Late Qing Dynasty Series
The Tongzhi Emperor
同治帝 (Tóngzhì Dì)
Given the name “Joint Rule” — yet shut out from the circle his entire life
Reigned 1861–1875 (13 years) · Born 1856 · Died 1875, age 19
“Tongzhi” means “joint rule.” Yet the emperor who bore that name was kept outside that circle for his entire life.
Empress Dowager Cixi eagerly adopted the era name “Tongzhi” because she interpreted it to mean joint rule by the two Empress Dowagers — herself and Empress Dowager Ci’an. From the very beginning, the emperor himself was never intended to be one of the rulers in that “joint rule.” In my reading of this history, the exclusion was already inscribed in his name before he could speak.
This is not the story of a weak or incompetent emperor. He pushed back against Cixi’s choice of consort. He tried to break the information blockade that surrounded him. In a diplomatic audience, he behaved like an enlightened monarch. He even devised a plan to physically move Cixi out of the Forbidden City. He resisted at every turn — and every act of resistance was crushed. He died at nineteen. This tragedy was the third link in a chain of cause and effect that had begun with Emperor Daoguang’s fateful choice of an heir.
I. From “Qixiang” to “Tongzhi” — Exclusion Carved into a Name
In 1861, Emperor Xianfeng died at the age of 31 at the Chengde Mountain Resort. His only son, Zaichun, was just six years old and ascended the throne.
The eight regent ministers appointed to govern on his behalf quickly established “Qixiang” (祺祥, qí xiáng) as the new era name. The term traced back to the Song dynasty text Songshu Yuelun and evoked rivers flowing peacefully, forests growing abundantly, and the people living in prosperity. The Taiping Rebellion was still ongoing; the war with Britain and France had barely ended; the treasury was exhausted. Against that backdrop, “Qixiang” embodied a vision of quelling the chaos, giving the people rest, and rebuilding the nation. Coins bearing “Qixiang Tongbao” were minted in preparation for use the following year.
But this move ignited Cixi’s hunger for power. Cixi coordinated with Empress Dowager Ci’an (the Eastern Empress Dowager) and Prince Gong Yixin, who had remained in Beijing, and launched a coup on September 30th of the same year. Known in history as the “Xinyou Coup” (or “Qixiang Coup”), it stripped all eight regent ministers of their power.
A key question: why did Prince Gong Yixin join the coup? Empress Dowager Ci’an was Emperor Xianfeng’s principal wife — a status entirely different from Cixi, who had clawed her way up from sixth-ranked imperial concubine. The legitimate authority of the Qing dynasty resided with Ci’an. Yixin moved not for Cixi’s sake, but because he rallied to the banner of Ci’an’s legitimate authority. Cixi merely rode the coalition — at least at this stage.
After the coup’s success, Cixi demanded a change of era name, to completely erase the political legacy of the eight regents. The new name chosen was “Tongzhi” — meaning “joint rule” by the two Empress Dowagers, the emperor, and the ministers. Cixi embraced it joyfully as a declaration of joint rule by the two of them.
On October 5, 1861, the Qing court officially abolished “Qixiang” and adopted “Tongzhi.” The “Qixiang” era had lasted just 69 days. Most of the minted Qixiang Tongbao coins were melted down and recast as Tongzhi Tongbao.
“Qixiang” was not merely an abolished era name — it was a symbol of a power transfer. And the name “Tongzhi” declared from the outset that the emperor himself had no place in the circle it described.
II. Birth and Accession — A Puppet Made by His Father’s Miscalculation
In 1856, a son was born in the Chuxiu Palace of the Forbidden City. He was Emperor Xianfeng’s only male heir. His mother was the imperial concubine Yehonara — the woman who would later be known as Empress Dowager Cixi.
Emperor Xianfeng had carefully designed the succession. On his deathbed, he gave the two Empress Dowagers different imperial seals. Empress Dowager Ci’an received the seal representing legitimate final authority. Cixi received the seal representing the power to review and draft documents. All imperial edicts required both seals to take effect — a mechanism designed to distribute power and keep each in check. He also created the council of eight regent ministers, wary of letting his capable brother Prince Gong hold sole power. A triple system of checks and balances.
In fact, the eight ministers had urged Xianfeng to take a more fundamental step: to eliminate Cixi now, for the sake of the young emperor. But Xianfeng could not bring himself to do it. His feelings for Cixi clouded his judgment. What he chose instead was to bequeath Empress Dowager Ci’an the authority — in his will — to “kill Cixi if it ever became necessary.” The Chongling Chuanxinlu records the existence of this testament. Beneath what appeared to be a sophisticated power design lay the indecision of one man.
Xianfeng had prepared one more safeguard. According to the Chongling Chuanxinlu, his will granted Ci’an the authority to execute Cixi if her conduct became intolerable — not merely institutional checks through seals, but the ultimate sanction of force. Xianfeng must have recognized Cixi’s danger to some degree; there is no other explanation for this testament.
But this elaborate design had a fatal blind spot. Ci’an was Xianfeng’s principal wife, clearly superior in status to Cixi. Xianfeng embedded that legitimacy in Ci’an’s seal and tried to confine Cixi’s influence to the practical role of “review.” But the power to review is also the power to decide what gets put on the agenda. Cixi turned this against the system: by filtering information and setting the agenda herself, she gradually hollowed out Ci’an’s formal authority to “decide.”
The eight ministers had underestimated the Empress Dowagers, treating their role as little more than stamping documents. The very thing Xianfeng had feared most — rule by one person — became reality in his son’s reign.
III. The “Tongzhi Restoration” — An Age of Brilliance Without Its Emperor
The reign of the Tongzhi Emperor is celebrated in history as the “Tongzhi Restoration” (同治中興), a period of revival and renewal. But the person responsible for it was not the emperor himself.
In 1864, the Taiping Rebellion ended. Zeng Guofan’s Xiang Army captured Nanjing, closing the curtain on fourteen years of civil war. Li Hongzhang then suppressed the Nian Rebellion (1865–1868); Zuo Zongtang pacified the Muslim uprisings in Shaanxi and Gansu (1866–1873). These Han Chinese ministers, under the banner of “wealth and strength” (富強), constructed a series of modern industrial enterprises: the Jiangnan Arsenal, the Fuzhou Shipyard, and the China Merchants’ Steam Navigation Company.
But all of this was the achievement of Cixi and the Han officials. The dazzling era name “Tongzhi Restoration” belied the fact that the emperor was kept outside it the entire time. The Tongzhi Restoration was a restoration without its emperor.
■ Column: What Was “Curtain Rule”? (垂簾聽政)
Curtain Rule (Ch: 垂簾聽政, chuilín tīnzhèng) was a distinctive political institution of imperial China in which an Empress Dowager sat behind a curtain or screen in the court chamber and participated in major state decisions on behalf of an emperor who was too young, infirm, or otherwise unable to rule.
The curtain itself was the key to the whole arrangement. Traditional Chinese society enforced a strict separation between men and women: a woman of rank was forbidden from appearing face-to-face before male officials. By conducting affairs from behind a screen, the Empress Dowager could participate in politics without violating those ritual norms.
The official fiction was carefully maintained: the emperor remained the nominal sovereign, and all edicts were issued in his name. The Empress Dowager was, in theory, merely making decisions on behalf of the emperor — not seizing the throne, and therefore not usurpation. In practice, of course, real power lay entirely in her hands. The screen was thin cloth; the power behind it was absolute.
IV. 1873 — Direct Rule and Resistance, Crushed One by One
In January 1873, the Tongzhi Emperor formally assumed personal rule. An audience ceremony was held in the Qianqing Palace, and the practice of “curtain rule” (垂簾聽政) — governing from behind a screen — was abolished. The Tongzhi Emperor pulled down the screen himself.
In 1872, Cixi had pushed her favored candidate, Consort Fuca (Consort Hui), as the empress. But the Tongzhi Emperor chose the intelligent Lady Alute instead.
After assuming personal rule, the Tongzhi Emperor attended court every day and energetically reviewed imperial edicts. He expressed support for the Self-Strengthening Movement and showed signs of change in diplomacy. In 1874, at the Ziguang Pavilion, he received envoys from Japan, Russia, the United States, Britain, France, and the Netherlands — and returned their bow (鞠躬). It was an unprecedented act: a Qing emperor showing a gesture of respect to foreign envoys. (See the column below for background.)
But after this audience, Cixi harshly rebuked the Tongzhi Emperor. His conduct as an enlightened monarch was repudiated, and thereafter he was barred from meeting foreign envoys. Diplomacy became the exclusive domain of the Zongli Yamen (the Office of Foreign Affairs), and the emperor was shut out of the diplomatic stage entirely. Independent diplomacy — such as dispatching his own envoys to other nations — was impossible from beginning to end.
Inside and outside the court, he could not have his own eyes and ears. That was the structural cage the Tongzhi Emperor lived in.
V. The Yuanmingyuan Project — Resistance in the Name of Filial Piety
The project the Tongzhi Emperor poured the most energy into during his personal rule was the reconstruction of the Yuanmingyuan — the Old Summer Palace, burned by Anglo-French forces in 1860.
The stated reason was to “restore the imperial retreat destroyed by the British and French, and prepare a residence for the Empress Dowager Mother.” But the real purpose was more specific. All information within the court reached the emperor via the Western Six Palaces where Cixi resided. The emperor, in other words, could not get accurate information. If Cixi could be moved from the Forbidden City to the Yuanmingyuan, that information pipeline could be severed — that was the true calculation.
In my reading of this, the Yuanmingyuan reconstruction was the emperor’s attempt to recapture information, dressed up as an act of filial devotion.
At first, Cixi showed no clear opposition and actually permitted the project to begin. But when a fiscal crisis erupted and officials mounted fierce resistance, she reversed course and applied pressure. The Tongzhi Emperor was forced to halt construction.
His attempt to recapture information was also crushed.
■ Column: The Western Six Palaces (西六宮) — Cixi’s Power Base
The Western Six Palaces (西六宮, Xī Liù Gōng) are a group of six palace compounds on the western side of the inner court of the Forbidden City in Beijing. Traditionally, they served as residential quarters for imperial consorts and concubines — with multiple consorts sharing a single compound.
Cixi broke from that tradition entirely. By connecting four of the six compounds into a single continuous space, she vastly expanded her living quarters — and in doing so, transformed what had been a concubine’s residence into something far more significant: a political command center. The physical expansion mirrored her political one. All information flowing to the emperor passed through this complex, making it the nerve center of the entire court.
In short, Cixi used architecture as power. By reshaping the physical layout of the palace, she ensured that she — not the emperor — sat at the center of everything.
VI. Isolation — No Eyes or Ears of His Own, Inside or Out
The greatest problem the Tongzhi Emperor faced was that he could not build a faction of his own within the court. The Imperial Household Department (内務府, Nèiwùfǔ) was controlled by Cixi’s loyalists, and all information reaching the emperor passed through the Western Six Palaces. Information was filtered by Cixi; the emperor could not grasp accurate realities.
He did attempt to crack down on embezzlement within the Imperial Household Department, but that reform also touched Cixi’s interests and stalled. For Cixi, the Department was a financial lifeline — she treated the state’s budget and her own purse as one and the same. Her loyalists closed ranks to defend that arrangement. The Tongzhi Emperor’s attempts at fiscal reform were crushed in this way.
This problem was not solved even after his death. Emperor Guangxu would face the same wall.
There was also a structural problem. Officials recruited through the Imperial Examination (科挙, the traditional Chinese civil service exam based on Confucian classics) were well versed in classical texts but had little practical knowledge of finance. Many senior officials pledged loyalty to Cixi, leaving the Tongzhi Emperor without allies. It is said he disguised himself and went out to the market to gather information on his own — seeking “raw reality” about how ordinary people were living, something the court could not provide.
Cut off from information inside the court, stripped of the right to send envoys in diplomacy, forced to hide his identity outside the palace walls — the Tongzhi Emperor had no eyes or ears of his own, neither inside nor out.
Emperor Xianfeng had also been isolated and came to depend on Cixi. The father’s loneliness took the form of dependence; the son’s loneliness took the form of resistance. But the outcome was the same — Cixi’s grip never wavered.
VII. Death — A Life Ended at Nineteen
In the autumn of 1874, the Tongzhi Emperor contracted smallpox.
In later generations, theories of syphilis circulated, but official records including the imperial physicians’ diagnostic notes consistently record smallpox. The syphilis theory tends to appear in the context of criticizing Cixi, and lacks support from primary sources.
On January 12, 1875, he died in the Eastern Warm Chamber of the Yangxin Hall. He was nineteen. It had been barely two years since he assumed personal rule — among the shortest reigns in Qing dynasty history.
According to one account, the bedridden Tongzhi Emperor let slip his true feelings to Empress Alute when she visited: that Cixi had been obstructing his rule and he could not govern as he wished. The Empress replied, “Please recover quickly. I will support Your Majesty’s personal rule.” But these words were immediately reported to Cixi. Eunuchs dragged the Empress out by her hair and beat her. What anguish must the Tongzhi Emperor have felt — hearing the screams of the woman he loved, his body too ill to move a single step.
Empress Alute had in fact been recommended by Empress Dowager Ci’an. She was dignified and deeply educated, with a reputation among Manchu nobility as “fit to be the mother of the nation.” Ci’an held her character in high regard and endorsed her as the Tongzhi Emperor’s consort.
Consort Fuca — Cixi’s candidate — was said to have leadership qualities at fourteen, but that “leadership” was a talent for forming cliques, exactly the kind of operative Cixi needed to control the inner court. Choose by character, or choose by usefulness: the two Empress Dowagers’ endorsements reflected the difference between their two views of human beings.
The Tongzhi Emperor followed Ci’an’s advice and chose Lady Alute as Empress. This was not merely a choice of consort. It was also a declaration of his will — to rebuff Cixi’s machinations and align himself with Ci’an.
Cixi did not forget. Her resentment toward Ci’an, who had overridden her recommendation in the empress selection, accumulated slowly from that point forward. Empress Alute (Empress Xiaozhe Yi), who was pregnant at the time of the Tongzhi Emperor’s death, passed away not long afterward. For Cixi, Alute was not merely an emotional problem: pregnant or not — dead fetus or otherwise — the principal wife of the late emperor, if she survived, would become Empress Dowager. If another Empress Dowager existed, Cixi could not become regent for the young Guangxu Emperor — or her power would be severely curtailed. Alute was someone who could not be allowed to live within the power structure. Rumors say she was starved to death, but the details remain unclear.
VIII. After His Death — Cixi’s “Finishing Touches”
After the Tongzhi Emperor’s death, with no male heir, Cixi installed his four-year-old cousin as Emperor Guangxu and returned herself to the position of regent.
Then Cixi removed the remaining obstacles, one by one.
In 1881, Empress Dowager Ci’an died suddenly of illness. She had been the embodiment of the Qing dynasty’s legitimate authority as Xianfeng’s principal wife — the banner under which Yixin had rallied in the Xinyou Coup, and the person entrusted by Xianfeng’s will with the authority to “kill Cixi if necessary.” This woman died, abruptly and without ceremony. Suspicious circumstances surrounded her death. The body was quickly moved to the funeral preparations, and Cixi forbade imperial princes and ministers from approaching it. All four of the attending ladies-in-waiting fell “suddenly ill” at the same time and were removed from the palace — those who might have served as witnesses were, one after another, eliminated. The theory of poisoning has never died out.
Immediately after Ci’an’s death, Cixi dismissed Prince Gong Yixin. The ally who had stood with her in toppling the eight ministers in the Xinyou Coup, the diplomatic linchpin of the Tongzhi Restoration — Cixi no longer needed him. The two pillars of the checks-and-balances system Emperor Xianfeng had designed — legitimate authority (Ci’an) and capable administrator (Yixin) — were now completely gone.
The ideal of “joint rule” embedded in the era name “Tongzhi” ended without ever being realized. And the chain of cause and effect continued. Emperor Guangxu attempted the Hundred Days’ Reform, was imprisoned by Cixi, and died under mysterious circumstances. Emperor Xuantong (Puyi) ascended the throne at three years old and became the last emperor of the Qing dynasty.
Emperor Daoguang erred in his choice of heir through “benevolent virtue.” Emperor Xianfeng’s loneliness opened the road to Cixi. The Tongzhi Emperor resisted but could not prevail. This accumulation of three generations of missteps determined the Qing dynasty’s path toward collapse.
IX. Historical Assessment — Not Weak. And Still It Was Not Enough
The Tongzhi Emperor was not weak. He was neither lazy nor incompetent.
He refused to favor Consort Fuca despite Cixi’s backing. He tore down the curtain of curtain-rule with his own hands. He conducted himself as an enlightened monarch before the envoys of six nations. He planned the Yuanmingyuan reconstruction to break the information blockade around him — and when he realized even that would not work, he disguised himself and went to the marketplace. He piled up this much resistance in a short life of nineteen years.
And all of it was crushed. The audience was forbidden. The Yuanmingyuan was halted. He could not build a faction. Information remained blocked. The exhaustion of being repelled at every turn may have worn down his body.
The Tongzhi Emperor’s premature death also symbolized the Qing dynasty’s loss of any chance to reclaim initiative for reform. If he had lived longer — if his resistance had borne fruit — that “what if” is carried forward into the story of the next tragedy: Emperor Guangxu.
Timeline
1856 Born in the Chuxiu Palace of the Forbidden City
1861 Emperor Xianfeng dies. Accession at age 6. Era name “Qixiang” established (abolished after 69 days). Xinyou Coup: Cixi seizes power. Era name changed to “Tongzhi”
1864 Xiang Army captures Nanjing; Taiping Rebellion ends
1865–68 Li Hongzhang suppresses the Nian Rebellion
1866–73 Zuo Zongtang pacifies Muslim uprisings in Shaanxi and Gansu
1872 Chooses Lady Alute as Empress, against Cixi’s wishes
1873 Formally assumes personal rule; tears down the curtain of curtain-rule
1874 Receives envoys of six nations; returns their bow; rebuked by Cixi, banned from further audiences. Orders Yuanmingyuan reconstruction; forced to halt. Contracts smallpox
Jan 1875 Dies at 19. Emperor Guangxu ascends the throne
1881 Empress Dowager Ci’an dies (poisoning theory persists). Cixi dismisses Prince Gong Yixin
■ Column: What Was the Three Kneelings and Nine Prostrations? (三跪九叩頭, sān guì jiǔ kóutóu)
This was one of the most solemn ritual acts in ancient China — performed to express the highest possible reverence toward Heaven and Earth, the emperor, one’s ancestors, or the gods. The practitioner kneels three times; with each kneeling, they bow their head to the floor three times, for a total of nine prostrations.
Each kneeling carried a distinct symbolic meaning:
• First kneeling: the bond between ruler and subject (loyalty, royal authority)
• Second kneeling: the bond between parent and child (filial piety, continuity of lineage)
• Third kneeling: the bond between husband and wife (harmony, mutual responsibility)
Together, the nine prostrations represented the ultimate expression of reverence.
An echo of this structure survives in the Japanese wedding ceremony san-san-kudo (三々九度), in which bride and groom exchange three ritual sips from three cups — the same three bonds: Heaven and Earth, parents, and each other. The same conception of three relationships as the foundation of family and social stability runs through both traditions.
X. The Kowtow Controversy — Diplomacy and the Battle Over Ritual
To understand the Tongzhi Emperor’s audience with the envoys of six nations, it is necessary to trace the Qing dynasty’s long collision with Western diplomacy over one deceptively simple question: how should a foreign envoy greet the emperor?
For the Qing court, the answer was non-negotiable. The proper greeting was the three kneelings and nine prostrations — an act that, in Chinese ritual logic, signified submission to the Son of Heaven. To perform it was not merely etiquette; it was an acknowledgment that one’s own ruler stood beneath the Qing emperor in the cosmic order.
1793 — The Macartney Mission (Emperor Qianlong). Britain sent an embassy seeking expanded trade. The Qing court demanded the full ritual. Lord Macartney refused: kneeling nine times before a foreign monarch was, in his view, an act of submission incompatible with the dignity of the British Crown. The mission ended in failure. The scientific instruments and luxury goods he had brought — showcasing the fruits of the Industrial Revolution — were politely received and ignored.
1816 — The Amherst Mission (Emperor Jiaqing). Britain tried again. Lord Amherst also refused the kowtow and was expelled without an audience. The gifts he carried — weapons and instruments representing the latest advances of Western technology — were once again shelved without study. Two chances to engage with a transforming world, twice turned away at the gate of ceremony.
1874 — The Tongzhi Emperor’s audience. Roughly sixty years after Macartney, something unprecedented occurred. At the Ziguang Pavilion, the Tongzhi Emperor received envoys from six nations — Japan, Russia, the United States, Britain, France, and the Netherlands — and returned their bow. A Qing emperor showing a gesture of respect to foreign envoys: it had never happened before.
From Qianlong, who demanded submission, to Tongzhi, who returned a bow — this shift of eighty years traced the Qing dynasty’s painful journey from the illusion of being the Celestial Empire to the reality of the modern world. For one moment, an emperor had chosen to meet the world as an equal.
But Cixi rebuked him. That single act was repudiated, and the Tongzhi Emperor was permanently barred from meeting foreign envoys. Diplomacy became the exclusive domain of the Zongli Yamen. The emperor’s bow was also the moment when a possibility was snuffed out.
— End —
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