Resignation of President Li Yuanhong

On 6 July 1917 the Vice-President of China, Feng Guozhang, announced in Nanking that he was assuming the duties of President of the Republic. In a proclamation, later passed to the State Department by the Chinese minister in Washington, Wellington Koo, he stated that President Li Yuanhong “for an important reason is unable to exercise his office”, and that he himself was taking over his duties under the law on the election of the President. The British chronology of the war records under this day that Li Yuanhong resigned and was succeeded by Feng. In reality Li did not formally resign that day. For five days an emperor had again been reigning in Peking, and since the evening of 2 July the President of the Republic had been hiding in the Japanese legation.

Li Yuanhong had himself handed power to Feng. When on 1 July General Zhang Xun restored Puyi to the throne, the President refused to recognise the empire, but he knew that in Peking, surrounded by Zhang’s troops, he could achieve nothing. Before fleeing to the Legation Quarter he sent a telegram to Nanking in which he apologised to the nation for failing to master the crisis and asked Feng, in accordance with the provisional constitution and the law on the election of the President, to exercise the presidential power temporarily. At the same time he reappointed as Prime Minister Duan Qirui, whom he himself had dismissed on 23 May, and instructed him to keep the state seal, which had been taken to Tientsin, and later to hand it over to Feng. In a further telegram, of 3 July, sent from hiding, he explained that his guard had suddenly been replaced and he had been pressed to leave the presidential palace, so he had “taken refuge in a safe place”.

Feng Guozhang, a general from the old Beiyang Army and military governor of Kiangsu province, had been Vice-President since 1916. In June, when the northern generals rebelled against the President, he tried to mediate and on 5 June even resigned the vice-presidency so as to act more freely as governor, but Li did not accept his resignation. Zhang Xun’s edicts of 1 July listed him among the alleged supporters of the restoration and appointed him imperial viceroy of the provinces of the lower Yangtze. On 3 July Feng publicly came out against the monarchy. When he assumed the duties of President, the government of the Republic was in effect operating from two places: Feng in Nanking, and Duan at the head of the troops marching on Peking from the direction of Tientsin. On the evening of 6 July the American minister, Paul Reinsch, reported from Peking that Zhang’s troops were falling back before Duan and that the general was proposing negotiations. On 9 July the Chinese minister in Tokyo informed the Americans that the government in Nanking had confirmed, in accordance with the constitution, Feng as President and Duan as Prime Minister.

Li Yuanhong never returned to power. He felt that he had failed, and above all he did not want to govern again in the shadow of Duan, whose victory over Zhang had made him the strongest man in the state. After the collapse of the restoration he rejected urgings to return to office and, according to Chinese sources, on 14 July announced his resignation by telegram and left the Japanese legation. The United States took note of Feng’s proclamation on 21 July. Feng came to Peking at the beginning of August and as President approved the decision over which Li had quarrelled with Duan throughout the spring: on 14 August 1917 China declared war on Germany and Austria-Hungary. Real power, however, was exercised by Duan Qirui, who had no intention of recalling the parliament dissolved in June. The deputies and some of the southern provinces did not recognise the new order.