The Qianzi Campaign to Support the Emperor and Late Qing Politics offers a detailed account of the campaign from multiple perspectives. It closely examines the tangled relationships among reform-minded factions, overseas Chinese, foreign powers in China, regional governors, and secret societies. It confirms the historical role played by the Baohuanghui, led by Kang Youwei, in the Qianzi Campaign to Support the Emperor, a major event in late Qing politics. It also carefully describes the Baohuanghui's organization, activities, and outcomes, and vividly explains the campaign's profound impact on political change in the late Qing. This book challenges some of the rigid views previously held in academic circles, which forced historical sources to fit predetermined arguments, and makes a number of breakthroughs. The author seeks to reverse a prevailing trend: now that the dichotomy between reform and revolution has become dominant, the truth about some groups has been obscured by deliberate distortions from contemporaries, while other groups are often treated as minor details and disappear from mainstream narratives.
