During The Boxer Movement, "declared" Public Opinion

The Yihetuan Movement was one of the important events in the history of the later Ch'ing dynasty. The researches on this event are undergoing in many fields and from many angles of views. Shen Newspaper, with the longest history in the modern China, had ever given a lot of detailed reports on that event, which are much valuable documents to study the society of modern China. Herein we try to study the Yihetuan Movement based on Shen Newspaper's records so that we can have a new insight into the social thoughts and national psychology of the modern China.We studied all the reports and reviews on the Yihetuan Movement published on Shen Newspaper. By investigating the knowledge and comments issued throughout the movement, we got a more impressive, detailed view about the social environment around that period and the developmental process of the modern China.At the early beginning of the Yihetuan Movement, Shen Newspaper worried about that China would enter in a crisis period once again. So they recommended breaking the Yihetuan Movement first prior to anti-foreigners action. They proposed many measures to resolve the conflict between rural people and foreign Christianity by put down the movement mildly at the beginning. After the Anti-Christians Event happened in Shandong Province in 1899, Shen swung to blame that the local authorities acted improperly and suggested the ruthlessly suppressing policy.Following the movement's spreading and developing into popularity in Hebei province, Shen Newspaper kept commenting on the causes of the rising with inconsistent attitudes while the Ch'ing court did not disclose its appeasing policy. However, as soon ad the court changed the policy, they strongly opposed giving official support and encouragement to the Yihetuan Movement.In the climax of the movement, Ch'ing Dynasty declared war on the western countries. Shen Newspaper stood on the position opposite to the court. They praised and recommended the policy of East and South hold together and articles by those officials who are not in favor of war. They were active in issuing proposals on seeking a quick settlement with theforeign forces.The movement fallen to failure after Ch'ing court's capitulation. Although it was much hard to negotiate for a treaty, Shen Newspapre still kept positive attitude to evaluate the good of the Boxer Protocol. Meanwhile, Shen Newspapers appealed that the court should catch the chance of reform to self-strengthening. They gave many ideas in terms of military affairs, education, industry, and business. However, basically speaking, all of these still remained on the theory of Machinary Reform. At the same time, among the reports about the Yihetuan Movement, Shen Newspaper paid special attention to Russian while less to Japan in the national defense. They insisted the strategy of allying with UK, US and Japan as well as making these countries struggle with each other.The political elements during the Yihetuan Movement can be concluded as follows: the crisis of partition and the reactionary reform. And as the results of these two factors, the blindness and the backwardness of the anti-western religion movement were further developed during the period of the Yihetuan Movement, which aimed to exterminate the Christianity and against foreigners.^ retrospect for the opinions of Shen Newspaper on this movement, we found those reflected the political characteristics of this period. Their thoughts were rather conservative although their attitude to the Yihetuan Movement kept changing. On the other hand, with the tendency of modernization, Shen Newspaper also criticized the contradiction of the north government's policy. As the reconstruction is bora in the change of times, the contradictions and repetition of Shen Newspaper's opinions also showed the swing of Ch'ing court's political and diplomatic policies after Reform Movement. The history always develops gradually. Shen Newspaper didn't give kinds of revolutionary words such as Constitutionalism and so on. This reflects the struggle and repe...