Yuan Shikai

Yuan Shikai the Chinese military and political leader of the late Qing and early Republic of China (1859-1916) who built the Beiyang Army, served as the first president of the republic and briefly attempted to restore the monarchy. He was one of the most powerful and controversial figures of the transition from empire to republic, and his career reflects the fragility of the new Chinese state.

Early Life and Military Career

Yuan Shikai was born on 16 September 1859 in Xiangcheng, in Henan province, into a family of officials and landowners. He failed the provincial examinations and chose instead a military path, entering the service of the Qing in Korea, where the empire asserted its influence. He distinguished himself in the turbulent politics of the Korean court and was appointed resident in 1885, remaining until the war with Japan.

After the Sino-Japanese War of 1894 to 1895 he was chosen to train a new kind of army at Xiaozhan, near Tianjin. He organised a modern force drilled by foreign instructors and equipped with modern rifles and artillery, the nucleus of the Beiyang Army that became the most effective military machine in China. Through this force he gathered around him a corps of loyal subordinates who would serve him for decades.

In 1898 he was a figure of consequence in the politics of the court, and his decision to side with the conservative faction against the Hundred Days reformers is remembered as a turning point. Whether he betrayed the reformers or acted out of caution has been debated ever since, but the episode established him as a force in national affairs and earned him the enmity of the reform party.

Governor and Architect of the Beiyang System

Yuan rose to be governor of Shandong and then governor-general of Zhili, the metropolitan province, where he commanded the Beiyang Army and built an extensive network of officials, officers and administrators loyal to him. He promoted modern police, schools, industry and communications, and he made Zhili a model of the new administration.

He was a leading participant in the reform measures of the early twentieth century. He supported the creation of a modern army and the reform of the examination system, and he helped to organise the new ministries and the beginnings of constitutional preparation. His power rested on his command of the army, which made him indispensable to the court and gave him a decisive voice in the crisis that followed.

The deaths of the empress dowager Cixi and the Guangxu emperor in 1908 weakened his position at court, and the regent, mistrusting him, forced him into retirement in 1909. He lived in seclusion in Henan but kept in close touch with the officers of his old army, waiting for the moment when the dynasty would again need him.

President of the Republic

The outbreak of the revolution of 1911 in Wuchang created exactly the opportunity he awaited. Recalled to command the government forces, he negotiated as much as he fought, and through a combination of military pressure and political bargaining he secured the abdication of the last Qing emperor and the establishment of a republic in early 1912, with himself as its provisional president.

Sun Yat-sen, the leader of the revolutionary movement, yielded the presidency to Yuan in the interest of unity, and in 1913 Yuan was elected president under the new constitution, though he soon showed little respect for its limits. He suppressed the second revolution of 1913, dissolved the elected parliament, and proceeded to rule by decree, sidelining the constitutional institutions of the young republic.

He sought to build a strong central state, strengthened the army, secured foreign loans, and attempted to bring the provinces under firm control. Yet his concentration of power alienated the revolutionaries and the liberal politicians and deepened the division between the north and the south that would plague China for many years.

Monarchy, Foreign Policy and Death

In 1915 Yuan accepted the notorious Twenty-One Demands presented by Japan, which would have extended Japanese influence over China, and though some of the demands were moderated the episode damaged his standing. In the same year he took the fateful step of preparing to restore the monarchy with himself as emperor, hoping that the name would confirm his authority.

The monarchy was declared in late 1915 but provoked immediate resistance. Provinces rose in revolt, the army wavered, and foreign powers withheld support, and he was compelled to abandon the throne within months. His health and authority broken, he died on 6 June 1916 in Beijing, his brief imperial reign ending in humiliation.

His death left the country without a controlling power. The Beiyang commanders who had served him divided the army into competing factions and fought among themselves, and there was no force capable of unifying China, so the era of warlord struggle began. Yuan's ambition and his failure to build durable institutions were blamed for much that followed.

Influence and Legacy

Yuan Shikai is one of the pivotal and most controversial figures of modern Chinese history. He was a capable organiser and moderniser who built a national army and a functioning administration, and it was largely through his manoeuvres that the Qing dynasty came to a peaceful enough end for the republic to be proclaimed.

At the same time he undermined the republic he headed, dissolving its parliament and rejecting its constitutional limits, and his attempt to make himself emperor discredited him and exposed the fragility of the new political order. He is remembered as an example of how personal power, unchallenged by institutions, can destroy the very state it creates.

Historians continue to debate whether he was a cynical opportunist or a conservative who believed that only strong rule could hold China together. What is not disputed is his central role at the moment of the fall of the empire and the birth of the republic, and the long shadow that his army and his clients cast over the decades of division that followed.

See also

• Beiyang Army
• Wuchang Uprising
• Twenty-One Demands
• Warlord Era