Yuan Shikai's Presidency, the First Years of the Republic of China and the 1913 Revolution
The Kuomintang (KMT) won the first national election, but its parliamentary leader was assassinated
By February 1912, the first Chinese revolution had been won and virtually no one wanted further upheaval. The end of the Qing Dynasty had been a political and not a social revolution. The masses, being hundreds of millions of illiterate peasants, were barely involved in the 1911 revolution. Where secret societies and other lower-class members had participated, they were quickly pushed aside and repressed as stable new provincial governments were formed, usually in some form of coalition of landed gentry, merchants and soldiers. Sun Yat-sen’s call for the People’s Livelihood, a form of land redistribution, was put to the side.
The Imperial Degree ending the Qing Dynasty, which Yuan Shikai had co-signed, stated that the nation’s form of government would be constitutional republicanism. Sun Yat-sen had try to impose three conditions on Yuan Shikai assuming the Presidency of the Provisional Government of the Republic of China. Nanjing would be China’s capital, Yuan would assume the Presidency in Nanjing and he would respect the Provisional Constitution.
Yuan had other ideas and step by step, he changed the Republic of China to match his own ideas of what China needed: centralism, order, peace and prosperity.
Within three weeks of the imperial abdication, Yuan Shikai was still in Beijing and had not travelled to Nanjing. An army mutiny broke out around Beijing in February 1912. While representatives of the Provisional Government from Nanjing were in Beijing to meet with Yuan, soldiers in China’s 2nd Division mutinied. Their pay was late. They attacked shops and began looting and burning. They fired artillery shots at two of Beijing’s gates and then poured into the city. There was looting, burning and killing. Then robbers joined and chaos ensued.
The delegates retreated to the foreign legations for safety. Foreign troops moved to protect the foreign quarter and everyone in it. They created barricades, set up Gatling machine guns and scaled walls for better views and positions to fire from, if necessary.
Yuan’s home was at risk, but by March 2nd, soldiers loyal to him were brutally pacifying the city, killing anyone they found on the streets, regardless of whether they had been troublemakers.
For a long time, Yuan Shikai was believed to have engineered the riots. The troops who started the uprising were part of the Beiyang Army and were part of the military system he had created. One result was that he stayed in Beijing to ensure stability, rather than travel to Nanjing as the provisional government had wanted.
More recent scholarship has blamed one of Yuan’s subordinates and Shikai’s son Yuan Keding. While Shikai was able to stay in the north, he also suffered a loss to his reputation as violence and chaos undermined his claim to being an effective leader.
It is also unclear that Yuan Shikai understood what republicanism meant. He once asked his diplomat Wellington Koo, who had studied in the USA, what a “republic” meant. Shikai’s own thoughts on it suggest that he believed it meant that all 400 million Chinese owned the state like shareholders, but that the President was like CEO and in charge of its operations. What will become clear is that, unlike the American Founding Fathers, Yuan had not spent time considering the Roman Republic’s history, learning lessons from it and carefully creating a separation and balancing of powers. Yuan did not value a balance of powers and came to attack the elected representatives in Nanjing for limiting his ability to rule.
The Provisional Constitution had been set up to limit the President’s powers. The elected legislative body and therefore, its leader: the Premier (like the Prime Minister in Great Britain), had considerable powers. Fundamental freedoms for the Chinese people were established in the constitution, including freedom of speech, of movement and of religion. Those rights could be “restricted by law when it is deemed necessary to promote public welfare, maintain public order, or be extremely urgent”. The Chinese people also had the obligation to pay taxes and to serve in the army if required. The President was commander-in-chief of the Chinese army and navy. The judiciary was to be independent.
Early on, there was conflict between Yuan Shikai and the first Premier, who had been Yuan’s subordinate in the old imperial system. The Premier chose a provincial governor and Yuan rejected him. Two members of the cabinet supported Yuan and used their powers to undermine the first Premier, who felt the need to resign after only a few months in office. The second Premier didn’t last much longer. They were replaced in turn, by the two cabinet ministers that had supported Yuan: Zhao Bingjun and then Duan Qirui, a soldier and politician, who would also be a famous warlord in China after Shikai’s death. Another Beiyang soldier, and future warlord, Feng Guozhang stated early in Yuan’s presidency that “Our President should have unlimited power in order to achieve his ambitious objectives.”
In 1912, relations between Yuan Shikai and Sun Yat-sen were cordial. Sun visited the President in Beijing and was warmly received and banqueted.
In August 1912, the Guomindang (KMT) was formed by Song Jiaoren as a union of the Revolutionary Alliance that Sun Yat-sen had led, with some smaller political parties. A majority of cabinet now belonged to the KMT as even some of Yuan’s appointments to cabinet joined that party. The KMT also had a majority in Parliament.
In September 1912, Yuan agreed that Sun Yat-sen could lead the construction of a national railroad network. Sun became General Manager of the China Railway Corporation, headquartered in Shanghai. Sun’s plan was grandiose. He wanted to build 50,000 kilometres of railroads and later increased that to 100,000. In fact, the 100,000-kilometre network was only achieved by China in 2013.
The early Republic of China faced a chronic shortage of funds. There were no funds for railway construction. Yuan was worried at the lack of revenue being sent to Beijing from the provinces. Peasants were feeling pressure of increased taxes to pay for projects imposed by the gentry led provincial governments. The Republic was still paying Boxer indemnities. More foreign loans were possible but came with conditions imposed by the international banking consortium. They wanted security, usually involving foreign control of salt tax and custom duty revenues. Only after paying the foreign loans would any leftover be transferred to Chinese officials.
One financial burden was the number of men in uniform in China. In early 1912, there might have been around one million soldiers. The Beijing mutiny was just one case among many where soldiers owed pay caused chaos. Most of the soldiers were in armies under provincial commands. There wasn’t enough money to pay them all. Yuan didn’t control most of the troops and unpaid men with guns were a risk. Yuan created a plan to reduce the number of soldiers in China by half.
Yuan’s critics in the KMT complained that the Beiyang Army that Yuan had founded was not suffering cuts, but that two thirds of the forces in Nanjing had been eliminated.
Yuan Shikai also tried to reduce local military fiefdoms. He separated military command from civilian authority.
The early years of the Republic of China saw an increase in spending on education. Compulsory four-year education for girls and boys was started. That may not seem like much. But a minimum of four years of mandatory schooling with a focus on practical and not classical subjects, was progress. At the beginning of the 20th Century, probably at least 85% or 90% of Chinese had not been able to read or write.
The revolution had a decentralizing effect. Now officials could serve in their home provinces. Local gentry took advantage of those opportunities. Yuan Shikai tried to build central power for himself and his regime in Beijing. But he did allow officials to serve in their home provinces.
In 1912, China held its first national election after the revolution. There were restrictions on who could vote. Adult males over the age of 21 who were educated or owned property and paid taxes, and who could prove a two-year residency in a particular county were eligible to vote. About 40 million may have been registered for the election, which was a considerable increase compared to the late Qing Dynasty votes. But no women could vote and most men were still deprived of the franchise.
Song Jiaoren led the campaigning for the KMT and achieved a strong result for his Nationalist Party. They won the most seats in both the House of Representatives and the Senate and were just short of a majority in each. That is remarkable considering that the President was allowed to appoint 64 representatives for seats meant to represent Tibet, Outer Mongolia and overseas Chinese. Votes had not actually occurred in those regions. Because of the KMT’s strong showing, Song expected to be Premier of China.
In March 1913, Song was at the Shanghai railway station when he was shot and mortally wounded. He died two days later and the assassination was national news. The police arrested a former soldier who had become homeless. He had been paid by the leader of a secret society. Further investigation showed ties between that man and a secretary of China’s Premier, who himself was a close ally and protege of Yuan Shikai.
Historians have debated whether Yuan himself ordered the murder. It is not clear how high up the conspiracy climbed in his government. The KMT did hold him responsible. Sun Yat-sen urged Yuan to resign. When he did not, Sun called for a new revolution. Other Nationalists preferred peaceful action through the courts instead.
In April 1913, Yuan’s government negotiated a Reorganization Loan with the five-power banking consortium. He did that without consulting the legislative branch of government. Britain, France, Germany, Russia and Japan all agreed to loan China twenty-five million pounds. But with strict conditions. Those powers would supervise tax management and salt duties. After fees and the reorganization of prior debts, only 10.2 million pounds (or about 40%) of the loan amount provided new funds for Beijing. The KMT opposed the loan and resisted it to no avail. Yuan controlled the disbursement of those new funds, which came at a crucial time.
Yuan was preparing for conflict. He mobilized troops and moved them so they could target the lower Yangtze River, which was a KMT power base. Troops were sent to Wuhan and Shanghai. He then removed three KMT provincial governors, in Anhui, Jiangxi and Guangdong. There were arrests in Wuhan and troops transported into Jiangxi. This only escalated the conflict. On July 12, 1913, the ousted KMT governor from Jiangxi issued an anti-Yuan declaration, which proclaimed Jiangxi to be independent. This launched the 1913 Revolution. Three days later, Jiangsu province joined in and within a week, Anhui, Shanghai, Fujian and Guangdong had done the same. Hunan and Sichuan later joined too.
Within 17 months of Yuan becoming provisional President, he was already facing armed revolt and by members of the leading party in the national assemblies, who had just won an election.
However, Yuan was prepared. His troops were already in good position before the revolution started. He used funds from the Reorganization Loan to fund his military campaigns.
By early September, his forces had won numerous battles. Every province that had proclaimed independence had since retracted. Yuan defeated the 1913 Revolution within 2 months. Sun Yat-sen and others fled to Japan.
Yuan then purged China of those who had opposed him. More than 1000 were killed, all without a fair trial and many without any trial. Freedom of speech was suspended and dozens of newspapers ordered to stop printing. Being an elected representative was no defence. Some of the people killed in Yuan’s bloody reprisals were recently elected members of congress.
Yuan dissolved the KMT political party and prohibited its members from taking their seats in the elected chambers.
Yuan appointed new provincial governors in many provinces and consolidated power further. With the KMT outlawed and its leadership dead, in jail or on the run, Yuan’s authority was supreme. He orchestrated the remaining members of Congress to pass a Presidential Election Law on October 5, 1913. The next day, they voted for who would be President. Pro-Yuan soldiers were present and watching. Despite all his power, and perhaps a foreshadowing of the opposition he would later face, Yuan Shikai was not elected by enough votes on the first or second ballots. After midnight, an exhausted and hungry congress held a third round of voting and this time Yuan got enough votes to be elected President by Congress.
Next time, we’ll look at Yuan Shikai’s final years in power. He had been elected President, but not by what could be called a “free and fair election”. The Yuan curse that killed all male members of his family before they turned 60 was alive and well. But before he died, he would lose what support he had gained. He had already made many enemies, and while he had pushed them aside in 1913 with ease...he would not be so successful after he engineered his election as Emperor.