Death of Yuan Shikai

On the morning of 6 June 1916 the President of China, Yuan Shikai, died in Peking. He was 56. The Chinese legation in Washington informed the State Department that the President had died at ten in the morning; Chinese sources give a quarter past ten. The cause of death was uraemia, the result of kidney failure. According to Chinese biographers, the first symptoms of the illness, including loss of voice, were noted by the press as early as the end of March. In May Yuan suffered from pain and hardly ate or slept; at the beginning of June his condition became grave, and at noon on 5 June he lost consciousness. He died less than three months after revoking the monarchy he himself had proclaimed in December 1915.

A state in pieces

Death found Yuan in a hopeless position. His renunciation of the throne had not satisfied his opponents. On 8 May the rebel south-western provinces set up their own military council at Zhaoqing in Guangdong province, which recognised Vice-President Li Yuanhong as the lawful president. A conference of representatives of the provinces loyal to the government, called in Nanking in May by General Feng Guozhang, broke up on 27 May without result. The American minister in Peking, Paul Reinsch, reported on 31 May that the rebels would agree to talks only on condition of Yuan’s immediate resignation, and at the end of May Sichuan and Hunan also declared independence. The “Annual Register” judged that the rebels then controlled half the area of China proper. Reinsch wrote that the most constitutional course would be for Yuan to step down in favour of Li Yuanhong, but cautioned that Li would need the army behind him from the outset.

Li Yuanhong becomes president

Under the constitution the office passed to the Vice-President. According to some sources, Yuan, following the example of the old emperors, left a list of candidates for the succession that included Li Yuanhong, the Prime Minister Duan Qirui and Xu Shichang. What decided the matter, however, was the attitude of Duan, the most influential of the generals of the northern Beiyang Army. On the evening of 6 June Reinsch telegraphed that Li, assured of the support of the Prime Minister and the cabinet, intended to take the oath the next day. The British minister and the representatives of the other Allied powers jointly expressed to the Chinese Foreign Ministry and to Duan the hope that power would pass to Li in accordance with the constitution and without disorder, and Duan gave them assurances to that effect. As a precaution the French minister brought about sixty soldiers from Indochina to Peking from Tientsin. Li Yuanhong took office on 7 June. The Chinese minister in Washington, Wellington Koo, informed the State Department that he would take the oath at ten in the morning that day.

The transition passed off quietly. On 9 June Reinsch reported that Li’s succession had been recognised by all the northern provinces, and since the south had already proclaimed him president, the new head of state had no opponents. He foresaw only disputes over the composition of the government. When it was announced in Japan that foreigners in China were demanding better protection, Reinsch replied that complete calm reigned in Peking. He also opposed the idea of Japanese troops guarding the railway station in Tientsin, because in his view it would only irritate the Chinese. President Woodrow Wilson sent Li his condolences and later personally attended a memorial service for Yuan in Washington.

The dispute over the constitution

Yuan had stipulated in his will that he did not want a state funeral, but Li ordered ceremonies with full honours. The deceased was buried in August at Anyang in his native province of Henan, where before the revolution he had spent years of enforced idleness. Meanwhile in Peking a dispute went on over the basis on which the new president was to govern. The south demanded the restoration of the provisional constitution of 1912 and of the parliament Yuan had dispersed; Duan preferred to keep the order introduced by the late president. Only when Duan gave way did Li, on 29 June, restore the 1912 constitution, summon parliament for 1 August and reappoint Duan as Prime Minister.

The harmony did not last long. Yuan’s successors lacked his authority in the army and never truly managed to reunify the government in Peking. A year later a dispute between the President and the Prime Minister over China’s entry into the war against Germany led to a crisis, and military commanders took power in the provinces. Yuan’s death is regarded as the beginning of the Warlord Era, which lasted until 1928.