History tells us that 120 years ago, the great cause of the Boxer Rebellion to “revive the Qing and destroy the foreigners” led to the invasion of Beijing by the Eight-Nation Alliance, the fleeing of Empress Dowager Cixi and Guangxu Emperor, and the signing of the Boxer Protocol, also known as the Xinchou Treaty. 120 years later, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is no longer the powerless late Qing Dynasty. After the U.S. and Chinese diplomatic heavyweights meeting in Alaska, China’s propaganda machine has been busy pushing the narrative that “China is not the same as it was in the past.” Knowing that the European Union (EU) would impose sanctions related to alleged human rights abuses in Xinjiang after the talks, they set the tone well in advance. When the EU announced sanctions on Xinjiang top officials, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying followed the script, accusing these countries of being unqualified to be “preachers on human rights,” and urging them to understand that “China is not Libya, Syria or the China of 120 years ago. The time when a few cannons could break through China’s gate has gone.” Beijing hit back immediately with tit-for-tat countermeasures by sanctioning 10 individuals and four entities of the European Parliament, which brought relations between China and Europe to a low point. Accordingly, the European Parliament canceled the scheduled meeting on the China-EU Comprehensive Agreement on Investment (CAI). The agreement was intended to break through Trump’s trade war and bring in the EU as a tool to provoke division. The CCP had made important concessions in order to get the CAI signed before the U.S. general election, but it is now going to be on the rocks.

It is true that today is not the xinchou of 120 years ago, and history will not simply replicate itself. First of all, those Boxers who initiated the Boxer Rebellion at the time of the Eight-Nation Alliance were genuinely stupid. They had no American green cards, nor did they have families or properties in the U.S. And the Allied forces of the eight invading imperialist powers were only soldiers and statesmen, who were not backed by any anti-Chinese sentiment. Fast-forward 120 years, China is again under siege by Western democracies, and the CCP’s “anti-Western fanatical nationalism” cannot be physically enforced. Compared to the Boxers who sought to “revive the Qing and destroy the foreigners,” the CCP is merely making a political gesture, internally rather than externally, in order to build momentum for Xi Jinping’s sustainable rule in 2022. This is the “perpetual recurrence” of the Boxer Rebellion from 120 years ago. “Anti-Western fanatical nationalism” is the most effective populist tool to unite people in the Mainland. During the 19th century, three great empires of the world fell concurrently: Tsarist Russia, the Ottoman Empire, and the Great Qing of China. Vladimir Putin, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Xi Jinping have all transformed themselves into populist dictators in a bid to consolidate their eternal rule by flying the anti-Western flag for “great national rejuvenation.”

From the Western perspective, the EU’s participation in the sanctions has a popular mandate, which is very different from the Eight-Nation Alliance 120 years ago. The global pandemic outbreak at the beginning of last year has so far claimed more than two million lives, but the CCP still fantasizes about using the crisis to realize its dream of rising as a great power. How can the world not be disgusted with China and hate the Communist Party? Hong Kong and Xinjiang have become political issues in the Western world only because of the hatred for China and the Communist Party. The question now is whether the “populist Cixi,” who was originally just posing as anti-Western, will eventually turn into reality.

What happened 120 years ago that made Cixi declare war on the West? The answer is the power struggle and internal affairs. All Cixi wanted was to forever reign behind the curtain. She never cared about what the Shandong boxers were doing to “revive the Qing and destroy the foreigners,” but she was concerned about Prince Duan, the face of the Manchu clan who had been challenging the “Cixi system” after the Hundred Days’ Reform, and who was in fact best known as one of the leaders of the Boxer Rebellion against the West. After the Hundred Days Reform was crushed, the Manchu clan forces were holding Cixi accountable, and she compromised by designating Prince Duan’s son, Puzhuan as First Prince. Many people believed that it was the Western ambassadors, who did not recognize Puzhuan’s legitimacy shattering Cixi’s plan to depose Guangxu, that had provoked her to declare war. However, has it ever occurred to you if she had a genuine desire to abolish Guangxu? Can Cixi reign forever afterward? The only option for Cixi was to use the Boxer Rebellion to send Prince Duan and Puzhuan on their way. In the end, in the xinchou year, the Eight-Nation Alliance’s top war criminals Prince Duan and Puzhuan were exiled to the northwest, and Cixi continued to rule until her death, killing Guangxu with poison before she died. Thus, what led to the Eight-Nation Alliance was the internal struggle among the Manchurian ruling clique, while anti-Western nationalism was merely the façade for Cixi’s perpetual ruling agenda.

(Lau Sai-leung, political commentator)

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