[War & Business] The Boxer Rebellion

Record painting of U.S. troops entering Beijing on August 14, 1900
[Image source: U.S. Army Center of Military History website / https://history.army.mil]

[Asia Economy Reporter Hyunwoo Lee] The year 1900, known as Gyeongja Year, 120 years ago, is considered the most humiliating year in China. In August of that year, an alliance of eight Western powers invaded the capital, Beijing. At that time, the Qing Dynasty and the civilian anti-foreign organization, the Yi Hwa Dan (Boxers), fought against the invading forces but were decisively defeated. The Forbidden City was looted, and over 100,000 Chinese people were massacred. In China, this event is called the "Gyeongja Great Disturbance," regarded as a period of hardship marking the beginning of China’s semi-colonial status due to the greedy Western invasion.

However, the Western perspective on the same event is completely different. The conflict between the eight allied powers and China is referred to as the "Boxer Rebellion." The term "Boxer" was given because the Yi Hwa Dan members, who fought using traditional Chinese martial arts, appeared similar to boxers. In the West, the Yi Hwa Dan are seen as brutally massacring Westerners and Christians under the protection of the Qing court, and the responsibility for the war is attributed to the Qing Dynasty.

Originally, the Yi Hwa Dan was known as one of several civilian vigilante groups that emerged in the chaotic China of the 1890s. Mainly composed of martial artists, they took on security duties such as protecting tenant farmers’ rights and preventing robber invasions. As Empress Dowager Cixi began to support them behind the scenes, they transformed into a military force under the Qing government.

At that time, Empress Dowager Cixi was engaged in a power struggle with the Qing Emperor Guangxu and sought to force him to abdicate. However, Western diplomats in China who supported Guangxu strongly opposed this, causing the plan to fail. Angered by this, Cixi aimed to eliminate Western powers by militarizing the civilian Yi Hwa Dan and using them to attack the foreign legations of the great powers. The Yi Hwa Dan carried out terrorist attacks against foreign legations and foreigners in Beijing under the slogan "Support the Qing, Exterminate the Foreigners." On June 21, 1899, Cixi declared war on the Western powers. All foreign legations in Beijing withdrew to Tianjin, and Cixi appeared to have fully seized power.

However, less than two months after the declaration of war, the Qing army and Yi Hwa Dan were defeated by the allied forces, and when Beijing fell, Cixi fled with her close aides thousands of kilometers away to Xi’an. The remaining Qing officials accepted the allied powers’ conditions to pay 980 million taels of silver?equivalent to ten years of the national budget?in installments over 40 years, and the country was completely bankrupt.

Ultimately, the entire nation was sacrificed due to the excessive ambition of one power figure. Yet in China, the focus remains on emphasizing only the Western powers’ invasion. Earlier in May, Xinhua News Agency published a column stating, "120 years ago in the Gyeongja Year, the Eight-Nation Alliance trampled the Forbidden City, and now a pandemic attacks us, but China grows stronger the more it fights." It deliberately turns a blind eye to how much unnecessary war has cost the nation.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.