Kang Youwei

Kang Youwei was a Chinese philosopher and politician. He was also a noted calligrapher creating Kang Typeface and prominent political thinker and reformer of the late Qing dynasty. Through his connections, he became close to the young Guangxu Emperor and fervently encouraged him to promote his friends and consequently soured the relationship between the emperor and his adoptive mother, the powerful Empress Dowager Cixi. His ideas inspired a reformation movement, the Hundred Days' Reform. Although he continued to advocate a constitutional monarchy after the founding of the Republic, Kang's political theory was never put into practice as he was forced to flee China for repeated attempts to assassinate the Empress Dowager Cixi. He was an ardent Chinese nationalist and internationalist.