Failure
of reform from the top and the fiasco of the Boxer uprising of 1900, convinced
many Chinese that the only solution lay in outright revolution to remove the old
and install a new government modelled on the Japanese example.
By
1911, the Chinese Imperial government was on it's knees. Discredited, bankrupt
and riddled with corruption, China was ripe for revolution. Preceded
by numerous abortive uprisings and protests, the republican revolution broke out
on 10 October 1911 with
a successful
army mutiny in Wu Ch'ang that
quickly spread to neighbouring cities. By
late November, 15 of the 24 provinces had declared their independence of the Qing
(Manchu) empire and on 1 January 1912, Sun Yat-sen
was inaugurated in Nanking (now Nanjing) as the provisional president of the new
Chinese Republic.
But
power in Peking (now Beijing) had already reverted to the commander-in-chief of
the old Imperial army, Yuan Shikai, the strongest regional military leader at
the time. To prevent civil war and possible foreign intervention from undermining
the infant republic, Sun agreed to Yuan's demand that China be united under a
Peking government headed unsurprisingly by Yuan himself.
On 12 February 1912,
the last Manchu emperor, the child Puyi, abdicated. On
10 March 1912 in Peking, Yuan Shikai was sworn in as provisional president of
the Republic of China. |
