Boxer Rebellion - Long-term Consequences

Long-term Consequences

The great powers stopped short of finally colonizing China. From the Boxer rebellions, they learned that the best way to govern China was through the Chinese dynasty, instead of direct dealing with the Chinese people (as a saying “The people are afraid of officials, the officials are afraid of foreigners, and the foreigners are afraid of the people" (老百姓怕官，官怕洋鬼子，洋鬼子怕老百姓)). Cixi used Boxers to fight foreigners largely because foreigners sympathized with China's rightful monarch, the Guangxu Emperor, who Cixi had placed under house arrest after suppressing his efforts to modernize China. Eventually, as an unwritten agreement, Cixi was allowed to stay in power. The Guangxu Emperor spent the rest of his life under house arrest before being poisoned in 1908, likely under the orders of Cixi.

In October 1900 Russia was busy occupying much of the northeastern province of Manchuria, a move which threatened Anglo-American hopes of maintaining what remained of China's territorial integrity and an openness to commerce under the Open Door Policy. This behavior led ultimately to the Russo-Japanese War, where Russia was defeated at the hands of an increasingly confident Japan.

Among the Imperial powers, Japan gained prestige due to its military aid in suppressing the Boxer Rebellion and was now seen as a power. Its clash with Russia over Liaodong and other provinces in eastern Manchuria, long considered by the Japanese as part of their sphere of influence, led to the Russo-Japanese War when two years of negotiations broke down in February 1904. The Russian Lease of the Liaodong (1898) was confirmed.

Besides the compensation, Empress Dowager Cixi reluctantly started some reformations despite her previous view. The imperial examination system for government service was eliminated; as a result, the classical system of education was replaced with a European liberal system that led to a university degree. After the death of Empress Dowager Cixi and the Guangxu Emperor (on the same day, mysteriously) in 1908, the regent (Guangxu Emperor's brother) launched reformation. However, these efforts seemed to be too late. The revolutionaries within Han Chinese could not wait. The imperial government's humiliating failure to defend China against the foreign powers contributed to the growth of nationalist resentment against the "foreigner" Qing dynasty (who were descendants of the Manchu conquerors of China). Consequently, the Qing Dynasty, weakened by the war and the 1911 revolution, led by Sun Yat-sen, became the last dynasty in Chinese history.

The effect on China was a weakening of the dynasty as well as a weakened national defense. The structure was temporarily sustained by the Europeans. Behind the international conflict, it further internally deepened the ideological differences between northern-Chinese anti-foreign royalists and southern-Chinese anti-Qing revolutionists. This scenario in the last Chinese dynasty gradually escalated to a chaotic warlord era in which the most powerful northern warlords were hostile towards the first Chinese republic in the south until the 1930s when the Chinese communists and Japanese imperialists became the greatest threats to the republic and the northern warlords respectively. Before the ultimate defeat of the Boxer Rebellion, all anti-Qing movements in the previous century such as the Taiping Rebellion were successfully suppressed by the Qing and her foreign collaborators.

Historian Walter LaFeber has argued that President William McKinley's decision to send 5,000 American troops to quell the rebellion marks "the origins of modern presidential war powers":

McKinley took a historic step in creating a new, 20th-century presidential power. He dispatched the five thousand troops without consulting Congress, let alone obtaining a declaration of war, to fight the Boxers who were supported by the Chinese government ... Presidents had previously used such force against non-governmental groups that threatened U.S. interests and citizens. It was now used, however, against recognized governments, and without obeying the Constitution's provisions about who was to declare war.

Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. concurred, writing that:

The intervention in China marked the start of a crucial shift in the presidential employment of armed force overseas. In the 19th century, military force committed without congressional authorization had been typically used against nongovernmental organizations. Now it was beginning to be used against sovereign states, and, in the case of Theodore Roosevelt, with less consultation than ever.