i
and his followers, to whom a number of well-known modern scholars
belonged, had strong support in South China. We have already mentioned
that owing to the increased penetration of European goods and ideas,
South China had become more progressive than the north; this had added
to the tension already existing for other reasons between north and
south. In foreign policy the north was more favourable to Russia and
radically opposed to Japan and Great Britain; the south was in favour of
co-operation with Britain and Japan, in order to learn from those two
states how reform could be carried through. In the north the men of the
south were suspected of being anti-Manchu and revolutionary in feeling.
This was to some extent true, though K'ang Yo-wei and his friends were
as yet largely unconscious of it.

When the empress Tzu Hsi saw that the emperor was actually thinking
about reforms, she went to work with lightning speed. Very soon the
reformers had to flee; those who failed to make good their escape were
arrested and executed. The emperor was made a prisoner in a palace near
Peking, and remained a captive until his death; the empress resumed her
regency on his behalf. The period of reforms lasted only for a few
months of 1898. A leading part in the extermination of the reformers was
played by troops from Kansu under the command of a Mohammedan, Tung
Fu-hsiang. General Yuean Shih-k'ai, who was then stationed at Tientsin in
command of 7,000 troops with modern equipment, the only ones in China,
could have removed the empress and protected the reformers; but he was
already pursuing a personal policy, and thought it safer to give the
reformers no help.

There now began, from 1898, a thoroughly reactionary rule of the dowager
empress. But China's general situation permitted no breathing-space. In
1900 came the so-called Boxer Rising, a new popular movement against the
gentry and the Manchus similar to the many that had preceded it. The
Peking government succeeded, however, in negotiations that brought the
movement into the service of the government and directed it against the
foreigners. This removed the danger to the government and at the same
time helped it against the hated foreigners. But incidents resulted
which the Peking government had not anticipated. An international army
was sent to China, and marched from Tientsin against Peking, to liberate
the besieged European legations and to punish the government. The
Europeans