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| Emperor
Kuang Hsu: Abolition of the Examination System (1898)
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| The changes in the attitude
of the court towards a new educational system began, as do many great undertakings,
in a very simple way. We have already shown how the eunuchs secured all
kinds of foreign mechanical toys to entertain the baby Emperor Kuang Hsu;
how these were supplemented in his boyhood by ingenious clocks and watches;
how he became interested in the telegraph, the telephone, steam cars, steamboats,
electric light and steam heat, and how he had them first brought into the
palace and then established throughout the empire: and how he had the phonograph,
graphophone, cinematograph, bicycle, and indeed all the useful and unique
inventions of modern times brought in for his entertainment.
He then began the study of English. When in 1894 a New Testament was sent to the Empress Dowager on the occasion of her sixtieth birthday, he at once secured from the American Bible Society a copy of the complete Bible for himself. He began studying the Gospel of Luke. This gave him a taste for foreign literature and he sent his eunuchs to the various book depositories and bought every book that had been translated from the European languages into the Chinese. To these he bent all his energies and it soon became noised abroad that the Emperor was studying foreign books and was about to embrace the Christian faith. This continued from 1894 till 1898, during which time his example was followed by tens of thousands of young Chinese scholars throughout the empire, and Chang Chih-tung wrote his epoch-making book "China's Only Hope" which, being sent to the young Emperor, led him to enter upon a universal reform, the chief feature of which may be considered the adoption of a new educational system. But now let us notice the animus of Kuang Hsu. He has been praised without stint for his leaning towards foreign affairs, when in reality was it not simply an effort on the part of the young man to make China strong enough to resist the incursions of the European powers? Germany had taken Kiaochou, Russia had taken Port Arthur, Japan had taken Formosa, Great Britain had taken Weihaiwei, France had taken Kuangchouwan, and even Italy was anxious to have a slice of his territory, while all the English papers in the port cities were talking of China being divided up amongst the Powers, and it was these things which led the Emperor to enter upon his work of reform. In the summer of 1898 therefore he sent out an edict to the effect that:
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