Self-Strengthening Movement in the context of "Prince Gong"

Late Qing reforms (Chinese: 晚清改革; pinyin: Wǎnqīng gǎigé), commonly known as New Policies of the late Qing dynasty (Chinese: 清末新政; pinyin: Qīngmò xīnzhèng), or New Deal of the late Qing dynasty, simply referred to as New Policies, were a series of cultural, economic, educational, military, diplomatic, and political reforms implemented in the last decade of the Qing dynasty to keep the dynasty in power after the invasions of the great powers of the Eight Nation Alliance in league with the ten provinces of the Southeast Mutual Protection during the Boxer Rebellion.

Late Qing reforms started in 1901, and since they were implemented with the backing of the Empress Dowager Cixi, they are also called Cixi's New Policies. The reforms were often considered more radical than the earlier Self-Strengthening Movement which came to an abrupt end with China's defeat in the First Sino-Japanese War in 1895. Despite the reforms and other political struggles the revolutionaries led the 1911 Revolution which resulted in the fall of the Qing dynasty.

Xiang or Hsiang (Chinese: 湘; Changsha Xiang: [sian˧ y˦˩], Mandarin: [ɕi̯aŋ˥ y˨˩˦]), also known as Hunanese, is a group of linguistically similar and historically related Sinitic languages, spoken mainly in Hunan province but also in northern Guangxi and parts of neighboring Guizhou, Guangdong, Sichuan, Jiangxi and Hubei provinces. Scholars divided Xiang into five subgroups: Lou–Shao (Old Xiang), Chang–Yi (New Xiang), Chen–Xu or Ji–Xu, Hengzhou, and Yong–Quan. Among those, Lou–Shao, or Old Xiang, still exhibits the three-way distinction of Middle Chinese obstruents, preserving the voiced stops, fricatives, and affricates. Xiang has also been heavily influenced by Mandarin, which adjoins three of the four sides of the Xiang-speaking territory, and Gan in Jiangxi Province, from where a large population immigrated to Hunan during the Ming dynasty.

Xiang-speaking Hunanese people have played an important role in Modern Chinese history, especially in those reformatory and revolutionary movements such as the Self-Strengthening Movement, Hundred Days' Reform, Xinhai Revolution and Chinese Communist Revolution. Some examples of Xiang speakers are Mao Zedong, Zuo Zongtang, Huang Xing and Ma Ying-jeou.

The Tongzhi Emperor (27 April 1856 – 12 January 1875), also known by his temple name Emperor Muzong of Qing, personal name Zaichun, was the ninth emperor of the Qing dynasty, and the eighth Qing emperor to rule over China proper. His reign, which effectively lasted through his adolescence, was largely overshadowed by the rule of Empress Dowager Cixi. Although he had little influence over state affairs, the events of his reign gave rise to what historians call the "Tongzhi Restoration", an unsuccessful modernization program.

The only surviving son of the Xianfeng Emperor, he ascended the throne at the age of five under a regency headed by his biological mother Empress Dowager Cixi and his legal mother Empress Dowager Ci'an. The Self-Strengthening Movement, in which Qing officials pursued radical institutional reforms following the disasters of the Opium Wars and the Taiping Rebellion, began during his reign. The Tongzhi Emperor assumed personal rule over the Qing government in 1873, but he had no interest in affairs of state and immediately came into conflict with his ministers. He was outmaneuvered by the dowager empresses.

During the Manchu–led Qing dynasty, the economy was significantly developed and markets continued to expand especially in the High Qing era, and imperial China experienced a second commercial revolution in the economic history of China from the mid-16th century to the end of the 18th century. But akin to the other major non-European powers around the world at that time like the Islamic gunpowder empires and Tokugawa Japan, such economic development did not keep pace with the economies of European countries in the Industrial Revolution occurring by the early 19th century, which resulted in a dramatic change described by the 19th-century Qing official Li Hongzhang (who promoted the Self-Strengthening Movement) as "the biggest change in more than three thousand years" (三千年未有之大變局).

Critics of the Qing, some of whom may be motivated by Chinese nationalism and anti-Qing sentiment, argue that the specific actions and policies of the Qing dynasty held the nation-state of China back during its rule, when the Industrial Revolution which occurred in Europe by the 19th century led to a Great Divergence in which China lost its early modern economic and industrial lead over the West which it had previously held for more than a millennium. According to the critics, the advances in science and technology and economic development in the preceding Song and Ming dynasties moved China toward a modern age, but the restrictions placed on commerce and industry and the persecution of non-orthodox thought after the transition from Ming to Qing in the 17th century caused China to gradually stagnate and fall behind the West and led to the century of humiliation.

Empress Dowager Cixi (Mandarin pronunciation: [tsʰɹ̩̌.ɕì]; 29 November 1835 – 15 November 1908) was a Manchu noblewoman of the Yehe Nara clan who had de facto but periodical control of the Chinese government in the late Qing dynasty as empress dowager and regent for almost 50 years, from 1861 until her death in 1908. Selected as a concubine of the Xianfeng Emperor in her adolescence, she gave birth to a son, Zaichun, in 1856. After the Xianfeng Emperor's death in 1861, his five-year-old son became the Tongzhi Emperor, and Cixi assumed the role of co-empress dowager alongside Xianfeng's widow, Empress Dowager Ci'an. Cixi ousted a group of regents appointed by the late emperor and assumed the regency along with Ci'an. Cixi then consolidated control over the dynasty when she installed her nephew as the Guangxu Emperor at the death of the Tongzhi Emperor in 1875. Ci'an continued as co-regent until her death in 1881.

Cixi supervised the Tongzhi Restoration, a series of moderate reforms that helped the regime survive until 1911. Although Cixi refused to adopt Western models of government, she supported technological and military reforms and the Self-Strengthening Movement. She supported the principles of the Hundred Days' Reforms of 1898, but feared that sudden implementation, without bureaucratic support, would be disruptive and permit the Japanese and other foreign powers to take advantage of China. She placed the Guangxu Emperor under virtual house arrest for supporting radical reformers, publicly executing the main reformers. After the Boxer Rebellion led to invasion by Allied armies, Cixi initially backed the Boxer groups and declared war on the invaders. The ensuing defeat was a stunning humiliation, ending with the occupation of Beijing and the Qing regime on the brink of collapse. When Cixi returned from Xi'an, she backtracked and began to implement fiscal and institutional reforms aimed to turn China towards a constitutional monarchy. Upon Guangxu's death in November 1908, Cixi installed the two-year-old Puyi on the throne, but she herself died shortly after. Her death left the court in the hands of conservatives governing a restless, deeply divided society.