Hundred Days of Reform

The Hundred Days of Reform (戊戌變法, Wuxu Bianfa) ran from 11 June to 21 September 1898, a 103-day period during which the Guangxu Emperor issued a rapid series of edicts intended to transform the Qing state along modern lines. The reforms responded to China's humiliating defeat in the First Sino-Japanese War (1894–95) and the subsequent "scramble for concessions" by foreign powers, which exposed the inadequacy of the earlier Self-Strengthening Movement.

The program was shaped largely by the Cantonese scholar Kang Youwei and his student Liang Qichao, who drew on Meiji Japan as a model. Edicts covered a wide range of areas, including:

• Abolishing the traditional eight-legged essay in the imperial examinations and reorienting them toward practical subjects
• Establishing the Imperial University of Peking (precursor to Peking University)
• Modernizing the army along Western lines
• Streamlining the bureaucracy and eliminating sinecures
• Promoting industry, railways, and commerce

Conservative officials, alarmed by both the speed and the substance of the changes, rallied around Empress Dowager Cixi. On 21 September 1898 she launched a palace coup, placing the Guangxu Emperor under effective house arrest on Yingtai island within the Forbidden City and rescinding most of the edicts. Six reformers, known as the "Six Gentlemen of Wuxu" — including Kang Youwei's brother Kang Guangren and the radical thinker Tan Sitong — were executed without trial on 28 September. Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao escaped into exile in Japan.

The failure of the reforms discredited gradualist constitutional change within the Qing system and is often cited as a turning point that pushed Chinese politics toward more revolutionary alternatives, culminating in the Xinhai Revolution of 1911 and the fall of the dynasty. It also foreshadowed the later, more reluctant Qing New Policies (Xinzheng) launched after 1901.