Empress Dowager Cixi : the concubine who launched modern China

by Jung Chang     (Get the Book)
Was Cixi (1835-1908) the "most evil woman in Chinese history"? In 1861, she began more than four decades of power as the mother of the young new emperor-hence the title Empress Dowager. She ruled first in her son's name, then, despite dynastic regulations prohibiting women from holding power, controlled the government "from behind the throne" for the rest of her life. After Cixi's death, Chinese and Western historians unfairly blamed her for every mistake and defeat that led to the fall of the Manchu Qing dynasty in 1911. In the 1970s, however, careful scholars began to call her the "much maligned" empress dowager and questioned the accounts created by her political enemies. Chang (Mao: The Unknown Story) extends to the empress dowager the charitable sympathy that she denied Mao. She uses the work of revisionist scholars to paint a largely plausible portrait of a ruthless, -farsighted politician who welcomed change and restructured the state. Chang less convincingly paints Cixi as a feminist and a liberal modernizer; Cixi "launched modern China" only if by "modern China" you mean the state dictatorships of Chiang Kai-shek, Mao, and Deng Xiaoping. VERDICT A fascinating and instructive biography for anyone interested in how today's China began. --Library Journal