administered: mini-colonies in effect beyond the jurisdiction of the Chinese government. The largest
concessions were in Shanghai. In 1898 China granted five leaseholds or more extensive territories:
• to Germany, Jiaozhou Bay in Shandong and over 500 square kilometers of the surrounding region, plus the
right to build railroad lines and quarry mines, for 99 years;
• to Russia, the Liaodong peninsula in southern Manchuria, for 25 years, plus the right to build a railroad line
from Port Arthur to Harbin and exploit timber and mines along it;
• to France, Guangzhouwan port in the southeast, for 99 years; to Britain, the New Territories opposite Hong
Kong (already made a supposedly permanent British colony after the Opium War), for 99 years; and also
• to Britain, Weihaiwei port, “for as long a period as Port Arthur shall remain in the occupation of Russia.”
The Powers also lay looser claim to spheres of influence: areas dominated by one of
the Powers through a combination of treaty rights and de facto military presence.
Spheres of influence coincided with economic penetration: Britain dominated the
lower and central Yangzi River valley and the Guangzhou area (from Hong Kong);
France, from its colonial base in Vietnam and Cambodia, claimed influence across
southern China in the provinces of Yunnan, Guizhou, and Guangxi; and Germany,
Russia, and Japan vied to control the north, until Japan defeated Russia in 1905 and
Germany lost World War I. Japan dominated Manchuria and much of Inner Mongolia
as well, officially turning Korea into its colony in 1910 and taking Shandong from
Germany in 1914. The following year the Chinese government gave Japan a 99-year
lease to the Liaodong Peninsula and railroad concessions. The United States,
demanding an “open door” through which all the Powers could trade with China on
equal terms, maintained a significant naval presence on the rivers as well as along
the coast. It was Britain, however, that held the system together, at least until World
War I. British domination of the lower Yangzi gave it the key to inland China, and
Britain’s economic confidence was the basis of a policy that tolerated the presence
of the other Powers in China. In other words, Britain opposed any nation claiming
exclusive economic rights in a given part of China and supported a unified Chinese
state.
 100 days Reform

• At the end of April, 1895, Kang Youwei, a 37-year-old aspiring

candidate to high government, drafted a petition to the emperor
demanding that the Qing refuse to surrender to Japan and that it
immediately undertake a series of fundamental reforms. Shocked
equally by China’s defeat at the hands of the Japanese in Korea and by
the harshness of the Treaty of Shimonoseki, about 1,200 of the
candidates who had come along with Kang to Beijing for the highest-
level civil service examinations (jinshi) signed the petition. This was
equivalent to a mass protest. The signers risked the wrath of the Qing
court, which had, after all, committed itself to the treaty and did not
countenance criticism.
Kang and his generation of Confucian radicals wished to combine loyalty to the Confucian values and
worldview that they had been raised on with loyalty to the emperor; loyalty to the emperor with loyalty
to a reformed Qing system; and loyalty to the Qing with loyalty to the nation, the Chinese people as a
whole. They began to ask new questions: Who was the nation? How were the Chinese people to be
defined? Did loyalty to the nation mean support for strong government? What kind of government?
“Confucian radicalism” – though it may sound like an oxymoron – signifies strident calls for thorough-
going reform based on readings of the Confucian classics and made by men (women had not yet found a
political voice) educated in the Confucian tradition. If these men called for a measure of Westernization,
it was a program none the less rooted in a Confucian view of the world. They wanted China to become
strong, standing unchallenged among the sovereign powers. They wanted, in other words, to be able
to pick and choose what foreign ideas they would adopt. However, in the rapid expansion of imperialist
threats against China after 1895 the fear was that these foreign powers would “carve up China like a
melon” and even that the Chinese people might perish.
Kang’s petition called upon the government to promote industry; modernize the army; build railroads, a
postal system, and a merchant marine; employ “good men,” even using the talents of the Overseas
Chinese (mostly lower-class merchants but technically and commercially skilled); and improve
agriculture through training schools. Today, such reforms may not sound particularly radical, but they
envisioned a much more active government than any China had seen before. The petition did not shrink
from calling on the government to raise taxes. More tellingly, the reformers envisioned an active
citizenry: people not just dedicated to their families and local community good but to fueling China’s
growth and progress. Kang succeeded in passing the 1895 jinshi exams. Leaving Beijing that autumn,
Kang and his disciples, most notably Liang Qichao (1873–1929), quickly went on to establish new “study
societies” designed to turn young, educated Chinese into a potent political force. With revealing names
like the “Society for the Study of National Strength” a number of similar groups formed libraries,
schools, and publishing projects, sometimes under the auspices of sympathetic provincial governors.
Their journals called for ever more radical reforms: notions of parliamentary democracy, “popular
power,” and equality began to be aired. The radical Confucians’ main goal was to “unify” the emperor
and the people. Thus parliaments were not thought of as bodies representing diverse interests, much
less conflicting wills, but as locations where “communication between top and bottom” would be
established and consensus reached.
Liang was a precocious student of Kang who went on to become the
leading spokesman for reform in the decade leading up to the 1911
Revolution. Liang was more sober-minded than Kang, and he emerged as
a reform leader when he was still in his twenties. His “General Discussion
of Reform,” published serially in 1896 and 1897, called for the
government to encourage ideas from below and to expand the
educational system – including girls’ schools – rapidly. These ideas
amounted to calling for the restructuring of Chinese society. For example,
Liang foresaw the replacement of the hoary examination system, one of
the most fundamental institutions of imperial China, with a system of
mass education. He praised the reforms of Meiji Japan that had
established a school system based largely on a Westernized curriculum.
Liang thought the Chinese people too “ignorant” and “aimless” to
immediately be given power, so he supported top-down reforms, but
there should be no mistaking his ultimate intentions. In calling for a kind
of gentry democracy, Liang was challenging the political monopolies of
the court and the bureaucracy. Furthermore, Liang’s published criticisms
of the “despotism” of the monarchical system were pointed if indirect. He
criticised emperors who had isolated themselves from the people and
selfishly refused to take care of them.
By the summer of 1898 Cixi was in semi-retirement and the reformers finally won the ear of the Guangxu
emperor, her nephew. They fought to streamline the bureaucracy and to strengthen the powers of the
emperor so he could push through reforms – ideas that aroused enormous opposition from vested interests.
The emperor announced his intention to listen to all good ideas, but the reform proposals stopped well short
of a parliament, a constitution, or other democratic institution-building. Still, the specter of outside
challenges to the intertwined interests of the Manchus, the court, and the bureaucracy had suddenly
emerged from the shadows. the Guangxu emperor did issue a stream of decrees and edicts over the summer
of 1898. He reformed the examination system to emphasize current affairs over the classics, he converted
Buddhist monasteries to public schools, he abolished Manchu sinecures and many government positions,
and he established new bureaus of commerce, industry, and agriculture. The army and navy were to be
modernized. And, in a kind of vindication of Kang’s temerity of 1895, low-level officials and even ordinary
literati were encouraged to send memorials directly to the emperor. The reforms challenged not only
officeholders but the great majority of educated Chinese whose livelihoods, educations, and cultural
assumptions were all threatened. Some officials and Manchu aristocrats felt the dynasty itself was in
jeopardy. And the vast bureaucracy took no steps to carry out Guangxu’s wishes, instead waiting inert for the
reaction of his aunt, Cixi. Guangxu’s remaking of the Chinese state was only a revolution on paper.
 Guangxu called for changes in four main areas of Qing life and

Guangxu Emperor government. To reform China's examination system, he

ordered the abolition of the highly stylized format known as
the "eight-legged essay," which had
structured the exams for centuries. He also urged that fine
calligraphy and knowledge of poetry no longer be major
criteria in grading degree candidates; instead he ordered the
use of more questions related to practical
governmental problems. Also in the area of education, he
ordered the upgrading of the Peking college and the addition
to it of a medical school, the conversion of the old academies
(along with unnecessary rural shrines)
to modern schools offering both Chinese and Western
learning, and the opening of vocational institutes for the study
of mining, industry, and railways. In the broader area of
economic development, the emperor ordered local officiais to
coordinate reforms in commerce, industry, and agriculture,
and to increase the production of tea and silk for export. New
bureaus in Peking were established to supervise such growth,
along with mines and railways, and the Ministry of Revenue
was to design an overall annual budget for the country as a
whole.
Although the evidence is contradictory, it seems that a number of the
reformers feared there might be a coup against the emperor, and
accordingly approached some leading generals in an attempt to win their
support. This led to a backlash when news of the scheming was reported
to the empress dowager, who, on September 19, 1898, suddenly returned
to the Forbidden City. Two days later, she issued an edict claiming that the
emperor had asked her to resume power. She put Guangxu under palace
detention and arrested six of his reputedly radical advisers. Before they
could even be tried on the vague conspiracy charges, her order that they
be executed was carried out, to the dismay of the reform party and of
many foreigners in China. Kang Youwei had left Peking on assignment just
before the coup, but his younger brother was among the victims. Now
with a price on his head, Kang Youwei was carried to safety in Hong Kong
on a British vessel, whence he made his way first to Japan and then to
Canada. Liang Qichao also fled China and began a life of exile. His and
Kang's dreams for a coherent program of reform, to be coordinated by
the emperor in the name of a new China, had ended in disaster.
Kang Youwei had offered Guangxu a new kind of monarchy. Ultimately, through a constitution and a
parliament, Guangxu could achieve the ideals established by the ancient sage-kings. The emperor was to
form “one body” with the people, as a sacred symbol but not possessing many real political powers. Kang
explained that in a parliamentary system “the ruler and the citizens discuss the nation’s politics and laws
together.” The parliament made the laws, legal officials adjudicated them, and the government
administered them. “The ruler remains in general charge.” But apparently has little to do. Perhaps, then,
Cixi was right to see the reformers as a direct threat, but the Confucian sage-ruler (and his sage-adviser)
appear alive and well in Kang’s vision. In the 1890s, however, Kang’s immediate interest lay in using New
Text ideas to promote institutional innovation, which he made even more explicit with the publication
of Confucius as a Reformer in 1897.18 Kang’s Confucius believed in steamships and railroads and Kang’s
Confucianism sanctioned institutional change. It called on the government to call on “good men” and
furthermore to institutionalize this in a parliament. However, if Confucius as an “uncrowned king”was still
shocking to Kang’s more conservative colleagues, a Confucius dedicated to political transformation
seemed even The reason why Chinese still remember the hundred days of reform – as witnessed by public
discussions held around China on its hundredth anniversary in 1998 – is precisely because Kang and Liang
made it the opening chapter of an ongoing drama of change and redemption for the Chinese nation. The
“hundred days” suggested that China might adopt a fast, topdown route to modernity. This dream scarcely
died with the martyrs of 1898.
The defeat of the reforms in September 1898 led directly to the
Boxer Uprising. The Boxers, of course, had their own pressing
concerns, having nothing to do with court politics or gentry
intellectuals. But they achieved importance on the national – and
international – stage solely because of the court’s toleration. Like
modern historians, conservative court officials interpreted the
1898 reform movement in terms of foreign influences. The
Boxers seemed, just possibly, the answer to this problem.
Ironically, however, the convincing defeat of the unorganized
Qing forces, Cixi’s humiliating escape from Beijing, and the
general failure of the conservatives’ response to the reformers,
resulted in a real reform program after 1901.
In the wake of the Boxer debacle—the court under a chastised Cixi began a series of “New Policy”
reforms. These reforms were extensive but largely reflected the very ideas that the court had so
violently rejected in 1898. The government was to be streamlined and modernized. Military reformers
worked to build a better equipped, more disciplined, and even more educated army. Educational
reformers began to build a new state school system. The number of schools gradually grew, especially
in major cities, not incidentally providing employment for educated men and a few women and
customers for publishers of textbooks and magazines. Money was found to send students abroad,
especially to Japan. Even before Japan’s astonishing victory over Russia in 1904, which inspired all of
Asia, Chinese intellectuals and leaders looked to Japan as a model of modernization, and Japanese
advisers and teachers were brought to China. The age-old Confucian examination system, producing
the officials of the empire was abolished in 1905
Another reform was “local self-government,” though this was actually a policy to
bring local leaders into the central bureaucratic system and was enormously
disruptive to traditional patterns of rural authority. The most far-reaching reform, at
least on paper, was the Qing promise of a constitution. A small team of Manchu
aristocrats and high Chinese officials was appointed to study the issue. After an initial
delay caused by a revolutionary’s assassination attempt, a delegation left to study the
constitutions of Japan, Europe, and the United States. Imperial edicts over the
following years set up timetables to implement a constitution and further streamline
the administrative structure. A draft constitution was promulgated that followed the
model of the Meiji Constitution of Japan, keeping all sovereignty and most powers in
the emperor’s hands. It was never fully implemented, but provincial assemblies were
elected in 1908, giving local elites a new kind of political voice. These constitutional
promises gave hope to Chinese reformers and scared the revolutionaries, who insisted
the Qing was just trying to cheat the Chinese people.
In the event, the reforms, sincere or not, came too late to save the dynasty. The late
Qing reforms were not in vain—they formed a basis for the state-building projects of
the generation that followed—but they actively undermined the Qing in the short run.
Modernization projects were expensive, and peasants resented tax increases, such as
those which paid for schools whose new curriculum seemed to depart from traditional
moral concerns while offering nothing of practical use to farmers. That beloved
temples might be forcibly turned into schools that only rich children could attend
added salt to the wound. The abolition of the examination system was also
destabilizing. Though elites were quick to turn to modern schooling for their children,
men whose lives had revolved around study of the Confucian classics felt abandoned
by a court that suddenly seemed to have no use for them. The exams had not been a
mere institutional device to recruit officials but were integral to the Confucian
integration of the dynastic realm.
The New Policies: In many ways, the political experiments to remake the Qing
empire into a modern nation-state started after 1900, in the last decade of
Manchu rule. Responding to the severe crisis of the empire exposed by the Boxer
episode, the court embarked on a program of reform that went far beyond
anything previously tried. The New Policies aimed at broad-ranging reforms
meant to make the imperial government more efficient and more involved in
many areas of society and economy. Recent research has shown that the New
Policies were not simply a superficial effort by a collapsing dynasty clinging to
power and doomed to fail, but truly a “new beginning” that ultimately led to
China’s turn to “big government” to seek national rejuvenation and awakening
throughout the twentieth century. While the goal of the imperial system’s reform
was not achieved—the dynasty’s fall from power could not be avoided—the
policies had far-reaching impact and considerable long-term significance. They
represented a reversal of the long decline of the government’s size and
capabilities, and a clear move toward the construction of a more intrusive,
expansive, and powerful state. This development would continue far into the late
twentieth century.
The new educational system of course taught loyalty, but in practice schools
became sites where radical students and teachers came together to protest
every incident of Qing pusillanimity in the face of imperialist aggression.
Perhaps most importantly of all, although suffrage was limited to wealthy and
highly educated elites, the new provincial assemblies offered such men new
ways to pressure the Qing court on a range of issues from taxes to the pace of
constitutional reform. The assemblies reflected and fostered a new kind of
national elite: largely based in the wealthy cities of the Jiangnan region
(centered on Shanghai) but concerned with national rather than provincial
issues. Furthermore, beyond the court’s purview, reform-minded Chinese
were setting up a variety of political organizations: antifootbinding
societies, opium suppression societies, “citizen’s martial societies,”
constitutional study societies, and the like.
A second commission called the Constitutional Government Commission was
sent to Japan, Germany, and Great Britain in 1906. In one report by those
delegations, officials concluded that the “real reason why other countries have
become wealthy and powerful lies in the fact that they have a constitution and
decide important affairs through public discussion. Their monarch and people
form one indivisible unity.”
Many officials and intellectuals saw the origins of China’s weakness in the
distance between the ruler and the ruled—in itself a rather Confucian concern.
Through constitutional reform, a closer and more organic relationship between
state and society could be formed.
The work of the commission resulted in the 1908 document “Principles of the Constitution”
(xianfa dagang). It envisioned a type of government with a monarch (usually a hereditary
position) as head of state and regulated by a written constitution. The authority of the
monarch would not be derived simply from religious concepts, or the Mandate of Heaven, or
the inheritance of the throne, but from a constitution that spelled out basic rules. The
emperor retained the power to make and promulgate law. Under the principles, the emperor
could issue imperial decrees, but he was not permitted to use them to change or abrogate
laws. The parliament had only consultative functions and was subordinate to the emperor.
Although the people were granted certain fundamental rights, the principles did not grant a
general and equal right to vote. This version of constitutional monarchy took the Meiji
constitution of 1889 as its model. It was decided in the end, however, that a “preparatory
period” of ten to fifteen years should precede the implementation of constitutional
government. The Qing constitution therefore never went into effect, due to the Xinhai
revolution in 1911, but the “Principles” led to the establishment of representative bodies,
called assemblies, on the local level (in 1908) and provincial level (in 1909) that soon became
important political platforms. In 1910, even a national assembly began to meet. Members of
the assemblies were elected by male citizens who fulfilled voter registration requirements
regarding property and education. Most assembly members came from the provincial elites,
including officials and merchants. The assemblies had no legislative functions, but were
platforms for debates on policy-related issues
In 1902 an Office for Legal Reform was established. It was headed by
two officials regarded as specialists in legal matters, Shen Jiaben and
Wu Tingfang. The office had three main tasks: to study and translate
important western texts on legal thinking and legislation; to evaluate
the Chinese legal tradition in light of these; to draft new laws based on
a synthesis of western law and Chinese tradition. A few years later,
the Qing government started to overhaul the institutional structure.
With the same edict that created a Ministry of Justice, an Imperial
Supreme Court was established. The court quickly moved forward with
an ambitious reform program. In all, twenty-six translations
from foreign countries were published, including one text on penology
The reformers introduced the separation of civil and criminal law. The office drafted separate
criminal and civil codes and also rules of criminal and civil procedure. After lengthy discussions,
the reforms finally went into effect in 1910. The execution of sentences and legal punishments
was another main area of the reforms. In 1905 physical penalties ranging from tattooing to
torture, slow slicing, and the beheading of corpses and public exhibition of heads Were
abolished. Some other physical punishments, like flogging, were Replaced in the same year
with fines. The concept of collective responsibility was also abolished. The newly drafted
criminal code limited punishments to three basic forms: fines, imprisonments, and death
sentences. Imprisonment became the main form of punishment for most offenses. Within a
very short time, public displays of painful punishments disappeared. The death penalty, too,
was no longer to be carried out publicly but only behind the walls of a prison.
In 1909 China adopted its first law of nationality, defining as “Chinese”
all children of Chinese fathers regardless of their place of residence.
This principle of jus sanguinis (determining nationality status by
bloodlines) was based on new, nineteenth-century ideas about
ethnicity, and directly conflicted with the notion of citizenship as a
territorial concept. China had decided to treat other countries’
ethnically Chinese citizens as Chinese subjects—despite its inability to
offer protections to them.
Economic development through trade and industrialization was another
major point on the reform agenda of this period’s government. China’s first
Company Law was published in 1904. Even as it asserted government control
over companies by requiring registration, it aimed to make it easier for
entrepreneurs to establish them. It introduced the protection of limited
liability,required the publication of annual reports, and put in force clear
accounting regulations. Merchants were offered assistance to attend
meetings and expositions abroad and to develop products for export. The
Ministry of Commerce actively supported the establishment of Chambers of
Commerce in the most important cities and in the provinces. By 1909,
approximately 180 such chambers were bringing together local merchants,
entrepreneurs, and brokers. The chambers soon turned into important
channels of communication
The New Policies also marked an important turning point in the development of the
military. On August 29, 1901, an edict suspended the traditional military exam, clearing the
way for modern military education. A decree issued on September 11 of the same year,
recognizing the value of trained officers and soldiers, directed all provinces to establish
new armies based on western models and to set up military schools. Another decree,
issued the next day, ordered the division of army units into separate standing armies, first-
class reserves, and gendarmerie divisions. The court also discussed reforming the
traditional Green Standard and Banner armies, but no solution was agreed upon. Instead,
these were often made reserve units. Implementation of the New Army reforms varied
from province to province. Progress was greatest where powerful and capable governors-
generalwerein office, as, for example, Yuan Shikai in Zhili or Zhang Zhidong in Hunan and
Hubei. Elsewhere the process was less successful. Existing troop units were simply
renamed or reorganized and officers were deputized to train in the new military
academies. Foreign, often Japanese, instructors were hired to qualify Chinese officers, and
occasionally to drill Chinese troops. In 1903 a Commission on Military Reorganization was
set up. It developed a plan to create a national military force, called the New Army,
composed of thirty-six divisions of approximately 12,500 men each, totaling some
450,000 men. Individual provinces took responsibility for organizing, training, and financing
one or more divisions of the New Army.
The government also pursued far-reaching reforms in the area of
education. The most dramatic move was the abolition of the civil
service examination system that had existed for more than a
millennium. It was replaced by a new educational system based on
western models, which introduced a whole For centuries,
as one of imperial China’s most sophisticated and functional
institutions, the examination system had unquestionably
contributed to popular acceptance
The main spokesman for the constitutionalist reformers was Liang Qichao, and it was
Liang’s innovative journalism that introduced many Chinese, including his
revolutionary opponents, to Western political doctrines. In the 1890’ss, Liang had
criticized the Manchus for their reactionary and sclerotic leadership, their refusal to
tear down the boundaries separating Manchu and Han, and indeed their “racial
backwardness,” in the parlance of the era. But in the early 1900’ss his fear of
revolution was greater than his distrust of the Qing court. Revolution, Liang claimed,
would bring disorder and could well weaken China to the point that the foreign
powers would take it over entirely. He distrusted republicanism, at least for the
foreseeable future, as inherently less stable than constitutional monarchism. Pointing
to Britain and Japan, Liang saw in constitutional monarchism a recipe for steady
progress, giving the people a voice in government while providing overarching
institutions to resolve conflicts among the people. He foresaw that by building up a
civic culture gradually, the Chinese state would be defined by active citizens rather
than “racial solidarity.” Liang contrasted the “narrow nationalism” of an “ethnically
pure” Han China to “greater nationalism,” or “the unity of all groups belonging to the
national territory to resist all foreign groups.” In racial terms, the Han and the
Manchus shared a common enemy: the Whites. In political terms, institutions
mattered less than raising the ability of the Chinese to cooperate among themselves
and identify with the state. Given the people’s current backwardness, Liang said,
republicanism was bound to fail.
Liang was the leading spokesman for the constitutionalists between 1898
and 1911, wading into battle against the revolutionaries from their mutual
exile in Japan and trying to influence events in China. His intellectual
influence cannot be exaggerated; his audience included students (like Mao
Zedong), the urban reformist elite, and even reform-minded officials. Even
those who disagreed with Liang’s specific political program, learned from
him about the major categories of modern social and political organization.
What he taught, essentially, was a civic version of nationalism that
emphasized the role of citizens in building a strong state. He understood
that national solidarity had to be created somehow, but sought a broad
definition of Chinese-ness primarily as a political identity.
Liang, like his teacher Kang Youwei, was born near Guangzhou to an educated family,
though in his case a rather poor farmer-scholar family with only two books. He passed the
first two examinations at very young ages, becoming a juren at 16. He failed to become a
jinshi, which soon became irrelevant to his real interests anyway. From 1898 to 1912 Liang
lived in Japan, learning to read Japanese, though never learning to speak it well nor
succeeding in several attempts to learn English. He made a number of acquaintances
among the Japanese intelligentsia and political classes. The great majority of Liang’s
numerous essays from this period – on everything from the French Revolution and
Russian nihilism to German theories of statism and American voting practices – were taken
from Japanese sources. What Liang taught young Chinese about the West thus came
through the mediation of Meiji Japan. By this time, late Meiji culture was changing.
Japanese who had supported radical liberalism and organized the “people’s rights”
movement in the 1880s had become more conservative by the end of the 1890s. In
particular, they supported a stronger state – a view Liang found attractive in spite of his
contempt for the Qing’s rulers. Perhaps even more important for both Liang and the
Chinese revolutionaries was Japanese sympathy for their cause. Pan-Asianism was in the
air. Anti-imperialism appealed to both the left and the right of the late Meiji political
spectrum.
In the wake of the 1898 debacle, Liang had a brief romance with
democracy and revolution. However, Japanese statism, Kang Youwei’s firm
adherence to reform, and his personal trips to the West, brought him back
to more moderate positions. Liang traveled to Hawaii and Australia in
1899–1900 and to Canada and the United States in 1903. The observant
Liang saw corruption, slums, and class struggle. Western societies did not
have all the answers, for all their wealth and power. Liang was also
disillusioned by the Chinese communities in America, which he
condemned as closed, parochial, and old-fashioned. In spite of their
relative freedom and wealth, as Liang saw it, they remained devoted to
private gain with no sense of the public good. He thus concluded that
even under the best of circumstances democracy was a highly flawed
system, and even the best Chinese were incapable of making it work. This
brought Liang back to an elitist belief in top-down reform under the
stabilizing influence of a wise and strong emperor.