Chinese Republican Revolution of 1911
After a major failure of reform from the
top and disaster of the Boxer Uprising, many Chinese thought to
build a real solution indicating outright revolution. This would aid
in getting rid of the old order and bringing up a new order similar
to the patter of Japan.
During this period, the revolutionary leader
was Sun Yat-sen (1866-1925) who was a republican and anti-Qing
activist and was quite popular amongst the overseas Chinese and
Chinese students studying abroad in Japan. In the year 1905, Sun
established Tongmeng Hui in Tokyo with Huang Xing (1874-1916), who
was a popular Chinese revolutionary leader in Japan, as his deputy
manager.
This revolutionary movement was completely aided by
overseas Chinese funds, political powers, regional military
officials and the reformers who had left China post-Hundred Days
Reform in China. In 1897, Sun conceptualized his political
philosophy and pronounced it with certain modifications from the
early 1920s in 1905 in Tokyo.
His philosophy revolved around the
Three Principles of the People: nationalism, democracy and peoples
livelihood. The first principle, Nationalism, advocated the
overthrowing of the Manchus from China and putting the foreign
supremacy over China to a halt.
The second principle of Democracy
was basically formulated to depict Suns aim to establish an elected
republican form of government. The third principle, Peoples
livelihood, also known as Socialism, was set up to help the common
man with the ownership of different means of production and land.
The Chinese Republican Revolution took
place on October 10, 1911 at Wuchang, which is also the capital of
Hubei province, amongst other restless modernized army units with
uncovered anti-Qing plots.
There were various other futile
rebellions and organized disputes that took place before the
Republican Revolution within China. The revolt extended beyond
borders to the neighboring cities, with the Tongmeng Hui members
always supportive of the Wuchang revolutionary movements across the
country.
In a months time span by the end of November, out of
twenty-four provinces fifteen declared their freedom from the Qing
kingdom. In December, Sun came back to China from the US, where he
was engaged in raising of funds between overseas Chinese and
American supporters.
On January 01, 1912, Sun was acknowledged as
the provisional president of the new Chinese Republic in Nanjing.
Sun agreed to unite China under a Beijing government to be headed by
Yuan, in order to avoid any foreign intervention. With the abduction
of the last Manchu emperor (child Puyi) in February 1912, Yuan
Shikai was made the provisional president of the Chinese Republic in
March 1912.
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