The Englishman in China During the Victorian Era, Vol. 2 (of 2) / As Illustrated in the Career of Sir Rutherford Alcock, K.C.B., D.C.L., Many Years Consul and Minister in China and Japan

by Alexander Michie

VI. THE EMPEROR ASSUMES THE GOVERNMENT, 1889.

The Emperor Kwanghsu comes of age in 1889—Audience of foreign Ministers arranged—Derogatory conditions—Second audience refused by Ministers—Accepted by Austrian and British envoys.

In 1889 his Majesty Kwanghsu attained his majority and married. But his coming of age was a somewhat gradual process, with intervals between each step, as if the empress-regent, who alone determined the time and the seasons, were either mistrustful of the capacity of her nephew or reluctant to lay down the reins of authority. The emperor, kept in leading-strings, was allowed to assume some of the functions of an autocrat, but not all. This slow unfolding of the imperial blossom had this result among others, that it procured a welcome respite from the bitter ordeal of granting an audience to the representatives of foreign States. It was well understood that the foreigners had for sixteen years been looking forward to the emperor's assumption of power as to the consummation of their diplomatic function, and that as soon as a decent interval had been allowed to the young monarch after his majority, the subject would become pressing.

It had been discussed in whispers for nearly two years, when, to the astonishment of everybody, including even the members of the Tsungli-Yamên themselves, an imperial decree was issued in December 1890 in kindly terms ordering preparations to be made to receive the foreign Ministers after the Chinese New Year—that is, in the February following. Since nobody owned to having been in the secret, the act was set down to the emperor's gracious initiative, and was hailed with enthusiasm as the opening of a new era. The Great Wall had at last fallen; the pretensions to superiority for which the Chinese had made such great sacrifices were suddenly abandoned, and henceforth equality with foreign nations was to be the basis of their diplomatic intercourse.

The hope was shortlived, for as soon as the details of the imperial reception came to be arranged with the Tsungli-Yamên all the old difficulties appeared in an aggravated form. The foreign ministers, having pondered the question for eighteen years, had unanimously resolved that they would not accept an audience in the building used for the reception of tributary princes, where the ceremony of 1873 had taken place, but only in the imperial palace, or not at all. The whole value of the audience was the acknowledgment it signified of international equality. The idea that it would facilitate business must have been long before abandoned. The form, therefore, was everything, and the Chinese Ministers were resolved that the "tributary" form should be adhered to. They became urgent in their appeals to the reasonableness of the foreign Ministers. They had gone to expense in renovating the hall, Tz-kwang-ko; they had no other place available; the imperial decree must be obeyed, and this admitted of no postponement.

Yielding to these arguments, the foreign Ministers agreed to a compromise. They would, for this time only, repair to the Tz-kwang-ko, but never again. The ceremony took place therefore on 5th March 1891. There were two receptions—first an audience to the various foreign Ministers separately, next a general reception of the whole of them. The diplomatic body soon felt the consequences of their retrograde step, for when they came to discuss details of the audience of the following year, the Chinese interposed a simple non possumus to every demand which implied the acknowledgment of equality. A reception within the palace without the kotow could not even be discussed. No accommodation between the opposing views being possible, there was no audience in 1892. The diplomatic body were solidly united in maintaining the dignity of their respective countries, and by ceasing to solicit, they left the onus of discovering a solution of the question on the Chinese themselves. The audience was of no practical value to the foreigners, while the withholding of it placed the Chinese so much in the wrong that they might safely have been left to their own devices.

Before, however, the pressure to extricate themselves and their sovereign from an untenable position had become too severe, a diversion in their favour was created by the flying visit of an Austrian envoy, who seemed ready to present his credentials on any terms whatever, so that the formalities were quickly got over, and he enabled to conclude his mission. The Chinese availed themselves of this unexpected opportunity, and the emperor granted an audience to M. Biegeleben in another hall or pavilion outside the palace, which thenceforth became known locally as the Palais Biegeleben.

At the end of 1892, not long after the Biegeleben incident, a new British Minister arrived in Peking. Not apparently considering himself bound by the compact to which his predecessor was a party, he, without the knowledge of his diplomatic colleagues, accepted an audience on the same derogatory terms as the Austrian envoy had done, and the reactionary policy of the Chinese thus enjoyed a complete, if temporary, triumph. This proceeding of the British Minister was deeply resented by the diplomatic body, most of all by the Russian Minister, Count Cassini, himself a new arrival, and the circumstance did not tend to smooth the subsequent intercourse between the parties.