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The first of January, 1912.
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Nanjing. At night, a new name for
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the country was read aloud.
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The Republic of China.
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A provisional president was sworn in.
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This was Asia's first republic — before it,
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no country in Asia had tried a
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system without an emperor.
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But that day was a beginning,
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not an ending. Because there was still
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a court in Beijing.
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The emperor was still in the Forbidden
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City, the reign title was still in
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use, and the Beiyang army was still
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in someone's hands. So the question is:
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how did a dynasty come to nothing?
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Was it beaten down by somebody?
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The answer this episode argues is a
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surprising one: it was not beaten down.
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It reformed itself — new policies, a new
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army, centralising power, collecting taxes — and step
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by step, it dismantled its own foundations.
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To talk about 1911, we have to
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start earlier. Start with the mess.
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There was a saying in late-Qing officialdom:
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three years as an honest prefect,
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and a hundred thousand taels of silver.
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What it described was not one corrupt
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man. It was an entire way of
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operating: official salaries were low, and what
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actually kept people alive were the extra
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fees and customary levies.
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Those above were supported by those below,
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and those below scraped it off the
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people. Layer after layer, everyone lived this
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way. This is not a question of
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anyone's morality. It is a structure:
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when the salary cannot support life,
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money has to come from somewhere other
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than the salary.
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If that was true of the civil
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service, the military side could not be
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counted on either. The Qing's standing forces
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were the Eight Banners and the Green
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Standard Army. They could fight when the
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dynasty was founded; by the late Qing
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they were something else entirely.
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There were men on the rolls and
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none in the barracks — officers drawing pay
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for empty ranks was an open secret.
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After long years of peace, the blades
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had rusted. An army had forgotten how
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to fight. What remained was one use
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only: to exist on paper.
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In 1894, the First Sino-Japanese War.
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The Beiyang Fleet, thirty years of self-strengthening
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poured into it, was destroyed outright.
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Defeated by Japan — the shock of that
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at the time is hard to imagine
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now. Not defeated by a Western power,
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but by a neighbour that had been
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forced open in the same way,
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decades earlier. The next year, the Treaty
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of Shimonoseki: an indemnity of two hundred
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million taels, ports opened, and Taiwan ceded.
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Thirty years of buying ships, building factories
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and drilling troops — one war, back to
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the starting point. The real consequence was
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not the size of the indemnity.
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It was that a great many people
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arrived at the same sentence at the
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same time: buying ships without changing the
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system may simply not be enough.
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Some tried to change it from inside.
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Not by rebellion — from the top.
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In 1898, the Guangxu emperor issued edicts for
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a new policy: abolish the eight-legged essay,
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open schools, train a new army,
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cut redundant posts. One hundred and three
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days. What it touched was not just
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regulations. It was the positions of a
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great many people — conservative grandees were dismissed,
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transferred, threatened. Then Cixi staged a coup,
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and every reform was rescinded.
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Tan Sitong and five others were executed
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at Caishikou in Beijing.
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Tan left words behind, and he left
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a choice behind as well: he could
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have left. The first attempt at saving
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itself was cut short like that.
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A greater humiliation was still to come.
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In 1900, the Boxers entered Beijing and the
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Eight-Nation Alliance came. Cixi took the emperor
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with her and fled to Xi'an.
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In 1901, the Boxer Protocol was signed.
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An indemnity of four hundred and fifty
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million taels — the figure was set that
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way, one tael for every person in
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the country. With interest, roughly nine hundred
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and eighty million taels, payable over thirty-nine
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years. The figures come from the text
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of the protocol itself, and became the
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heaviest fixed charge on late-Qing finances.
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From then on, the court was called
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the court of the foreigners.
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Where would the money come from?
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Not from the treasury — the treasury was
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empty. It was apportioned down to every
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village: provinces took their share, then added
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their own charges, and it landed on
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land, on salt, on goods.
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The second attempt came earlier.
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It was called self-strengthening.
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The self-strengtheners' proposal, in eight words:
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Chinese learning for the essence, Western learning
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for use. Buy machines, build factories,
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make guns and cannon, open mines,
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found a language college, send students abroad.
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What was learned was technique.
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The system was not to be touched.
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The war of 1894 proved that learning
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only the surface is not enough.
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Technique cannot save a rotted system.
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That sentence was not added afterwards by
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historians — a great many people at the
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time worked it out themselves.
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After 1900, the court had been hurt badly
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enough to really act.
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From 1901, the New Policies began: train a
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new army, encourage industry, restructure the administration,
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establish a ministry of education, send commissioners
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abroad to observe. In 1905, a thousand years
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of the examination system was abolished
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it is hard to overstate this:
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the road by which a literate man
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moved upward had been changed.
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New schools were founded, students sent abroad;
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a new-model army was trained on Western
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lines, with Western drill and Western rifles.
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All three were done.
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One thing was not: the political system
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was left untouched. The surface was changed.
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The root was still the old one.
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Later on, even a constitution was put
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on the table. The trigger was somebody
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else's war: the Russo-Japanese War of 1904,
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which Japan won. A small constitutional country
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defeating a large autocracy was a comparison
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quoted endlessly at home.
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There was a wave of demand inside
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the country: Yuan Shikai, Zhang Zhidong and
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other senior officials petitioned jointly for a
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constitution, and the press pressed as well.
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In 1906, the court announced preparatory constitutionalism.
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In 1908, the Outline of an Imperial Constitution
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was promulgated: imperial power sacred and inviolable,
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with a preparatory period of nine years.
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In 1909, provincial consultative assemblies were set up
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the delegates were elected, many of them
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gentry and merchants, constitutionalists, and for the
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first time they had a place to
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speak. Nine years was asked for.
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Others could not wait nine years.
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Once the assemblies opened, people learned two
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things: how to put forward a motion,
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and how to act together.
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A list laid the whole question of
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sincerity open. On 8 May 1911, the Qing's first
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cabinet was formed. Thirteen men.
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Nine were Manchu and only four were
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Han; of the nine Manchus, seven were
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from the imperial clan.
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The list appears in the cabinet regulations
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and the edicts of appointment, and the
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clan branches can be verified.
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The army, the navy and the treasury
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military power and financial power — were all
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in the hands of imperial kinsmen.
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Contemporaries called it the imperial-clan cabinet.
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This broke the ordinary rule of constitutional
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monarchy: in such a system, members of
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the royal house do not sit in
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the cabinet. The constitutionalists were stunned.
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Zhang Jian, Tang Hualong, Tan Yankai and
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others petitioned jointly, saying an imperial-clan cabinet
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was incompatible with constitutional monarchy.
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The court ignored them. Trying to pull power
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in, they pushed their allies away.
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The last straw came the next day.
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On 9 May 1911, an edict: the main railway
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trunk lines were to be nationalised.
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The Sichuan-Hankou and Guangzhou-Hankou lines were taken
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into state ownership. The problem was not
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the word nationalisation. It was how it
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was done. The Sichuan share capital was
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around fourteen million taels — the figure appears
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in People's Daily and in the Institute
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of Modern History of the Chinese Academy
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of Social Sciences — and much of it
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came from a rent levy: collected with
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the land tax at three percent,
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so that farmers across Sichuan held a
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share. The government would exchange it for
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state bonds, not cash.
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And three million taels of the shortfall
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which included some two and a half
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million taels lost when Shanghai money shops
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collapsed in the rubber crash — was not
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recognised. In the same month, the minister
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of posts and communications, Sheng Xuanhuai,
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borrowed six million pounds from a four-power
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banking consortium of Britain, America, Germany and
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France, secured on Hunan and Hubei transit
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dues and the salt tax.
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In June, the Sichuan Railway Protection League
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was founded, with hundreds of thousands of
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members. On 7 September, the Chengdu massacre:
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the Sichuan governor-general Zhao Erfeng ordered troops
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to fire, and more than thirty petitioners
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died. On 25 September, Rongxian declared independence
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half a month before Wuchang.
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By this point, the merchants' money and
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the farmers' rent shares had been taken
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too.
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At this point one thing can be
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made clear: why did the New Policies
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and the new army end up dismantling
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the dynasty itself? First: the new army
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was organised on new lines — literate,
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structured, armed, and able to read the
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new newspapers. The court gave them organisation and
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weapons, but not a sense of belonging.
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The first shot at Wuchang was fired
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by the engineering battalion of the Hubei
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new army. An army with guns and
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organisation became the group best placed to
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overthrow the court. Second: the constitutionalists were
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the ones who most wanted the dynasty
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preserved. Once the imperial-clan cabinet appeared,
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the literati turned to revolution — assembly delegates,
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school-founding gentry, railway investors, all turning around
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together. Liang Qichao had a line that
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has been quoted ever since: the present
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government is a great factory for manufacturing
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revolutionaries. It wanted to strengthen itself.
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Instead it armed its opponents.
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So now: who set it in motion.
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The first person to speak of is
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Sun Yat-sen. In 1894, he founded the Revive
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China Society in Honolulu — he was twenty-eight,
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and a letter he had sent to
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Li Hongzhang had gone unanswered.
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In 1905 in Tokyo, the Revive China Society
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merged with the China Revival Society and
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the Restoration Society to form the Revolutionary
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Alliance, and he was elected its director,
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advocating the Three Principles of the People:
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nationalism, democracy, and the people's livelihood.
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Whichever side writes this history, both honour
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him as the forerunner of the revolution.
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But to be precise: he was not
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the first to call for the overthrow
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of the Qing, and he was not
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the only one. He was the one
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who lasted. Others scattered after one failure;
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he failed more than ten times and
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00:13:23,750 --> 00:13:24,550
kept going.
268
00:13:25,690 --> 00:13:27,800
In the six years after the Alliance
269
00:13:27,820 --> 00:13:30,470
was founded, it launched a dozen or
270
00:13:30,480 --> 00:13:35,950
more uprisings. Guangzhou, Huizhou, Chaozhou, Huanggang,
271
00:13:36,360 --> 00:13:42,690
Qinvhu, Fangcheng, Zhennanguan, Qinlian, Hekou — the names
272
00:13:42,700 --> 00:13:45,390
Guangzhou and Huizhou recur again and again
273
00:13:45,410 --> 00:13:48,860
in Qing memorials. Failure after failure.
274
00:13:49,330 --> 00:13:53,170
Some risings scattered within days; some were
275
00:13:53,190 --> 00:13:55,390
broken up before they could assemble.
276
00:13:55,860 --> 00:13:57,700
Where did the money come from?
277
00:13:58,130 --> 00:14:00,860
It came from overseas Chinese — miners and
278
00:14:00,880 --> 00:14:05,040
shopkeepers in Southeast Asia, restaurant owners and
279
00:14:05,060 --> 00:14:09,450
laundrymen in America, subscribing, holding charity sales,
280
00:14:09,910 --> 00:14:11,700
sometimes selling their property.
281
00:14:12,140 --> 00:14:14,170
That is also why he could rise
282
00:14:14,190 --> 00:14:16,170
again after every defeat.
283
00:14:16,640 --> 00:14:19,140
In this circle, failure was the norm
284
00:14:19,160 --> 00:14:21,890
and scattering was the reasonable response.
285
00:14:22,350 --> 00:14:24,110
He simply did not stop.
286
00:14:24,570 --> 00:14:26,700
That he did not stop was itself
287
00:14:26,720 --> 00:14:28,110
his greatest asset.
288
00:14:29,280 --> 00:14:31,820
But the revolutionary camp was not a
289
00:14:31,840 --> 00:14:36,530
single block either. In 1914, after the failure
290
00:14:36,540 --> 00:14:39,900
of the Second Revolution, Sun Yat-sen formed
291
00:14:39,910 --> 00:14:42,950
a new party in Tokyo — the Chinese
292
00:14:42,970 --> 00:14:46,970
Revolutionary Party — setting aside the Nationalist Party.
293
00:14:47,450 --> 00:14:49,950
Its rules required new members to swear
294
00:14:49,970 --> 00:14:51,320
an oath to follow Mr.
295
00:14:51,340 --> 00:14:54,220
Sun, with wording such as "if my
296
00:14:54,230 --> 00:14:56,880
heart should waver, may I suffer the
297
00:14:56,910 --> 00:14:59,310
utmost penalty"; and they had to give
298
00:14:59,320 --> 00:15:02,090
a fingerprint. The party's second figure,
299
00:15:02,480 --> 00:15:05,480
Huang Xing, opposed this — Huang was the
300
00:15:05,500 --> 00:15:08,630
founder of the China Revival Society and
301
00:15:08,650 --> 00:15:10,870
the commander at Huanghuagang and at the
302
00:15:10,880 --> 00:15:13,010
battle of Hankou and Hanyang.
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00:15:13,730 --> 00:15:16,060
He refused to join, and his reasons
304
00:15:16,070 --> 00:15:17,840
are in his letters to Sun and
305
00:15:17,850 --> 00:15:21,220
to comrades: swearing a fingerprint oath of
306
00:15:21,230 --> 00:15:23,480
personal loyalty was a reversal for a
307
00:15:23,500 --> 00:15:26,530
democratic revolution, and an insult to his
308
00:15:26,540 --> 00:15:29,310
comrades. Sun did not yield.
309
00:15:29,750 --> 00:15:34,630
On 30 June 1914, Huang Xing left for America.
310
00:15:35,090 --> 00:15:37,130
The two went their separate ways.
311
00:15:37,600 --> 00:15:40,900
Scholars of early Republican politics, Yang Tianshi
312
00:15:40,910 --> 00:15:43,280
among them, generally regard this as a
313
00:15:43,290 --> 00:15:45,760
low point in Sun's career — because by
314
00:15:45,780 --> 00:15:47,790
the time of the National Protection War,
315
00:15:48,130 --> 00:15:50,130
the anti-Yuan force that actually took the
316
00:15:50,150 --> 00:15:51,850
stage was not his party but the
317
00:15:51,870 --> 00:15:54,250
circle around Liang Qichao and Cai E.
318
00:15:54,700 --> 00:15:58,290
A man who advocated republicanism also walked
319
00:15:58,310 --> 00:16:00,410
the road of centralising power.
320
00:16:00,900 --> 00:16:02,840
That is one of the most telling
321
00:16:02,850 --> 00:16:05,290
internal wounds of 1911.
322
00:16:06,440 --> 00:16:09,420
Money was never a settled question among
323
00:16:09,440 --> 00:16:14,260
the revolutionaries. In 1907, when Sun left Japan,
324
00:16:14,880 --> 00:16:17,560
Japanese friends and merchants gave him gifts
325
00:16:17,570 --> 00:16:19,940
amounting to more than twenty thousand yen.
326
00:16:20,470 --> 00:16:22,320
He left only two thousand for the
327
00:16:22,340 --> 00:16:24,880
newspaper Minbao and took the rest for
328
00:16:24,900 --> 00:16:27,500
actual risings in Chaozhou and Huizhou.
329
00:16:27,950 --> 00:16:29,940
This exploded in Tokyo.
330
00:16:30,410 --> 00:16:32,840
Zhang Taiyan — and Zhang Ji and Liu
331
00:16:32,850 --> 00:16:35,950
Shipei with him — launched a movement against
332
00:16:35,970 --> 00:16:39,090
Sun, putting up notices accusing him of
333
00:16:39,100 --> 00:16:41,860
having secretly taken Japanese money and of
334
00:16:41,880 --> 00:16:45,010
misusing public funds. What the later inquiry
335
00:16:45,030 --> 00:16:47,470
found is recorded in the Alliance's internal
336
00:16:47,480 --> 00:16:50,000
investigation and in Sun's own statement of
337
00:16:50,010 --> 00:16:52,860
accounts: his mother and his brother were
338
00:16:52,880 --> 00:16:55,360
not living comfortably, which did not look
339
00:16:55,380 --> 00:16:57,470
like someone who had embezzled a fortune;
340
00:16:57,510 --> 00:17:00,220
he produced a list of receipts and
341
00:17:00,230 --> 00:17:02,840
payments, saying he had spent nothing public
342
00:17:02,850 --> 00:17:05,170
beyond board, lodging and travel.
343
00:17:05,750 --> 00:17:08,070
His brother Sun Mei had given away
344
00:17:08,090 --> 00:17:10,590
his whole property for the revolution and
345
00:17:10,600 --> 00:17:14,090
gone bankrupt. In the end, no evidence
346
00:17:14,100 --> 00:17:16,510
was produced for the embezzlement charge,
347
00:17:16,920 --> 00:17:18,480
and the talk died down.
348
00:17:18,950 --> 00:17:21,570
What this episode really shows is something
349
00:17:21,590 --> 00:17:25,160
else: even comrades questioned one another.
350
00:17:25,630 --> 00:17:28,590
For an organisation living on donations,
351
00:17:28,970 --> 00:17:31,880
financial transparency was a problem from the
352
00:17:31,900 --> 00:17:32,850
very beginning.
353
00:17:34,010 --> 00:17:36,260
Having said all that, one more thing
354
00:17:36,270 --> 00:17:38,830
should be said: he was an ordinary
355
00:17:38,840 --> 00:17:41,980
man too. His marriages and relationships have
356
00:17:41,990 --> 00:17:45,170
been recorded repeatedly, both then and since:
357
00:17:45,200 --> 00:17:47,680
his first wife Lu Muzhen, from an
358
00:17:47,700 --> 00:17:49,740
arranged marriage in his home village;
359
00:17:50,270 --> 00:17:52,490
a marriage to Otsuki Kaoru during his
360
00:17:52,510 --> 00:17:54,770
years in Japan, and a daughter from
361
00:17:54,780 --> 00:17:57,230
it; and his marriage to Soong Ching-ling
362
00:17:57,240 --> 00:18:00,810
in 1915. He was forty-nine that year and
363
00:18:00,830 --> 00:18:03,770
she was twenty-two. The difference in age,
364
00:18:03,800 --> 00:18:05,420
and the setting aside of his first
365
00:18:05,430 --> 00:18:07,430
wife, were discussed at the time
366
00:18:07,780 --> 00:18:10,060
the Soong family objected at first,
367
00:18:10,330 --> 00:18:12,620
and some comrades thought it unfair to
368
00:18:12,640 --> 00:18:14,920
Lu Muzhen. On the other hand,
369
00:18:14,950 --> 00:18:18,330
his speaking ability and personal magnetism really
370
00:18:18,340 --> 00:18:20,770
were his greatest capital in raising money
371
00:18:20,780 --> 00:18:24,280
and mobilising support; that too is consistent
372
00:18:24,300 --> 00:18:26,370
in the accounts of his contemporaries.
373
00:18:26,860 --> 00:18:30,360
Also from his contemporaries: the description of
374
00:18:30,370 --> 00:18:33,260
him as not constant in his affections.
375
00:18:33,740 --> 00:18:36,260
Beyond his achievements and his failures,
376
00:18:36,280 --> 00:18:38,340
he had a private life as well.
377
00:18:38,810 --> 00:18:40,920
None of this changes who he was
378
00:18:41,460 --> 00:18:44,150
but put together, it is what makes
379
00:18:44,170 --> 00:18:44,890
a person.
380
00:18:46,010 --> 00:18:48,500
Besides overthrowing the Qing, he had a
381
00:18:48,510 --> 00:18:51,010
design: what to do afterwards.
382
00:18:51,490 --> 00:18:53,410
Two concepts were his own.
383
00:18:53,880 --> 00:18:58,590
One is the five-power constitution: adding examination
384
00:18:58,600 --> 00:19:02,220
and control to the executive, legislative and
385
00:19:02,240 --> 00:19:05,850
judicial powers. The second is the separation
386
00:19:05,870 --> 00:19:07,620
of powers and functions.
387
00:19:08,090 --> 00:19:10,900
Power is split in two: the people
388
00:19:10,910 --> 00:19:15,480
hold four powers — election, recall, initiative and
389
00:19:15,500 --> 00:19:19,600
referendum — called political power; the government holds
390
00:19:19,620 --> 00:19:21,780
five, called governing power.
391
00:19:22,250 --> 00:19:25,190
Together it means the people have authority
392
00:19:25,210 --> 00:19:27,160
and the government has capacity.
393
00:19:27,600 --> 00:19:29,690
The idea appears in outline in a
394
00:19:29,710 --> 00:19:33,070
1906 speech and is set out systematically
395
00:19:33,090 --> 00:19:35,970
in the 1924 lectures on democracy.
396
00:19:36,430 --> 00:19:38,960
Did it leave institutional traces?
397
00:19:39,440 --> 00:19:44,380
Yes: the 1947 constitution adopted a five-yuan
398
00:19:44,400 --> 00:19:47,150
structure. The design survived.
399
00:19:47,620 --> 00:19:50,540
Assessments differ — some value it as a
400
00:19:50,560 --> 00:19:55,650
Chinese-designed constitutional scheme, others criticise the fivefold
401
00:19:55,660 --> 00:19:58,040
division as unclear in practice.
402
00:19:58,490 --> 00:20:00,600
This film states it and leaves the
403
00:20:00,620 --> 00:20:02,040
judgement to the viewer.
404
00:20:03,190 --> 00:20:05,420
One more thing is worth noticing:
405
00:20:05,450 --> 00:20:07,530
his party kept changing.
406
00:20:08,000 --> 00:20:10,480
From the Revive China Society to the
407
00:20:10,500 --> 00:20:13,900
Revolutionary Alliance, a small body became a
408
00:20:13,910 --> 00:20:18,060
united front. In 1912, with the Republic founded,
409
00:20:18,380 --> 00:20:20,780
the Alliance became the Nationalist Party,
410
00:20:21,150 --> 00:20:23,690
taking the path of parliamentary competition,
411
00:20:24,060 --> 00:20:25,900
and this time it was Song Jiaoren
412
00:20:25,910 --> 00:20:29,720
who led it. In 1914, after the failure
413
00:20:29,730 --> 00:20:32,750
of the Second Revolution, Sun formed the
414
00:20:32,760 --> 00:20:35,600
Chinese Revolutionary Party and drew power back
415
00:20:35,620 --> 00:20:37,250
to the party leader personally.
416
00:20:37,720 --> 00:20:41,230
In 1919, it was renamed the Kuomintang.
417
00:20:41,700 --> 00:20:44,920
In 1924, it was reorganised in Guangzhou:
418
00:20:45,810 --> 00:20:49,280
Soviet advisers brought in, communists allowed to
419
00:20:49,290 --> 00:20:52,200
join as individuals, and a party machine
420
00:20:52,220 --> 00:20:54,260
built on the principle of governing through
421
00:20:54,280 --> 00:20:56,720
the party. The line of swing is
422
00:20:56,730 --> 00:20:59,760
clear: from a parliamentary party to a
423
00:20:59,780 --> 00:21:03,540
centralised party. The parliamentary path Song Jiaoren
424
00:21:03,560 --> 00:21:08,690
advocated in 1912 was overridden twice, in 1914 and
425
00:21:08,700 --> 00:21:12,650
in 1924. This film states the sequence and
426
00:21:12,660 --> 00:21:14,400
does not say which one ought to
427
00:21:14,410 --> 00:21:15,120
have won.
428
00:21:16,250 --> 00:21:18,200
Even the title of head of state
429
00:21:18,210 --> 00:21:23,730
was disputed. In 1921, the Guangzhou military government
430
00:21:23,840 --> 00:21:26,800
elected him "extraordinary president".
431
00:21:27,300 --> 00:21:30,830
The word extraordinary describes the post itself:
432
00:21:31,230 --> 00:21:34,180
an expedient created for the emergency of
433
00:21:34,200 --> 00:21:37,840
the constitution-protection period. And because it was
434
00:21:37,860 --> 00:21:41,390
an expedient for an emergency, its term
435
00:21:41,430 --> 00:21:43,460
and its legality were questioned.
436
00:21:43,930 --> 00:21:45,890
Among those who questioned it was Chen
437
00:21:45,900 --> 00:21:49,120
Jiongming — inside the same revolutionary camp,
438
00:21:49,480 --> 00:21:52,780
objecting precisely to whether "extraordinary" could be
439
00:21:52,800 --> 00:21:55,860
used that way. His principle of governing
440
00:21:55,870 --> 00:21:57,870
through the party was also read by
441
00:21:57,890 --> 00:22:01,180
contemporaries as placing a leader's power above
442
00:22:01,200 --> 00:22:03,930
the ordinary track of constitutional government.
443
00:22:04,420 --> 00:22:06,370
These were the arguments of people at
444
00:22:06,390 --> 00:22:09,170
the time — not criticism added later,
445
00:22:09,200 --> 00:22:11,370
but things said in the newspapers and
446
00:22:11,390 --> 00:22:12,870
correspondence of the day.
447
00:22:13,360 --> 00:22:15,920
This film sets them beside the assessment
448
00:22:15,930 --> 00:22:17,780
of him as the forerunner of the
449
00:22:17,800 --> 00:22:22,180
revolution, without verdict, and without any reference
450
00:22:22,200 --> 00:22:23,900
to any present-day system.
451
00:22:25,020 --> 00:22:27,760
Having dealt with Sun Yat-sen, there is
452
00:22:27,770 --> 00:22:29,550
a second question to answer.
453
00:22:30,040 --> 00:22:32,080
Why did the people who most wanted
454
00:22:32,100 --> 00:22:34,290
to preserve the Qing end up leaving
455
00:22:34,300 --> 00:22:38,390
too? They were the constitutionalists: Zhang Jian,
456
00:22:38,830 --> 00:22:42,910
Tang Hualong, Tan Yankai, Tang Shouqian,
457
00:22:43,350 --> 00:22:46,390
Liang Qichao. What they wanted was not
458
00:22:46,410 --> 00:22:49,440
revolution; they wanted a parliament.
459
00:22:49,890 --> 00:22:52,480
They invested in railways, ran schools and
460
00:22:52,490 --> 00:22:55,850
newspapers, sat in the provincial assemblies
461
00:22:56,240 --> 00:22:57,960
no one wanted the country to fall
462
00:22:57,980 --> 00:22:59,800
into chaos more than they did.
463
00:23:00,240 --> 00:23:02,140
They gave the court nine years.
464
00:23:02,630 --> 00:23:05,920
Once the imperial-clan cabinet appeared, the hope
465
00:23:05,940 --> 00:23:10,320
collapsed entirely: thirteen men, nine Manchu,
466
00:23:10,790 --> 00:23:13,830
seven of the imperial clan, military and
467
00:23:13,850 --> 00:23:15,890
financial power all in the hands of
468
00:23:15,910 --> 00:23:18,860
kinsmen. The next day, the railways were
469
00:23:18,880 --> 00:23:21,980
nationalised. The money they had put in
470
00:23:21,990 --> 00:23:23,380
was taken as well.
471
00:23:23,800 --> 00:23:26,120
So the constitutionalists turned.
472
00:23:26,630 --> 00:23:28,790
When the shots were fired at Wuchang
473
00:23:28,800 --> 00:23:31,360
in October, many of the first to
474
00:23:31,380 --> 00:23:33,850
respond were the chairmen and members of
475
00:23:33,860 --> 00:23:37,320
the provincial assemblies. Liang Qichao's line,
476
00:23:37,570 --> 00:23:40,710
compressed to a few words: the government,
477
00:23:40,740 --> 00:23:43,610
a factory for manufacturing revolutionaries.
478
00:23:44,080 --> 00:23:46,170
The ones who wanted to preserve it
479
00:23:46,190 --> 00:23:47,380
left in the end.
480
00:23:48,500 --> 00:23:49,690
That is one man.
481
00:23:50,140 --> 00:23:51,470
There was a whole group.
482
00:23:51,910 --> 00:23:53,640
The first is Huang Xing.
483
00:23:54,100 --> 00:23:58,070
In 1904 he founded the China Revival Society
484
00:23:58,080 --> 00:24:01,190
in Changsha. At Huanghuagang he led the
485
00:24:01,200 --> 00:24:03,790
attack on the governor-general's yamen with two
486
00:24:03,800 --> 00:24:05,980
fingers of his right hand shot away,
487
00:24:06,390 --> 00:24:08,320
and kept directing to the end.
488
00:24:08,790 --> 00:24:10,910
In the battle of Hankou and Hanyang
489
00:24:10,920 --> 00:24:13,540
after the Wuchang rising — forty-odd days
490
00:24:13,570 --> 00:24:16,530
he was the front-line commander in chief;
491
00:24:17,140 --> 00:24:19,050
those forty days bought time for the
492
00:24:19,070 --> 00:24:21,730
southern provinces. In the accounts of his
493
00:24:21,750 --> 00:24:24,160
contemporaries he is described as loyal,
494
00:24:24,170 --> 00:24:27,360
brave, and uninterested in power: he was
495
00:24:27,380 --> 00:24:30,010
named with Sun as Sun-Huang, but never
496
00:24:30,030 --> 00:24:32,550
contested position with him; and when the
497
00:24:32,570 --> 00:24:35,320
two parted in 1914 he chose to step
498
00:24:35,330 --> 00:24:36,790
aside rather than fight.
499
00:24:37,260 --> 00:24:40,280
In one sentence: he was Sun's other
500
00:24:40,290 --> 00:24:40,800
half.
501
00:24:41,930 --> 00:24:43,960
There was one man who believed in
502
00:24:43,980 --> 00:24:45,380
parliament to the end.
503
00:24:45,800 --> 00:24:48,950
Song Jiaoren. After the Wuchang rising he
504
00:24:48,960 --> 00:24:51,600
took part in organising the provisional government
505
00:24:51,610 --> 00:24:54,670
in Nanjing; when the Alliance was reorganised
506
00:24:54,680 --> 00:24:57,020
into the Nationalist Party, he was the
507
00:24:57,040 --> 00:24:59,320
one who actually ran it, turning it
508
00:24:59,330 --> 00:25:01,040
into a party that would compete for
509
00:25:01,050 --> 00:25:03,960
votes. He argued for a party cabinet:
510
00:25:04,430 --> 00:25:06,700
the majority party in parliament forms the
511
00:25:06,710 --> 00:25:10,330
government, and responsibility lies with the cabinet
512
00:25:10,350 --> 00:25:12,490
rather than with a president personally.
513
00:25:12,960 --> 00:25:16,070
In the 1913 National Assembly elections the
514
00:25:16,080 --> 00:25:18,920
Nationalist Party won a majority of seats
515
00:25:19,320 --> 00:25:22,760
the first nationwide parliamentary election in China.
516
00:25:23,210 --> 00:25:26,230
What followed is beyond this episode's scope.
517
00:25:26,680 --> 00:25:28,660
His ideal did not get through.
518
00:25:29,140 --> 00:25:31,200
But that path was tried once,
519
00:25:31,510 --> 00:25:33,270
and the fact that it was tried
520
00:25:33,290 --> 00:25:34,610
is worth remembering.
521
00:25:35,740 --> 00:25:38,360
Besides guns, the pens came in too.
522
00:25:38,780 --> 00:25:42,790
Zhang Taiyan. In 1903 he wrote Refuting Kang
523
00:25:42,800 --> 00:25:46,580
Youwei's Views on Revolution, naming Kang directly
524
00:25:46,600 --> 00:25:49,600
and rejecting his monarchist argument; in the
525
00:25:49,610 --> 00:25:51,700
same year the Subao case broke and
526
00:25:51,710 --> 00:25:53,580
he was imprisoned for three years.
527
00:25:54,050 --> 00:25:56,120
After his release he went to Japan
528
00:25:56,140 --> 00:25:58,900
and edited Minbao, and for several years
529
00:25:58,920 --> 00:26:00,960
fought a war of articles with Liang
530
00:26:00,980 --> 00:26:03,770
Qichao's New People's Miscellany over whether there
531
00:26:03,790 --> 00:26:05,430
should be a revolution at all
532
00:26:05,760 --> 00:26:07,650
the largest public debate of the late
533
00:26:07,670 --> 00:26:10,650
Qing. He wrote against the monarchists.
534
00:26:11,200 --> 00:26:14,240
He also wrote against comrades: he was
535
00:26:14,260 --> 00:26:16,670
one of those who launched the 1907
536
00:26:16,680 --> 00:26:20,300
movement against Sun. One article, copied and
537
00:26:20,320 --> 00:26:23,110
recopied as it was then, was worth
538
00:26:23,120 --> 00:26:24,700
a detachment of troops.
539
00:26:25,830 --> 00:26:28,700
A younger generation wrote with their lives.
540
00:26:29,170 --> 00:26:33,390
Zou Rong's The Revolutionary Army appeared in 1903;
541
00:26:33,980 --> 00:26:35,680
its author was nineteen.
542
00:26:36,170 --> 00:26:38,260
The book calls out "long live the
543
00:26:38,270 --> 00:26:41,040
Chinese Republic", and it was printed as
544
00:26:41,050 --> 00:26:43,520
a pamphlet and reprinted endlessly.
545
00:26:43,990 --> 00:26:46,180
Two years later he died in prison,
546
00:26:46,930 --> 00:26:49,460
aged twenty. In the same year,
547
00:26:50,020 --> 00:26:53,140
Chen Tianhua's Alarm Bell and Sudden Awakening
548
00:26:53,150 --> 00:26:56,010
were published. He wrote in the plainest
549
00:26:56,020 --> 00:26:59,140
language: how the powers are carving the
550
00:26:59,150 --> 00:27:02,460
country up, how China is being destroyed.
551
00:27:02,950 --> 00:27:06,170
These two pamphlets circulated very widely in
552
00:27:06,180 --> 00:27:10,150
the new army. In December 1905, after the
553
00:27:10,170 --> 00:27:13,550
controversy over the Japanese regulations on Chinese
554
00:27:13,570 --> 00:27:17,330
students, Chen Tianhua left a last letter
555
00:27:17,430 --> 00:27:19,290
and drowned himself in the sea at
556
00:27:19,300 --> 00:27:22,990
Omori, aged thirty. He used his death
557
00:27:23,010 --> 00:27:26,450
to persuade: fearing that his compatriots would
558
00:27:26,460 --> 00:27:29,550
not listen, or would forget, he threw
559
00:27:29,570 --> 00:27:31,790
himself into the sea as a reminder
560
00:27:31,800 --> 00:27:33,870
to you all. They did not live
561
00:27:33,890 --> 00:27:35,580
to see it — they did not live
562
00:27:35,600 --> 00:27:37,580
to see the day of the republic.
563
00:27:38,700 --> 00:27:40,760
Among them there were women too.
564
00:27:41,190 --> 00:27:43,700
Qiu Jin. She came from an official
565
00:27:43,720 --> 00:27:47,880
family, married, had two children, then went
566
00:27:47,890 --> 00:27:50,590
to study in Japan; she returned to
567
00:27:50,600 --> 00:27:54,160
publish a women's journal, promote women's education,
568
00:27:54,690 --> 00:27:57,070
and run the Datong School in Shaoxing.
569
00:27:57,540 --> 00:28:02,130
In July 1907, implicated in Xu Xilin's Anqing
570
00:28:02,140 --> 00:28:05,760
rising, she was arrested by Qing authorities.
571
00:28:06,230 --> 00:28:09,940
On 15 July she was executed at Xuantingkou
572
00:28:09,950 --> 00:28:12,940
in Shaoxing, aged thirty-one.
573
00:28:13,410 --> 00:28:15,510
The most widely repeated line is what
574
00:28:15,530 --> 00:28:19,280
she wrote before her execution: "autumn wind,
575
00:28:19,820 --> 00:28:22,720
autumn rain, fill one with melancholy"
576
00:28:23,440 --> 00:28:25,810
the phrase appears in Qing case records
577
00:28:25,820 --> 00:28:28,630
and in many later accounts, though scholars
578
00:28:28,640 --> 00:28:30,700
still discuss its original source.
579
00:28:31,120 --> 00:28:33,540
She did not live to 1911.
580
00:28:34,010 --> 00:28:35,730
But she was one link in this
581
00:28:35,750 --> 00:28:36,320
chain.
582
00:28:37,460 --> 00:28:41,140
One more thing needs saying: the revolutionaries
583
00:28:41,150 --> 00:28:43,860
were not one society, they were many.
584
00:28:44,340 --> 00:28:47,330
The main ones: the Revive China Society,
585
00:28:47,590 --> 00:28:51,900
founded in Honolulu in 1894; the China Revival
586
00:28:51,920 --> 00:28:54,920
Society in Changsha and the Restoration Society
587
00:28:54,930 --> 00:28:59,140
in Shanghai, both in 1904; in Hubei,
588
00:28:59,170 --> 00:29:01,370
the Reading Society and the Science Study
589
00:29:01,390 --> 00:29:04,090
Institute, each with its own members and
590
00:29:04,110 --> 00:29:07,710
its own ground. In August 1905 in Tokyo
591
00:29:07,730 --> 00:29:10,700
these bodies combined into the Chinese Revolutionary
592
00:29:10,710 --> 00:29:13,990
Alliance, with Sun Yat-sen as director and
593
00:29:14,010 --> 00:29:16,030
Huang Xing as general manager.
594
00:29:16,490 --> 00:29:19,870
This was a real merger: scattered forces
595
00:29:19,890 --> 00:29:21,420
at last had a centre.
596
00:29:21,870 --> 00:29:23,620
But it must also be said:
597
00:29:24,230 --> 00:29:26,230
numbers alone do not win.
598
00:29:26,700 --> 00:29:28,810
For six years after the merger,
599
00:29:29,170 --> 00:29:31,730
the uprisings still numbered a dozen-odd,
600
00:29:32,170 --> 00:29:34,180
and still every one failed.
601
00:29:34,670 --> 00:29:37,060
The real difference was that someone led
602
00:29:37,700 --> 00:29:41,090
someone who kept raising money, kept reorganising,
603
00:29:41,120 --> 00:29:42,710
and kept going on to the next
604
00:29:42,730 --> 00:29:43,270
attempt.
605
00:29:44,390 --> 00:29:47,480
To close the line of uprisings, the failures
606
00:29:47,490 --> 00:29:50,160
come first. From the large rising of
607
00:29:50,170 --> 00:29:52,690
miners and sworn brotherhoods at Pingxiang,
608
00:29:52,980 --> 00:29:56,490
Liuyang and Liling in 1906, to the rising
609
00:29:56,510 --> 00:29:58,890
of the Guangzhou new army in 1910,
610
00:29:59,260 --> 00:30:01,380
to the last one — the Guangzhou rising
611
00:30:01,390 --> 00:30:06,290
of 27 April 1911. From Ping-Liu-Li to Huanghuagang,
612
00:30:06,800 --> 00:30:08,820
every one had the same ending.
613
00:30:09,290 --> 00:30:12,140
At Guangzhou, Huang Xing led some hundred
614
00:30:12,160 --> 00:30:16,100
men into the governor-general's yamen; the governor-general
615
00:30:16,110 --> 00:30:19,330
fled, the attackers were surrounded by naval
616
00:30:19,350 --> 00:30:22,260
forces, and by nightfall it was over.
617
00:30:22,730 --> 00:30:26,040
Afterwards Pan Dawei collected seventy-two bodies and
618
00:30:26,050 --> 00:30:28,220
buried them at Red Flower Ridge,
619
00:30:28,720 --> 00:30:33,420
renamed Huanghuagang — hence the customary seventy-two martyrs.
620
00:30:33,890 --> 00:30:36,720
Fourteen more names were later established and
621
00:30:36,730 --> 00:30:39,230
inscribed on the reverse of the memorial
622
00:30:39,240 --> 00:30:42,230
arch, giving eighty-six names that can be
623
00:30:42,240 --> 00:30:45,630
verified. Among the dead was Lin Juemin,
624
00:30:46,220 --> 00:30:50,360
twenty-four, a student in Japan, wounded at
625
00:30:50,380 --> 00:30:52,220
the yamen and taken alive.
626
00:30:52,690 --> 00:30:54,790
The night before the rising he wrote
627
00:30:54,800 --> 00:30:57,510
two letters, one to his father and
628
00:30:57,520 --> 00:30:59,240
one to his wife Chen Yiying.
629
00:30:59,720 --> 00:31:02,600
That one letter — " I enlarge the love
630
00:31:02,610 --> 00:31:04,630
I have for you, to help all
631
00:31:04,640 --> 00:31:07,910
people love those they love" — still brings
632
00:31:07,920 --> 00:31:09,730
tears a hundred years later.
633
00:31:10,830 --> 00:31:12,100
And then that night.
634
00:31:12,530 --> 00:31:17,790
10 October 1911. Wuchang. What happened that night is,
635
00:31:17,820 --> 00:31:21,030
told plainly, very short: soldiers of the
636
00:31:21,040 --> 00:31:23,500
eighth engineering battalion of the Hubei new
637
00:31:23,510 --> 00:31:25,910
army moved first, because word of a
638
00:31:25,920 --> 00:31:27,730
register of names had leaked in the
639
00:31:27,750 --> 00:31:30,610
barracks. Who fired the first shot is
640
00:31:30,630 --> 00:31:33,720
recorded differently in different sources — the common
641
00:31:33,730 --> 00:31:35,570
account is a soldier of the eighth
642
00:31:35,580 --> 00:31:38,790
engineering battalion, but accounts differ as to
643
00:31:38,800 --> 00:31:41,480
the individual. What can be said is
644
00:31:41,500 --> 00:31:43,860
that the shooting was done by soldiers,
645
00:31:43,890 --> 00:31:47,360
not by generals. The governor-general of Huguang,
646
00:31:48,050 --> 00:31:51,070
Ruicheng, escaped through a hole in the
647
00:31:51,080 --> 00:31:53,300
back wall of his yamen and boarded
648
00:31:53,320 --> 00:31:54,780
a gunboat on the river.
649
00:31:55,230 --> 00:31:57,530
Overnight, Wuchang changed hands.
650
00:31:58,000 --> 00:32:00,410
By the following morning the flag over
651
00:32:00,420 --> 00:32:01,830
the city had changed.
652
00:32:02,300 --> 00:32:05,200
No senior commander was present to direct
653
00:32:05,220 --> 00:32:08,220
it. It was common soldiers who started
654
00:32:08,230 --> 00:32:08,570
it.
655
00:32:09,730 --> 00:32:12,100
Within that night there was a contrast
656
00:32:12,110 --> 00:32:15,280
between two men, more neatly turned than
657
00:32:15,290 --> 00:32:19,160
any script. The first: Sun Yat-sen in
658
00:32:19,170 --> 00:32:22,420
America. When the Wuchang rising happened,
659
00:32:22,450 --> 00:32:24,970
he was in the United States raising
660
00:32:24,980 --> 00:32:28,510
money for uprisings. In mid-October he read
661
00:32:28,530 --> 00:32:31,040
the news from Wuchang in a newspaper
662
00:32:31,330 --> 00:32:33,750
not by telegram, but in the paper.
663
00:32:34,200 --> 00:32:36,510
He wrote about this himself later.
664
00:32:36,980 --> 00:32:38,750
Which is to say: he was not
665
00:32:38,760 --> 00:32:41,760
there. The rising that toppled the Qing
666
00:32:41,780 --> 00:32:44,750
was launched without its originator present.
667
00:32:45,220 --> 00:32:47,580
The second: Li Yuanhong.
668
00:32:48,260 --> 00:32:50,610
He was the commander of the twenty-first
669
00:32:50,630 --> 00:32:52,950
mixed brigade of the Hubei new army,
670
00:32:53,350 --> 00:32:55,140
and he was not with his unit
671
00:32:55,170 --> 00:32:56,660
on the night of the rising.
672
00:32:57,130 --> 00:32:58,860
The next day he was found by
673
00:32:58,880 --> 00:33:01,790
soldiers and made military governor of the
674
00:33:01,810 --> 00:33:05,480
Hubei military government. The most widespread story
675
00:33:05,500 --> 00:33:07,010
is that he was found at home,
676
00:33:07,040 --> 00:33:09,060
or under a bed, and refused at
677
00:33:09,070 --> 00:33:12,390
first; the details differ across memoirs and
678
00:33:12,410 --> 00:33:14,720
the original source cannot be verified
679
00:33:15,080 --> 00:33:16,510
what is certain is that he was
680
00:33:16,530 --> 00:33:18,820
unwilling at first and agreed later.
681
00:33:19,290 --> 00:33:21,580
And there is something better: a few
682
00:33:21,600 --> 00:33:24,320
days earlier the soldiers had privately called
683
00:33:24,330 --> 00:33:27,380
him " Bodhisattva Li", because he treated men
684
00:33:27,390 --> 00:33:29,780
leniently and did not punish them lightly.
685
00:33:30,260 --> 00:33:31,780
The men who had called him a
686
00:33:31,790 --> 00:33:35,280
bodhisattva days before were, days later,
687
00:33:35,600 --> 00:33:37,890
pressing the seal into the same man's
688
00:33:37,910 --> 00:33:41,200
hands. The jokes history tells are neater
689
00:33:41,220 --> 00:33:42,390
than any script.
690
00:33:43,530 --> 00:33:47,320
After Wuchang, the provinces responded like dominoes.
691
00:33:47,790 --> 00:33:49,660
In the two months after Wuchang:
692
00:33:50,420 --> 00:33:56,370
on 22 October, Changsha and Xi'an; on 29 October,
693
00:33:56,760 --> 00:34:02,940
Taiyuan; on 30 October, Kunming; on 31 October,
694
00:34:03,310 --> 00:34:08,470
Nanchang;on 3 November, Shanghai; on the 5th,
695
00:34:08,820 --> 00:34:13,230
Jiangsu; on the 7th, Anhui; on the
696
00:34:13,260 --> 00:34:17,410
8th, Fuzhou; on the 9th, Guangdong;
697
00:34:18,250 --> 00:34:22,220
on the 13th, Shandong; on the 22nd,
698
00:34:22,650 --> 00:34:26,420
Chongqing; on the 27th, Chengdu.
699
00:34:26,900 --> 00:34:30,650
Within two months, fifteen provinces had declared
700
00:34:30,660 --> 00:34:32,840
themselves separated from the Qing.
701
00:34:33,310 --> 00:34:35,230
Some of it with blood — there was
702
00:34:35,250 --> 00:34:37,400
street fighting in Taiyuan and Xi'an;
703
00:34:38,120 --> 00:34:40,410
some of it almost without — Cheng Dequan,
704
00:34:40,440 --> 00:34:43,290
the governor of Jiangsu, was made military
705
00:34:43,310 --> 00:34:45,570
governor after knocking a few tiles off
706
00:34:45,590 --> 00:34:46,880
the roof of his yamen with a
707
00:34:46,900 --> 00:34:49,980
bamboo pole, and that counted as revolution.
708
00:34:50,440 --> 00:34:52,730
The Qing's map came apart piece by
709
00:34:52,750 --> 00:34:53,350
piece.
710
00:34:54,470 --> 00:34:55,870
Back to the first day.
711
00:34:56,340 --> 00:35:02,220
1 January 1912. Nanjing. Sun Yat-sen was sworn in
712
00:35:02,240 --> 00:35:04,530
as provisional president of the Republic of
713
00:35:04,550 --> 00:35:08,430
China, took the oath, changed the calendar,
714
00:35:08,910 --> 00:35:10,570
and fixed the name of the state:
715
00:35:11,300 --> 00:35:12,600
the Republic of China.
716
00:35:13,070 --> 00:35:15,650
This was Asia's first republic without an
717
00:35:15,660 --> 00:35:18,620
emperor — before it, no country in Asia
718
00:35:18,630 --> 00:35:20,150
had tried such a system.
719
00:35:20,620 --> 00:35:23,300
Two thousand years of imperial rule turned
720
00:35:23,310 --> 00:35:24,820
a corner on that day.
721
00:35:25,300 --> 00:35:28,560
Turned a corner, not finished: the emperor
722
00:35:28,570 --> 00:35:30,100
in the north was still on the
723
00:35:30,120 --> 00:35:32,300
throne and the reign title still in
724
00:35:32,310 --> 00:35:36,240
use. The abdication came forty-one days later.
725
00:35:37,350 --> 00:35:39,860
This history is not only in books.
726
00:35:40,300 --> 00:35:41,900
You can still go and see.
727
00:35:42,370 --> 00:35:44,640
In Guangzhou, the tomb of the seventy-two
728
00:35:44,650 --> 00:35:48,990
martyrs at Huanghuagang, in Huanghuagang Park — open,
729
00:35:49,230 --> 00:35:51,990
and you can pay respects; the memorial
730
00:35:52,010 --> 00:35:54,930
arch there carries the eighty-six names established
731
00:35:54,950 --> 00:35:57,580
later. In Wuhan, the Red House in
732
00:35:57,600 --> 00:36:00,270
Wuchang — the former Hubei military government,
733
00:36:00,620 --> 00:36:03,320
today the Xinhai Revolution Memorial Hall of
734
00:36:03,330 --> 00:36:06,100
Wuchang — open to visitors, with the meeting
735
00:36:06,110 --> 00:36:07,870
hall of those days still there.
736
00:36:08,350 --> 00:36:11,510
In Nanjing, the Presidential Palace, today the
737
00:36:11,520 --> 00:36:14,240
Museum of Modern Chinese History — open;
738
00:36:15,050 --> 00:36:17,620
Sun's office from those years is preserved
739
00:36:17,640 --> 00:36:20,890
in the grounds. Outside Nanjing, on Zijin
740
00:36:20,900 --> 00:36:23,870
Mountain, the Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum — open,
741
00:36:24,170 --> 00:36:25,900
and where he was finally laid to
742
00:36:25,920 --> 00:36:28,580
rest. The tombs are still there.
743
00:36:29,040 --> 00:36:30,960
The people have been gone a hundred
744
00:36:30,980 --> 00:36:31,580
years.
745
00:36:32,700 --> 00:36:34,060
But it was not over.
746
00:36:34,530 --> 00:36:37,980
On 1 January 1912, the Qing court in the north
747
00:36:38,000 --> 00:36:40,700
was still there: the emperor still in
748
00:36:40,720 --> 00:36:43,440
the Forbidden City, and Yuan Shikai still
749
00:36:43,450 --> 00:36:45,870
holding the six Beiyang divisions — the most
750
00:36:45,880 --> 00:36:47,970
completely trained force in the country.
751
00:36:48,450 --> 00:36:51,370
The south had a republic; the north
752
00:36:51,380 --> 00:36:53,920
had an army. The new government had
753
00:36:53,940 --> 00:36:56,690
a name; the old court had troops.
754
00:36:57,110 --> 00:36:58,660
So who would finish it?
755
00:36:59,130 --> 00:37:01,100
Fight it out, or talk it out?
756
00:37:01,570 --> 00:37:03,220
Who would take the last step?
757
00:37:03,690 --> 00:37:06,500
And how was the emperor's abdication edict
758
00:37:06,510 --> 00:37:09,140
written? In the next episode, we take
759
00:37:09,160 --> 00:37:12,170
up Yuan Shikai — his return to power,
760
00:37:12,620 --> 00:37:15,780
the north-south negotiations, the pressure on the
761
00:37:15,790 --> 00:37:20,880
court, and the abdication edict of 12 February 1912.
762
00:37:22,010 --> 00:37:23,960
The full script and sources for this
763
00:37:23,970 --> 00:37:26,460
film are at sylogs.com.