The Odd World of Royalist Conspiracy Theories

There is a man, probably unknown to most younger Americans today, named Lyndon LaRouche who was once fairly well known as someone who was constantly running for president without ever winning. He ran on his own at least once as I recall but usually as a Democrat though he never made any headway, never won a primary and thus was never actually nominated. An ardent socialist from a French-Canadian family, he was known for his many and diverse conspiracy theories and his, perhaps, most overriding conspiracy theory involved monarchism and, in particular, the most prominent monarchy in the world, namely the British monarchy. There have, of course, been numerous individuals throughout American history, and doubtless in other countries, who have portrayed the British as the villains of the world but I do not know of any who took it to such an extreme as Lyndon LaRouche or of any other who so particularly singled out the British Royal Family as the authors of this villainy.

To summarize the views of LaRouche and his movement, this man believed that the British Empire was and still is alive and well, despite all evidence to the contrary. He maintains that the supposed global super-power, the United States of America, is, in fact, not even an independent country but is, rather, simply one of the pawns of the British Empire which still dominates the world and that HM Queen Elizabeth II is the unquestioned and absolute ruler of this British Empire which secretly dominates the world. He has claimed that the Queen maintains her position by being at the top of a vast, global, drug cartel network and has never missed on opportunity to accuse the British Royal Family of being responsible for every tragedy and atrocity that has ever come about. Some of these have gained more traction than others, such as his assertion that Diana, Princess of Wales, did not die as a result of a drunk driving accident but was assassinated by British secret agents on orders from the Duke of Edinburgh.

However, while LaRouche insists that the British monarch is the mastermind of this sinister conspiracy, he by no means limits it to the British royals alone. He has often referred to an Anglo-Dutch empire of drug traffickers and, in fact, concludes that since 1688 the Dutch took over the British Empire and set all of this up, so while the House of Windsor is on top today, it is only thanks to their Dutch co-conspirators of days gone by. He, of course, has also played up the German ties of the British Royal Family, past and present, such as by portraying Prince Philip and the late consort of the Dutch monarch, Prince Bernhard, of being Nazis and that the Anglo-Dutch royals are still carrying on the Nazi campaign of genocide on a global scale. He also once made a point to write that Prince Philip was Danish as if this was equivalent to being a Nazi German so, presumably, the Danish Royal Family is implicated as well as the British, Dutch and German royal houses. So, the British Empire rules the world through drug trafficking, except it is actually the Dutch empire under another name and is run by German royals who are all Nazis. Are we clear now?

LaRouche was a very big fan of Franklin D. Roosevelt, but certainly all recent American presidents have simply been the puppets of this Anglo-Dutch British Empire in his view. All of this may seem quite entertaining for southern Europeans but, rest assured, LaRouche does not let you off the hook either. After all, he also asserts that the Anglo-Dutch empire, run by Germans, was established in order to supplant the Venetian empire which dominated European affairs and held all of Europe in its grip previously. So, in the annals of the secret history of the world according to Lyndon LaRouche, before the British Empire dominated the world through banks and drug cartels, it was the Venetian republic which did so, all of the supposedly powerful kings of Spain and France, the German and Italian princes simply being the powerless puppets of the villainous and all-powerful Doge of Venice!

Does this sort of thing happen in other parts of the world? Not to any great extent from what I can tell. I have never heard of any equivalent in Africa or the Islamic countries. In Japan the native monarchy is certainly not talked about in such a way though I have seen a few examples in Japanese entertainment of portrayals of the (again) British monarch being the one who secretly calls the shots, that the British royals and hereditary aristocracy are still the ones really in control of the country, they just do everything behind the scenes so as not to attract notice. That being said, I have to believe this is simply a tool of imaginative fiction and I doubt very seriously anyone in Japan actually believes that. The only non-western equivalent I have ever heard of is the conspiracy regarding the late Qing Dynasty which is prevalent among the more bizarre elements of the Han Chinese nationalists though, obviously, in a country like Communist China, it is hard to know how much of this to take seriously since it is all necessarily based on rumors and such. As conspiracy theories go, it is a fantastic one.

According to these Han-supremacists, depending on which version of the conspiracy you choose to believe, the Great Qing Empire is, like the British Empire, still alive and well and still ruling China secretly, behind the scenes. Some versions of the story say that the Manchu princes themselves are running the show, others that it is simply a conspiracy of Manchurians in general who maintain Manchu supremacy over the Han Chinese. This is quite an accomplishment considering that the Han account for about 92% of the population of China while the Manchurians are practically nonexistent. Even simply counting those with some Manchu ancestry would still be a statistically irrelevant number. Nonetheless, the Han-supremacists who push this conspiracy, carrying on the anti-Manchu sentiment of the late Qing period, believe that the Chinese government and military are riddled with Manchurians who manipulate policy, kill off Han Chinese rivals and guide national affairs. Probably their most well known accusation is that the former “one child policy” was actually a secret program of genocide by the Manchurians to wipe out the Han population.

The idea that there are anti-Han Manchurians in control of China at a time when non-Han minorities have been reduced to a miniscule fraction of the Chinese population is clearly absurd but hardly more absurd than LaRouche arguing that U.S. President Obama, the son of a man imprisoned by the British colonial authorities in Kenya, would be the pliant stooge of the British monarch. It is no less absurd than the conspiracy put forward by the recently deceased Jack Chick that the Islamic religion was created by the Pope as an instrument of the Catholic Church, that the Catholics, Muslims, Jews, pagans and Freemasons were all playing for the same team against his version of “true” Christianity. How can anyone possibly believe any of this?

A simple explanation is that they take certain actual facts and then build absurdities on top of them. The “one child policy” was real, after all. The British Empire did fight the Opium Wars with China and the Catholic Church did absorb many pre-Christian customs of pagan Europe. The Italian city-states and the Dutch republic were major banking centers and London today is one of the financial centers of the world. The conspiracy theories mentioned above take these facts, expand on them and the next thing you know, the Queen is running a drug cartel, Qing princes are ruling Communist China and the Jesuits are the papal assassination squad. As it stands, very few people believe these stories and those who do find them attractive, I think, because they allow people to believe themselves powerless and thus not responsible for the sad state of affairs in which they find themselves. It may reduce people to being powerless dupes but at least it means someone else is to blame, it is not your fault and all you have to do is believe it and support those who told you the “truth”. You do not have to actually take any action as these all-powerful forces would easily thwart you after all, so it is also extremely convenient and requires very little effort on your part, which is how most like it.

There a myriad of these types of conspiracies, aimed against various groups, large and small alike and they can be quite irritating. I find them irritating because, for one thing, secrets are hard to keep and most people with a sinister agenda are quite open about what they are doing because they do not think it is sinister. Focus on winning the game, not dissecting the motives of the other player. I also find it irritating because it gives permission for people to stop taking responsibility for their own actions or, more usually, their inaction. It encourages people to see themselves as victims and there are few things more destructive in the modern world than the victim mentality. It also leads to the same sort of thing that the tens of thousands of Christian denominations led to in western religion which was an ever increasing amount of skepticism. When people do not know what to believe, when there are so many different narratives that are being pushed, people simply give up, stop believing anything they hear and, again, become inactive.

Most intelligent people, I would think, can easily see that conspiracies such as the unseen, all-powerful British Empire or the secret society of Manchurian loyalists are complete and utter nonsense. However, conspiracies do exist. Many people, in America for example, said that all talk of the “Deep State” was a silly conspiracy theory but we now know it to be completely true. Conspiracies exist but they are rarely, if ever, secret or, at the very least, do not stay secret for long. It is also true that not everything that looks like a conspiracy actually is, often it is simply a group of like minded people, working toward the same goal who thus inadvertently assist each other and this can be easily portrayed as a conspiracy even when nothing of the sort was going on. Again, what matters is what they are doing, not who is doing it or how much they coordinate with each other. So, for a monarchist perspective, I would say it does not matter to me so much whether the French Revolution was a Masonic conspiracy, it only matters to me that I think the Revolution was horrible and should have been prevented or stopped. I would oppose anyone favoring the French Revolution whether they were a Freemason or not.

I would also add, frivolously, that these types of conspiracies do make me laugh in as much as the enemies of monarchy tend to have a loftier view of existing monarchs than many monarchists do. While monarchists lament the powerless state of western monarchs, the enemies of monarchy like LaRouche followers still think they are the most powerful people in the world, secretly dominating world affairs behind the scenes. Sometimes, one must simply appreciate the irony of the situation.

Communist China Just Lengthened World War II

Recently, the People’s Republic of China announced that they are officially changing the date for the start of World War II. They did this, they openly said, to highlight the role of the Communist Party in fighting the Japanese and as part of an overall campaign to instill patriotic fervor, and some would say xenophobia, in the Chinese youth of today. Which, in itself, only makes sense if one takes into account the amount of deception already in place when it comes to how the Chinese Communist Party uses history as a political tool. This has also meant that they have had to adjust their official name for World War II in East Asia from, “The Eight-Year War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression” to, “The Fourteen-Year War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression”. Hardly rolls off the tongue but maybe it sounds better in Chinese. Some commentators, such as Michael Peck at “The National Interest” have said that the Chinese are doing the right thing but for the wrong reason. Actually, they are doing the wrong thing for the wrong reason. Nothing about this is right or remotely accurate.

Traditionally, historians have dated the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War or World War II in East Asia (or the “Greater East Asian War” if you’re in Japan) to the Marco Polo Bridge Incident of July 7, 1937. This is because it was from that point onward, increasing in intensity, that large-scale combat occurred between Chinese and Japanese military forces. So, that makes sense. The Republic of China did not actually declare war on the Empire of Japan until after the attack on Pearl Harbor when the United States, Great Britain, The Netherlands, Australia and others became involved. This was mostly because the leader of the Republic of China, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, was, in my opinion, leaving himself room for maneuver in case the persistent communist threat became a greater concern to him than the Japanese, so that he could negotiate a settlement with Japan in order to focus on fighting Mao Zedong and his communist bandits. Clearly, a war was being fought between Chinese and Japanese forces long before 1941 so taking into account declarations of war is rather meaningless.

Now, the Chinese Communist Party is changing its history books to say that the war actually began at the time of the Mukden Incident on September 18, 1931 when, after a small bomb was exploded on the Japanese-owned South Manchurian Railway, troops of the Imperial Japanese Army rushed in and quickly took control of the region, occupying Manchuria and later established the State (and finally Empire) of Manchukuo under the titular leadership of the last Qing Dynasty Emperor. This, they say, is when the Japanese first invaded China, first engaged in hostile action against China and thus that this was really when World War II in East Asia began. However, while it may make for a nice narrative, this is simply misleading. The war did not start in 1931, plain and simple. That is not what happened and no amount of word play can change the actual facts. The reason some people are buying into this narrative is because they have already swallowed a previous falsehood that has been allowed to take root. The preliminary falsehood is that the Republic of China had any legitimate right to claim ownership of Manchuria in the first place.

That is what this whole farce is based on, that “Japan invaded China” in 1931 and so the war can be said to have started then. Some, like Peter Harmsen, who writes about Japanese atrocities, say that the invasion of Manchuria was, “a full-scale Japanese invasion of territory that had been part of China for centuries” which sounds dramatic and is easy for people to believe, looking at maps seems to verify it, but this is totally untrue. Manchuria had not been part of China for centuries, the Manchu Imperial Family ruled over China for centuries. As I have said before, this would be like saying that prior to 1783 the British Isles had been part of America for centuries. Manchuria was a separate, independent country. The rulers of that country were the Qing Dynasty emperors. They ruled Manchuria and the Ming Dynasty ruled China. Then the Qing Emperor became the Great Khan of Mongolia also. So Manchuria and Mongolia had the same Emperor. Then the Ming Dynasty was overthrown, chaos ensued, the Qing Emperor from Manchuria invaded China and became the accepted, recognized Emperor. You will notice that at no point do the Chinese invade and conquer or buy or annex Manchuria. The ruler of Manchuria became the ruler of China.

Then, centuries later, the Chinese rose up against the Manchu Emperor, he abdicated and the Republic of China was established. The Republic of China, however, claimed ownership over all countries besides their own that had also been ruled by the Manchu Emperors such as Tibet, Mongolia and Manchuria. A certain White Russian general expelled them from Mongolia but the rest were eventually taken and remain part of China to this day, though at least in the case of Tibet some people do recognize the injustice of it. However, Manchuria should be no different. Which is why I have long said, and will go on saying no matter how unpopular it is, that the Japanese occupation of Manchuria and the restoration of the last Qing Emperor to the throne of “Manchukuo” (which is simply how you say Manchuria in Chinese) was the correction of an historical injustice. You can agree or disagree on whether the actions of the Japanese in Manchuria were positive or negative but they had put back on the throne the one man who had the only legitimate right to be there. They restored, officially (whether ‘genuinely’ or not people can debate) the independence of a country that had been independent before and had never been “a part of China”.

That is the basis of this issue and the one the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) most wishes to cover up because it is, so to speak, the root of their entire tree of lies on this issue. The more obvious falsehood is that, as U.S. General William T. Sherman said, “War means fighting and fighting means killing” and not much of that happened in 1931. It is perfectly obvious that the war did not start with the Japanese occupation of Manchuria in 1931 because, on the whole, the Chinese did not resist. There was little to fighting in the whole process. China made no effort to defend Manchuria and this was a matter of official policy. It also makes the current tactic of the CCP trying to take credit for resisting the Japanese all the more laughable. Republic of China president Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek had ordered a policy of non-resistance to the Japanese in order to focus on the threat posed by the communist insurgency, which he regarded as more serious. The Chinese Northeastern Army under General Zhang Xueliang was vastly largely than the Japanese forces that moved into Manchuria and yet no significant resistance was offered.

It takes some severe twisting of the facts to insist that a war started in 1931 when there was little to no fighting rather than in 1937 when the armies of two nations became engaged in increasingly large scale combat. Common sense would seem to indicate that a war starts when two sides begin fighting but common sense is often unfashionable and doesn’t always fit with political narratives. The Chinese government decided, as a matter of policy, not to oppose the Japanese and that did not change until 1937 when both sides were drawn into conflict after the Marco Polo Bridge Incident. The Chinese communists, you may note, had little to do with any of this other than, perhaps, doing their best to instigate a clash between the Japanese and the Chinese nationalists, knowing it would be to their benefit (in certain cases Mao openly stated this). That, however, also goes against their current narrative. Getting into the details also, ultimately, only serves to bolster the case of Japan since doing that tends to reveal how chaotic China was during this period and what a loose claim to any actual authority the republican government had.

The Japanese have voiced some disapproval over what the Chinese communist government is doing with this re-working of the World War II timeline but they are likely the only ones who will. Encouraging anti-Japanese hatred over historical events has become a mainstay of the CCP’s program to unite the people and divert their frustrations away from the government and toward a foreign power that is not allowed to go to war anymore. One could say that it does reveal how insecure they are about their own national narrative and how shaky the ground is that it rests on. What is alarming is that so many people in other parts of the world have bought into their false narrative, usually because of anti-Japanese sentiment on their own part because of World War II which allows them to easily slip from, “the Japanese are guilty of this” to “the Japanese are guilty of everything”. It is not, however, factual, it is not real history and it should not go unanswered. The effort of the CCP to take credit for everything the nationalists did and to erase from the history books any traces of the Qing Dynasty and the Manchurian nation should be resisted.

A Note on Chinese Monarchists in the Great War Years

It was on this day in 1915 that General Yuan Shikai, President of the Republic of China, announced his intention to give himself a promotion from President to Emperor. This he would eventually do, though his reign as "Emperor Hongxian" would last only about three months from December 22, 1915 to March 22, 1916. To say the least, the years from 1914 to 1918, when most of the globe was focused on the events of World War I, was a time of struggle in "the Middle Kingdom" between the adherents of a republic and those of a monarchy and this incident illustrates how there were plenty of divisions in each of those camps. Yuan Shikai did have his supporters and there were those who backed his regime who argued that his new version of an Imperial China, the "Great Chinese Empire" would be ideal, just what the country needed at the time. They portrayed it as something more nationalistic and more modern than the traditional imperial system, something that would, nonetheless, maintain some of the old customs while also being strong enough to deal with the internal and external enemies that China faced. However, it obviously did not work and the fact that it would be a failed enterprise should have been fairly obvious for all to see. This action was the 'last straw', so to speak, for those on both the left and the right who had been increasingly opposed to Yuan Shikai for some time.

General Yuan Shikai had burned his bridges with both the republican and monarchist factions by this act of self-promotion. He had been the top military commander for the old empire, commanding the most powerful military forces of the late Qing Dynasty. However, when the 1911 Revolution broke out, rather than suppressing the rebels, whose ideological father was Sun Yat-sen, he made a deal with them. He would persuade the Qing Imperial court that all was lost and that they should give up power voluntarily in return for the "Articles of Favorable Treatment". In exchange for this, effectively selling out the monarchy and Qing loyalists, the republicans would make him the first President of the Republic of China. In due course, this all came about. The Empress-Dowager Longyu signed the abdication on behalf of little Puyi in 1912 and only a couple of days later Yuan Shikai became provisional President of China, being formally sworn in the following month. For many monarchists and those of and sympathetic to the Qing dynasty, Yuan Shikai took on the part of an arch-traitor who had sold out his own side for personal gain. The Qing Imperial forces had not been defeated outright after all, no rebel mobs had stormed the Forbidden City, the entire downfall of the Great Qing Empire had been noticeably anti-climactic. Many traditionalists viewed the situation as the Qing dynasty not really losing the 'Mandate of Heaven' but as having been deceived into abandoning it.

The republicans ultimately found themselves no more pleased with Yuan Shikai than the monarchists did. Immediately there were clashes over the extent of presidential powers, a leading critic of Yuan Shikai was assassinated. Elections brought in a large Kuomintang (Chinese Nationalist Party) power bloc but Yuan Shikai dissolved the assemblies, basically assumed dictatorial powers and forced Sun Yat-sen to flee the country. He fled to Japan in 1913 and immediately called for a "Second Revolution" to overthrow Yuan Shikai. It was the following year that World War I started and when it came to China in a major way with the campaign to capture the German port of Tsingtao. It had a powerful German garrison (along with a small Austro-Hungarian naval contingent) and was attacked by a much larger Allied force, predominately the Imperial Japanese Army with a token British contingent. After the Germans were ultimately forced to surrender to the Japanese, Tokyo issued a list of demands to the Chinese government concerning the recently conquered territory, which the Chinese found outrageous when they learned of them but which Yuan Shikai largely agreed to, further undermining his standing as a nationalist figure.

So it was that when, the following year, he began to make his transition from President to Emperor, the republicans who had previously supported him for getting rid of the Qing Dynasty for them had all turned against him. Traditional monarchists, likewise, had little reason to welcome this new turn of events. They had not forgotten his betrayal of the Qing, many blamed him for the entire state of affairs based on the view that he could have stopped the 1911 Revolution if he had really wanted to and now they viewed his effort to make himself monarch of a new sort of Chinese monarchy in the same way that most French royalists viewed Napoleon crowning himself emperor. They viewed him as a usurper and while they would love to see the restoration of the monarchy, they certainly saw no need for Yuan Shikai as emperor. For most of the monarchists, for those who believed in the traditional imperial system, China already had an emperor and that was the young boy being kept hidden away in the Forbidden City. Immediately, even within his own camp, things began to fall apart for Yuan Shikai. The military was divided, many of his supporters abandoned him, his sons began fighting over who would be the crown prince and most foreign governments refused to recognize his change in status, preferring to wait for things to settle down.

PuYi in 1917

Before he had gone through the traditional rites of accession to the throne (which is why practically no one considers him the "last emperor" of China), Yuan Shikai could see that his 'ship of state' was sinking fast. His money dried up, the provinces began to declare against him, republican forces were gathering to oppose him and renouncing his claim to imperial status satisfied no one. He would not be an emperor or a president any more and before things could get really bad he simply dropped dead in the summer of 1916. Yet, without Yuan Shikai to oppose, the republicans had nothing to unite them and soon began feuding among themselves. The following year, 1917, a Qing Dynasty loyalist decided that the traditional monarchy should be restored. With his army, he occupied Peking and, for a few days, restored the last Manchu Emperor to the Chinese throne. That, as we know, did not last and there was to be no Emperor of China again, though the actual "last Emperor" was restored in his Manchurian homeland a few decades later thanks to Japan.

Yuan Shikai, simply had nothing really going for him. Unlike Napoleon, he had won no great battles with which to rally the country behind him. He had no 'street cred' with the republicans and most monarchists viewed him as a traitor. For the republicans, he had not triumphed over the Qing Imperial Army, he had led the Qing Imperial Army and had used a combination of warnings and promises to convince them to hand over power without a real fight. He was not a republican by natural inclination and yet he had no legitimacy as a monarchial claimant to the throne. Just as for most conservative French royalists, Napoleon would never be anything but the 'upstart Corsican usurper' there were always going to be those Manchu loyalists who would never accept him. However, while Napoleon had struck down threats to France and conquered much of Italy and won battles in Egypt before claiming the throne, Yuan Shikai had not crushed his republican rivals, defeated any foreign armies or, such as with his reaction to the Japanese, done much to revive Chinese pride and prestige. He was, mostly by his own actions, caught between two irreconcilable forces. The republicans, obviously, wanted a republic and would not have an emperor. The monarchists, on the other hand, already had an emperor and it was not Yuan Shikai.

Monarch Profile: Emperor Tongzhi of China

It is an unfortunate fact that many, when looking back on the history of fallen dynasties, tend to take that downfall as an inevitable fact and allow this to prejudice their view of monarchs ruling during what is, retroactively of course, referred to as the latter stages of a dynasty. This causes them to emphasize the negative, discount the positive and ignore what were real and legitimate instances of a reversal in fortunes or at least the possibility for rejuvenation. Such is the case with the Tongzhi Emperor, tenth monarch of the Qing Dynasty of Manchuria. He was born, Prince Zaichun, on April 27, 1856 the only son of Emperor Xianfeng by his powerful consort Tzu-hsi (Cixi). He was only five years old when his father died and from that moment on was at the center of intrigues on the part of his formidable mother. Emperor Xianfeng had originally intended for General Sushun to act as head of a regency committee for his young son but this plan was thwarted by an alliance Cixi forged with Empress Xiao Chen (who had given the Emperor a daughter) and the Emperor’s brother Prince Kong (Aisin-Gioro Yixin). Cixi and Xiao Chen were both raised to the status of Dowager Empress and for Cixi it would mark the beginning of her fifty year hold on power in China.

However, the alliance was an uneasy one. Whereas Empress Dowager Cixi tended to be suspicious of any change to the established, traditional system, Prince Kong was in favor of modernization (especially in the military) and tended to prefer cooperation with the western powers over antagonism. Under this triumvirate the Great Qing Empire first began to step onto the world stage, establishing a Ministry of Foreign Affairs and promoting the study of foreign languages. As a child, Emperor Tongzhi was left mostly in the care of a small army of fawning eunuchs who were not always a good influence on him. While his tutors strove to instill in him the traditional Confucian virtues, the eunuchs were all too willing to please him by indulging his every whim and, at times, introducing him to some he might not have considered on his own. In 1873 the young Emperor was declared to be of age and he began his official duties. One of these, keeping with the changing times, was to receive foreign ambassadors and he did so, meeting with the representatives of Japan, Russia, Great Britain, France, The Netherlands and the United States. As an another sign of how things were changing, none were obliged to kowtow in the presence of the young ‘Son of Heaven’.

In spite of official declarations, Empress Dowager Cixi continued to be the real power behind the throne, though initially she was not the only one struggling to dominate the halls of power in the name of the Tongzhi Emperor. The young monarch became listless and disheartened under such domination and drifted back to the eunuchs he had known all his short life who were more than willing to help him flee his troubles through overindulgence in women and alcohol. His mother responded by getting her 16-year old son married, though she clashed with Empress Dowager Xiao Chen over who it should be, until Tongzhi chose Xiaozheyi of the Alute clan, Mongol Plain Blue Banner, daughter of a prominent nobleman and scholar. However, marriage brought little lasting peace to the life of the Emperor. He had other concubines but favored his Empress above all and spent most every night with her. Empress Dowager Cixi, never terribly fond of the girl, accused her of trying to monopolize the affections of her husband and depriving the other consorts of his affections. Eventually, she would go so far as to order the two to separate.

Meanwhile, on the political scene, some actions where being taken in an effort to strengthen and modernize China as the recent defeats in the Opium Wars and the exorbitantly costly victory over the Taiping Rebellion had proven to all that some change was necessary or China would be surpassed and swallowed up by foreign powers. The shining example on how this could be done was the Meiji Restoration in Japan. In a very short period of time, the Empire of Japan had become a major regional power with modern industry, infrastructure and military might that secured it against foreign interference while also maintaining the imperial system and the traditional culture and values of Japan. This would not be the last time that something similar for the Great Qing Empire was considered. Toward that end, a number of reforms were enacted as part of the so-called Tongzhi Restoration. This included the aforementioned establishment of the Foreign Ministry and Institute for Foreign Languages as well as enlisted the aid of foreign powers in certain areas. Primarily, this meant the Imperial Maritime Customs Service which was essentially set up to enlist foreigners in China to deal with the foreigners who had dominated the Chinese coast since 1860. It was staffed by foreigners and a British national was put in charge. The IMCS collected revenue and excise duties for the imperial government and it proved to be a major success and has been described by more than a few as the only arm of the Chinese government that worked efficiently and well.

The Tongzhi Restoration, however, did not go anywhere close to the lengths that the Meiji Restoration did in Japan. It was intended to focus on “practical knowledge” while shunning western ideas about philosophy or politics. That would probably have been okay but there was such opposition that permission to limit modernization was often stretched to mean that many refused to implement any real modernization at all. There were also problems at court with the Emperor and his mother not on good terms and with cracks beginning to appear in the triumvirate that still held considerable power despite the fact that Emperor Tongzhi was supposed to be in charge. Empress Dowager Cixi suggested that the Emperor build himself a new residence and he seemed quite taken by the idea but Prince Kong refused to allocate the funds for it. Some have wondered since if the Empress Dowager expected this. Emperor Tongzhi was enraged and distraught by this, yet another example of how he was not being allowed to rule as he pleased and how everyone seemed dedicated to thwarting him and his happiness. He went back to trying to forget his sorrow, came down with smallpox but seemed to recover from it. Then, quite suddenly, Emperor Tongzhi died on January 12, 1875.

Due to the circumstances, many wondered if the Empress Dowager had not had her own son poisoned to remove him from the influence of his wife and prevent him from removing her from power. When the Empress Consort later committed suicide many also suspected the Empress Dowager of being behind it. Whatever the case may be, it was a sad end to a monarch who, despite much over-indulgence, had lived a rather sad life from start to finish. Emperor Tongzhi is often portrayed very critically as being willful, over-emotional and dissolute. However, what faults he had were mostly not of his own making but were the result of how he was treated by others. He also possessed positive qualities which are often overlooked. Had he been free to rule as he wished, aided by his very intelligent Empress consort, and had the Tongzhi Restoration lived up to its potential, there is every possibility that the era of Tongzhi might have gone down in Chinese history as the period when the Manchu dynasty revived itself and put Imperial China on the path to prestige and prosperity.

The Ming Dynasty After the Fall

A couple weeks ago, on April 25, was the anniversary of the end of the rule of the Ming dynasty over China with the death of the last Ming Emperor, Chongzhen, in 1644. By the time Emperor Chongzhen came to the throne it is likely that the Ming Dynasty was already beyond repair. He tried to set things to rights but corruption had run rampant, the treasury was empty, bad harvests and drought had caused widespread famine and hunger and rebellions were becoming increasingly commonplace. The last straw was the attack of a group of rebels under Li Zicheng who had already turned usurper by declaring himself emperor of the “Shun Dynasty”. With no hope for survival, Emperor Chongzhen gathered the female family members together and, with tears streaming down his face, killed them all with his own sword before hanging himself in the Jingshan Park behind the Forbidden City. Hundreds of courtiers dutifully followed their monarch in death rather than serve the usurper. As we know, Li Zicheng never became a real ruler of China, being driven from power and defeated by the Mongol and Manchu forces of the Qing Dynasty that next assumed the Mantle of Heaven. The Ming Dynasty tried to carry on for a time as the Southern Ming Dynasty but they were a beaten and increasingly fractured force, eventually giving way to the forces of the Great Qing Empire.

Yongzheng

The family, under their original name of Chu, continued to survive and for that brief time early on they even then made rather uncomfortable enemies for the new Manchurian dynasty. Emperor Huang Taiji had come to power in Peking at the head of his forces, standing as the avenger of the fallen Ming Dynasty, punishing the usurper who had overthrown them yet still determined to see their own victory consolidated rather than handing power back over to the Ming. They had won, following all established tradition, and secured the Mandate of Heaven, happily without actually overthrowing the previous dynasty. So it was that the suppression of the Southern Ming could be seen as somewhat awkward. In any event, once all was settled and secure, the Qing Dynasty took steps to show that there were no hard feelings between themselves and their imperial predecessors in China. So it was that the Qing Emperor Yongzheng (one of the three great Qing monarchs who reigned at the height of Manchu power and prestige) granted to the heir of the Ming Dynasty the title of “Extended Grace” in reference to the mercy that the Ming had been shown by their successors. So, the heir of the Ming dynasty, head of the Chu family, was the Marquis of Extended Grace in the aristocracy of the Great Qing Empire.

There was only one condition attached to the title by the Manchu court and it was really no condition at all but more akin to a reward for doing what every faithful Chinese gentleman would feel obliged to do in any event and that was that twice a year the Marquis of Extended Grace was to visit the Thirteen Imperial Tombs (of the Ming Dynasty) to perform the rites of remembrance and give a report on this to the Qing court for which the Manchu Emperor would compensate him for his expenses on these occasions. So, in effect, the Qing Emperor was paying the Ming heir for doing officially what he almost certainly would have done or would have wished to do in a private capacity in any event. After the passage of centuries most of the people of China forgot about the descendants of the former dynasty and the family itself came to be in a very modest condition, by not a few standards some would even say impoverished. However, each Marquis of the Chu family continued to dutifully visit the Thirteen Imperial Tombs and receive their allowance from the Qing court without ever actually meeting the Great Qing Emperor himself. That situation persevered until finally the reign of the Qing Dynasty too came to an end.

Marquis of Extended Grace

The British tutor of the last Manchu Emperor, Reginald Fleming Johnston, relates in his book, “Twilight in the Forbidden City” about his noticing the name of the Marquis of Extended Grace in the court newspaper and suggesting to the young Emperor that he should meet with the heir of the former Ming Dynasty. It was all arranged and on September 7, 1924 the last Qing Emperor met face to face with the heir of the last Ming Emperor in the Forbidden City (itself a monument of the Ming Dynasty reign). Later he called on Johnston to thank him for having arranged the visit but protested when Johnston offered to return the favor and visit the Marquis at his own home. He confessed that the traditional robes he wore were borrowed and he did not wish anyone to see the poor state he was living in. Johnston agreed to respect his wishes but did photograph him and later sent him copies of the snaps along with some gifts to thank him for his courtesy. He was a loyal and genteel man who greatly impressed the British scholar as did his actions later. 1924, after all, was the year that the last Qing Emperor was expelled from the Forbidden City by the corrupt forces of the Republic of China and in the aftermath it became much easier to tell who the true friends of the monarchy in China were.

Immediately after the Revolution, the republicans tried to make a show of paying pretended homage to the memory of the Great Ming Empire, the last of the dynasties of the majority Han nationality. The traitor Sun Yat-sen even went to the tomb of the founder of the Ming Dynasty (absurdly wearing a western frock coat and top hat) to proclaim that they had driven the foreign Manchurians from power. However, they took no care to actually preserve and maintain the relics of the Ming era and the tombs themselves soon began to fall into decay. Their pretended respect for the old Ming Dynasty was just that; a pretense and nothing more. It also annoyed the republican elite that the Ming heir, the Marquis of Extended Grace, even after the fall of the Qing Dynasty, continued to pay his respects at the tombs of his ancestors in the name of the Manchu Emperor. As stated above, this was still going on decades later in 1924 when the Marquis and the last Emperor finally met in person. The republicans had tried to convey the idea that they respected the history and culture of the old, traditional China by paying lip-service to the Great Ming Empire of the past. However, their game of pretend was ruined by the fact that the Ming heir remained loyal to the last Qing Emperor and continued to perform the duties attached to the noble title he had been given. He of course, had no reason to prefer the republic. It had done nothing but betray the dynasty which had shown favor and reconciliation to his own family, they certainly did not restore the Ming nor did they even grant any assistance to the Marquis in his poverty. They also refused to recognize his noble title.

No doubt some today would like to assert that the fidelity of the Ming heir to the Qing Dynasty was purely a matter of convenience, of serving the powers-that-be rather than any sincere act of principle. Those people, however, would be totally wrong as the actions of the Marquis of Extended Grace himself prove. Naturally he came to know that, after being granted an imperial audience himself in 1924, the last Qing Emperor was expelled from the Forbidden City, was effectively placed under house arrest by the republican authorities and later managed to escape to the foreign concession in Tientsin, given a safe haven in the Japanese legation. Chu Yu-hsun, Marquis of Extended Grace, heir of the Ming dynasty, despite his poverty, managed to save enough money, which was a considerable sacrifice for himself, to make the journey to Tientsin simply to kowtow before his Emperor one last time and assure him of his continued loyalty and devotion. Johnston mentions in his book that the Marquis had two young sons at the time he met him but what exactly became of the family I do not know. Under the republic they slipped into total obscurity with many of their former loyalists eventually becoming secret societies and gangs in China and in foreign countries, some perhaps not even cognizant of their origins. Still, despite the effort of the republic to use any lingering loyalty felt for the Ming dynasty to their own advantage, the Marquis of Extended Grace set the right example of loyalty to his own ancestors and of loyalty to the imperial system.

Where Chinese Rule Is Wrong

The title of this may be a bit confusing. As a monarchist, I find everything about the rule of communist China (or “communist” China) wrong but what I am talking about here specifically is the controversy about certain areas that are currently ruled by the People’s Bandit Republic of China which that regime has absolutely no right to. The most prominent of these areas, certainly in the west and which probably has the highest profile worldwide, is Tibet. Why is there a dispute over the Chinese rule of Tibet? Why is this the only dispute most people have heard about? More people know about Tibet mostly because the Tibetan exile community has elements in many countries and because of the inspirational leadership of His Holiness the XIV Dalai Lama who so many people around the world have come to respect and admire for his compassion and devotion to peace. The bandit regime in Peking has absolutely no right to Tibet but it also has no right to some other areas most people do not think about such as Manchuria (now called simply the northeast as part of the program, sadly mostly successful by this point, to eradicate Manchuria from existence) and Mongolia. Now, as most probably know, China does not rule Mongolia which is an independent country though teetering between dependence on China and Russia. However, the communists in Peking have claimed it in the past and the Republic of China, on Taiwan, which still maintains a claim to rule the whole of mainland China, also still, technically, include Mongolia in that claim. So, why all the confusion?

Song Empire

Basically, it all goes back to the last time China had a monarchy and the efforts by the republicans and communist bandits to claim the entire legacy of traditional, imperial China as their own. Save, perhaps, for the period when China was part of the Mongol Yuan Empire, the place most in the world think of as China reached its greatest height under the Manchu emperors of the Great Qing Dynasty. The borders that existed at the height of the Great Qing Empire are the borders the communists in Peking would most like to see restored. The problem with that is that those were the borders of the Great Qing Empire and not really the borders of China. Confused yet? It can seem quite complicated so pay close attention and we will try to take this one step at a time. What most of the world calls “China” is, of course, not a Chinese term but is a western term. The Chinese never called their country “China” in all of their multi-thousand year history prior to the revolution. This area was referred to as “the Middle Kingdom” which can itself be a bit confusing since this referred not only to China proper but actually meant the entire world; everything above the underworld and below Heaven -the “Middle Kingdom”. The ruler of China was considered, in traditional Chinese political philosophy, to be the ruler of the entire world it was only that some remote, barbarian peoples on the edges of the earth were too ignorant to understand this. It was a way of thinking which must be kept in mind when considering how China interacted with foreign powers and why the communists today seize on this interaction to justify their claims for more territory.

Traditionally, Chinese rulers would not deal with any outsider unless they presented themselves as a supplicant and recognized or at least pretended to recognize the Chinese Emperor as their superior. This attitude persisted for almost the entirety of Chinese history. For example, when China and Japan first established diplomatic relations things got off to a bad start as the message from the Emperor of Japan to the Emperor of China was addressed as ‘from the land where the sun rises to the land where the sun sets’ referring to Japan being to the east of China. However, the Chinese took this as being extremely rude and offensive as they saw it as implying that the Emperor of Japan was the equal of the Emperor of China. Move forward many, many centuries in time and we can see again the case of the first British diplomatic mission to China which ran into a considerable obstacle over the refusal of the British ambassador to present himself as a subject and kowtow before the Manchu Emperor, getting down on both knees and touching his forehead to the floor. Today, the Chinese Communist kleptocracy claims that any ruler or representative of a ruler who recognized the Chinese Emperor as his superior or overlord in this fashion was effectively making his country a part of China when, as we can see, this would apply to almost every foreign ruler or dignitary any Chinese Emperor ever met because they would not deal with anyone unless they assumed such a posture.

Viet envoys to Qing court in China

This situation is further complicated by the fact that not all such tributaries were of equal status. The Emperor in China might have more or less influence in one of the other but none were directly under Chinese rule or were considered a part of China. As early as the Tang Dynasty, for example, the kingdoms in what is now Korea were nominal vassals of the Tang Emperor but retained their own rulers. Under the Ming Dynasty, the unified Kingdom of Korea was likewise a vassal of the Ming Emperor or, in terms more familiar to westerners perhaps, a Chinese protectorate. So, when Japan invaded Korea in 1592 the Ming Emperor sent hundreds of thousands of Chinese troops to defend (or in this case re-take) Korea. However, the King of Korea was still the local authority and Korea was never considered a part of China itself. Similarly, there were periods when Chinese Emperors ruled Vietnam but they were invariably driven out. However, every time this occurred, almost immediately, the victorious Vietnamese dynasty would send envoys to Peking to present themselves as the vassals of the Emperor in China and to request his ‘seal of approval’ on their government. The Chinese did not rule Vietnam and, in fact, inside Vietnam the monarch was often referred to as the ‘Emperor’ while he was referred to as ‘King’ when dealing with the ruler of China. It was a way to keep the peace by allowing the Emperor in China to save face, being treated as the superior while in fact the local Vietnamese monarch actually ruled the country. Again, this was rather like a protectorate as when the last Le dynasty emperor was overthrown, he called on China to restore him and this situation endured until the Sino-French War.

Obviously, no one today would consider Korea or Vietnam to be a part of China nor any of the other neighboring countries which paid tribute to the Chinese Emperor. Problems, and confusion, arise partly because of the different understanding of what makes a country. As stated earlier, the Chinese did not view their country as “China” in the same way that foreigners viewed their own countries. When the Chinese referred to their country, when not referring to it as the broader “Middle Kingdom” the Chinese always referred to the dynasty so that the country was whatever territory the Emperor had under his direct control which might have included most, some or even relatively little of what is labeled as China on maps of today. So, rather than saying “China” the Chinese would refer to their country, under the Ming Dynasty for example, as the “Great Ming Empire” (Ta Ming Kuo) and then as the “Great Qing Empire” (Ta Qing Kuo) under the Manchurian dynasty. The Ming Empire, for example, included all of “China” which is to say the historic lands sometimes referred to (somewhat oddly) as “China proper” but did not include Tibet, Mongolia or Manchuria though parts of southern Manchuria and southern Mongolia were under Ming rule for a relatively short time. Today, what the Chinese government likes to claim is that territory which was part of the Great Qing Empire at its height, which included Tibet, Mongolia and Manchuria (obviously, as the Qing Dynasty was the native dynasty of Manchuria) as well as smaller parts of various neighboring powers.

Emperor Nurhaqi of Manchuria

The absurdity of this can, perhaps, best be illustrated by skipping backward, over the Ming Dynasty, to the Yuan Dynasty. As regular readers will know, the Yuan Dynasty was the Mongolian dynasty and refers to that period when China was part of the vast Mongol Empire founded by Genghis Khan with his grandson Kublai Khan being counted as the first Yuan Emperor as it was he who conquered the remainder of China itself; what had been the southern Song Dynasty. What was directly under the rule of the Yuan Emperors was restricted to basically the east Asian mainland north of Vietnam, extending all the way into Siberia. However, the wider Mongol Empire stretched all the way to well inside Eastern Europe. For China today to claim Tibet or Manchuria as being a part of China because all were part of the Qing Empire would be just as absurd as claiming that Siberia is a part of China because it was part of the Yuan Empire. Any claim to Mongolia is just as silly. No Chinese Emperor, meaning an Emperor of the Han nationality from “China proper” ever ruled all of Mongolia or Manchuria but under the Yuan and Qing Dynasties the Mongol and later Manchu Emperors did rule all of China. To put it another way, Mongolia nor Manchuria were ever a part of China but China was, in a manner of speaking, a part of Mongolia and Manchuria during those eras when the Mongol and Manchu Emperors ruled China.

This is the history: When the Ming Empire was in its final days the Qing Dynasty was already well established as the leaders of the Empire of Manchuria. The Manchu Emperor formed an alliance with the Mongols and was granted sovereignty over them when the son of Ligden Khan (last Mongol Emperor of the Yuan Dynasty that had previously ruled most of Asia) handed the imperial seal over to the Manchu Emperor Hong Taiji, who was himself the son of the first Qing Emperor Nurhaqi. Thus Hong Taiji became Emperor of Manchuria and Great Khan of Mongolia. Meanwhile, to the south, the Ming Empire was coming apart. In 1644 Peking was taken by the rebel army of Li Zicheng with the last Ming Emperor, Chongzhen, committing suicide. Li Zicheng proclaimed himself the master of a new Shun Dynasty but a combined force of Chinese, Manchu and Mongol troops ousted him and he disappeared, making the Manchu Emperor Shunzhi the ruler of China, having dispatched an illegitimate usurper and restoring peace and order to China, which became part of the Great Qing Empire -an empire that already existed in Manchuria and Mongolia. Emperor Shunzhi also received an official visit by His Holiness the “Great Fifth” Dalai Lama. The Qing emperors had been protectors of the Tibetan style of Buddhism since the reign of Nurhaqi and, of course, there were deep ties between Mongolia and Tibet with the Mongols having helped establish the Dalai Lamas in the first place and with the Dalai Lamas holding spiritual authority over Mongolia as well as Tibet.

Emperor KangXi of the Great Qing

As we have seen, Mongolia and Manchuria were independent countries which came to share a monarch and then that monarch was also recognized as the ruler of China, holding the Mandate of Heaven. China never conquered or annexed Manchuria and Mongolia, in fact, what happened was closer to the reverse of that. In the same way, it is important to note that when the Great Fifth visiting Peking it was as one sovereign visiting another. His successor, was overthrown and in the ensuing chaos the Qing Emperor Kangxi sent troops to see order restored and the legitimate Dalai Lama secured on his throne. It was at that point and only at that point that the Kingdom of Tibet was declared a protectorate of the Great Qing Empire. That, of course, did not make Tibet a part of China. The Dalai Lama remained the ruler of Tibet with the only change being that two Qing commissioners and a small military force were stationed there and, in the future, Tibet did call on the Qing Empire for assistance in times of crisis. For those who claim that Tibet has “always” been a part of China, one would have to ask why there were no representatives from Peking there in the first place. Why is mention made of the annexation of Tibetan border territories to Chinese provinces if Tibet was entirely part of China already? Obviously, this is nonsense. Tibet was an independent country and it was only when neighboring countries invaded Tibet and Qing troops were sent in to defend the place that Qing Imperial influence was most felt in the aftermath.

Hopefully, this has made clear the absurdity of the Republic of China (and more so the People’s Republic of China) claiming Tibet, Mongolia and Manchuria to have “always” been a part of China. When the revolution occurred, Manchuria naturally had no part in it and Mongolia and Tibet were both quick to make clear to the rest of the world that they were independent, issuing joint declarations to that effect. This was because their association with China was based solely on their relationship with the Qing Emperor and not the country of China itself. Once the Manchu Emperor was deprived of his throne, all deals were off. That independence was temporarily retained for Tibet, remaining independent until communist Chinese troops conquered the country in 1951. Mongolia (or at least Outer Mongolia) remains independent to this day though it was certainly not an easy achievement. Manchuria became, effectively, a warlord “monarchy” ruled by a warlord father and son in succession while they offered nominal allegiance to the Republic of China. All of that changed when the Japanese occupied Manchuria and in 1932 independence was declared for the State of Manchuria, later to be fully restored as the Empire of Manchuria. That, of course, is what should have happened from the beginning and some Chinese officials even admitted as much.

Empire of Manchuria

There was no justification for the Han Chinese to think they were somehow entitled to Manchuria just because China and Manchuria had been part of the same empire. As soon as the Qing Emperor was forced to abdicate in Peking, he should have been able to immediately withdraw to the old Qing Imperial Palace in Mukden and continue to rule over Manchuria as his ancestors had done before accepting the allegiance of the Chinese. For China to claim Manchuria as part of their own national territory would be as absurd as the United States, after winning the Revolutionary War, claiming Great Britain and Ireland to be American territory just because both had previously been part of the same empire. That being so, when the polyglot army of Baron von Ungern-Sternberg drove the Chinese out of Mongolia in 1921, he was expelling invaders and restoring the country to its only available legitimate leader. Likewise, when the Japanese restored the last Qing Emperor to the throne of Manchuria they were correcting a gross historical injustice and when the Soviets (in total violation of their pledged word) invaded and destroyed that empire and handed it over to China again, they were essentially giving recovered property back to the thieves. In the same way, if by some chance the Dalai Lama is ever restored to the Potala Palace in Tibet, it will be correcting a horrible injustice. When the republicans, and certainly the communists, took over China, they turned their back on and even attempted to destroy all that had gone before them and the legacy of the emperors in particular. It is the height of hypocrisy to then attempt to claim those borders which only existed because of the emperors as their own inheritance.

Favorite Royal Images: The Last Empress

HM Empress Wan Jung of China

Understanding the Last Emperor, Part III

Continued from Part II

The Emperor hoped he would finally have the opportunity to prove himself as an independent ruler but he was hampered by the degree to which Manchukuo depended on Japan for security and economic development. As Japan was the primary source of investment in Manchukuo, they naturally had the most influence in the country. Both then and in the years since this has been exaggerated to ridiculous proportions. However, because Japan was the primary source of support for the new regime and because the Emperor desired to show solidarity with Japan during times of increasing difficulty, the Emperor signed into law many directives to show that Manchukuo stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Japan. Some of these, such as Japanese being made the official language taught in Manchukuo schools, have since caused a great deal of unfair criticism to be heaped on the Emperor. However, in every government position it was a Manchu who held the top ministerial role with the Japanese being restricted to the position of deputy ministers. Many critics hold Manchukuo and Japan to an unfair standard in this regard, ignoring other countries which acted similarly. The United States, for example, recognized the independence of The Philippines after World War II but still imposed many conditions to give American interests a favored position and to maintain American military forces in the country.

Enemies of the Empire of Manchukuo, in and outside the country, worked tirelessly to spread fear and paranoia about the Japanese presence in the country. Especially after the start of World War II any person who died or left the country was immediately accused of having been assassinated by the Japanese. Even the Emperor's consort, Tan Yuling, who died in 1944 is an example of this. Despite the lack of any evidence at all that she died of anything but natural causes it is still widely held, whether outright or through innuendo, that she was murdered by Japanese doctors after opposing their influence in Manchukuo. What is certain is that the Japanese officials always treated the Emperor with the utmost respect and, though he later expressed misgivings, the Emperor gave his full support to Japan and the "holy war" for Greater East Asia and showed this support by proclaiming Shinto as the official state religion of Manchukuo. And yet, the Emperor himself was not immune from the fear-mongering going on throughout the country. Concerns about security became causes for suspicion and in time the Emperor himself became very worried about his safety and constantly consulted Buddhist oracles and delved into divination to try to protect himself. Empress Wan Jung dealt with the situation by becoming addicted to opium, a fact which particularly distressed the Emperor as his mother had died of an opium overdose when he was young.

In actuality, the life of the Emperor had in a way regressed to what it had been like for him as a boy in the Forbidden City, only with a change in handlers. He signed what documents the Japanese put before him, he followed their advice on who he was to meet and what he was to say and was not allowed to leave the palace unless the trip had been cleared by the Japanese and he was accompanied by an official escort. Today this is all portrayed in the most negative light possible, yet is little different from the role of any constitutional monarch and, indeed, was not terribly dissimilar to what life was like for the Emperor of Japan at the same time. There was a war going on and it would not be the first or only time that progress toward greater independence for a client state was put on hold because of an on-going conflict. Moreover, the conflict was increasingly going against Japan and by extension for Manchukuo. Japanese security around the Emperor and his own paranoia only increased as the defeat of Japan loomed closer. This is unfortunate because the Emperor was legitimately popular among the native Manchu people, if for no other reason than that he was one of their own. Even those who grumbled about the Japanese being too heavy-handed still felt sympathy for their Emperor in whom they saw a brief vision of their former glory and status. And though things were far from ideal, it was lost on no one that without Japan the restoration would never have hapened at all, and if they were defeated the restored monarchy was surely doomed. When the end finally came PuYi hoped to fly to Japan where he could surrender to the Americans, but unfortunately for him, he was overtaken by the Russian invasion, captured and placed under house arrest in the Soviet Union for five years. Having long held the Communists to be the worst of all revolutionary, republican groups, he was certain that his fate was sealed.

His fear turned out to be misplaced. The Russians, for their own part, cared very little about him. The Soviet Union had, after all, originally recognized Manchukuo as a legitimate country and had only declared war on Japan at the last minute, after the atomic bomb had been dropped and Japan was all but defeated, in order to grab territory and extend their influence in the Far East. The actual state of mind of the former Chinese Emperor, at this period, is hard to estimate. He made gushing overtures to Joseph Stalin about how his mind had been liberated by reading Karl Marx, yet at the same time he named a cousin to be his successor in the imperial line. Was he genuinely being changed or was he simply throwing himself at the mercy of the powers that be as he had done before with the Chinese republic? He had, after all, testified at the war crimes trials in Tokyo in 1946 and claimed that he had been kidnapped by the Japanese, used against his will as their instrument and pleaded his total opposition to these people to whom he had once expressed his deepest thanks, loyalty and admiration to. Which stance represents his true beliefs? Only PuYi himself could say for sure and his story changed constantly. He was hardly in a position to be perfectly honest with anyone.

Whatever his feelings about Marxist doctrine he certainly did not want to go back to China and fall into Red Chinese hands, certain that he would face death at their hands. The Soviets soon grew uncomfortable keeping him and realized they could not use him to their benefit. So, as a gesture of friendship to the government of Chairman Mao Tse-tung who had recently seized power; even standing triumphantly over the gates of the Forbidden City announcing that the world had stood up, and turned over the despised former monarch to them in 1950. PuYi and his entourage were returned to Manchuria and incarcerated in the Fushun prison for war criminals. He underwent a constant battery of communist indoctrination and reeducation through labor. Famously, he had to learn to dress himself, tie his own shoes, make his own bed, wash his own clothes; all of which he had no idea how to do since he had never had to do anything for himself. He was a tragic figure, especially at that time, being a man who had never known real personal freedom except perhaps for his few years in Tientsin, and yet even the comfort of his previous prisons denied him of any independence and self worth because of his pampering.

In time, PuYi overcame his fear of being killed. The Communists had decided that he would be more useful to them alive than as a traditionalist martyr. Across China, as in most every Communist country, there was an effort to create a "new man" who would see no class distinctions, who would idolize the party, revere the Chairman and march lock-step with the dictates handed down by the absolutist government, even in terms of dictating thoughts and opinions. They saw in PuYi the chance for a great propaganda coup, that they could "reform", as they called it, the Emperor himself, the man once called the Son of Heaven and the Lord of 10,000 Years, as an ordinary working communist. Unfortunately, they were successful in this, though it took ten years to do it. It is hard to say how much individualism he ever had and the Communists have always been masters at denying the value of any individual and by the time of his release PuYi was praising his Communist captors, scorning his imperial background, voicing shame for his great crimes and thanking the Communist government for their charity, benevolence and wisdom.

Chairman Mao officially pardoned PuYi who returned to Beijing and became a simple worker at the Botanical Gardens. Having abandoned his wives in Manchukuo, Empress Wan Jung died in Communist prison in 1946 and his surviving concubine divorced him, the government played matchmaker to see him married to a nurse, also a member of the Communist Party of course, who he stayed with for the rest of his life. PuYi served on the Chinese People‘s Political Consultative Conference from 1964 and wrote his memoir, "From Emperor to Citizen" in which he recounts the story of his life, remarking on how very wicked he and his compatriots were in his time as Emperor and lavishing praise on the Communists for saving his life and helping him to see the truth and be apart of their remaking of China into a much better country than it had ever been before -as he had been duly taught. The life of the last Emperor of China finally came to an end in 1967 when he died in a hospital in Beijing from cancer. At this time, China was at the height of the horrific Cultural Revolution and rumors began that he had been assassinated by Red Guards. The truth, as with much of his life, may never be known. The Cultural Revolution was a reaction against all things traditional, and as the former Emperor PuYi inherently represented the old China, yet as a reborn Communist he also represented the new China and it would seem a little late to kill him. Interestingly, that night the sky turned brown and eerie from a Mongol sand storm that was quite unheard of at that time of year. The strange light and sounds caused many elder Chinese especially to guess that the "last dragon" had flown into the clouds.

Initially, after his death, PuYi was cremated and buried in a Communist Party cemetery alongside government elites and older graves of imperial concubines and eunuchs. Later, in 1995, his widow moved his body to a private cemetery near the old Qing dynasty tombs, paid for by a Hong Kong businessman who admitted that he hoped the presence of the last Emperor would help boost his sales for plots. He also stated that he planned to build a larger memorial for the Emperor and his later wives as a sort of tourist attraction. The Aisin-Gioro, never very taken by PuYi's last wife, were reportedly extremely upset about this action. Even in death, it seems, PuYi is still being used as an instrument for the cause of others.

Understanding the Last Emperor, Part II

Continued from Part I

Married life made the Emperor feel more like his own man and shortly thereafter he decided that if he could not rule China he would at least rule the Forbidden City in line with his own ideas. He had, especially through the influence of Johnston, become something of a radical liberal by the standards of the staunch Chinese traditionalists. He wanted reform and modernization and shocked the court when he cut off his queue and appointed a new chamberlain, Cheng Hsiao-hsu, and attempted a crackdown on the black market sale of antiques from the palace. When he met resistance on this front from those entrenched at court, particularly the eunuchs who had been his only constant companions since childhood, he expelled the eunuchs from the Forbidden City. This was quite an undertaking considering the ancient and powerful position of the eunuchs and the fact that there were still roughly 1,200 of them living in the Forbidden City. What would have come of this new effort to create his own society inside the palace walls we will never know. In 1924 another warlord seized Peking. This time it was a Communist, who ironically also claimed to be a Christian, named General Feng Yuxiang, who ordered PuYi and the entire court to evacuate the Forbidden City immediately.

PuYi considered several destinations to relocate to but eventually settled in the foreign section of Tientsin, specifically in the Japanese legation. Here he had more freedom than he had ever enjoyed in the traditional confines of the Forbidden City and preferred the modern conveniences and cosmopolitan atmosphere he had never known before. He was generally treated with great respect by the representatives of foreign nations, still given the respect due an emperor and was able to dress in western clothes and adopt western practices. This is something most Chinese people were doing anyway but it upset some of his more traditional courtiers who thought it beneath the dignity of the Lord of 10,000 Years to look and act like a European playboy. He also never gave up hope of restoring the Qing Empire and was in constant contact with Chinese loyalists, his Manchurian relatives and the always fickle warlords who demanded a lot of money but delivered only promises. He was also conspicuously well treated by the Japanese who convinced him that they had his best interests at heart, and as fellow believers in the superiority of monarchy and the imperial system, were entirely supportive of his restoration.

There were problems and worries for the Emperor too in Tientsin. The rest of China was engulfed in the civil war between the republican government and communist revolutionaries. In 1931 Princess Wen Xiu, tired of being the second class wife, sought and obtained a divorce from the Emperor, something unprecedented in Chinese imperial history but rather keeping with the more modern lifestyle he had adopted in Tientsin. Most significantly however was when republican troops raided and sacked the tombs of the Qing emperors. For any Chinese raised with the traditional Confucian moral code of filial piety this was a terrible outrage. PuYi was especially incensed to learn that the grave of the Empress Dowager had been desecrated and pearls from her headdress given to the wife of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek to decorate the toes of her shoes. PuYi vowed to those around him to avenge this wrong and to restore the Qing and the dignity of his ancestors, declaring that if he did not do so then he was no Aisin-Gioro.

What seemed like his chance to do so came in 1932 when the Japanese, who had occupied Manchuria with little resistance from official Chinese republican forces, approached the Emperor about returning to power in his ancestral homeland. It took a little negotiation to get PuYi to go along with the idea, especially when it was made clear that this would be a new state and not a restoration of the Qing Empire. Further, PuYi was rather insulted when the Japanese insisted that he be installed first as Chief Executive rather than as a monarch. The Japanese knew that an immediate restoration of the Qing Empire would be overreaching and could be little justified to the outside world. However, there was no doubt that the Emperor was the legitimate hereditary ruler of the Manchu people and this was where a restoration had to start. Japan also knew that if this was going to be accepted by the international community, they would have to play by the rules of the day, which meant "Chief Executive" before "Emperor". The Emperor's longtime advisor Chen Pao-shen was totally opposed to the idea and favored what seemed the safer course of trying to restore the Articles of Favorable Treatment and regaining the good graces of republican China. Others, however, like Cheng Hsiao-hsu and Lo Chen-yu impressed upon him that this was an opportunity that might never come again and the Japanese promised that he would resume his imperial status at an appropriate time in the future. PuYi finally agreed to the enterprise on a trial basis and if he did not become emperor after a certain amount of time he would resign and resume his life as an exile.

PuYi was taken to Manchuria and on March 1, 1932 was formally installed as the Chief Executive of the State of Manchukuo. As the Japanese were continuing their expansion in China this attracted the attention of the League of Nations which sent a delegation to Manchuria to determine whether or not Manchukuo was a legitimate nation which reflected the will of the Manchu people or simply a puppet state of Japan. As was often the case, the commission seemed mostly concerned with the opportunities this offered for other foreign nations rather than focusing on the stated intent of their mission. Nonetheless, the commission, led by the British Earl of Lytton, eventually reported that Manchuria was and would remain Chinese though some degree of autonomy was suggested. This prompted Japan to resign from the League of Nations, deeply offended, and no further action was taken on the part of the international community. Once the Japanese were better entrenched and the Manchu government better established they agreed to restore the imperial dignity to the head of state.

In 1934 PuYi was formally enthroned as Emperor of Manchukuo, taking the reign name of Kang Teh or Tranquility and Virtue of the Great Manchu Empire. This new status did not, though, ease his relationship with the Japanese which was difficult even at the very start of his new reign. The problems were not serious but should be mentioned simply because so many claim that the Emperor was only a pliant tool of the Japanese when, in fact, they two did not always agree completely on everything. For example, PuYi could not bear the idea of being enthroned in anything but the traditional robes of a Chinese emperor. The Japanese, on the other hand, insisted that he wear Manchukuo military uniform. This was, after all, Manchukuo and not the Qing Empire and this might cause difficulty with those who wanted a distinct and independent Manchuria, remaining apart from China. In the end it was agreed that PuYi would be enthroned in uniform but wear traditional regalia when he announced his accession to Heaven at a recently constructed earthen altar. PuYi was, nonetheless, filled with hope for the future, especially after a formal visit to Japan where he was warmly received by Emperor Hirohito. He announced that Japan and Manchukuo were partners and friends and that he intended to produce an heir to secure the succession.

The Japanese, however, were not too enthusiastic about his talk of Japan and Manchukuo being partners, insisting on being treated as the actual power in the country which they were. Many in Japan did not see this as unreasonable and no different from the way the British, for example, interacted with client monarchies in the Empire of India. There were also those in Japan who disagreed and wanted a true and equal partnership between the Manchu and Japanese nations. Most western powers, not surprisingly, dismissed Manchukuo as no more than a Japanese puppet state, particularly after the start of World War II in the Pacific. Some countries did open diplomatic relations with Manchukuo such as of course Japan, the Kingdom of Italy and Nazi Germany as well as General Franco in Spain, Marshal Petain of the Vichy regime in France, Pope Pius XI, the pro-Japanese Republic of China under Wang Qinghui (the only Chinese republicans to recognize the restoration of their former emperor), El Salvador, the Dominican Republic and surprisingly the Soviet Union as well as a few others. 

Emperor "Henry" was never successful in producing an heir however and he was obliged to designate his brother, Prince Pu Chieh, as his successor who was married to the Japanese Princess Hiro Saga but even she bore only daughters. In 1939 the Emperor took another wife which also caused some friction with the Japanese who wanted him to take a Japanese wife. This also illustrates a hole in the logic of biased westerners who insist that the Japanese were full of racial bigotry against other Asians. They wanted to cement their alliance with a royal marriage, something very traditional and, to put it in a western context, no one at the time would have considered for a minute having a British princess married to a King of the Zulus for example. This was also nothing new as, at that time, the Crown Prince of Korea had also taken a Japanese wife and she very much adopted the Korean people as her own. Still, the Emperor of Manchukuo resisted the idea of having a Japanese bride and so, once again, another compromise was worked out by which PuYi married a Han Chinese girl named Tan Yuling. She was educated by the Japanese-operated school system, which made her acceptable to them, and was only a teenager so the Emperor hoped she would be politically innocent.

To be concluded in Part III...