#16: Empress Dowager Cixi
For decades, Empress Dowager Cixi was blamed personally for China’s decline and portrayed as a reactionary luxury addict sabotaging reform. Newer scholarship offers a less tidy picture. She supported portions of the Self-Strengthening Movement and authorized administrative, educational, military, and constitutional changes. She also crushed the Hundred Days’ Reform, protected her authority, and made choices during the Boxer crisis. Cixi was neither China’s destroyer nor an uncomplicated modernizer, but a cautious ruler reforming under pressure.
