Author Jung Chang (Picture: Jon Halliday)

Wild Swans author Jung Chang on restoring the status of the most important woman in Chinese history.

The Empress Dowager Cixi is the most important woman in Chinese history. In her day, women really had a very low status in China – they were not allowed to leave their house. Yet from the time of the 1861 coup that made her regent, until her death in 1908, she was, behind the scenes, the absolute ruler of a third of the world’s population.

She was a moderniser but her image is of an archly conservative diehard despot, so this is a radical reinterpretation. She outlawed foot-binding in 1902 and abolished the medieval practice of death by 1,000 cuts. Though she failed to deliver it, her project was to turn China into a constitutional monarchy.



I became interested in Cixi 20 years ago when I was researching my family memoir, Wild Swans. I was astonished by the freedoms the young Mao had under her rule. He could have easily got a scholarship to college, travelled abroad, checked into a hotel with a girlfriend, or said whatever he wanted in a newspaper – there was very little censorship under Cixi. All these freedoms were undreamt of when I was growing up under Mao.


She was capable of great ruthlessness. The day before she died, she poisoned the Emperor Guangxu, her adopted son. But compared to her predecessors and successors – Mao was responsible for 70million deaths in peacetime – her rule was incredibly benign.

My books are strictly banned in China but the regime tolerates me visiting my mother, who is in her eighties and frail. The control on my visits is now tighter than it was before the publication of my biography of Mao, or when I started writing this book in 2008. That was the year of the Beijing Olympics, when the regime wanted a good international image. They agreed to me researching the Qing dynasty, as long as I did not see anyone outside my family and some Qing scholars. I think they were relieved I was doing a historical subject but I wonder what they will think now the book is published.

Cixi is very relevant to modern China, because the country is sharply divided between pro-Mao and liberal forces. The liberal forces are calling for a constitutional government and a free press, which is what she was trying to introduce more than 100 years ago.

I’m working on the Chinese translation of the book. It will be available in Hong Kong and Taiwan. Although my books are banned in China, many people have read them through smuggled and pirated editions.

Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China (Jonathan Cape) is out now.

Advertisement Advertisement