Grievances under Yuan - political, social + opposition

Question 1

GY - elections - voters

Answer 1

• January 1913
• An estimated 4-6% of China’s population were registered for the election -

Adult males over the age of 21 who were educated or owned property and paid taxes and who could prove two-year residency in a particular county could vote

Question 2

GY - elections results

Answer 2

• Kuomintang won 269 of 596 seats in the lower house of the legislature, and 123 of 274 in the upper house. (45.06% of seats)
• Republican party got 20.11% of seats
• Song Jiaoren to become Prime Minister

Question 3

GY - repression - Song Jiaoren

Answer 3

• argued for a parliamentary system over a presidential regime.
• Policies on land redistribution and women’s rights were dropped as Song connected with the mainstream of the 1 9 1 1 revolt and preached a message of re-creating ‘the mighty accomplishments of our ancestors over the past five thousand years
• killed on March 20 1913 by hired assasin

Question 4

GY - repression - KMT

Answer 4

• 4 November 1 9 1 3 , the KMT was outlawe
• remaining members of parliament were prevented from entering the legislature
• chamber lacked a quorum, so could not hold valid sessions. (10 November 1913)

Question 5

GY - dictatorship

Answer 5

• Oct.06 1913> Parliament is compelled to formally elect Yüan president for a five year term after he has it surrounded by police disguised as ‘Citizens Corps’ vigilante
• Feb.28 1914 Yüan orders the dissolution of provincial assemblie
• A new May 1 1914 constitution expanded the powers of the president, allowing him to declare war, sign treaties and appoint officials without legislative approval
• Imperial forms of address were revived. Service under the dynasty became an aid to promotion.
• 1 January of 1916 declared Emperor

Question 6

GY - social

Answer 6

• A Bureau for Examining Meritorious Service distributed cash among those who had served the revolutionary cause
• continued gentry influence
• famine in the northern plains put 800,000 people at risk, another 300,000-400,000 needed help in Anhui

Question 7

Second Revolution beginnings

Answer 7

• July 1913 governor of Jiangxi declared independence, within a month 6 southern provinces followed Guandong
• Ambitious programmes were drawn up in the province for education, health care, sanitation and the law.
• 10 members of the provincial assembly were picked by a female electorate, and women’s associations bloomed.

Question 8

GY SR repression

Answer 8

• 4000 strong force sent by Beijing
• local assembly was dissolved.
• newspapers were shut down while Confucianism was extolled and traditional dress encouraged.
• Restrictions on gambling and opium were lifted
• British backing for Yuan was rewarded with a resumption of limestone exports to Hong Kong.

Question 9

GY opposition faced

Answer 9

• Nor could Yuan count on traditionalists
• he was still the man who had betrayed the Qing
• Yuan lost the backing of constitutionalists from the imperial era such as Liang Qichao.
• gentry resenting his pretensions to claim the Mandate of Heaven
• Intellectuals, scholars and students were hostile. -

renounced claim to throne March 22 1916

Question 10

Warlords grievances

Answer 10

• by 1925 the number of unemployed in China was estimated at more than 168 million, more than half of whom were peasants and farm labourers
• the Beiyang government was both changeable and unstable: it had seven different heads of state and more than two dozen different ministries between 1916 and 1928.
• this militarism and economic desperation fuelled a rapid growth in the size of warlord armies: from around 500,000 in late 1916 to more than one million in 1918 and **two million in 1928. **