Yüan Shih-kai
The other major player in the 1911 Revolution was Yüan Shih-kai. A conservative bureaucrat and monarchist, the imperial government appointed him in 1911 to suppress the rebellion. His decisions as a military leader advanced the revolution in many ways. First, his response to the Szechwan rebellion was to overplay his hand; the deaths that resulted drove several other revolutionary attempts. Second, as the revolution continued, it became evident to Yüan that the monarchy was about to collapse, so he avoided any real, substantial confrontation with the revolutionary forces. The revolution, it would turn out, would sweep Yüan into power as a virtual dictator of China until his death in 1916.
The 1911 Revolution
In all, there were ten attempts at revolution in the provinces, most of them in the Southwest. The revolution really began with the uprising in Szechwan. Angered at the nationalisation of the railway, students took to the streets on August 24, 1911, demanding a delay in the proposed nationalisation. When the leaders of the movement were order arrested, conflict broke out between troops and the protestors and thirty-two people were killed. From this point onwards, the military and the people of Szechwan fought directly with one another. The original movement, it must be stressed, was begun by conservative and wealth gentry. They did not want to overthrow the imperial government; they only wanted their financial concerns met. When they found that the imperial government refused to negotiate with them, they turned their support to the revolutionaries.
When the revolutionaries seized Wuchang, a series of provinces declared independence from the emperor in late October and the month of November: Changsha, Yunnan, Kwangtung, and Szechwan. By the end of November, two-thirds of China had seceded from the Ch'ing empire.
In December, a delegation of provincial delegates from central and northern China declared China a republic and elected Sun Yat-sen as the provisional president of the Republic of China. They set January 1, 1912, as the first day of the Republic. There still, however, remained one final task: the elimination of the Ch'ing.
The Ch'ing Abdication
The imperial government was dying. In one last, desperate struggle to survive, the Manchus appointed Yüan Shih-kai as governor-general of Hunan and Hupeh, two provinces that had not seceded, and the National Assembly in Beijing appointed him Prime Minister. Yüan, for his part, harboured a grudge against the Manchu dynasty and agreed only if the Manchus would inaugurate a national assembly, pardon the revolutionaries, give him full power of the military, and lift the ban on political parties. Since the emperor was only a boy, the Regent, Prince Chün, granted Yüan all his demands; the critical demand, however, was Yüan's total control of the military. Yüan, by the beginning of November, was convinced that the Manchu dynasty was at its close; his goal was to avoid civil war and become the first president of the new republic. The revolutionaries, for their part, saw Yüan as vital to their cause; they understood that he was the only individual who could bring about the revolution without civil war.
On January 3, 1912, Yüan announced that he would force the Ch'ing to abdicate if he were offered the presidency of the republic. Sun, who had been voted the first president of the republic, agreed to these terms. None of the Mongol or Manchu nobility wished to abdicate, so Yüan "persuaded" them by inducing over fifty generals to declare support for the republic. On February 1, 1912, the Dowager summoned Yüan to an audience and, in tears, handed the government over to him.
The new government was very generous with the former emperor. They agreed to treat the emperor and his family as foreign royalty and gave them an extremely generous allowance. On February 12, the emperor officially abdicated; on February 13, Sun officially resigned as president of the Republic. On April 5, the United States became the first foreign country to officially recognise the new republic.
Although Yüan had declared himself a supporter of the Republic, he betrayed it as soon as he became its first president. In his first cabinet he gave all the important ministries (War, Interior, Navy, and Foreign Affairs) to his cronies and gave the revolutionaries the least important cabinet positions. Even though he was cordial and respectful to the T'ung meng-hui leaders, it became evident early on that they were in a precarious position.
The Kuomintang
In the summer of 1912, Sun Yat-sen's T'ung-meng hui party absorbed four other revolutionary parties to form a new party, the Kuomintag, or Nationalist Party. The party was under the control of another prominent revolutionary, Sung Chaio-jen, who had studied parliamentary government in Japan.
The provisional constitution demanded that parliamentary elections be held within six months of the formation of the government. In December, the Kuomintang won a majority of the parliamentary seats. Sung's main platform had been the promise to check the unlimited power of Yüan through a responsible cabinet and opposition parties. Yüan tried to win over Sung with bribes and, when that failed, had him assassinated on March 20, 1913, just as he was leaving for Peking to assume the leadership of the new parliament. When Yüan threatened the new parliament with troops, parliament impeached him. In July, provinces began to secede from the new republic (the "second Revolution"), but Yüan easily brought them in line.
Yüan's Dictatorship
Through the use of threats, Yüan forced the Parliament to elect him president in October 1913. However, when the Parliament adopted the T'ien-t'an Constitution, which adopted a cabinet system of government over a presidential system, Yüan dissolved the Parliament permanently. Thus, by the beginning of 1914, Yüan Shih-kai had become the dictator of China. Sun Yat-sen fled to Japan and the Kuomintang was effectively expelled as a political party.
Yüan really wanted to be emperor of China; that, above everything else, was the ambition that drove him through the first and second revolutions. Japan, through Prime Minister Okuma, had signalled that a constitutional monarchy would be more suitable to Japanese and Chinese relations than a Chinese Republic. The president of Johns Hopkins University, Frank Goodnow, who was Yüan's American advisor, began publishing a series of articles that argued that a republican system was unsuited to the character of China. On November 20, 1915, the National People's Representative Assembly overwhelmingly voted for a monarchy and in December, provincial delegates called on Yüan to officially become emperor of China.
What Yüan really didn't know, however, was the depth and breadth of anti-monarchical sentiment. The most passionate anti-monarchical forces were provincial governors and military leaders. The first revolution began under the direction of the military general Ts'ai Ao in Yunnan province. When provinces began seceding in greater numbers, Yüan gave over his dream to be emperor in late March 1916. It was too late. Provinces continued to secede and Yüan, deserted and humiliated, died of uraemia in June. The last dream of imperial China had come to an end.
Conclusion
In conclusion, although the Manchus attempted to avoid the revolution of 1911 by using Yüan Shih-kai to suppress it the revolution was inevitable and if it had not had succeeded history could have taken a very different course and China may not be the country it is today.
