How Much Did Empress Dowager Cixi Squander and How Did She Destroy the Qing Dynasty

The Most Expensive Garden in Modern Chinese History: Cixi's Forty-Seven Years of Squandering an Empire

On November 15, 1908, inside the Hall of Yilan in the Forbidden City, the seventy-four-year-old Empress Dowager Cixi breathed her last. Just one day earlier, the Guangxu Emperor had died suddenly—the two deaths separated by merely twenty hours, a coincidence so eerie it chilled the spine. This woman who had wielded China's highest power for forty-seven years was gone, but what she left behind for the empire was a kingdom riddled with problems, burdened with debt, on the verge of total collapse. Three years later, the Xinhai Revolution erupted, and the Qing Dynasty crumbled spectacularly. It is no exaggeration to say that Cixi was the most thoroughly profligate ruler in modern Chinese history. When she took power, the Qing Dynasty, though declining, remained a great power in the world; when she let go, China had become a dish divided among the great powers.

From Xianfeng's Widow to the Empire's Actual Ruler

Cixi's path to power began in 1861. That year, the Xianfeng Emperor died at the Mountain Resort in Chengde, leaving behind only a six-year-old Tongzhi Emperor and eight regents. Cixi allied with Prince Gong Yixin and launched the "Xinyou Coup," toppling the regent clique led by Sushun at one stroke. She then began to rule through the "curtain" (veiled authority), though officially in the name of others.

From 1861 to 1908, for forty-seven full years, regardless of whether the nominal emperor was Tongzhi or Guangxu, the person who truly made decisions was always Cixi. The Tongzhi Emperor ruled in his own right for barely two years before dying. Cixi then violated ancestral precedent and selected the four-year-old Zaitian as successor—the Guangxu Emperor. Because Guangxu was so young, she could continue ruling behind the curtain. This move was extraordinarily clever: she never became emperor herself, yet she remained forever the emperor's mother (technically, his aunt), keeping power firmly in her hands.

To be fair, Cixi's early rule was not without merit. During the Tongzhi era, the "Self-Strengthening Movement" proceeded with her tacit approval, and capable ministers like Zeng Guofan, Li Hongzhang, Zuo Zongtang, and Zhang Zhidong established modern enterprises such as the Jiangnan Arsenal, the Fuzhou Arsenal, and the Hanyang Iron Works. The Beiyang Fleet was once called Asia's greatest navy. But the problem was fundamental: Cixi supported the Self-Strengthening Movement not to enrich and strengthen the nation, but to maintain her own power base. Once reforms touched her core interests, she would unhesitatingly slam on the brakes.

Embezzling Naval Funds to Build the Summer Palace: An Imperial-Scale Squandering

In 1888, the Beiyang Fleet was formally established, equipped with the ironclads "Dingyuan" and "Zhenyuan" as flagships. But it was precisely from this year that Cixi made a decision that would astound posterity: she embezzled naval funds to build the Summer Palace.

The Summer Palace's predecessor was the Qingyi Garden, destroyed by British and French forces during the Second Opium War in 1860. Cixi had long dreamed of rebuilding this royal garden as the venue for her sixtieth birthday celebration. The problem was that the construction required astronomical sums, while the imperial treasury was already stretched thin. So Cixi reached into the naval budget.

According to scholars' research, from 1889 to 1894, the funds diverted from the Naval Ministry through various pretexts amounted to between six to twenty million taels of silver. The most notorious operation was establishing a so-called "Imperial Naval Inspection" fund—nominally for naval use but actually entirely for garden construction. Between 1888 and 1894, when the First Sino-Japanese War broke out, the Beiyang Fleet added not a single new ship and suffered severe ammunition shortages. Fleet Commander Ding Ruchang submitted numerous memorials requesting funds to upgrade equipment, all rejected.

Meanwhile, Japan was desperately expanding its navy. The Meiji Emperor personally donated imperial funds, and the entire nation tightened its belt to build warships. By the eve of the Sino-Japanese War, the Japanese Combined Fleet not only outnumbered the Beiyang Fleet but thoroughly outclassed it in speed, firepower, and ammunition quality. Cixi used the money meant for shipbuilding to personally bury the future of China's modern navy.

The Humiliating Defeat: Two Hundred Thirty Million Taels of Silver

In 1894, the First Sino-Japanese War erupted. This war directly knocked the Qing Dynasty from its position as the world's "greatest empire."

The immediate cause was the Donghak Peasant Rebellion in Korea. Both China and Japan sent troops to Korea; Japan deliberately provoked conflict, ambushing Chinese troop transports at Fengdao. Subsequently, fighting spread across Korea, Liaodong, and the Yellow Sea. On September 17, 1894, the Yellow Sea naval battle saw the Beiyang Fleet severely damaged. The captain of the "Zhiyuan," Deng Shichang, ordered his ship to ram a Japanese vessel when ammunition ran out, dying a heroic death. But heroism could not compensate for equipment deficiency—the Beiyang Fleet's shells were filled with sand rather than explosives because, after military funds were embezzled, even regular ammunition could not be purchased.

In February 1895, Japanese forces captured Weihai and the Beiyang Fleet was completely destroyed. Ding Ruchang committed suicide rather than surrender. This fleet, constructed at a cost of millions of taels, simply vanished.

Even more tragic was the war indemnity. The Treaty of Shimonoseki, signed in April 1895, stipulated that the Qing pay Japan two hundred million taels for war expenses, plus thirty million taels to ransom the Liaodong Peninsula, totaling two hundred thirty million taels. What did this mean? At that time, China's annual fiscal revenue was approximately eighty to ninety million taels—equivalent to nearly three years of the entire national budget handed to Japan. Additionally, Taiwan and the Penghu Islands were ceded, and Shashi, Chongqing, Suzhou, and Hangzhou were opened as treaty ports.

Japan used the indemnity to vigorously develop industry and military strength, establishing heavy industry like the Yawata Steel Works, laying the material foundation for future expansion. The Qing, meanwhile, forced to incur massive foreign debts due to the indemnity, fell into a vicious cycle of "borrowing new debt to repay old." In a sense, the Sino-Japanese indemnity was the turning point of modern China's fate—Japan rose while China plunged into the abyss.

The Hundred Days' Reform and the Blood of Six Martyrs

The Sino-Japanese defeat finally awakened some Chinese. In 1898, the Guangxu Emperor, influenced by reformers like Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao, resolved to strengthen the nation through reform. From June 11 to September 21, in just one hundred and three days, Guangxu issued over one hundred reform edicts covering everything from abolishing the Eight-Legged Essay to establishing schools, reducing redundant officials, and creating a parliament. This became the famous "Hundred Days' Reform."

Yet nearly every reform measure touched the interests of Cixi and conservative factions. Abolishing the Eight-Legged Essay threatened the career prospects of traditional scholars; reducing officials meant smashing the livelihood of countless bureaucrats; creating a parliament directly challenged the foundations of imperial absolutism. Though Cixi had nominally "returned power" to Guangxu, she still controlled the levers of government. When she realized reform might genuinely diminish her authority, she struck decisively.

On September 21, Cixi launched a coup, declared "regency," and imprisoned Guangxu in the Yingtai Pavilion. Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao escaped overseas with British and Japanese assistance, but Tan Sitong, Yang Rui, Liu Guangdi, Lin Yu, Yang Shenxiu, and Kang Guangren were arrested. Tan Sitong had the chance to escape but chose to stay, leaving behind words that still resonate: "Every nation's reforms have involved bloodshed, but China has never seen blood spilled for reform. Let it begin with me."

On September 28, all six were executed at Beijing's vegetable market—they became known as the "Six Martyrs of the Hundred Days' Reform." Cixi had personally strangled the Qing's last chance at top-down transformation. When she was later forced to implement the "Late Qing New Policies" from 1901 onward, hearts had scattered and momentum had shifted irrevocably.

The Gengzi Disaster: Four Hundred Fifty Million Taels in Blood and Tears

If the Sino-Japanese indemnity critically wounded the Qing, the 1900 Gengzi Incident nearly completely drained it dry.

The incident stemmed from the Boxer Rebellion. From 1899 onward, the Boxers in Shandong and Zhili, under the banner of "Support Qing, Eliminate the Foreign," launched large-scale attacks on foreign missionaries, Christian converts, and foreign merchants, burning churches and destroying railways and telegraph lines. Cixi's initial stance wavered, but in June 1900, she made an insane decision: declare war simultaneously on eleven great powers.

This may be history's most absurd declaration of war. Aside from the fact that Qing military power was no match for the powers, the very decision to "simultaneously declare war on eleven nations" exposed Cixi's ignorance and arbitrariness in international politics. According to records, she pounded the table during an imperial conference, saying: "Today all nations have joined against us—how shall we respond?" ignoring ministers' objections, she issued the declaration of war.

The outcome was predictable. The Eight-Power Allied Forces—Britain, France, Germany, Russia, America, Japan, Italy, and Austria—with merely over twenty thousand troops, fought from Tianjin to Beijing. On August 14, 1900, the Allies entered the city. Cixi fled in panic with Guangxu, eventually reaching Xi'an. Beijing suffered unprecedented devastation; the remaining structures of the Summer Palace were completely destroyed, and countless treasures were plundered.

The Protocol of 1901, signed on September 7, was the most tragic unequal treaty in modern Chinese history. The total indemnity was four hundred fifty million taels of silver—calculated at one tael per person of China's four hundred fifty million population, a deliberate humiliation by the great powers. With annual interest of four percent, by the time of final payment in 1940, the total would reach nine hundred eighty million taels. Additionally, the treaty required demolition of the Dagu Forts, permitted foreign troops to garrison along the Beijing-Shanhaiguan railway, and designated the Legation Quarter in Beijing as exclusive to foreign powers, forbidding Chinese residence. Qing sovereignty had virtually vanished; the nation became a mere "tax-collection tool" for the great powers.

From World Leader to Prey for All

Looking back over Cixi's forty-seven years in power, the Qing's national strength experienced a precipitous decline.

According to economic historian Angus Maddison's research, in 1820 (during the Daoguang era), China's GDP comprised approximately one-third of global output—clearly the world's premier economic power. By 1870, in early Cixi's reign, despite the devastating Taiping Rebellion, China's GDP still represented about seventeen percent of global output. But by 1900, this figure had dropped to approximately eleven percent and continued falling.

During Cixi's rule, the Qing successively signed multiple unequal treaties, ceding and leasing vast territories: Taiwan to Japan; Port Arthur and Dalian to Russia (later Japan); Weihai to Britain; Jiaozhou to Germany; Guangzhouwan to France. Foreign powers carved out spheres of influence, controlled customs revenue, and stationed troops. Though China retained nominal independence, it had become a semi-colonial state.

How much money did Cixi ultimately squander? A simple accounting: two hundred thirty million taels for the Sino-Japanese indemnity, nearly one billion taels with interest for the Gengzi indemnity, plus the Sino-French War, various local indemnities, embezzled funds, and indirect losses from territorial cession—conservatively exceeding fifteen billion taels of silver. Yet annual Qing fiscal revenue was merely eighty to ninety million taels; these indemnities effectively mortgaged the nation's earnings for the next twenty years.

The Knell of Collapse

Three years after Cixi's death, on October 10, 1911, the Wuchang Uprising erupted. Merely four months later, on February 12, 1912, the last emperor Puyi, through Empress Dowager Longyu's regency, issued an abdication edict, and the Qing Dynasty, which had ruled for two hundred sixty-eight years, officially ended.

The Qing's collapse cannot be attributed solely to Cixi; institutional rigidity, foreign aggression, and accumulated social contradictions all played crucial roles. But as the wielder of supreme power for nearly half a century, virtually every critical decision Cixi made chose the worst option: when she should have built warships, she constructed gardens; when she should have pursued reform, she executed reformers; when she should have allied with powers, she declared war on the world; when she should have embraced opening and reform, she clung desperately to power.

Some have attempted to rehabilitate Cixi's reputation, noting her support for the Self-Strengthening Movement and Late Qing New Policies, claiming she was "without choice." But history does not extend credit for "having no choice." She enjoyed forty-seven years of supreme power and must bear responsibility for the empire's rapid decline during those years. The Summer Palace's long corridors remain, Kunming Lake's waters still ripple, but the silver meant for warships, training new armies, and establishing new schools has transformed into every meticulously carved brick and every piece of glazed tile in this garden.

This is, perhaps, the most expensive garden in modern Chinese history. Its cost was the fate of an empire.