Yuan Shikai renounces the throne

On 22 March 1916 the President of China, Yuan Shikai, announced that he was cancelling the restoration of the monarchy. Three months earlier he had accepted the throne offered to him by the Council of State, but he had never been crowned. Now he ordered all the petitions urging him to take the throne to be returned to the Council, so that it could send them back to their senders to be destroyed, and preparations for the ceremony to be stopped. The next day the Hongxian era introduced on 1 January was abolished and the republican calendar restored. Counting from the acceptance of the throne on 12 December, the monarchy had lasted 102 days. Yuan kept the office of President of the Republic. The American minister in Peking, Paul Reinsch, cabled that evening that politicians who had disapproved of the imperial plans were returning to the government, and that the decree was countersigned by Xu Shichang, an old associate of Yuan’s who had not supported the imperial plans and had withdrawn into the background.

Revolt in the south

Resistance began on 25 December 1915 in the province of Yunnan. There General Cai E and the governor Tang Jiyao came out in defence of the republic and formed the National Protection Army. The conflict went down in history as the National Protection War, also called the Third Revolution. Cai E’s troops entered Sichuan, and on 27 January the province of Guizhou joined the rising. Yuan sent troops from the north against them. In February and early March they recovered some of the lost towns in Sichuan, but the fighting in the mountains dragged on. As early as January Peking postponed the formal accession to the throne, planned for 9 February, and at the end of February Yuan announced that he was postponing it indefinitely.

Japan was also against the empire. According to historians, on 7 March the cabinet of Shigenobu Ōkuma resolved to work for Yuan’s removal from power, and Japanese money was reaching his opponents. Reinsch wrote in February that rumours of Japanese help for the revolutionaries were circulating throughout China, but that there was no evidence for them.

The generals refuse

Everything was decided by the attitude of the military governors. On 15 March the province of Guangxi declared independence, where the governor Lu Rongting went over to the rebels together with the reformer Liang Qichao. He had earlier extracted money and ammunition from the government for a supposed attack on Yunnan. The governor of neighbouring Guangdong advised Peking to come to terms. On 19 March a secret telegram reached Yuan from five generals led by Feng Guozhang, military governor of Jiangsu province in Nanking and one of the most important men of the Beiyang Army. They demanded that the monarchy be cancelled. Without their support Yuan could not wage war against the south. Reinsch judged that the retreat without any guarantees from the rebels was a “surprise” and that Yuan feared above all that Guangdong would go over to the revolution.

The concession did not bring peace. The rebels regarded it as an admission of defeat and demanded that Yuan also resign the presidency, while his supporters in the army felt abandoned. In April Guangdong and Zhejiang declared independence, and General Duan Qirui became head of the government. On 6 June 1916 Yuan died, and the Vice-President, Li Yuanhong, became President. After Yuan’s death the central government weakened and the provinces came to be ruled by military governors. The Warlord Era had begun.