ON August 19, 1898, Ito Hirobumi (1841-1909) set out from Nagasaki, Japan, on a journey to China as the envoy of Emperor Meiji.

Before his departure, Ito had a private audience with the emperor, who told the ex-prime minister the mission of his trip: to allay Chinese resentment over the defeat by Japan in the War of Jiawu (1894-95) and gauge the significance of the Wuxu Reform that was unfolding in China.

Following the war, anti-Japanese feelings were running high in China. Fearful of further Japanese aggression, the Qing court cozied up to czarist Russia, with the signing of a secret treaty that allowed Russia to build a railway linking Vladivostok in the Russian far east and northeastern China.

This development was a fresh insult to Japan, whose plot to annex China’s Liaodong peninsula in 1895 was foiled thanks to active, and cynical, intervention of Russia, France and Germany. Japanese politicians felt the urgent need to woo Chinese bigwigs, especially Wuxu reformists, whose politics were demonstrably pro-Japan. Hence Ito’s visit.

Leading figures of the Wuxu Reform, notably intellectuals like Kang Youwei (1858-1927), Liang Qichao (1873-1929), Tan Sitong (1895-1898) and their patron, Emperor Guangxu (1871-1908), were intent on modeling their movement on Japan’s metamorphosis from a feudal, divided backwater into a modern, strong nation.

The ambitious reformers were finally given a mandate on June 11, 1898, when Emperor Guangxu issued edicts announcing the beginning of the Wuxu Reform, aimed at streamlining the bureaucracy, establishing a parliament, developing the economy and ultimately, instituting a constitutional monarchy, as Japan did.

Lukewarm support

Amid this atmosphere, Ito arrived to great fanfare in Beijing in early September, and was accorded pomp wherever he went, in spite of the fact that he was one of the masterminds of the Jiawu war.

The reformers were particularly jubilant, hopeful that Ito’s visit would add impetus to the ongoing reform. So fascinated were they with his statesmanship that there was even effusive talk of appointing him prime minister of China.

Ito, however, was ambivalent about the reform’s prospect and perhaps even more about its exponents’ yearnings for Japanese sponsorship. While many Japanese had visceral sympathy for China’s reform, their sympathy mostly stopped at verbal support, lest active involvement be perceived as a sign of growing Japanese ambitions.

A bigger reason for Ito’s lukewarm attitude was that he didn’t think the reformers or the reform itself could be taken seriously.

A sharp observer, Ito felt that Emperor Guangxu was merely a titular leader who lacked the effective powers to push through his desired reforms or mandate top-down changes. The person who really called the shots was the Empress Dowager Cixi, who clung to power and ruled from behind the curtain.

In the absence of enlightened mandarins able to enact sweeping reforms — Li Hongzhang (1823-1901) was discredited by the Jiawu defeat; Zuo Zongtang (1812-1885) had died; and Zhang Zhidong (1837-1909) was still taking a wait-and-see attitude — the onerous reform duty fell on the shoulders of a few intellectuals. But they were the most marginalized, politically inexperienced and vested with little power, said Lei Yi, renowned historian and researcher with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

“That they were in the vanguard of reform was a tragedy for the Qing empire,” Lei said.

Moreover, in his opinion, the reform fell short of making real attempts to establish a constitutional monarchy. Clearly aware of the disparity between reality and ideals, the intellectuals settled for compromises. Kang and Liang had wanted to cut official jobs, but their bid was met with fierce resistance from officials. They had to back down.

Notwithstanding the evisceration of reforms, Ito still considered the process a little too “drastic.” After an audience with Emperor Guangxu on September 20, he voiced concerns about the reformers’ haste in pushing for changes before their time.

In a dramatic turn of affairs, just one day after the audience, Cixi launched a sudden and violent crackdown against the reformists.

With Ito’s help, Kang and Liang fled to the Japanese Legation and were then granted asylum in Japan. Six other leading reformists, including Tan Sitong, were arrested and executed. The emperor himself was placed under house arrest until his death. The 103-day Wuxu Reform ended in utter failure.

Textbook explanations for Cixi’s crackdown were that she learned of the reformers’ plan to lay siege to the Summer Palace, her private retreat, and force her to relinquish power through the informant Yuan Shikai, a double-dealing general. But this has been proven wrong, because Yuan’s whistle-blowing happened after the fact. What essentially prompted the crackdown may well be the emperor’s fateful audience with Ito.

In fact, Cixi had been spying on the emperor and Ito. After the Jiawu defeat, she was in favor of forging closer ties with Russia to contain Japan.

Her fears of Japan were magnified by the thought that it would support the Wuxu Reform to undermine the conservative clique within the Qing court, including herself. Connections with Japan became not an asset, but a burden and the reform’s biggest undoing. Ito might not have realized it, but his visit did not empower the reformers; rather, it expedited their downfall.

In this sense, the reform’s demise should be seen in the context of infighting within the byzantine Qing court as well as Japan and Russia’s struggle for influence in China.

During the Wuxu Reform, the official policy of Japan was to monitor the changing balance of power in the upper echelons of Chinese leadership, and hobnob with real movers and shakers, such as Li Hongzhang, Zhang Zhidong, Weng Tonghe and other pro-Japan politicians, said Mao Haijian, a researcher with East China Normal University.

“This policy was necessitated by the need to mend fences with the Qing empire and compete with Russia. It was fairly self-serving,” said Mao.

“Golden decade”

Lei Yi believed that the pulverizing of Wuxu Reform meant the Qing Dynasty was one step closer toward its collapse. The efforts by Kang and Liang were practically aimed at perpetuating the imperial rule, not terminating it. That even these reforms were little tolerated and later crushed suggests that the Manchu rulers could only expect something more radical, namely, revolution.

“The failure of Wuxu Reform cost the Qing empire an important opportunity and considerably narrowed its wiggle room for changes,” Lei said.

In the wake of Wuxu, Japan’s China policy evolved from verbal support for reform into more aggressive involvement, often in the form of official or semi-official relationships with Chinese mandarins, reformers and exiled revolutionaries in Japan, said Mao.

After 1894, China and Japan could have been at each other’s throats, but the fact is, as American scholar Douglas R. Reynolds put it, the two nations experienced a “golden decade” from 1898 to 1907. Reynolds is a historian and researcher at Georgia State University.

People-to-people exchange boomed in this period. From the first 13 Chinese students the Manchu rulers sent to Japan in 1896, their number at one time swelled to a peak of 10,000.

Japan, in turn, also sent “advisers” and “instructors” to help inaugurate new systems and promote changes in China. Of all the 549 foreign teachers and educators working in China in 1909, 424 of them were Japanese, said Reynolds.

An outgrowth of this exchange was the acceleration of Chinese modernization. Japanese translations of Western books and terminology served as intellectual bridges rendering Western ideas comprehensible and acceptable to the Chinese.

Looked up to as a role model, Japan quickly replaced Britain as the country with the most influence in China, until 1915, when the revelation of its “21 Demands” seeking to colonize China sparked fierce nationalist uprisings.

The Wuxu Reform, inspired by Japan’s success story, foundered largely on suspicions of Japanese machinations, but in a twist of historical irony, its failure only led to Japan’s bigger and more vicious role in Chinese politics.