Reformist Qing Emperor was Murdered in 1908 
BEIJING -- Arsenic poisoning killed Guangxu, a late Qing dynasty emperor who inspired the hopes of reformists but lost in power struggles with his conservative aunt, China’s Xinhua news agency said on Monday.
Guangxu, who lived from 1871 to 1908, was a favorite of Chinese intellectuals hoping to reform the decaying dynasty and save the country from encroachment by Western powers.
Guangxu’s support for a constitutional monarchy was destroyed by his aunt Cixi, the powerful Empress Dowager, who mounted a coup in 1898 that ended his Hundred Days of Reform — a period of sweeping new edicts that sought to modernize the country and succeeded only in alienating the bureaucracy.
Guangxu’s allies were executed or exiled and he spent the rest of his life under house arrest, dying just 22 hours before Cixi in 1908.
His death allowed Cixi to name the child Puyi as emperor. Puyi was deposed at age 6, in 1912.
“Cixi (then 74 and seriously ill) was afraid that Guangxu would regain the throne and continue his reform plan after her death,” Xinhua quoted Qing Dynasty historian Dai Yi as saying.
Forensic experts tested two strands of hair taken from Guangxu’s body and found they contained arsenic more than 2,000 times higher than that of ordinary healthy people today, Xinhua said, citing a report by a committee in charge of Qing history.
The project to test Guangxu’s body for signs of poisoning began in 2003 and was carried out by the China Institute of Atomic Energy, the forensic laboratory of the Beijing police and China Central Television, which plans to make a documentary.
Guangxu’s hair was compared with that of two contemporaries, his wife and a Qing official.
The arsenic found on the empress’ hair was 261 times lower than Guangxu and that of the official was 132 times lower, Xinhua said, adding that arsenic was also found in his stomach and clothes.
To refute the possibility that arsenic levels might be due to traditional Chinese medicine, the team compared samples with the hair of a person suffering chronic arsenic poisoning.
In a memoir by Der Ling, a Manchu lady-in-waiting to Cixi, Guangxu is portrayed as kind and sympathetic to ideas of reform, but completely powerless and isolated from the outside world.
Poisoning has long been suspected as the cause of his death, although court documents indicate he had been ill for some time.
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