British author Demetrius Charles Boulger in 1899 proposed that Britain form and head an alliance of "Philo-Chinese Powers" in setting up a new government for China based in Shanghai and Nanking as two capitals along the River Yangtze, to counter the interests of other powers in the region like the Russians due to what he believed was the imminent collapse of the Qing dynasty. The Yangtze valley was controlled by Qing officials such as Liu Kunyi and Zhang Zhidong, who were not under Beijing's influence and whom Boulger believed Britain could work with to stabilize China. He proposed that at Nanjing and Hankou a force of Chinese soldiers trained by the British be deployed and in Hong Kong, Weihaiwei and the Yangtze valley and it would have no allegiance to the Qing, and as such they in his idea would forgo the queue and be made to grow their hair long as a symbolic measure to "increasing the confidence of the Chinese in the advent of a new era". Boulger stated he could not discern from the Chinese he spoke to on whether the queue was invented by Nurhaci to impose on the Chinese as a symbol of loyalty or whether it was an already established Manchu custom as no one seemed to know the origin of it from his or other sinologists' inquiries.