In the summer of 1913, half of China rose up together against Yuan Shikai. Two months later, every voice of opposition had fallen silent. Yet the first to strike was not the man who fired the shot. So
"China's First Democracy Died in 60 Days. Here's Who Killed It." is one episode of the Shenzhou Land (神州大地) series. Below is the full illustrated transcript of this episode. You can read it word by word, or open the video page to follow the images.
In the summer of 1913, half of China rose up together against Yuan Shikai. Two months later, every voice of opposition had fallen silent.
Yet the first to strike was not the man who fired the shot. Song Jiaoren was dead. But this was not merely the death of one remarkable man — China's constitutional government died with him. From that moment, history took a turn: why would a man who had been
president for less than a year be met with armed revolt? The answer is not in Beijing, but at Hukou, Jiangxi — on July 12, 1913, before the fort where the Yangtze meets Poyang Lake, a governor who had just been dismissed read aloud a proclamation against
Yuan Shikai and declared Jiangxi independent. His name was Li Liejun. That shot was the first shot of the first civil war since the republic was founded history calls it the "Second Revolution."
And this war lasted only two months. First, what kind of place is Hukou?
It sits in Jiangxi, at the throat where the Yangtze meets Poyang Lake, called since ancient times the "lock and key of the rivers." The Qing dynasty posted a naval commander here; once the fort's guns fired, not a single boat could pass up or down the river.
Whoever held Hukou held the Yangtze by the throat. Li Liejun did not pick this spot for the first shot at random — what he aimed to choke was Yuan Shikai's windpipe.
Then we must push one step further: who actually drew the blade first? The governor who fired at Hukou, or the order from Beijing that dismissed him?
Half a year earlier, this country had just elected a parliament and seen the first embryo of a party cabinet — from parliament to cannon, only a single summer passed.
What is even more telling: Li Liejun's defiance was set off only a month earlier by an order from Yuan Shikai dismissing him — the reason stated, politely, as "rectifying local administration."
A single dismissal order cost a province its independence; a polite turn of phrase lit a civil war.
On the surface it was Li Liejun who rebelled, yet the first move — that order — came from Beijing.
Three days later, on July 15, Huang Xing declared Jiangsu independent at Nanjing; Anhui, Guangdong, Fujian, Hunan, and Sichuan followed in turn.
On the surface, half of China had rebelled. But let me tell you the ending first: this war lasted all of two months from start to finish — on September 1, Zhang Xun's troops entered Nanjing.
Half of China rose up; why did it all collapse in two months? The answer is not on the battlefield.
The outcome was decided before a single shot was fired. Push the clock back one month, to June 1913.
With a single order, Yuan Shikai dismissed Li Liejun as governor of Jiangxi — the document's reason stated, politely, "rectifying local administration."
Li Liejun did not hand over his seal; he withdrew with his remaining troops to Hukou and, before the fort, read aloud the proclamation against Yuan.
This order is easily read as "Yuan Shikai deliberately picking a fight."
Hold that verdict and fill in four boxes first. Motive: what he wanted was a central government that actually governed. In April 1913 the Reorganization Loan was signed; in May, Li Liejun joined Guangdong's Hu Hanmin, Anhui's Bai Wenwei and others in a joint public telegram of opposition
not a private grumble, but several governorship-holding militarists openly defying a contract the central government had already signed. Power: to dismiss a governor, he held the appointment-and-removal authority the Provisional Constitution gave the president;
he used paperwork, not a blade — and the procedure held. Timing: when this June order came, the war had not yet started; within that same month, Guangdong's Hu Hanmin and Anhui's Bai Wenwei were also dismissed in turn — three governors replaced in a single month.
Payoff: he bet that "remove the toughest one, and the South scatters." In three of the four boxes motive, power, timing — he stands.
The one that collapses is the fourth: Li Liejun refused to recognize the order, withdrew to Hukou, and a month later fired that shot.
So this cannot be dismissed with a phrase like "deliberately picking a fight": every central government must reclaim local military and fiscal authority; he tried to reclaim it, Li would not yield that is the true shape of the conflict.
The above is logical analysis, not historical record. What Yuan Shikai did afterward, we will lay out piece by piece — neither excusing him nor simply condemning him.
This proclamation was written on the spot by Yang Gengsheng, a provincial assemblyman.
It is not long; let the audience hear the original: "Since the founding of the republic, every one of our citizens has wished to reach the true goal of a republic. Yuan Shikai seized the moment and stole the helm, making himself emperor in all but name;
he has extinguished humanity and secretly murdered our founding hero; he has cast the constitution aside as a mere trifle and arbitrarily borrowed vast sums.
Where money has power, even public opinion and justice can be bought; with offices without limit, he lets his own creatures and lackeys hold every post.
Lately, in the heat of summer, he has launched his armies, ravaging Jiangxi, and with military might coerces the realm, treating our people as enemies truly betraying the trust of the nation.
Our citizens must rise at once to defend themselves, and with the world strike him down together."
A little over a hundred characters, and four charges: murdering the founding hero, arbitrarily borrowing vast sums, buying off public opinion, and ravaging the land with his armies. The most lethal line is the one in the middle — "casting the constitution aside as a
trifle." "Bianmao" were the ornaments on a cap, discarded once their use was spent; in plain terms: you, Yuan Shikai, treat the constitution as a decoration. This proclamation rested the legitimacy of "punishing Yuan" upon a law that had been
thrown away. On the same day, Li Liejun also made three pledges to the people of Jiangxi, in the original: "First, we swear to execute the traitor Yuan Shikai; second, to consolidate the republican form of government; third, to protect the lives and property
of Chinese and foreign subjects alike." Of the three, the first is about killing a man, the second about founding a state, the third about protecting foreigners — and that very order tells you this war was first about removing one man, not about changing a system.
Let me make clear first: why Jiangxi, of all places? Li Liejun held Hukou fort — the throat where the Yangtze meets Poyang Lake; once its guns sounded, not a single boat could pass up or down.
Jiangxi was the toughest military base of the southern revolutionaries, and Hukou was the nail Yuan Shikai had to pull first if he was to unify the South and strip the localities of their military power. So the first blow fell on Li Liejun not because
his temper was the fiercest, but because the position of the cannon in his hands was the most fatal.
Let us lay out the sequence again: the order came in June, the shot in July. After the Song case broke, Yuan Shikai began moving Beiyang troops south; by the time Li Liejun rose at Hukou, the armies of Feng Guozhang and Zhang Xun were already on the road.
That is to say — it was not Li Liejun who fired first; it was the dismissal order that struck first.
What Yuan wanted was to replace the "disobedient governors" one by one; what Li wanted was to keep the troops in his own hands. Both felt themselves forced, and the gun was the last sound to be heard.
Why was it Li Liejun who fired the first shot? Because he had troops — and they were troops he had trained with his own hands.
The Jiangxi army was reorganized by him personally after the 1911 Revolution: he paid their wages, he appointed their officers.
The other provinces' governors responded slowly, mostly because their soldiers were not entirely their own. Troops were the only thing that counted that summer.
But the Kuomintang fell into disorder on its own. After Song Jiaoren's death, the party was not of one mind about whether to fight another war — Sun Yat-sen advocated fighting, demanding immediate armed resistance against Yuan, saying "the only thing that
can resolve this is force"; the commanders like Huang Xing, however, at first favored the legal and parliamentary road, believing the South's military strength could not be relied upon and that war should not be lightly begun; it was Li Liejun, supporting Sun
Yat-sen, who first raised the anti-Yuan banner at Hukou. One was the party chief calling for war, the other a general counseling peace — before a shot was fired, the party had already split.
What each wanted, who blocked whom, by what means, and at what cost — these four questions the Kuomintang left unanswered, while Yuan Shikai had already answered them: the Beiyang army in his hands was better drilled than all the responding provinces
combined. Here I must make one thing clear to viewers who have watched the earlier episodes: after the Song case, who in the Kuomintang actually advocated war.
The conclusion first — Sun Yat-sen advocated immediate armed resistance against Yuan, saying "the only thing that can resolve this is force"; Huang Xing at first favored the legal and parliamentary road, believing the South's military strength could not be relied upon and that war should
not be lightly begun; Li Liejun supported Sun Yat-sen and was first to rise at Hukou.
This is the consistent account across multiple sources we checked — CCTV's website, Guangming Daily, the Complete Works of Sun Yat-sen, and biographies of Huang Xing. Then why do you still hear different accounts? Because this matter has three layers,
easily collapsed into one. The first layer: "public" and "within the party" are not the same thing — after the Song case Sun issued no public telegram against Yuan for a long stretch, so publicly it looked like "no statement," yet in party meetings his position was always immediate action.
The second layer: "advocating war" and "leading the fighting" are not the same — it was Sun the party chief who set the tone, but Huang the general who led the troops, and Huang was the one who at first counseled peace and only later went to Nanjing to command.
So "who advocated war" and "who fought" are not the same person. The third layer: this is an advancement in how we read the sources, not a change in the facts earlier we emphasized execution, now we supply the decision side; both can hold at once.
As for whether Sun wanted to topple Yuan or keep his grip on the party — the sources give his actions, not his mind. The following is logical analysis: the Song case turned his greatest rival into a man no legal procedure could topple; and he himself was one
who in 1912 had just become, then personally relinquished, the provisional presidency.
He handed that seat to Yuan on conditions, but once Yuan was seated the conditions became a scrap of paper and the former president could never return. A man who has been president fears not a too-strong enemy, but his own inability to return to
that seat — to advocate war, stripped bare, was to seize the presidency back by force, his own private interest, not the public righteousness of saving the republic. Look again at Huang Xing: his initial legalism was not cowardice but that he truly knew
what those few southern divisions were worth he knew the war would be lost; yet he also knew that once the chief cried "fight," if he did not take it up the party would split on the spot. So he went to Nanjing after all.
The above is logical analysis, not record; right and wrong we leave to your judgment.
There is one more detail worth putting on the table. According to the Sun Yat-sen Academic Database, after Li Liejun received the dismissal order he first took a steamer from Jiujiang to Shanghai, "went to see the Master, and after the Master gave him
his plan in person," then turned back to Hukou in Jiangxi, opened the fort, issued the proclamation, and declared independence.
That is to say — before the shot at Hukou sounded, the man who rose in revolt had first gone to see the party chief, who gave him his plan face to face.
This is not speculation about who advocated war; it is an itinerary: Shanghai — audience, plan given in person; Hukou — fort opened, proclamation issued.
Between them lay one man's personal instruction. The fact is: the dismissal order was issued, the Beiyang troops were moved — none of it waited for Li Liejun to fire. That is to say — even if the Kuomintang had not fired a single shot, Yuan Shikai would have
found other means to deal with these "disobedient governors." The key question is not "would the Kuomintang cooperate," but "could the parliamentary system of the time actually let Yuan get anything done." The answer is no: three premiers in one year,
the loan blocked by parliament, the cabinet list rejected — this system of checks and balances paralyzed itself first. If this system had truly been able to produce a stable government, let him borrow and push his policies, he might not have had to bypass
parliament or dissolve the Kuomintang. It was the system's failure to function that drove out the dictatorship that followed.
This is deduction, not record. This legal clean-up path of "dissolving the party and stripping legislators of their seats" — he did in fact take it later, and he made it work.
In the Second Revolution, before a shot was fired, the outcome was already decided.
The fighting lasted only two months. The Beiyang army bore down from two directions along the Tianjin-Pukou and Shanghai-Nanjing lines; at Nanjing, Huang Xing hurried there and was named commander-in-chief of the Jiangsu anti-Yuan army, but held on only until September before collapsing.
Huang Xing fled, Li Liejun fled, and Sun Yat-sen went into exile in Japan once more.
Jiangxi rose first and was gone in just over a month; Nanjing held longest, until September 1; Guangdong changed its flag in three weeks; Hunan and Fujian declared and then withdrew on their own; Sichuan rose latest and ended soonest.
Seven banners, not one lasted two months; seven columns of troops, not one reinforcement arrived on time; seven provinces, not a single victory won by the anti-Yuan army. This is not the failure of a revolt; it is a collapse at a single push.
Don't go away. Yuan Shikai won this battle, but the truly thorny opponent was not across from him: it was the Provisional Constitution in his own hands.
We will return shortly to watch how he tore it up, step by step.
Here keep one detail in mind: in the very year the republic was founded (1912), it was Sun Yat-sen's side that led the drafting of the Provisional Constitution, deliberately adopting a "responsible cabinet system" — boxing in the president's power and
handing real authority to the cabinet. Put plainly: when he himself was to be president, what he wanted was a presidential system; when Yuan Shikai was president, what he wanted was a cabinet system to tie Yuan down.
The same logic, the following year (1914), became even more naked: he formed a separate "Chinese Revolutionary Party," whose charter concentrated all party power in the single person of the Director-General, requiring members to press their fingerprints on joining and swear to "follow Mr.
Sun in raising revolution again"; even his old comrade Huang Xing refused to join because he would not swear personal loyalty to an individual.
According to the recollection of his then-comrade Ju Zheng, he said to the party: "To speak of republic and democracy apart from me is to drive south while heading north." These were his own words, not our conclusion. A man who personally designed a system to
tie the president down then turned around and demanded that the whole party obey him alone absolutely. The objective fact the sources can show is this: his institutional choices always revolved around "who holds power," not "what system."
We draw no conclusion; we leave that to your judgment. The war was over, Yuan Shikai had won, and won faster than anyone — in two months, the opposition of half of China fell silent. Yet in this, his most triumphant autumn, one thing was waiting for him in the
parliament at Beijing: he would discover that conquering the realm is easy, but holding it steady is hard. Where would the winner of the battlefield lose next? The answer is not on the battlefield it is in the parliament at Beijing.
Let us continue. On October 10, 1913, Yuan Shikai was formally inaugurated in Beijing as the Great President of the Republic of China, swearing to "faithfully uphold the constitution." Keep this image in mind: a man who had just sworn to defend the constitution would,
within a year, uproot that very constitution. Did he change, or did the constitution itself never let him sit steady? In this episode we draw no conclusion; we simply lay out the facts, layer by layer.
Having won the Second Revolution, Yuan Shikai thought he could breathe easy.
He found instead that wars are easy to win but affairs hard to conduct. The problem lay in the system: the republic's Provisional Constitution provided a responsible cabinet system, the Great President being head of state in name while real power rested
with the cabinet; and in parliament, although the Kuomintang had lost the war, it still held the majority of seats.
This law, the audience should hear in the original, because when it was later torn up, it was precisely these four articles that were torn.
Promulgated on March 11, 1912 — Article 34: "The Provisional Great President appoints and removes civil and military officials.
But the appointment of state councillors and of ambassadors and ministers to foreign powers requires the consent of the Senate."
Article 35: "With the consent of the Senate, the Provisional Great President may declare war, make peace, and conclude treaties."
Article 44: "The state councillors assist the Provisional Great President and bear responsibility therefor."
Article 45: "When the Provisional Great President submits legislative bills, promulgates laws, and issues orders, the state councillors must countersign them." Those four characters in Article 45 are the deadliest — "must countersign."
They mean: a signature by the president, without a councillor's countersignature, carries no force.
Mark the timing exactly: Yuan Shikai took office in Beijing on March 10, 1912, and this constitution was promulgated on March 11 — the day after he assumed office, this law was already waiting there.
Four brakes, not one omitted, all mounted on his carriage. This constitution remained in force for two years and fifty-one days in all.
Three things, laid out, and you will understand: first, Yuan wanted to borrow a "Reorganization Loan" twenty-five million pounds, to set the finances in order and disband the armies — parliament would not approve it. What did he do? He bypassed parliament and
signed directly with the banking consortium. Second, the list of state councillors he proposed was rejected by parliament several times in a row.
Third, in the year from 1912 to 1913 the cabinet changed like a revolving door — Tang Shaoyi, Lu Zhengxiang, Zhao Bingjun… three premiers in a single year, not one serving his full term.
This is like a manager who, every time he signs a requisition, is blocked by finance; every time he hires someone, is rejected by the board.
Tell me, could he get anything done? So the first layer of "Yuan Shikai's predicament" is this line: parliament would not let him get anything done; if he did not become a dictator, what choice did he have? This sentence — we neither defend him with it nor
dismiss him with a single curse of "ambition" we first lay out the situation clearly.
On November 4, 1913, Yuan Shikai struck. He issued an order: charging that the Kuomintang legislators had colluded with "rebel bandits" like Li Liejun and Huang Xing, he stripped them of their legislative seats. With that single stroke, four hundred and thirty-eight Kuomintang
legislators were deprived of their seats and parliament instantly lost the quorum to meet, paralyzed on the spot.
This order, the audience should hear in the original because it was used as evidence for a full century afterward. Yuan Shikai wrote: "In this rebellion, the headquarters of the said Kuomintang and its legislators in parliament secretly plotted and
incited; Li Liejun, Huang Xing and others have dared to occupy territory and raise troops, laying waste to the southeastern provinces…" He listed four charges, in the original: "First, the said telegrams spoke of Li the traitor Liejun's plan for a seven-province alliance, plainly
treating the republican government as a hostile state; second, the central government sent troops to garrison Hubei purely to defend the locality, yet the said telegrams show the Kuomintang headquarters took keen notice of this move, already dispatched envoes to negotiate with Huang
Xing, and telegraphed Li Liejun to speedily defend the fortresses in preparation to resist plainly treating the republican national army as enemy troops; third, the said telegrams urged Li the traitor Liejun to strike first, that the opportunity
must not be lost, and spoke of Huang linking Ning and Wan, Sun linking Gui, Guangdong and Ning as a base, to hastily establish a government — plainly wishing to destroy the unity of the republic without care; fourth, the said telegrams claimed that internal
strife was erupting one after another and that foreigners would step in to mediate, that a north-south partition was imminent — plainly wishing to provoke the intervention of the great powers and be done with it." The final sentence is the blade: "The garrison commander shall be ordered to
direct the Metropolitan Police, and shall ascertain, from the day the revolt was raised at Hukou in Jiangxi, that all legislators of the said Kuomintang be uniformly made to surrender their legislative certificates and insignia."
Note the construction of this sentence — it does not say "dissolve parliament"; it says "surrender certificates and insignia."
Parliament remained; the men were gone. This is what we said earlier: what he chose was not purge by force, but the legal cancellation of status.
One phrase — "surrender certificates" — and four hundred and thirty-eight men, in a single night, were no longer legislators.
After the shot at Hukou rang out, the accounts must be settled. The Second Revolution, from July 12 to early September, less than two months, saw Jiangxi, Jiangsu and Anhui fall one after another; where the fires of war passed, towns lay in ruin.
The "resolution by force" that Sun Yat-sen advocated cost three prices: the first, the Kuomintang lost its entire foundation — legislative seats cancelled at a word, newspapers shut down, party headquarters raided, the legal political space accumulated
since 1911 wiped out overnight; the second, he himself went into exile in Tokyo and the party split in two; the third, and heaviest — Yuan Shikai seized the great moral banner of "pacifying the rebellion," and from then on every step of power-
grabbing was done under the flag of "cleansing the rebel band and restoring order," making it righteous and proper. The above is logical analysis, not historical record; you may weigh it yourself: the man who took up arms believed he was saving the
republic, yet the republic's first experiment was precisely lost on that one shot.
Note: Yuan did not choose "purge by force"; he chose "legal cancellation of status." Why?
Because he held the rules of the Provisional Constitution and the parliament's own procedures pulling out the opponent's seats one by one cost less and looked cleaner than sending troops to arrest people. We must still ask that question: could
parliament actually let him get anything done? If this parliamentary system itself could have operated stably, let the government borrow its funds, form a cabinet and push its policies, Yuan might not have had to bypass it. But the reality was that the
parliamentary system of 1913 could not make itself work, and the two sides distrusted each other this road of "parliamentary politics" simply had no one who could walk it through at the time.
This is deduction, not record. The core power struggle of this act is over "who has the final say": Yuan wanted a central authority that could get things done; parliament wanted a president kept under watch. Both sides felt the other was destroying
the republic. The problem is — once parliament was stripped of its majority and Yuan had the final say, the next thing to be rewritten was the constitution itself.
This order of November 4, 1913, Yuan Shikai won clean and neat: without firing a single shot, four hundred and thirty-eight opponents, in one night, were no longer legislators.
Parliament remained; the men were gone. The method he learned that year was "to do unlawful things by lawful means" — and every step thereafter, he walked by this method. But once the list of legislators was pulled, one thing still stood in his
way: that law inscribed with "must countersign." So long as those four characters remained, his signatures still could not fully count.
In the next episode, we watch how he tore up the republic's fundamental law, page by page and at the end of the tearing, what emerged was a crown.
Don't switch channels.
▶ Watch this episode (images and maps included): China's First Democracy Died in 60 Days. Here's Who Killed It.