Background
A native of Nanpi, Zhili, Zhang Zhidong was born into a family that had produced officials for three successive generations.
A native of Nanpi, Zhili, Zhang Zhidong was born into a family that had produced officials for three successive generations.
With an excellent classical education, he placed first in the juren examinations at age fifteen (1852). He placed third in the palace examination in 1863 following a reappraisal of his papers by the Empress Dowager Cixi. After having served as a compiler of the Hanlin Academy for three years, he held several positions connected with the civil service examinations in the provinces. As director of education for Sichuan in 1873—1876, he founded the Zunjing (Revere the Classics Academy) and promoted traditional education. He also authored a handbook on study and composition, and an annotated bibliography on important works. The latter examined more than 2,000 works, but only eight had anything to do with the geography of the West and none dealt with its civilization. In both volumes he insisted on the scholar's adherence to Confucian morality. He returned to Beijing in 1876, first as a tutor in the imperial academy and then a registrar in the state archives.
Two events in 1879 earned him fame and recognition by the Empress Dowager Cixi. The first concerned Wu Kedu, a secretary in the Board of Civil Appointments, who took his own life in protest against Cixi's breach of dynastic law when choosing the new emperor in 1875. As the empire took note of Wu's action, Zhang wrote an obsequious memorial in defense of the Empress Dowager. The second was the vast concessions given to Russia by Chonghou when trying to settle the dispute over the Yili region. Zhang, now identified as a member of the Qingliu group who took it upon themselves to defend traditional values and made bold commentaries on current issues, wrote a searing memorial attacking Chonghou, demanding his execution and the repudiation of the treaty. Faced with strident Chinese resistance, the Russians agreed to reopen negotiations. As the Chinese were able to recover much of the lost grounds in the subsequent Treaty of St. Petersburg, Zhang was rewarded with rapid promotions, culminating in the governorship of Shanxi in 1882.
Having just emerged from a great famine that affected much of north China, Shanxi was in a terrible state. Conditions were made worse by wide-spread official corruption. Zhang punished the key offenders and then introduced a variety of reforms, forgiving delinquent taxes, supporting Confucian learning, promoting the colonization of Inner Mongolia, and checking the growth and smoking of opium. But the reforms withered with his departure for the viceroyalty of Liang Guang in August 1884.
Since the early 1880s the French had renewed their advance in Vietnam. Their seizure of Hanoi in April 1882 had jogged the Chinese out of inaction. As negotiations for peace collapsed, Zhang advocated a forward policy. He tried turning Vietnam into China's first line of defense, and sent military aid to Liu Yongfu's Black Flags. In the end, China simply did not have the power to resist France; Zhang’s policy, however correct proved unrealistic.
Following China's defeat, Zhang, now the governor general of two important coastal provinces in the south Guangdong and Guangxi became convinced of the need for defense and economic modernization. He established an academy for training naval and army officers, an arsenal for making shells and small arms, both in 1887, and two years later, made plans for the creation of an arsenal and a large-scale iron foundry. On the economic front he reformed the tax collection system established China’s first modern mint, and set up two textile mills. Of particular note, too, was his founding of the Guangya Academy and its associated publishing house, promoting traditional learning and making available major works mainly by Qing scholars. When he left for the viceroyalty of Hu Guang in December 1889, he left a legacy of energetic and honest government, buttressed by a surprisingly healthy treasury.
From December 1889 to August 1907, with the exception of two short periods, Zhang was the governor general of Hunan and Hubei. His appointment was in large part the result of his support for the building of a railway trunk line from Beijing to Hankou. The project had to be temporarily shelved soon after because of funding problems. Meanwhile, he moved the equipment he ordered when viceroy at Guangzhou and set up an iron foundry at Hanyang, across the river from his yamen (government office). To provide ore for the foundry, he opened an iron mine at Daye in 1894. The two were subsequently linked with the Pingshan coal mine in Jiangxi to form the Hanyeping Company in 1908. His other industrial accomplishments included a mint, cotton mills, silk factories, and tanneries.
In the early 1890s a series of attacks on missionaries and their properties occurred in the Yangzi provinces. Zhang cooperated with Liu Kunyi the Liang Jiang governor general, in quelling the riots and avoided potential hostilities with the powers. By this time, he had become far more appreciative of the West, ordering translations of Western works on geography, education, government, commerce, legal code, and even customs and religion. Workers were also sent to Belgium to study iron and steel production.
After the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War (1894-1895), Zhang was appointed acting governor general of Liang Jiang as Liu Kunyi was ordered to help defend the North. During his brief tenure at Nanjing, Zhang built schools and made proposals for naval development, a national postal system, and a railway network. These broadly based reform proposals greatly enhanced his national stature as he returned to Wuchang.
China's defeat in 1895 rekindled the fervor for reform. Zhang favored education and administrative reforms, he introduced a new curriculum in schools, sent students to Japan, and cut superfluous government jobs. He parted ways with Kang Youwei partly because of changing political winds in Beijing but mainly because of fundamental philosophical differences. Zhang found the idea of empowering the nonofficial elite in politics too threatening to central authority. In April 1898 he published his treatise, Quanxue pian (Exhortation to Learn), advocating selective reten-tion of Chinas heritage and the use of Western ideas and tools to build national strength. In this elaboration of the ti-yong formula, he went beyond a narrow refutation of Kang and the limitations of the goals of the selfstrengthening” era.
In the reaction that followed the Hundred Day Reform, Zhang, perhaps because of his good relations with the Empress Dowager, was silent over the latter's attempt to dethrone Emperor Guangxu. But in the Boxer Uprising, he joined Liu Kunyi in ignoring Cixi's declaration of war, electing to interpret her edict as an order to keep peace within his jurisdiction and confine hostilities to the north. This “neutrality” gained the support of the powers as he suppressed the Boxers and other rebels in his jurisdiction.
After 1900 Zhang emerged as the foremost spokesman for a comprehensive reform movement. In July 1901 he and Liu Kunyi submitted concrete proposals for reform in the school system, civil service examinations, governmental institutions, administrative practices, and for the introduction of Western methods (xifa). He spent nearly a year in Beijing in 1903 to lobby for a program of national reform. In his own viceroyalty, he had pushed reform to such a stage that by 1905 he, however reluctantly, was ready to entertain the idea of a constitutional government. The new national goals such as the rights recovery campaign to regain control over railways and mining projects simply could not be achieved without support from the new and increasingly assertive local elites.
In September 1907 Zhang was appointed to the grand council. Contrary to popular belief,he was not so much “kicked upstairs” as being placed in a critical position at a time when reforms acquired an increasingly national dimension. In 1908 he was also given charge of building the Guangzhou-Hankou railway, the rights to which he had wrestled from American hands three years earlier. But the project was mired in interprovincial squabbles as well as bickering among the imperialist powers over a loan to the Chinese as Zhang died in office.
The other big, vexing issue in Zhang's last years concerned the establishment of a constitutional government. Zhang had joined Yuan Shikai in 1905 to urge a mission to study the constitutional systems in foreign countries. But Zhang was opposed to yielding too much power to the gentry.
To him, constitutional government was merely a means to a powerful state. But as he tried to preserve the authority of the court, he also became increasingly despondent over the leadership of the regent, Prince Chun. Thus, despite the abolition of distinctions between the Chinese and the Manchus in 1907, an imperial decision in which Zhang had played a part, large numbers of Manchus were appointed to high positions in the name of reform.
Zhang was an energetic and honest administrator. His long career was marked by major shifts in ideas on reforms and foreign policy as dictated by his patriotism and loyalty to the throne. But his political behavior was also guided by an unusual allegiance to the Empress Dowager, which led to charges of opportunism and betrayals, especially by the more radical reformers. His influence finally waned with the almost simultaneous passing of the Empress Dowager and the Guangxu emperor in 1908. By this time, however, though still a voice for reform within the government, he had also fallen behind the times.