The Chinese Revolution was triggered not by the United League itself but by the army troops in Hubei who were urged on by the local revolutionary bodies not incorporated in the league. The accidental exposure of a mutinous plot forced a number of junior officers to choose between arrest or revolt in Wuhan. The revolt was initially successful because of the determination of lower-level officers and revolutionary troops and the cowardice of the responsible Manchu and Chinese officials. Within a day the rebels had seized the arsenal and the governor-general’s offices and had gained possession of Wuchang. With no nationally known revolutionary leaders on hand, the rebels coerced a colonel, Li Yuanhong, to assume military command, although only as a figurehead. They persuaded the Hubei provincial assembly to proclaim the establishment of the Chinese republic; Tang Hualong, the assembly’s chairman, was elected head of the civil government.

After this initial victory, a number of historical tendencies converged to bring about the downfall of the Qing dynasty. A decade of revolutionary organization and propaganda paid off in a sequence of supportive uprisings in important centers of central and southern China; these occurred in recently formed military academies and in newly created divisions and brigades, in which many cadets and junior officers were revolutionary sympathizers. Secret-society units also were quickly mobilized for local revolts. The anti-revolutionary constitutionalist movement also made an important contribution: its leaders had become disillusioned with the imperial government’s unwillingness to speed the process of constitutional government, and a number of them led their respective provincial assemblies to declare their provinces independent of Beijing or to actually join the new republic. Tang Hualong was the first among them. A significant product of the newly emerging nationalism was widespread hostility among Chinese toward the dynasty. Many had absorbed the revolutionary propaganda that blamed a weak and vacillating court for the humiliations China had suffered from foreign powers since 1895. Therefore, broad sentiment favored the end of Manchu rule. Also, as an outcome of two decades of journalizing discussion of “people’s rights,” there was substantial support among the urban educated for a republican form of government. Probably the most-decisive development was the recall of Yuan Shikai (Yüan Shih-k’ai), the architect of the elite Beiyang Army, to government service to suppress the rebellion when its seriousness became apparent.

After the collapse of the Huai Army in the Sino-Japanese War, the Qing government had endeavored to build up a new Western-style army, among which the elite corps trained by Yuan Shikai, former governor-general of Zhili, had survived the Boxer uprising and emerged as the strongest force in China. But it was in a sense Yuan’s private army and did not easily submit to the Manchu court. Yuan had been retired from officialdom at odds with the regent Prince Chun, but, on the outbreak of the revolution in 1911, the court had no choice but to recall him from retirement to take command of his new army. Instead of using force, however, he played a double game: on the one hand, he deprived the floundering court of all its power; on the other, he started to negotiate with the revolutionaries. At the peace talks that opened at the end of the year, Yuan’s emissaries and the revolutionary representatives agreed that the abdication of the Qing and the appointment of Yuan to the presidency of the new republic were to be formally decided by a National Assembly that would be formed. However, this was renounced by Yuan, probably because he hoped to be appointed by the retiring Manchu monarch to organize a new government rather than nominated as chief of state by the National Assembly. (This is a formula of the Chinese dynastic revolution called chanrang, which means the peaceful shift in rule from a decadent dynasty to a more-virtuous one.) But events turned against him, and the presidency was given to Sun Yat-sen, who had been appointed provisional president of the republic by the National Assembly. In February 1912 Sun voluntarily resigned his position, and the Qing court proclaimed the decree of abdication, which included a passage—fabricated and inserted by Yuan into this last imperial document—purporting that Yuan was to organize a republican government to negotiate with the revolutionists on unification of northern and southern China. Thus ended the 268-year rule of the Qing dynasty.

Early power struggles

The first years of the republic were marked by a continuing contest between Yuan and the former revolutionaries over where ultimate power should lie. The contest began with the election of parliament (the National Assembly) in February 1913. The Nationalist Party (Kuomintang [KMT], or Guomindang), made up largely of former revolutionaries, won a commanding majority of seats. Parliament was to produce a permanent constitution. Song Jiaoren (Sung Chiao-jen), the main organizer of the KMT’s electoral victory, advocated executive authority in a cabinet responsible to parliament rather than to the president. In March 1913, Song was assassinated; the confession of the assassin and later circumstantial evidence strongly implicated the premier and possibly Yuan himself.

Parliament tried to block Yuan’s effort to get a “reorganization loan” (face value $125 million) from a consortium of foreign banks, but in April Yuan concluded the negotiations and received the loan. He then dismissed three Nationalist military governors. That summer, revolutionary leaders organized a revolt against Yuan, later known as the Second Revolution, but his military followers quickly suppressed it. Sun Yat-sen, one of the principal revolutionaries, fled to Japan. Yuan then coerced parliament into electing him formally to the presidency, and he was inaugurated on October 10, the second anniversary of the outbreak of the revolution. By then his government had been recognized by most foreign powers. When parliament promulgated a constitution placing executive authority in a cabinet responsible to the legislature, Yuan revoked the credentials of the KMT members, charging them with involvement in the recent revolt. He dissolved parliament on January 10, 1914, and appointed another body to prepare a constitution according to his own specifications. The presidency had become a dictatorship.