Nor was this all. The British-Chinese treaty of Nanking (1842) and that with the United States (1844) both contained provisions relating to the protection of the life and property of foreigners. The imperial government found itself pledged to the fulfillment of a policy which collided directly with the xenophobia engendered by ideological control. The enforcement of these provisions, half-hearted as it was, involved constantly increasing imperial intervention in regional affairs, although the issues arising between the central government and the provincial authorities were settled through negotiation rather than enforceable commands. Toward the end of the nineteenth century the gradual transformation in China gave rise to a reform movement carried forward by a group of constitutional monarchists. One of their leaders, K'ang Yu-wei, became in 1898 the tutor of the young Emperor Kuang Hsü. The summer of that year witnessed a steady stream of edicts which ultimately might have made China under the leadership of the throne as progressive as Japan. The reforms aimed primarily at efficiency and modernization, and partially at the parliamentarization of the regime. The young Emperor, however, was soon checked by Yüan Shih-k'ai, his leading military adviser, and outmaneuvered by the reactionary Empress Dowager. He spent the rest of his life in actual imprisonment, and the Six Geniuses--as the reformers behind his policy were called--were exiled or executed. One of those who were put to death was the poet Tan Shih-tung, a man of great skill in the classical literature and of ambitious visions for the future, who might, had the Hundred Days succeeded, have lived to be a guardian of the throne in a modern Chinese Empire. Just before his execution he wrote the following poem, calling forth the memory of Chiang-ch'ing and Tou-keng, upright men of the past, and comparing his faith with the mountain range of Kuang-lêng: LAST SONG FROM PRISON _Prison door facing me--thoughts of Chiang-ch'ing-- I could die easily, if like Tou-keng ... Laughing and alone, I lift the knife to heaven: I die but leave behind hopes higher than Kuang-lêng!_[20]