Yuan Shikai

Yuán Shìkǎi.

Yuan Shikai, 1859–1916, Shantung Military Governor

Yuán Shìkǎi ( Chinese  袁世凱  /  袁世凯 , W.-G. Yuan Shih-k'ai or Jüan-schi-kai , Zì 慰 亭 , Wèitíng , Hào 容 庵 , Róng'ān , also called 袁 项 城 , Yuán Xiàngchéng after his place of birth ; * September 16, 1859 in Zhangying, Xiangcheng District , Henan Province ; † June 6, 1916 in Beijing ) was a military leader and politician during the late Qing Dynasty and the Republic of China . He was known to exploit the weaknesses of the Qing Emperors and the young Republic of China for his goal of authoritarian power through military superiority.

biography

Yuan received a classical Confucian education and began his career as a protégé of the powerful governor-general of Zhili , Li Hongzhang, in the Beiyang or Northern Army established by him . From 1885 to 1894 he held the role of the all-powerful high commissioner of China in this vassal empire in Korea . At the same time he was commander in chief of the Chinese troops stationed there. When they were attacked by the Japanese in the course of the first Sino-Japanese War in 1894 , he was fortunate enough to be recalled to Beijing a few days before the devastating defeat of September 1894.

Because of his loyalty to the Dowager Empress Cixi , he was appointed commander of the first "new army" in 1895. The Qing court relied on Yuan's army for its efficiency and its garrison proximity to Beijing. However, Yuan abused his position and switched sides several times, considering the greatest personal benefit. Especially after the coup d'état that ended the Hundred-Day Reform , he became the deadly enemy of the Guangxu emperor . In December 1899, he succeeded the Yuxian governor of Shandong, who had been sentenced under foreign pressure . After the Boxer Rebellion in 1900, he used his troops on expiatory missions against the defeated boxers.

On June 25, 1902, he became Minister for Beiyang - the area corresponds to today's Liaoning , Hebei and Shandong provinces . As a result, he received numerous loans to transform his Beiyang armies into the most powerful army in China. He took advantage of his high position in 1906 by giving a memorandum to the court. In this he demanded that China should become a constitutional monarchy modeled on another state and saw the system of the United Kingdom as a good example. Following this example, he saw the establishment of a Senate ( 參議院 , cān yì yuàn ) as a legislature as a first step. Subsequently, his memorandum provided that a legislative assembly should legally prepare the establishment of a congress ( 代表 大会 , dài biăo dà huì ) and later a parliament ( 議院 , yì yuàn ) or a lower house ( 国会 , guó huì ) as the executive . To this end, he called for the grand minister (guowu zongli dachen) to be replaced by a prime minister and for the previous state council (junjichu) , which had acted as the emperor's advisory government to be dissolved , since the 1820s. The Dowager Empress Cixi rejected this memorandum, however, because she feared the imperial title would be reduced to a purely representative role and assumed that Yuan Shikai wanted to strengthen his own position of power by taking over the post of prime minister. If a reformation of the government had to take place at all, then the Japanese empire should serve as a model, in which the monarchy was supported by the police and the military. As punishment for this memorandum, which was viewed as a rebellion, Cixi had the State Council reorganized and several of Yuan's followers dismissed. It also moved some of the Beiyang Army contingents to more distant areas, further weakening Yuan's power base. From 1907 onwards, he and Zhang Zhidong had to move to Beijing. Immediately after the deaths of Cixi and Guangxu in 1908, Regent Prince Chun relieved him of all posts. This was probably because of a secret will from Guangxu, with which the latter wanted to take revenge for Yuan betraying the Hundred-Day Reform he was supporting . After he was about to be executed, Zhang Zhidong was able to achieve that he was only exiled to his home province of Henan, with reference to Yuan's strong power base. His withdrawal was publicly justified with a foot disease.

In 1912, Yuan played a critical role in the establishment of the Republic of China . The southern provinces had already declared their independence from the Qing, but the northern provinces and Yuan's Beiyang army had not taken a stand for or against the revolution. Both the Yuan and the Qing knew that the Beiyang Army was the only modern army capable of suppressing the revolution. As a result, Yuan demanded the highest political offices from the Qing on the one hand, and on the other, his forces captured Hankou and Hanyang in November 1911 and prepared to attack Wuchang , forcing the revolutionaries to negotiate with Yuan.

Presidency and restoration of the monarchy

Yuan Shikai in ceremonial clothes from the Qing period

Yuan Shikai in 1915 in
uniform as President of the Republic

On October 10, 1911, the Republican Revolution began with the Wuchang uprising . This ended the more than two thousand year rule of the emperors in China.

Yuan was Prime Minister under Emperor Puyi and was given authority to put down the uprising. The leader of the revolutionaries, Dr. Sun Yat-sen , was elected interim president of the First Republic of China ( Beiyang government ) on December 29th at a conference of provincial representatives in Nanjing . The transitional government was nevertheless in a very weak position: the southern provinces had declared their independence, while the north had not yet done so. The transitional government also had no armed forces, as its control over the new army was poor and there were many troops loyal to the Qing . Therefore, Sun needed the support of Yuan, who was under the command of the northern Chinese military with the Beiyang Army . Sun was forced to promise him the office of president in order to side with the revolution. Yuan subsequently forced Emperor Puyi to abdicate and became the first official President of the Republic of China.

Cao Kun , one of Yuan's confidants in the Beiyang Army, staged a coup d'état in Beijing and Tianjin , apparently on behalf of Yuan, to provide an excuse to keep Yuan from leaving his sphere of influence in what is now Hebei Province . The leadership of the revolutionaries had to give way again and Beijing became the capital of the new republic instead of Nanjing.

In February 1913, elections were held for the National Assembly, in which the Chinese Nationalist Party, the Kuomintang , did very well. Song Jiaoren , Sun Yat-sen's deputy in the KMT, promoted a western system of government and was widely viewed as a candidate for the post of prime minister. Yuan saw Song as a threat to his power; Song was murdered on March 20, 1913, and it is widely believed that Yuan was responsible for it.

Tensions between the Kuomintang and the Yuan increased when the parliament refused to accept a Yuan-approved foreign loan. This caused Yuan to overthrow the government with its military might, to ban the Kuomintang and to dissolve the national assembly and the provincial parliaments. The Kuomintang attempted a "second revolution" against Yuan, but this was suppressed by Yuan's military. The Kuomintang leadership, including Sun Yat-sen, went into exile in Japan .

Yuan subsequently made a political mistake by restoring the monarchy and proclaiming himself Emperor of the Chinese Empire . His Hongxian dynasty only lasted a few months, from December 12, 1915 to March 22, 1916. Not only the revolutionaries opposed this development, but also Yuan's own commanders, including Cai E as the driving force . Not only were the latter tired of the monarchy, they feared that the restoration of the monarchy would allow Yuan to operate independently of military support. In the face of opposition from all sides, Yuan bowed to the pressure and resigned. He died of kidney failure a few months later.

With the death of Yuan, China lost its last central power. The army quickly splintered into factions of warlords fighting each other ( Northern Militarists ). This started the civil war that made the Japanese invasion possible 20 years later .

Individual evidence

1. ^ ^{A b c d} Dieter Kuhn : The Republic of China from 1912 to 1937. Draft for a political history of events. 3rd, revised and expanded edition. Edition Forum, Heidelberg 2007, ISBN 978-3-927943-25-4 , pp. 42-43, ( online ).

literature

• World tour. (From July 15 to August 6, 1900) , in: Deutscher Hausschatz, Volume 26, 1899/1900, No. 46, p. 863. With portrait.
• Jerome Ch'ên : Yuan Shih-k'ai. 2nd edition. Stanford University Press, Stanford CA 1972, ISBN 0-8047-0789-8 .
• Denis Twitchett (Ed.): The Cambridge History of China. Volume 12: John K. Fairbank (Ed.): Republican China, 1912-1949. Part 1. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge et al. 1983, ISBN 0-521-23541-3 .
• Thomas Weyrauch: China's neglected republic. 100 years in the shadow of world history. Volume 1: 1911-1949. Longtai Verlag Giessen, Heuchelheim 2009, ISBN 978-3-938946-14-5 .

Web links

Commons : Yuan Shikai  - Collection of Pictures, Videos and Audio Files

• Newspaper article about Yuan Shikai in the 20th century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .

Note: This article places the family name before the person's first name. This is the usual order in Chinese. Yuan is the family name here, Shikai is the first name.