Xinhai Revolution (1911): The Fall of China's Qing Dynasty

The Xinhai Revolution of 1911-1912 overthrew the Qing dynasty and ended more than 2,000 years of imperial rule in China. It began with an army mutiny in Wuchang on 10 October 1911, spread rapidly through the southern and central provinces, and ended with the abdication of the six-year-old emperor Puyi on 12 February 1912. Its outcome, the Republic of China, is often described as the first lasting republic in Asia, although its democratic promise was soon undermined by dictatorship and warlordism.

Background: a dynasty in decline

The Qing dynasty, founded by the Manchus, had ruled China since 1644. By the late 19th century it was badly weakened. Huge internal rebellions, above all the Taiping Rebellion of 1850-1864, had killed millions, while defeats in the Opium Wars and the First Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895 forced China to give up territory, open ports and pay large indemnities.

The Boxer Rebellion of 1899-1901 brought foreign armies to Beijing and an indemnity of 450 million taels. Afterwards the court, led by the Empress Dowager Cixi, launched a programme of “New Policies”. It created modern New Army units, abolished the ancient civil service examinations in 1905, sent thousands of students abroad and promised a constitution, with elected provincial assemblies meeting from 1909.

These reforms created new groups that the dynasty could not control: officers and soldiers trained in modern ideas, students returning from Japan, and provincial gentry and merchants who wanted more say in government. Anti-Manchu nationalism grew, and revolutionaries such as Sun Yat-sen, who founded the Tongmenghui in Tokyo in 1905, called openly for a republic.

The final crisis

Cixi and the Guangxu Emperor died within a day of each other in November 1908. The throne passed to the two-year-old Puyi, with his father, Prince Chun, as regent. The new leadership dismissed the powerful general Yuan Shikai and tried to concentrate power in Manchu hands.

In May 1911 the court appointed its first cabinet. Most of its members were Manchu and several belonged to the imperial clan, so reformers mocked it as the “princes’ cabinet”. The same month, the government announced the nationalisation of key railway lines, financed by a loan from a consortium of British, French, German and American banks.

The railway policy caused uproar, especially in Sichuan, where local investors stood to lose money. A Railway Protection Movement organised strikes and protests. On 7 September 1911 troops in Chengdu fired on demonstrators, and the province slid into revolt. To restore order, the government moved New Army units from neighbouring Hubei, weakening its hold on the key city of Wuchang.

The Wuchang Uprising

In Wuchang, on the Yangtze river, two revolutionary groups, the Literary Society and the Progressive Association, had recruited many soldiers of the local New Army. On 9 October 1911 a bomb exploded by accident while being made in the Russian concession of neighbouring Hankou. Police raids uncovered membership lists, and arrests and executions followed.

Facing discovery, soldiers of an engineering battalion in Wuchang rose on the evening of 10 October 1911. Other units joined them, and by the next morning the rebels held the city. The Qing governor-general fled. Because the revolutionary leaders were dead, arrested or absent, the rebels persuaded a reluctant brigade commander, Li Yuanhong, to head a new Hubei military government. Within days they also took Hanyang and Hankou, the other two cities that make up today’s Wuhan.

The revolution spreads

The uprising was a spark. Over the following weeks province after province declared independence from the Qing, often through alliances between New Army officers and provincial assembly leaders. Hunan and Shaanxi broke away on 22 October; Shanghai, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Guangdong and others followed in November. By early December about 15 provinces had left Qing control.

The transfer of power was mostly quick, but not peaceful everywhere. In several cities, including Xi’an and Wuchang, Manchu garrison communities were attacked and thousands of Manchu men, women and children were killed. Elsewhere, revolutionaries cut off men’s queues, the braided hairstyle imposed by the Qing, as a symbol of liberation.

In desperation the court recalled Yuan Shikai, commander of the strongest modern army, the Beiyang Army, and in November made him prime minister. His troops recaptured Hankou, burning much of it, and took Hanyang in late November after hard fighting against forces led by Huang Xing. But on 2 December revolutionary armies captured Nanjing, and Yuan, rather than pressing on, opened negotiations with the south.

A republic and an abdication

Peace talks between representatives of Yuan and of the revolutionary provinces began in Shanghai in December. Sun Yat-sen, who had been in Denver, Colorado, when the uprising began and had travelled back through Europe to seek support, arrived in Shanghai on 25 December 1911.

On 29 December delegates of the revolutionary provinces meeting in Nanjing elected Sun provisional president. He took office on 1 January 1912, proclaiming the Republic of China, which also adopted the Western calendar. Li Yuanhong became vice president.

The new government had little money and no army able to defeat Yuan’s forces. Sun therefore agreed to give up the presidency to Yuan if he secured the emperor’s abdication and supported the republic. Yuan pressed the court, and Beiyang generals sent telegrams demanding a republic.

On 12 February 1912 the Empress Dowager Longyu issued the abdication edict on behalf of the six-year-old Xuantong Emperor, Puyi. The edict transferred authority to Yuan Shikai to organise a republican government. Under the “Articles of Favourable Treatment”, Puyi kept his title and an annual allowance and continued to live in the inner Forbidden City.

Sun Yat-sen resigned the next day, and on 15 February the provisional senate in Nanjing elected Yuan provisional president. He was sworn in on 10 March 1912 in Beijing, and on 11 March a Provisional Constitution was promulgated, providing for a parliament and a cabinet.

Key people

Sun Yat-sen (1866-1925) was the movement’s best-known leader and ideologist, author of the Three Principles of the People, although he was abroad when the revolution began. Huang Xing (1874-1916), his closest partner, led the military defence of Wuhan.

Yuan Shikai (1859-1916), a former Qing general and reformer, used his control of the army to broker the abdication and claim the presidency. Li Yuanhong (1864-1928), the brigade commander pressed into leading the Wuchang rising, later served twice as president. Puyi (1906-1967), the last emperor, was a small child throughout; he later became the puppet ruler of Japanese-controlled Manchukuo.

Consequences

The republic proved fragile. Elections in early 1913 were won by the Kuomintang, the party formed from the Tongmenghui, but its leader Song Jiaoren was assassinated in March 1913, with suspicion falling on Yuan’s government. A “Second Revolution” against Yuan failed that summer, and Sun fled into exile.

Yuan dissolved parliament and in late 1915 tried to make himself emperor. Provincial revolts forced him to abandon the plan, and he died in June 1916. China then fragmented into territories controlled by regional military leaders, the warlords, a period that lasted until the late 1920s.

The revolution also affected China’s borders. Outer Mongolia declared independence in December 1911, and in Tibet Qing troops were expelled in 1912-1913. Both regions slipped out of effective Chinese control for decades.

Timeline

• 1905, 20 August: The Tongmenghui is founded in Tokyo.
• 1908, 14-15 November: The Guangxu Emperor and Cixi die; Puyi becomes emperor.
• 1911, May: The “princes’ cabinet” is formed and railway nationalisation is announced.
• 1911, 7 September: Troops fire on railway protesters in Chengdu.
• 1911, 10 October: The Wuchang Uprising begins.
• 1911, 2 December: Revolutionary forces capture Nanjing.
• 1911, 29 December: Sun Yat-sen is elected provisional president.
• 1912, 1 January: The Republic of China is proclaimed in Nanjing.
• 1912, 12 February: The Qing abdication edict is issued.
• 1912, 10 March: Yuan Shikai is sworn in as provisional president in Beijing.

Legacy

Both the Republic of China on Taiwan and the People’s Republic of China honour the Xinhai Revolution. Taiwan celebrates 10 October as its national day, and Sun Yat-sen is revered on both sides of the Taiwan Strait as a father of modern China. The rival parties that later fought the Chinese Civil War both claimed his heritage.

Historians debate how revolutionary 1911 really was. Some stress that local elites and army officers, rather than mass movements, drove events, and that social structures changed little. Others emphasise that ending the monarchy transformed Chinese political ideas and opened the way to the radical movements of the following decades, from the New Culture Movement to the rise of the Chinese Communist Party in the 1920s.

Several popular ideas about the revolution need qualifying. It is often presented as Sun Yat-sen’s revolution, but he played no part in the Wuchang rising and returned only after most provinces had already broken away. Nor was it bloodless: although there was no long civil war, fighting around Wuhan and Nanjing and the attacks on Manchu communities cost thousands of lives. Finally, the end of the dynasty did not end the monarchy question at once. Yuan Shikai’s imperial attempt of 1915-1916 and a brief restoration of Puyi by the general Zhang Xun in July 1917 showed how unsettled the new order was.

Why it matters

The Xinhai Revolution ended China’s imperial system and founded one of Asia’s first republics. It failed to build a stable democracy, but it reshaped Chinese nationalism and politics and began the long, turbulent search for a modern state that dominated China’s 20th century.