ABSTRACT
Nineteenth-century China was characterized by a great influx of ideas from the West which began to permeate the whole of Chinese cultural life, and by the slow disintegration of the power and authority of the Ching (Manchu) dynasty which had ruled China since 1644. The royal Court had become locked into elaborate but meaningless ceremonial296which did nothing to address the needs of the vast majority of the Chinese population. The defeat of China by Britain in the Opium War (1840–2), which led to major trade concessions to western countries, and the victory of Japan in the Sino-Japanese war of 1894–5 convinced many political thinkers, foremost amongst whom was Kang Youwei, that the need for political reform was urgent. In 1898, Kang Youwei presented to the young Emperor a series of reforms based on a limited constitutional monarchy. The Emperor tried to institute the changes suggested, but was out-manoeuvred by the conservative court elements, led by the Empress Dowager. Kang Youwei avoided execution by escaping to Japan, and for the next sixteen years he travelled to Hong Kong, Canada and the United States, where he was asked to undertake various lecture tours. He was invited to return to China after the declaration of the Chinese Republic in 1912.
