why did empress cixi not want to follow the reforms of Kang Youwei?

Question

why did empress cixi not want to follow the reforms of Kang Youwei( under emperor guangxu)? (china history) this was when kang youwei wanted to westernized china but empress cixi + her imperial army imprisoned him and ended his reforms

Answer 1

Empress Dowager Cixi (1835-1908)

"Never again allow a woman to hold the supreme power in the State..."
--Empress Cixi's final words
Introduction

Empress Dowager Cixi ruled over China for about a half a century. She had a limitless greed for power, family, and subjects. Indeed she had a sharp political sense and decisive practices but under her rule the Qing Dynasty grew more and more corrupt and lost its power.

Childhood

She was born on the 29th of November in 1885 as the daughter of an ordinary official. Her name was Yohonala, which originated from the combined name of two tribes, Yeho and Nala. She lost her father at an early age. As the eldest child, she felt mistreated, neglected, and unloved. She once said, "I have had a very hard life ever since I was a young girl. I was not a bit happy with my parents, as I was not a favourite. My sister had everything they wanted, while I was, to a great extent, ignored altogether.". She was nominated as a candidate-concubine at the age of fourteen. It was a honour for her and it was also a chance to escape from her family misery. When she was sixteen, she was chosen to be a concubine. At the age of eighteen, she completed the ritual preparation necessary for a royal concubine. Even during her early years, Empress Cixi proved to be strong-willed. Her hard childhood made her more determine to rise above her peers and head forward towards her dream of royalty.

Life As Empress

Emperor Hsien Feng took special notice to a second ranked concubine by the name of Li Fei. Li Fei became pregnant with the emperor's child almost immediately. Unfortunately to many, the child was a baby girl. Her rise to power came about when she gave birth to first and only male heir on a sunny April 27, 1856. He was born at the summer palace. The healthy baby boy was named Tsai Chun or better known as Emperor Tung Chih. On the part of producing the first heir to the throne, she was promoted to consort or concubine of the first rank, equal to Li Fei and second in prestige only to the empress. She was given the title Kuei Fei, meaning Concubine of Feminine Virtue. The birth of an emperor's son gave her the maximum status possible in China. Cixi was elevated from total obscurity to the centre political stage of China as a figure of unique importance to the survival of the dynasty. From that moment, she went from an insignificant figure, to someone who suddenly had presence and power over others. In 1861, Emperor Hsien Feng died, and with that, Tsai Chun became emperor. She then got the title of empress. From then her greed for the power grew out of control and finally in 1865 she seized the throne, removing another sect being at the helm of politics. In 1875 Emperor Tung Chih died. Then despite a lot of opposition, she forced her nephew to become the emperor and maintained her power. She allowed the emperor to govern the politics, but in 1898, she returned to wield power again. However, Death is inevitable even to China's last empress dowager. Empress Cixi died on the fifteenth of November 1908.

A Politician

It was because she masterfully maintained a balance between conservatives and sects, that the empress was able to ensure her power. But thorough wars with France and Japan in the end of the 19th century, the balance of the two forces was corrupted, and to the contrary radical sects demanding political reform tempted taking the power of Empress Dowager. The Boxer Rebellion emerged in Shandong in 1898 out of secret societies whow were trained in martial arts. The boxers were fanatically anti-foreign, and saw 1900 as the dawn of the new age and believe themselves invincible to the bullets of foreign forces. The boxers roamed in bands attacking Chinese Christians and foreigners. First, the Empress Dowager encouraged the movement. But to the contrary, the Empress Dowager attempted to ride the tide of anti-foreign sentiment by declaring war on the foreign powers in 1900. Unfortunately, it led to a veary harsh competition and colonisation of China. After all, under her politics, the Qing Dynasty became more corrupt and weak. It took only three years from her death for the Qing Dynasty to fall.

The Selfish Empress

It is said that she was a keen Buddhist, but many women and subjects were killed just for making her angry. She seized whatever she wanted by any means. She surrounded herself with money and banquets, jewels, and other luxuries. She was served 150 different dishes at a single banquet. She drank from a jade cup and ate with golden chopsticks. She used navy funds to build herself a lavish summer palace. At the end of her life, her jewellery vault held 3,000 ebony boxes of her "everyday jewels." Because she lived in luxury despite the difficult financial situation, there were insufficient funds for the military. This was later to contribute to the defeat of the war against Japan. She was such a selfish woman that not many mourned her death. In 1928 robbers broke into her grave to get the jewellery she was buried with.

Kang Youwei (K'ang Yu-wei) 1858-1927

Kang Youwei (1858-1927) A native of Nanhai, Guangdong province, Kang came from a wealthy family of scholar-officials. He was an accomplished classical scholar with a knowledge of the West gleaned from Western books in translation. He and Liang Qichao fled abroad after a coup by the Empress Dowager Cixi in 1898. Kang spent a total of sixteen years in exile, visiting over forty countries on five continents, and promoting the Society to Protect the Emperor (est. 1899) and its successor the Society for Constitutional Government (1903). To this end Kang and Liang were also involved in two failed insurrections against Cixi in 1900. Kang made his most extensive travels in the West in the years 1904-1909, visiting twenty European countries and North America. He returned to China in 1914, after the establishment of the Republican state. Settling in Shanghai, he was closely involved in a plot to restore the Qing emperor in 1917 and remained loyal to the dynasty until his death. Among his best known work is the Datong shu [Great Harmony], in which he laid out his utopian vision for the world. He was also a fine poet, identifying himself closely with Du Fu and seeing himself as a sage with a mission to save China.

Answer 2

Orthodox or Chasidic Jews are the ones you can tell are Jewish by the way they dress, often men wear black suits, black hats with the tallit tassles hanging under their jackets etc... They follow Judaism as a part of culture and religion. They live in close-knit communities and don't really integrate with the rest of society in the way that Reform Jews do. mainly their families were victims of Russian and middle eastern war and struggle and so have spread to other parts of the world but keep the old ways of doing things. Orthodox Jews have nearly always been brought up and so maintain the strictness of their religion. Reform Jews tend to want to blend modern day life with their Religion, so the old food laws for example, are passed off as just being for health and safety reasons at the time they were written and hence most reform jews will eat pork, and mix meat with milk etc. Orthodox Jews tend to preserve the rules as how they were meant regardless of modern advances. Not a thorough explanation, just a brief insight into the different approaches.