MAO’S RED CHINA

WARLORD CHINA

The Wuchang Rebellion

• Rebellion Breaks Out After Police Brutality

• Sworn Chinese Brotherhood Takes Action

• New Army Joins in the Uprising on the Double Tenth

• Manchus Bring Back Yuan Shikai to Deal with Rebels

The Contest for Leadership

The Contest for Leadership

Yuan Shikai Sun Yatsen

THE EDICT OF ABDICATION

Today the people of the whole Empire have their minds bent on

a Republic, the southern provinces have begun the

movement, and the northern generals have subsequently

supported it. The will of Providence is clear and the

people’s wishes are plain. How could I, for the sake of glory and honor of one family, oppose the

wishes of teeming millions? Wherefore I, with the Emperor,

decide that the form of government in China shall be a

constitutional Republic.

Warlord China, 1912 - 1927• President Yuan Shikai

and the Constitutional Republic

• Sun Yatsen and the National Assembly

• Formation of the Kuomintang

• Yuan Shikai Dissolves National Assembly in 1914 – Sun Yatsen Flees, Calls for 2nd Revolution

Warlord China, 1912-1927

• 1915 – Yuan Shikai Names Himself Emperor and a New Dynasty

• Three Sources of Opposition: Kuomintang, Warlords, Japanese

• Japanese Government Presents the Twenty-One Demands

The Warlords: 1916-1927

A small, fat man with a jovial and craft countenance…shook hands with me and bade me welcome in impeccable French. “The Marshal will receive you shortly. We are preparing an offensive, and he is still in conference with his generals. But I am going to let him know you are here. I am M. Wuching (Foreign Minister).” To kill time we struck up a conversation. “What do you think of our capital, and of our streets? The Marshal, you know, insists on cleanliness and order.” The city, I must say, was well policed. I remember seeing two heads, still dripping with blood, swaying in a fisherman’s net by the door of a theater: two soldiers had been executed there for having disregarded the law that forbade them to enter without paying.

M. Wuching probably read my thoughts: “What else could we do? Stern punishments are salutary warnings to any mutineers. Pity is the unforgivable when it comes to setting an example…Do drink your tea please, and have a cigarette.”

Civil War: 1920 & 1922

700 Yunnan men stripped; some were entirely naked, some naked to the waist. Armed with knives and revolvers they rushed the Sichuan camp of 16,000 men at the foot of the hills. The attack was a complete success. Panic seized regiment after regiment and the whole force fled…About 10 of these heroes…were captured, naked as they were, kept in the streets on show in cold drenching rain before being murdered. Two were killed and cut up in the streets, and I saw hearts and livers in the cookshop.

- Extract from British Council in Chengdu about an attack in 1920.