Episode Transcript
Transcripts are displayed as originally observed. Some content, including advertisements may have changed.
Use Ctrl + F to search
0:00
This is the BBC. I
0:30
can't believe this. I
1:00
can't believe this. Find
1:30
a reading list to go with it. I hope
1:32
you enjoyed the programme. rule
2:00
in her own interests more than China's. Yet
2:02
she's also gained credit for starting
2:04
some reforms, even if you didn't see
2:06
them through. We'll discuss
2:08
the Empress Dowager Sushi, our Yang
2:11
Wenzang, Professor of Chinese History at
2:13
the University of Manchester, Ronald Pergh,
2:15
Associate Professor in the Department of
2:17
International History at London School of
2:19
Economics and Visiting Professor at Leiden
2:21
University, and Rana Mitra,
2:23
the S.D. Lee Professor of
2:25
US-Asia Relations at the Harvard Kennedy
2:28
School. Rana, what's
2:30
the state of China in 1830s when
2:32
Sushi was born? The
2:35
1830s is an absolutely pivotal time in
2:37
China's history because it marks the decade
2:39
in which essentially China moved
2:41
from being in control of its
2:43
own destiny as a country to
2:45
being a country that essentially was
2:47
at the whim of others. Prior
2:50
to the 1830s, for about
2:54
a century or so, China had
2:56
been growing and becoming increasingly prosperous and
2:58
increasingly confident. Through the 18th century,
3:00
it doubled its population size from 150 million
3:03
to about 300
3:05
million people. That was because there were
3:07
new crops, new measures that meant that
3:09
health improved amongst the population, and overall
3:12
it was considered in some way something
3:14
of a golden era. But
3:16
that changed quite rapidly by the
3:18
early to mid 19th century, and
3:21
in particular there was one product,
3:23
opium, that really shifted the dial
3:25
because the British Empire, having
3:27
conquered East India, produced
3:29
large amounts of opium from the poppies that
3:31
were grown in Bengal in Eastern India, and
3:34
China was the place that they targeted
3:36
as a market for that opium. And
3:39
when the Chinese government at the
3:41
time, the Qing Dynasty, refused to
3:43
allow the entrance of opium
3:46
into the country as a whole, that
3:48
really meant that China found itself in
3:51
a much more difficult position. The opium was
3:53
being sold anyway, smuggled you might say, into
3:55
China, and the state of the
3:58
population became much more dependent on many. cases
4:00
on opium. A lot of people
4:02
became addicted to it and that
4:04
did a great deal not only
4:06
to reverse the balance of trade
4:08
between Britain and China, it was
4:10
now in Britain's favour rather than
4:12
China's, but also the government, the
4:14
Qing Dynasty, became increasingly concerned that
4:16
the population was essentially being poisoned
4:18
by drugs and that somehow the
4:20
dynasty was beginning to become vulnerable
4:22
to the outside world. So the
4:24
1830s really marks that period when
4:26
China becomes first of all subject
4:28
to the impact of the Western
4:31
empires, British, French and others, and increasingly
4:33
uncertain whether it can actually cope with
4:35
that outside pressure. Is
4:37
there a trade imperative because we
4:40
were in debt to China, opium was one of the
4:42
few things we could sell that they wanted, but
4:45
there's also isn't an imperial imperative that people
4:47
want to conquer China as a way
4:49
to have a bit of this great empire. Trade
4:52
was the battering ram that opened
4:55
up China in that sense and it was
4:57
a lot of companies, many of them based
4:59
in London, Scotland and elsewhere, that was behind
5:01
the trade of getting
5:03
opium in, but behind them
5:05
came missionaries, came people bringing
5:07
Christianity, also wider ideas
5:10
that came from the West including
5:12
ideas of empire, free trade,
5:14
you know even kind of liberal and
5:16
conservative thought from the Western world and
5:19
that new influx of thinking that came
5:21
in the wake of the opium
5:23
ships also was a sort of
5:25
intellectual shock, an intellectual set
5:27
of horizons that were opened up that
5:30
hadn't been there previously. So trade was the
5:32
starting point but empire and a
5:34
real change in China's worldview
5:36
followed quite quickly. The
5:38
Qing dynasty had ruled China for almost two
5:40
centuries by then. Had it been stable
5:43
until then, did the Opium War destabilise
5:45
it in a profound way? The
5:47
Opium War did destabilise it in a profound
5:50
way but it had not been completely stable
5:52
up to that point. Between the late
5:54
17th century, 1644,
5:57
when the Manchu dynasty rode in, there
5:59
were no is
30:00
with our little brothers, I mean how would it happen? Rana,
30:03
one of the things that I think
30:06
is important to remember at this period
30:08
is that a lot of power had
30:10
drained away from the Qing court during
30:13
the last two or three decades of
30:15
the 19th century. So what is that?
30:17
Because of the Taiping rebellion, where essentially
30:19
it had only been put down because
30:22
the Qing court in desperation allowed local
30:24
provincial leaders, people like Zhang Guofan and
30:26
Li Hongdrang, to actually launch provincial
30:29
armies of their own. Bearing in mind that
30:31
a Chinese province can be and is the
30:33
size of European countries, so that's still substantial.
30:35
But it meant that from a centralized system
30:37
there was much more of a move to
30:39
the kind of local provincial areas in terms
30:41
of military power. And once that
30:43
had begun, the process that by the 20th
30:46
century would become known as warlordism, in other
30:48
words local military leaders kind of fighting each
30:50
other for power, had begun
30:52
to be set in train. In
30:54
particular there was one northern-based area known
30:57
as the Beyang, which would have a
30:59
succession of leaders who actually would become
31:01
a sort of power in
31:03
their own right and would push back against
31:05
what the court in Beijing actually wanted to
31:07
do. Sometimes they'd act in concert with them
31:09
and other times they would actually oppose them.
31:12
And that means that when we consider what
31:14
Tzu-shi was doing and the court was doing,
31:16
we should always remember that in some senses
31:18
it's a tribute to her that there was
31:20
as much centralized power in the court as
31:22
there was, because a great deal of the
31:24
military power and political power and even taxing
31:26
power had moved down to the Chinese provinces
31:28
during the period that she was actually behind
31:30
the throne. How did she react to that?
31:32
She is very interesting because she knew that
31:35
she needed to control these men as
31:37
well. So she cut something, you know,
31:40
she can control them, she would knight
31:42
them, you know, give them titles, make
31:44
them do things for her, but then
31:47
at the same time she would pit
31:49
them against each other as well for
31:51
competition, for projects, for money. So she's
31:54
really very skilled at managing people that
31:57
make all these Han Chinese men were
31:59
kind of loyal to her. For
32:02
managing people in her own interests. Yes. But
32:04
the interests of the empire, as she saw
32:06
it, I mean, to be fair to her,
32:08
all of her actions, everything from assassinations
32:10
to subversions, were done with the belief
32:12
that the Qing dynasty must survive and
32:15
that at a time of crisis she
32:17
was the one to actually continue to
32:19
keep it stable. Three years later in 1898,
32:21
you get a
32:23
desperate surge of more radical reform
32:25
being proposed. The hundred days of
32:28
reform that are put forward by
32:30
certain reformers, Kanyue, Langtichao, at first
32:32
with the agreement, with the acquiescence
32:35
of the Taoist empress, Tixi, but
32:37
then she turned against them very
32:39
strongly and actually shut down these
32:41
reforms. The hundred days reform
32:44
seems rather dramatic and
32:46
it was rather dramatic, it's
32:48
not that effective in hindsight,
32:50
but it does serve as a wake-up
32:52
call for some of the intellectuals in
32:55
China by saying that, well, the Qing
32:57
empire was really not into substantial reforms,
33:00
so they were actually trying to advocate
33:03
another path, for example, to overthrow
33:05
the Qing empire. Actually,
33:07
the failure of the hundred day
33:09
reforms was planting the seed of
33:11
those revolutionaries in China to overthrow
33:13
the Qing empires later in 1912.
33:16
Did she herself as a
33:18
traditionalist or reformer? For
33:22
me, maybe it's a little bit
33:24
different from Rana, for me it's
33:26
her power. For me, she's neither
33:28
a reformer nor a conservative. Her
33:31
goal is for the Qing dynasty to
33:33
live on, for herself, her own power
33:35
to go on. So, in
33:38
a way, she's very complex, she's not
33:40
just a reformer, she's supported reform, but
33:42
to a degree, to a
33:44
degree, that doesn't threaten the survival
33:46
of the dynasty, and she would
33:49
go become conservative when necessary. But
33:51
she manages it very well. Yes,
33:53
I would say so, Rana. Well,
33:55
in 1898, during the hundred days reform,
33:58
which basically takes place over the summer and
34:00
early early autumn, you see both specific and
34:02
general reforms that are being put forward, which
34:04
is associated with, which actually do seem quite
34:07
progressive. So perhaps the real keynote one is
34:09
the foundation in 1898 of the institution that
34:13
still exists today in the form of Peking
34:15
University, essentially China's first modern university. And she
34:17
was actually very supportive. What did they mean
34:20
by modern? Well teaching modern
34:22
subjects such as languages, sciences that
34:24
have been brought in through Western
34:26
channels and and so forth, rather
34:28
than the old Confucian style of teaching,
34:30
which was essentially the old classics that had, you
34:32
know, been there for 2,000 years
34:34
or so. A few years later they would actually
34:37
abolish the old traditional exam system, but the university
34:39
itself in its first form was founded in 1898.
34:41
At the same time she was also
34:45
keen to make sure that while
34:47
reforms were encouraged that they didn't
34:49
overthrow the entire system. So for
34:51
instance, constitutional monarchy would be a
34:53
good way of thinking about what
34:55
some of these figures, Kangya Wei,
34:57
who's been mentioned, and also Yang
35:00
Chi-Chao, probably one of the other major
35:02
modernist thinkers of this of this time.
35:04
If you think about figures like Benjamin
35:06
Franklin or in a slightly different way about
35:09
someone like William Morris, in other words, people
35:11
who bring together literary and artistic skills with
35:13
a certain sort of political sensibility, that's what
35:15
these men were like. And they were brought
35:17
in essentially as a sort of think tank
35:19
to try and find new and radical ways
35:21
to change society. They put forward
35:23
ideas like constitutional monarchy, like the
35:26
idea of adapting traditional Confucian thought
35:28
so that it would throw off
35:30
its old hierarchical sorts of mechanisms
35:33
and instead become more egalitarian. And for a
35:35
while she seemed actually quite keen on this
35:37
as indeed the the Emperor, the Guangxi Emperor,
35:39
but when it looked like they were moving
35:42
in a direction of reform that was perhaps
35:44
closer to revolution, something that she found uncomfortable,
35:46
that's when the screws turned and essentially she
35:49
shut down the reforms and essentially sent
35:51
out to have these reformers arrested or exiled.
36:01
communist regime today because Beijing
36:03
also undertook reform and it
36:06
enabled them to live a few
36:09
decades longer and so is
36:11
the regime today right because but
36:13
then the Qing refused political reform
36:15
that's why in the end collapsed.
36:19
For me as a historian I'd like to
36:21
see kind of the patterns. Rana.
36:24
In 1900 a couple of years later
36:27
you have the Boxer Rebellion, a peasant
36:29
uprising which Tzu-Shee decides actually to throw
36:31
in the way to the Chinese Empire
36:34
on the side of the rebels
36:36
against the Westerners leading to a
36:39
terribly destructive incursion by the Western
36:41
powers that essentially leads to again
36:43
a sort of defeat for China.
36:46
Rana, can you tell us about the Boxer Rebellion
36:48
and how she dealt with it? So yeah in
36:50
the 1900 there was lots
36:52
of like religious incidents that's the
36:55
tension between the Westerners, Western
36:57
merchants, Western missionaries in China and Han
36:59
Chinese in China we have been brewing
37:02
and there was some like burning of
37:04
the churches mean killing of some of
37:06
these Westerners in China and a wave
37:09
of anti-foreigner sentiments mean happening in China
37:11
during that period of time. At
37:13
the very beginning actually Tzu-Shee was didn't
37:16
really trust these boxes. Rana.
37:19
The Boxers was the term used
37:21
by Westerners for these peasant rebels
37:23
who essentially came from a very
37:25
devastated part of North China where
37:27
they'd been drought and poverty and
37:29
they became known as Boxers because they basically
37:32
went through the villages in the countryside wearing
37:34
sort of always magic costumes saying that
37:36
special ceremonies which involved clenching their fists
37:38
could be used to try and push
37:40
back against this poverty and desperation so
37:43
they they used essentially ideas of magic
37:45
and superstition to inspire the peasants to
37:47
hit back a bit against the two
37:49
groups that they thought were their enemies
37:51
one were Westerners and the others were
37:54
Chinese Christians. Yeah indeed. Back
37:56
to Tzu-Shee her role with the Boxers were
37:58
also quite complex. was because as
38:00
I said I mean at the very beginning she didn't
38:02
really trust these people but when
38:04
the tensions between the Qing court and
38:07
those foreign powers began to grow and then
38:09
so she really wanted to make use of
38:11
these boxes to buy her time at least
38:14
meant to inflict some kind of late
38:16
damage to the foreign communities or the
38:18
foreign powers in China so she began
38:21
very supportive of these boxes against the
38:23
foreigners and after that of course I
38:25
mean that we know that after the
38:28
Boxer Rebellion the Qing court was forced
38:30
to sign another unequal treatise. One really
38:32
important moment concerning Tzu-Shi during the Boxer
38:34
Rebellion is that moment when
38:37
she actually says that she's going to
38:39
declare war against the Westerners. Lots of
38:41
people at court actually advise her against
38:43
this. If we're looking for decisions
38:45
that Tzu-Shi makes personally that go one way or the
38:47
other you can blame her for or praise her for
38:50
that's a really important one because lots of others there
38:52
even a couple of people who are executed for telling
38:54
her that she shouldn't do this and
38:56
by declaring war against essentially the Allied
38:58
powers the British the French the Japanese
39:00
the Americans and so forth she
39:03
brought in what was in the end I think a 20,000 troop
39:06
army of foreigners to come in and
39:08
put down the rebellion which then became
39:10
not just an attack on the Boxers
39:12
but actually a fight back against China
39:15
itself and for that particular decision in
39:17
its aftermath she can I think legitimately
39:19
be blamed. She fled Beijing in the
39:21
capital when the Boxers
39:26
arrived the night before she
39:28
disguised herself as a country woman and
39:30
she fled of course taking the Emperor
39:33
you know the puppet Emperor with her
39:35
so yeah it
39:37
was a disaster she was personally
39:39
responsible for. And as Ron was saying the
39:41
aftermath of the Boxers including the indemnity that was
39:43
paid at that time and was devastating for China.
39:45
Indeed it was devastating and Tzu-Shi I mean was
39:48
also like at that time after the war and
39:50
then she blamed the Boxers by saying
39:52
that you were the one who incited me all
39:54
these like turbidans and troubles me it wasn't my
39:57
fault it was your guys me you guys are
39:59
doing things wrongly speed
44:00
and possibly failing. Well,
44:03
thank you all very much. Thanks to
44:05
Rong Po, Yang Wenzang and Rana Mitter.
44:08
And to our studio engineer Bob Nittles.
44:10
Next week we go back to the
44:12
14th century and a political theorist seen
44:14
as a founder of modern democracy and
44:16
an inspiration for the Reformation. That's Marcilius
44:19
of Padua. Thanks for listening. And
44:22
the In Our Time podcast gets some extra time
44:24
now with a few minutes of bonus material from
44:26
Melvin and his guests. So what would you like
44:29
to say you don't have a chance to say?
44:32
I'd like to just say that the
44:35
reformers who we've mentioned, particularly as the
44:37
ones who were first given 100 days
44:39
to try and propose reformers and then
44:41
essentially purged from court and either execute
44:43
or send to exile, they're
44:45
fascinating thinkers in their own right. Kang
44:47
Youwei, Yang Qichao, they're a real
44:49
sort of generation of people who thought in
44:51
ways that Chinese thinkers simply hadn't done before.
44:54
Quick example, Kang Youwei is one of the
44:56
most original thinkers, not just really in Chinese
44:58
history but anywhere. He believed in really radical
45:01
reform. He believed that marriage should be an
45:03
annual contract that was renewed by the consent
45:05
of both parties. That would sound modern even
45:07
today. At one point he tried
45:09
to launch a colony in Mexico. He got
45:12
very into hot air balloons and was sort
45:14
of flying those around for a while. That
45:16
turned out not to be a profitable enterprise.
45:18
But this was a man who not only
45:20
thought outside the box, there wasn't really a
45:22
box in which he thought. And
45:24
his big intellectual contribution, a thing for which
45:26
he's still read today by people who look
45:28
into Chinese intellectual thought, is the
45:31
modernisation of Confucian thinking. He believed
45:33
in something called the D'atun, the
45:35
great unity, which was the idea
45:37
that somehow you could bring together
45:39
traditional Chinese thinking with modernisation. So
45:41
he loved Confucius. He wrote a
45:43
great essay, still read, called Confucius
45:45
as a Reformer. But in it
45:47
he said that the hierarchy, the
45:50
lack of equality in traditional Confucianism, that wouldn't do
45:52
anymore in a modern world. And instead Confucius
45:54
had to be someone who could be seen as
45:56
someone who could push forward equality as well.
45:58
And you could see the sort of, you know,
46:01
like socialists who came before Marx in a sense
46:03
in the European context, the people
46:05
in the 20th century who pushed equality,
46:07
Mao became the most famous, Mao Zedong,
46:10
in some senses draw from that push
46:12
in the direction that Kanye away and
46:14
others put forward. So I do think
46:16
that understanding these people as really interesting
46:18
thinkers in their own right is something
46:21
that deserves attention to. Ron,
46:23
what about you? Well, okay, I would like
46:25
to talk about a century of humiliations because
46:27
well, so first of all, this is a conception coined
46:30
by the PRC government later to
46:32
sort of to blame the Qing
46:34
empire in the 19th century by
46:37
like losing all of these humiliating
46:39
battles against foreigners or foreign powers.
46:41
And so that's why the late Qing in which
46:43
means he played a big role in ruling this
46:46
empire at that time was being
46:48
blamed, criticized heavily because of losing
46:51
those wars. And also
46:53
feel like I mean, China, I mean, during
46:55
the late 19th century, didn't really have too
46:57
much progress and didn't really have too much
47:00
development because of these centuries of humiliations, this
47:02
course. But what I would like
47:04
to add is that I've been going back to
47:06
what we have just talked about earlier. Well, there
47:08
were lots of various kinds of reformations, modernizing
47:11
campaigns and so forth mean that
47:13
is worth mentioning. And so
47:15
she played a crucial role in supporting most of
47:18
these reforms. So the 19th century wasn't
47:21
simply a century of humiliations. I
47:24
would say it was also full of opportunities and
47:27
new chances mean for the empire
47:29
for the intellectuals for the officials
47:31
really to thrive. Yeah.
47:33
And you? I think I'm going
47:35
back to what I said earlier.
47:38
I'm always thinking about what we
47:40
could learn from history. So
47:42
you see the late Qing launch
47:44
reform, they built four navies, they
47:47
bought warships from Germany, from
47:49
Britain and trained everybody. So
47:51
they acquired all the hardware
47:54
needed, but they didn't save
47:56
the dynasty. So coming to
47:58
today, it seems China China
48:00
is the same, acquiring a
48:03
lot of hardware, infrastructure, high
48:05
speed trade, battleships and
48:07
navies and what have you. Would
48:09
they save the Communist regime? I
48:11
don't know. So for me, that's
48:13
a very interesting parallel that
48:16
late Qing launch reform didn't save. It
48:18
seems the more reform they did, the
48:21
more disastrous it did. And
48:23
today, the same post-Mao reform,
48:25
Deng Xiaoping, China is very powerful. Would
48:27
they save the Communist regime? I don't
48:29
know. That's something I would like to think
48:32
more about. Well, I just want to
48:34
add something about the navy because that's my comfort zone.
48:37
And actually the late Qing navy, what we haven't
48:39
really emphasised, it was one of the greatest navies
48:41
in East Asia. Like 10
48:43
years before the first sign of the Japanese
48:45
war, it was being reported by Western columnists
48:47
and reporters saying that China, the Qing, actually
48:50
are one of the greatest navies not just
48:52
in Asia, but in the world. So
48:54
it's not just the hardware, assuming that we're
48:56
really impressed. The foreigners and
48:59
also the others, but also like
49:01
training up the very capable navies, meaning learning
49:03
from the West is quite impressive to me.
49:06
But we have to understand that by maintaining
49:08
a navy is a costly end of us.
49:10
So it's not easy for the Qing Corps
49:12
to really keep pouring in money to build
49:14
up a navy. So that is the reason
49:16
why eventually they lost. But it doesn't mean
49:18
that they didn't really have a golden era
49:20
in their naval history. And
49:22
I just add that Yang Wan mentioned
49:25
high speed trains. Famously,
49:28
there was a railway, one of China's
49:30
first railways built under Tzu-shi, but she
49:32
refused to allow a steam
49:34
engine to actually pull it and insisted it should
49:36
be, I think, pulled by a bullock, I think,
49:38
in that case. Eunuchs. Sorry?
49:41
Eunuchs. Was it eunuchs? Eunuchs, gosh, by humans
49:43
in that case. Yes, even more so because
49:45
essentially there would be a sort of ritual
49:47
impurity, essentially, if she allowed a steam engine
49:50
to pull it. That hasn't been so much
49:52
of a problem with today's China's high speed
49:54
trains, I think. No, no, no. How
49:57
much do they reach back to her, the
49:59
Chinese politician? at the moment, look
50:01
back to those days, or the glorious days,
50:03
or the days that they... Oh my goodness.
50:05
This is one of the most politically sensitive
50:07
periods in contemporary China. It's very hard to
50:09
talk about. The reason being, actually, the bit
50:11
that we mentioned briefly at the end of
50:13
the programme, but actually for many people is
50:15
one of the most interesting areas which is
50:17
the very last phase of reforms under Tzixi,
50:19
the so-called new reforms of 1902
50:22
until the Empire suddenly collapsed with the revolution of
50:24
1911. The reason being that essentially
50:27
those reforms were trying to turn
50:30
China into a country that was a sort
50:32
of constitutional monarchy with locally elected assemblies that
50:34
would work from the bottom up. People would
50:36
learn about elections and democracy at the local
50:38
level and then eventually you would get national
50:41
level elections. Now you could see why today's
50:43
Communist Party might consider this as a lesson
50:45
they do not want people to learn. And
50:47
actually doing research on what seems a very
50:50
long time ago, more than a hundred years
50:52
ago, is actually still a deeply sensitive subject
50:54
in China today, precisely for that reason. Yes.
50:56
Well thank you all very much. Thank you.
50:59
Thank you. Would you like your
51:01
tea or coffee, anybody? Melvin, do you
51:03
want tea? I'd like a cup of tea. Coffee, please. A cup
51:05
of tea, if that's what's for some. Thank you. Yes,
51:07
please. I'm okay. I
51:09
have more tea. Thank you very much. Three teas.
51:11
Thank you. Great. In
51:13
our time with Melvin Bragg is produced
51:15
by Simon Tillotson and it's a BBC
51:18
Studios audio production. Okay,
51:21
he's coming in underneath your... He
51:25
was underneath us and that's when he came
51:27
and rammed into our left wing. A collision
51:29
between a Chinese jet and an
51:31
American spy play. We flipped inverted and
51:33
weren't an inverted dive with no nose,
51:36
explosive decompression and severe problems. With
51:38
relations between the West and China
51:41
increasingly strained, what are the
51:43
chances of things spinning out of control? The
51:46
Western world was asleep and
51:48
it's had a rude awakening. I'm
51:52
Gordon Carrera. In Shadow War, China and
51:54
the West from BBC Radio 4, I'll
51:57
be exploring the friction in this most important... of
52:00
relationships and asking, has the
52:02
West taken its eye off the ball? Well,
52:05
unlike many of my colleagues, I don't talk
52:07
about what's discussed around the cabinet table. I'll
52:10
be speaking to politicians, spies, dissidents and
52:13
those caught up in the growing tension.
52:16
You cannot ignore China. Listen
52:18
on BBC Sounds. I
52:30
can't believe this. It's
52:36
almost like it's become this moral obligation to find her.
Podchaser is the ultimate destination for podcast data, search, and discovery. Learn More