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The foreign powers recognized that a divided China would be much easier to penetrate and annex than a united China, and accordingly opposed Yüan Shih-k'ai. Before he could ascend the throne, he died suddenly and this terminated the first attempt to re-establish monarchy. Yüan was succeeded as president by Li Yüan-hung. Meanwhile five provinces had declared themselves independent.
Its Commander-in-Chief, Yuan Shih-k'ai, however, hit upon a better scheme. He made peace with the revolutionaries and acknowledged the Republic, on condition that he should be the first President instead of Sun Yat Sen.
The revolutionaries, for their part, had no choice but to win over Yüan Shih-k'ai for the sake of his troops, since they were not themselves strong enough to get rid of the Manchus, or even to wrest concessions from them, so long as the Manchus were defended by Yüan's army. Thus Yüan and the revolutionaries were forced into each other's arms.
The chief regent, however, worked against Yüan Shih-k'ai and dismissed him at the beginning of 1909; Yüan's supporters remained at their posts. Yüan himself now entered into relations with the revolutionaries, whose centre was Canton, and whose undisputed leader was now Sun Yat-sen.
General Yüan Shih-k'ai, who was then stationed at Tientsin in command of 7,000 troops with modern equipment, the only ones in China, could have removed the empress and protected the reformers; but he was already pursuing a personal policy, and thought it safer to give the reformers no help. There now began, from 1898, a thoroughly reactionary rule of the dowager empress.
On the news of the abdication of the imperial house, Sun Yat-sen resigned in Nanking, and recommended Yüan Shih-k'ai as president. 1 Social and intellectual position In order to understand the period that now followed, let us first consider the social and intellectual position in China in the period between 1911 and 1927.
One of their leaders was murdered, and the blame was thrown upon Yüan Shih-k'ai; there then came, in the middle of 1912, a new revolution, in which the radicals made themselves independent and tried to gain control of South China. But Yüan Shih-k'ai commanded better troops and won the day.
Within the Peking government matters soon came to a climax. Yüan Shih-k'ai and his supporters represented the conservative view, with the unexpressed but obvious aim of setting up a new imperial house and continuing the old gentry system. Most of the members of the parliament came, however, from the middle class and were opposed to any reaction of this sort.
Yüan Shih-k'ai now declared to the imperial house that the monarchy could no longer be defended, as his troops were too unreliable, and he induced the Manchu government to issue an edict on February 12th, 1912, in which they renounced the throne of China and declared the Republic to be the constitutional form of state.
In negotiations with Great Britain, in which Japan took advantage of the British commitments in Europe, Japan had to be conceded the predominant position in the Far East. Meanwhile Yüan Shih-k'ai had made all preparations for turning the Republic once more into an empire, in which he would be emperor; the empire was to be based once more on the gentry group.
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