![]() ![]() And thus, “under Cixi, China entered a long period of peace with the West” and maintained an open-door policy even when Cixi faced a strong xenophobic faction within China (57). According to Chang, once Cixi accomplished the coup and became the “real ruler of China” after her husband's death, she quickly switched China's international relations from Emperor Xianfeng's “all-consuming hatred” toward the West and the “closed-door policy of 100 years” to a new course of “opening it up to the outside world” (50, 55). One example is China's relationship with the West. Chang's book seeks to provide an alternative interpretation regarding almost all the major historical events and figures of the time. In the author's treatment of late Qing history, the standard masculine narrative of male figures making modern China is replaced by a Cixi-centered history of China's modernization and interaction with the external world. This study is a provocative attempt to rewrite the Chinese history of Cixi's time. ![]() ![]() In Jung Chang's book, Cixi becomes the superhero who, as her book title states, “launched modern China.” Who was Cixi? As one of the few women rulers in Chinese history, several waves of scholarship have placed Cixi within rather different frames, emphasizing various images of her complex life, from femme fatale to powerful woman and reformer. Empress Dowager Cixi has both intrigued and perplexed the imaginations of scholars searching for emerging modernity in China. ![]()
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