I'm not saying you should have been couped because you are trying to reform, however Qing is acting too strangely and should behave more like China on 1861 instead of like in say, 2000.
Also, the
only unprecedented reforms Cixi has made thus far are:
1. Legalizing opium (which technically had already been done under the Unequal Treaties, but the Qing repeatedly violated them)
2. Establishing embassies
China had a decreasing amount of closed cities with every treaty; but under previous dynasties, China had no closed cities. It is not beyond the pale of traditional Chinese political discourse to have free trade and open borders. Legalizing opium would indeed piss off many Confucian elements; Cixi did some things this last turn to mitigate that, but, more importantly, even if that did cause some instability, other actions (land redistribution, anti-corruption, bureaucracy retraining, military deployments) do more than enough to maintain macrostability.
Establishing foreign missions began in the 1860's anyways for the Qing, but didn't really get as big as I'm making it until the 1900's. Cixi personally resisted this reform, which was proposed by at least the 1870's. Implementing it in 1861 is indeed novel and early, but it's hard to imagine an uprising over the matter.
