Kang Youwei

Independent activity Monarchy and royalism 1858–1927 ○ Natural death

Reform thinker behind the Hundred Days’ Reform who clung to constitutional monarchy after the Republic was founded

From a scholarly family of Nanhai in Guangdong, he argued for institutional reform in works that read Confucius as a reformer of institutions. In 1898 he won the trust of the young Guangxu Emperor and led the Hundred Days’ Reform, but fled abroad when Cixi’s coup reversed it. In exile he and Liang Qichao founded the Emperor Protection Society to restore the Guangxu Emperor and establish constitutional monarchy, opposing Sun Yat-sen’s revolutionaries among the overseas Chinese. He opposed the republic after 1911 and in July 1917 joined Zhang Xun’s restoration, fleeing to the American legation when it failed. His Datong Shu, picturing a utopia without private property or the family, was read by later generations including Mao Zedong. He died in Qingdao in 1927.

Also known as: K'ang Yu-wei