Chinese Revolution

The Chinese Revolution of 1911, often called the Xinhai Revolution, brought down the Qing dynasty and ended the imperial system that had shaped Chinese government for roughly two thousand years. It led to the founding of the Republic of China in early 1912, Asia's first republic. Although the new state proved fragile and the revolution did not resolve China's deeper problems, it permanently altered the country's political vocabulary: after 1912, the idea that an emperor should rule China was no longer taken for granted.

The Qing, a dynasty founded by Manchus in the seventeenth century, entered the twentieth century badly weakened. Defeats in the Opium Wars, the devastating Taiping Rebellion, and the loss of the First Sino-Japanese War in 1895 had exposed the state's military and fiscal weakness, while foreign powers extracted concessions and spheres of influence. Reform efforts, including the short-lived Hundred Days' Reform of 1898 and later "New Policies" that abolished the old examination system and promised a constitution, raised expectations without satisfying them. Revolutionary societies, most notably Sun Yat-sen's Tongmenghui, organized abroad and in southern China, promoting nationalism, republicanism, and economic reform. Many also resented Manchu rule itself.

The immediate trigger was a dispute over railways. In 1911 the Qing government moved to nationalize and borrow foreign money for lines that provincial investors had financed, angering gentry and merchants, especially in Sichuan. On 10 October, an uprising among soldiers in Wuchang, in Hubei province, succeeded after a plot was partly discovered, and the rebels quickly gained control of the Wuhan cities. Province after province declared independence from Qing rule over the following weeks. Sun Yat-sen, who had been abroad, returned and was chosen provisional president of the new republic, which was proclaimed in Nanjing on 1 January 1912.

The Qing court turned to Yuan Shikai, commander of the most powerful modern army, to restore order. Instead he negotiated with the revolutionaries. The child emperor Puyi abdicated in February 1912, and Sun stepped aside so that Yuan could become president, in hopes of unifying the country. Historians generally see this as a compromise that left real power with the military rather than with elected institutions.

The republic's early years were troubled. Yuan suppressed rivals, dissolved parliament, and in 1915–16 tried to make himself emperor, a move that failed amid widespread opposition. After his death in 1916, China fragmented under regional warlords. The revolution nonetheless opened the way for the New Culture and May Fourth movements, and for the later rise of both the Nationalist and Communist parties. Historians continue to debate whether 1911 was a true revolution or mainly a collapse of central authority, but its role as a turning point is widely accepted.