For example, much more evidence is needed to back up the author's claim that the Reforms of 1898 “had been launched and spearheaded by Cixi” and the alleged assassination of the Dowager (245). As a serious historical account, this reader hoped the author would provide more concrete and convincing evidence to support her claims in various places. As a popular text on Cixi, Chang's book is intriguing and well written. In contrast, male figures, such as Kang Youwei and the Guanxu Emperor, were the narrow-minded people who cared more about their personal power and gains (245).Ĭhang presents a radically different interpretation of Cixi and her time, suggesting that she was an intentional and conscious modernizer and reformer as well as a virtuous and likeable woman. Even when faced with an attempted assassination by her enemies, Cixi still “wished the Reforms to continue” and placed the interest of the country before her personal safety.

Cixi, in Chang's book, is credited with China's post-Taiping developments of reconstruction, the Self-Strengthening Movement, the Reforms of 1898, and the late Qing reforms. This open-door policy provided Cixi with the economic benefit of income from customs revenues and an open mindset to assume her role as China's modernizer and reformer during her reign. And thus, “under Cixi, China entered a long period of peace with the West” and maintained an open-door policy even when Cixi faced a strong xenophobic faction within China (57). According to Chang, once Cixi accomplished the coup and became the “real ruler of China” after her husband's death, she quickly switched China's international relations from Emperor Xianfeng's “all-consuming hatred” toward the West and the “closed-door policy of 100 years” to a new course of “opening it up to the outside world” (50, 55). One example is China's relationship with the West. Chang's book seeks to provide an alternative interpretation regarding almost all the major historical events and figures of the time. In the author's treatment of late Qing history, the standard masculine narrative of male figures making modern China is replaced by a Cixi-centered history of China's modernization and interaction with the external world. This study is a provocative attempt to rewrite the Chinese history of Cixi's time.

In Jung Chang's book, Cixi becomes the superhero who, as her book title states, “launched modern China.” Who was Cixi? As one of the few women rulers in Chinese history, several waves of scholarship have placed Cixi within rather different frames, emphasizing various images of her complex life, from femme fatale to powerful woman and reformer. Empress Dowager Cixi has both intrigued and perplexed the imaginations of scholars searching for emerging modernity in China.

Empress dowager book