Empress Dowager Cixi

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Empress Dowager Cixi (29 November 1835 – 15 November 1908) was a Manchu noblewoman of the Yehe Nara clan who effectively controlled the Chinese government in the late Qing dynasty as empress dowager and regent for almost 50 years, from 1861 until her death in 1908. Selected as a concubine of the Xianfeng Emperor in her adolescence, she gave birth to a son, Zaichun, in 1856. After the Xianfeng Emperor's death in 1861, his five-year-old son became the Tongzhi Emperor, and Cixi assumed the role of co-empress dowager alongside Xianfeng's widow, Empress Dowager Ci'an. Cixi ousted a group of regents appointed by the late emperor and assumed the regency along with Ci'an. Cixi then consolidated control over the dynasty when she installed her nephew as the Guangxu Emperor at the death of the Tongzhi Emperor in 1875. Ci'an continued as co-regent until her death in 1881.

Cixi supervised the Tongzhi Restoration, a series of moderate reforms that helped the regime survive until 1911. Although Cixi refused to adopt Western models of government, she supported technological and military reforms and the Self-Strengthening Movement. She supported the principles of the Hundred Days' Reforms of 1898, but feared that sudden implementation, without bureaucratic support, would be disruptive and permit the Japanese and other foreign powers would take advantage of China. She placed the Guangxu Emperor under virtual house arrest for supporting radical reformers, publicly executing the main reformers. After the Boxer Rebellion led to invasion by Allied armies, Cixi initially backed the Boxer groups and declared war on the invaders. The ensuing defeat was a stunning humiliation, ending with the occupation of Beijing and the Qing regime on the brink of collapse. When Cixi returned from Xi'an, she backtracked and began to implement fiscal and institutional reforms aimed to turn China towards a constitutional monarchy. The deaths of both Cixi and Guangxu in November 1908 left the court in the hands of Manchu conservatives, the two year-old Puyi on the throne, and a restless, deeply divided society.

Historians both in China and abroad have debated Cixi's legacy. Historians have argued that she was a ruthless despot whose reactionary policies – although successful in managing to prolong the ailing Qing dynasty – led to its humiliation and eventual downfall in the Wuchang Uprising. However, revisionist chroniclers have suggested that Nationalist and Communist revolutionaries scapegoated her for deep-rooted problems which were beyond salvaging, and laud her perchant for moderate reform, including the founding of Peking University and Beiyang Army, and maintenance of political order in an era of destabilising European colonialism. Provided by Wikipedia