A History of China (70 page)

Yet the dynasty had offered an opening to supporters of restrictions on its powers. By 1909, provincial assemblies, chosen with limited suffrage and reputedly with scant power, became one of the opposition forces. Although they tended to represent the new commercial, military, and political elites, they still championed greater civil liberties, women’s rights, and a less authoritarian regime. As they grew disenchanted with the Qing, they evinced anti-Manchu sentiments and sought Chinese control of government. Such Chinese ­nationalism spread and animated patriots, who began to blame the Manchu dynasty for China’s weaknesses. Figures as disparate as the political leader and revolutionary Sun Yat-sen (1866–1925) and the twentieth century’s most renowned Chinese short-story writer and essayist Zhou Shuren (1881–1936), better known by his pseudonym Lu Xun, were influenced by these currents, and Sun, in particular, viewed the Manchus as enemies. Coincidentally or not, both men had connections with Japan. Sun devoted himself to studying the Japanese model, courting Japanese support, and, in 1905, founding the Tongmenghui, a party to unify all revolutionary groups, in Japan. Lu Xun studied medicine in Japan but turned away from that profession after witnessing the Japanese audience’s raucous reaction to the execution of a Chinese by a Japanese soldier.

The Chinese found Japan to be an attractive model, especially after its resounding victory in the Russo–Japanese War of 1904–1905. Japan could now take its place among the Western powers. In less than four decades, Japan had leapt from a traditional system based upon an agricultural economy and dominated by a samurai class (which scarcely used modern weapons) to a major great power that could readily compete with the West. Many young Chinese found Japan’s path worth emulating and believed that, since its written language was close to Chinese, learning Japanese was not as demanding as learning Western languages. The Japanese attracted the largest number of Chinese ­students, some of whom were exposed to new ideas and became radicalized by their foreign experiences. They received good training in medicine, engineering, and other practical subjects, and on their return to China played a vital role in efforts at industrialization.

The waning decade of the Qing witnessed a growth in industrial development. Because the government recognized that transport was a high priority, it entered into agreements for foreign loans and assistance in the construction of railroads. The pace of such construction accelerated between 1901, the year the Boxer Protocol was signed, and 1911. By the terms of a Mutual Defense Treaty in 1896, Count Sergei Witte (1849–1915), the former Director of the Railways and the then Russian Minister of Finance, had extracted, perhaps with a bribe, from an elderly Li Hongzhang the right to build and to enjoy a ninety-nine-year lease and joint ownership of the so-called Chinese Eastern Railway through northern Manchuria to the Siberian port city of Vladivostok. The treaty appeared to offer Russia a major advantage in Manchuria, but this gain placed it on course toward a collision with Japan, which also sought to expand into the Manchus’ native territory. The Russo–Japanese War of 1904–1905 ended tsarist penetration into northeast China, but the Chinese Eastern Railway was built and survived Russia’s loss in the war. In other areas, France built tracks from Kunming to Hanoi, Germany started to construct railway lines in its concession in Shandong, and Britain built tracks from Beijing to Wuhan, the collective name for the cities of Wuchang, Hanyang, and Hankou.

Such improvements in transport contributed to industrialization in parts of the country. The Wuhan area became one of the centers of such development, and other regions housed both native and foreign enterprises. Textile mills, copper and coal mines, and cigarette factories (among others) had been established and had elicited foreign partners or investment, although an indigenous capitalist class, known as compradors, became wealthier and more powerful. Thus, new groups gradually perceived that the dynasty was irrelevant to their interests and, in fact, impeded industrialization and modernization. Support for the Qing eroded among these increasingly prominent groups, whose discontent complemented the frustrations of many peasants, intellectuals, and reformers. A large number of manufacturers became opponents, proclaiming the Qing to be obstructing modernization.

The Qing, having lost the ardent support of much of the population, barely survived the first decade of the twentieth century. The empress dowager and the emperor died in 1908, within a day of each other. Manchu court officials enthroned a three-year-old (not a good choice during a crisis) because they believed that they could more readily wield power with a child emperor on the throne. However, they alienated Chinese who feared that they would retard or impede reforms. Moreover, nationalism, in the form of anti-Manchu attitudes, was rampant, creating greater animosity toward court officials who wished to maintain power over the mass of the population. More and more Chinese believed that they had no choice but to overthrow the dynasty, and revolutionary groups began to attract a large number of adherents.

An accident at one of the revolutionaries’ secret bomb-making sites in Hankou, one of the cities in Wuhan, led almost inexorably to the dynasty’s fall. On October 9, 1911, an explosion rocked the hideaway. The police quickly occupied the house and found a file that listed the revolutionary group’s ­members. Faced with the prospect of being identified and then arrested and probably executed or imprisoned, the revolutionaries were compelled to act. Violence erupted on the following day, which is celebrated by Chinese around the world as “10/10.” Within a short time, many Qing troops in Wuhan joined the revolutionary forces. The court tried to fight back and restore order, but by the end of October troops in many provinces had allied with the antidynastic movement. Provincial assemblies, which had been organized just a few years earlier, started to support the revolution. In desperation, the court appointed Yuan Shikai (the powerful military leader who had assisted in ­suppressing the Hundred Days of Reform movement in 1898) as premier, and approved of his organizing a cabinet that signaled that it would accept a constitutional ­monarchy. This concession was too little and too late, and the court’s military position worsened. In December, the revolutionary forces occupied Nanjing after a major battle. On January 1, 1912, Sun Yat-sen, the leader most closely associated with revolution, who had just returned from a trip to the USA and Europe that aimed to gain support from the West and from the overseas Chinese, accepted the title of provisional president from the provincial assemblies.

However, Sun, whose life, ideas, and skill will be discussed in the next ­chapter, was in a weak position and would be unable to seize power after the dynasty’s fall. He had no military force, and the Tongmenghui, the revolutionary organization he had established in 1905, was not a cohesive political party. He was not an especially good administrator. Without a strong base, Sun had little choice but to make a deal with Yuan Shikai. He did so almost immediately, yielding the presidency of the new republic to Yuan, who negotiated with the court about the conditions for an end to the dynasty. Yuan guaranteed the safety of the boy emperor and his entourage, and ensured that the court would receive an annual stipend and would retain its property. On February 12, 1912, the young emperor – Puyi (1906–1967) – abdicated, and the more than two–­thousand-year history of the imperial institution ended. Free of Qing regulations, Chinese men now cut off the despised queues that the Manchus had forced them to wear.

1
Benjamin Schwartz,
In Search of Wealth and Power: Yen Fu and the West
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1964).

Joseph Esherick,
The Origins of the Boxer Uprising
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987).

Kenneth Pomeranz,
The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001).

William Rowe,
China’s Last Empire: The Great Qing
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009).

Jonathan Spence,
God’s Chinese Son: The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom of Hong Xiuquan
(New York: W. W. Norton, 1996).

T
HE
end of the dynastic system left a vacuum in China. Earlier in its history, the Middle Kingdom had experienced periods of uncertainty and chaos. It lacked true central governments during the last centuries of the Zhou dynasty, again following the Han dynasty’s collapse, and also after the Tang dynasty’s downfall. Although these eras witnessed remarkable cultural innovations, such as the development of Confucianism and Daoism and the introduction and spread of Buddhism, disunity had led to considerable ­political and military turbulence. As China became more populous and incorporated additional ­territory, it could not endure such periods of decentralization. After the Yuan dynasty reunified the country in 1279, central governments ruled China, ­without interruption, until 1911. Specific emperors and administrators may not have been effective, but (at least in theory) centralization prevailed, and successive dynasties continued to rule from the capital, generally in Beijing. The Qing emperor’s abdication in 1912 could and did lead to disruptions. Six centuries or so of unity had prevented the country’s dismemberment. However, the lack of an emperor, a symbol of unity, cast China into uncharted waters, creating unstable conditions. Although a central government was established in Beijing from 1912 to 1916 and in Nanjing and Chongjing from 1928 to 1949, neither controlled the entire country. Japanese encroachment starting in 1915 and culminating in the Japanese attack of 1937 contributed to disunity and chaos.

Map 11.1
China after Japanese attack, 1938

Sun Yat-sen is the leader most often associated with the 1911 revolution, although, in fact, he scarcely played a role in the events leading directly to the downfall of the Qing. His encomium as “Father of the Chinese Republic” may be somewhat misleading. He became a national figure and even a national hero, but he hardly ever wielded much authority over China during his own lifetime. He never became the country’s chief executive and played an entirely different role.

Sun had disadvantages as a political leader in China. Although he was born in Guangdong province, he spent most of his life outside China. He was ­educated in Hawaii and attended medical school in Hong Kong. Perhaps even more significant, Sun had been converted to Christianity. Thus, he ­differed considerably from most Chinese because of his religious views and his ­residence abroad. When he turned to politics, he remained abroad and devoted most of his time and efforts to obtaining financial support from overseas Chinese communities. Sun seemed to be separated from the vast majority of the Chinese population. On the other hand, this could also have been an asset. Chinese who were entranced by Western civilization may have ­appreciated Sun’s apparent identification with the West. He wore Western clothes, at least in most of his photos. He identified and sought assistance from the Japanese, who had modernized their economy and educational and banking systems expeditiously, although their political structure differed from that of the West. His ability to connect with ordinary Chinese would appear to have been limited, but his appeal to advocates of modernization and possibly Westernization helped him to gain support among the general population.

Figure 11.1
Sun Yat-sen in 1912. Photo: akg-images / Interfoto