On September 7, 1901, Li Hongzhang and Yikuang signed the Boxer Protocol in Beijing, ending the Boxer War. The other signatures belonged to eleven powers: the eight nations that had sent troops to relieve the legations, plus Belgium, Spain and the Netherlands. In China the agreement is known as the Xinchou Treaty and is counted among the unequal treaties.
The numbers were set to be felt. The indemnity was fixed at 450 million taels of silver, roughly one tael for every person in the country at a figure chosen for the insult as much as the money, payable over 39 years at four per cent interest. With interest the total came to nearly twice the principal, and servicing it consumed a large part of Qing customs and salt revenue, which foreign inspectors already administered. Russia took the largest share at about 29 per cent, Germany about 20, France about 16, Britain about 11, and Japan and the United States about 7 each.
The rest of the treaty was written to make a repeat impossible. The legation quarter in Beijing became a walled district under exclusive foreign control with permanent guards, and the Taku forts and other defences between the capital and the sea were to be dismantled. Arms imports were banned for two years. Officials named by the powers were to be executed, exiled or dismissed, and the civil service examinations were suspended for five years in every city where foreigners had been attacked. The Zongli Yamen was replaced by a Ministry of Foreign Affairs ranking above the other boards.
The humiliation was not only financial. The Qing court had backed the Boxers in the summer of 1900, and the occupation of Beijing by foreign troops, the looting, and the terms that followed destroyed the dynasty's remaining credibility. Cixi had fled to Xi'an. She returned in 1902. The reforms she began were meant to keep the dynasty alive. They produced instead the institutions that replaced it in 1912.
Some powers gave money back. The United States remitted more than half of its share, and the money was used to send Chinese students to American universities and to found Tsinghua College in Beijing in 1911. Britain did the same in 1922.