Yuan Shikai

Yuan Shikai was born on September 16, 1859, at Xiangcheng in Henan province, China, into a landed military family of that place.⁠[1][2]

He was the fourth of six sons; his father and uncles had helped to suppress rebellions in North China in the 1850s and 1860s.⁠[3]

Earlier generations of the family had succeeded in the examinations and in office: Yuan Jiasan earned the highest examination degree and served as imperial commissioner and director-general of grain transport in the Xianfeng and Tongzhi reigns, and Yuan Jiasan’s second son, Yuan Baoling, an uncle of Yuan Shikai, directed the construction of the port of Lüshun.⁠[4][5]

In 1866 he was adopted by his father’s younger brother; in 1868, at the age of ten, he went to Nanjing with his uncle Yuan Baoqing.⁠[3][6]

His adoptive father died in 1873, after which he lived in Beijing under the supervision of his uncles until 1878.⁠[3]

He received a traditional Confucian education but had no interest in scholarship, preferring riding, hunting and other martial pursuits; he failed the civil service examinations twice and never obtained even the lowest degree.⁠[3][1]

In 1880 he purchased a low-ranking official title and joined the military staff of a friend of his adoptive father.⁠[3]

The chronology of the Japan Center for Asian Historical Records (JACAR) lists him in 1881 as a staff officer of Admiral Wu Changqing of the Huai Forces.⁠[2]

In 1882 the Qing government sent a brigade of the Huai (Anhui) army, the force commanded by Li Hongzhang, to Korea to check Japanese influence there; he went with it and saw active military duty for the first time.⁠[1][3][2]

That year a coup in Korea set off a series of anti-Japanese riots and Chinese troops moved into Seoul; his first role was that of an adviser on foreign affairs.⁠[3]

In 1884 he was placed in command of the three Chinese units stationed in Korea and, at the request of the Korean king, helped to form and advise the newly constituted royal guard. The biography on the website of the Brigham Young University library adds that in the same year, in the wake of another anti-Japanese riot, Chinese troops rescued the Japanese minister from a Korean mob.⁠[3]

That year a coup broke out in Korea and Japan sent troops in support of it; aged 25, he led the Qing troops that defeated the plotters and the Japanese force.⁠[7]

In 1885 he was made the Chinese commissioner at Seoul; JACAR’s chronology describes the post as that of the Qing government’s trade representative in Korea.⁠[1][2]

In 1885 China and Japan agreed to share influence in Korea equally, but Beijing still sought to keep the upper hand, and for the next nine years he directed that effort: he re-established Chinese ascendancy in Korea, curbed Japanese and Russian influence, blocked Korea’s attempt to open relations with Britain and had Korea ban the sale of rice to Japanese merchants.⁠[3]

The biography on the website of the Brigham Young University (BYU) library states that his heavy-handed approach alienated the Korean government and antagonized the Japanese. BritannicaEncyclopædia BritannicaEncyclopædia Britannica is a general English-language encyclopedia first published in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1768; the name also refers to its publisher, Chicago-based Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. (which presents itself as The Britannica Group). The print edition ended in 2012, and the company’s main businesses since then have been the online encyclopedia Britannica.com, digital education products for schools and libraries, and Merriam-Webster dictionaries.Open the full entry holds that his energetic service to the throne in Korea contributed to the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War of 1894–1895, and the review in the Asian Review of Books likewise states that he would later take his share of the blame for the political mistakes that led to the war.⁠[3][1][4]

He left Korea shortly before war broke out in 1894; during the war Li Hongzhang put Zhou Fu in charge of the forward military secretariat and sent him to assist.⁠[3][6]

Japan had destroyed China’s navy and army in the Sino-Japanese War, the training of a new army became urgent, and the task fell to him.⁠[1]

After the war, in 1895, the Qing government set up a modern force first called the Dingwu Army; in October of that year he was commissioned to train it at Xiaozhan, Tianjin, where it was known as the Newly Created Army.⁠[8][3]

The Newly Created Army was organized on Western lines, with infantry, cavalry, artillery and engineers and a modern staff system; he cultivated the personal loyalty of its officers and men.⁠[3]

He invited Xu Shichang to Xiaozhan as counsellor of the military secretariat, where Xu Shichang stayed for two years; the army paid its men by roll call so that no pay could be drawn for soldiers who did not exist.⁠[9]

This force was the first of China’s new armies and later grew into the Beiyang Army.⁠[8][7]

During the Hundred Days’ Reform of 1898 the Guangxu Emperor promoted him.⁠[3]

The conventional account, as the review in the Asian Review of Books relates it, holds that the emperor, aware of the plotting on the side of Empress Dowager Cixi, sent Tan Sitong to ask him to use his troops against the conservative faction, that he passed the plan to the conservatives instead, and that the emperor was thereafter confined for the rest of his life on an island in a lake west of the Forbidden City. The review adds that the emperor died believing that Yuan Shikai had betrayed him and that he would write the three characters of Yuan Shikai’s name on paper each day and then tear them to tiny pieces.⁠[4]

In his book Yuan Shikai: A Reappraisal, Patrick Fuliang Shan calls this account flawed: Tan Sitong appeared to Yuan Shikai at their meeting as an “armed madman,” and Yuan Shikai wondered whether the secret request really came from the emperor; Shan also argues that the alleged betrayal was not decisive, because the empress dowager had already received the information from elsewhere.⁠[4]

On the sixth day of the eighth lunar month the empress dowager announced that she was resuming the direction of government and the reforms came to a halt; on the tenth day Ronglu was summoned to the capital, and he, as an expectant vice-minister, took temporary charge of the offices of governor-general of Zhili and northern commissioner for about ten days, until the new governor-general arrived in Tianjin on the twentieth.⁠[10]

On the twenty-fifth day of that lunar month he wrote a postscript to his own account of the events of 1898, saying that exposing the plot of the party of Kang Youwei had been a choice forced on him and had served precisely to protect the emperor; Ma Zhongwen calls the passage his self-justification. He later also published a diary in his own defense.⁠[10][3]

The reformers were hostile to him from then on, while the ascendancy of the conservatives advanced his career.⁠[3][4]

In the second lunar month of 1899 Ronglu created the Wuwei (Guards) Army; the Newly Created Army was renamed the Wuwei Right Army and began to use its new seal on the fourteenth day of the third month.⁠[10]

Late in the third lunar month he led his troops in three columns to Dezhou in Shandong, arriving on the fourth day of the fourth month and leaving two-tenths of his strength to train at Xiaozhan; the move was meant to reinforce the units watching German expansion and to deal with the Boxers.⁠[10][3]

On the ninth day of the fifth lunar month he was appointed junior vice-minister of the Board of Works while continuing to train the Wuwei Right Army; that summer he oversaw the compilation of an illustrated drill manual for the new army, which was packed and sent up to the throne on the eighteenth day of the seventh month and which favored German training methods.⁠[10][3]

On the fourth day of the eleventh lunar month the court ordered him to act as governor of Shandong and summoned the incumbent, Yuxian, to the capital; he reached Jinan on the twenty-third day of that month and took up his duties the next day.⁠[10]

On the twenty-seventh day of the eleventh lunar month the court telegraphed that he must not rely on military force alone; on the thirteenth day of the twelfth lunar month he submitted a memorial proposing ways to reconcile the common people with the Christian converts and to pacify the province.⁠[10]

The study by Ma Zhongwen argues that after the coup of 1898 he, as a close follower of Ronglu, was caught up in the struggle between Ronglu and Gangyi, that his appointment to Shandong was a small victory for Ronglu in that contest, and that the faction of Gangyi and Yuxian soon set censors to attack him.⁠[10]

On the fourteenth day of the second lunar month of 1900 the court confirmed him as governor of Shandong.⁠[10]

During the Boxer Uprising he ignored the court’s orders to support the Boxers, suppressed them ruthlessly within his jurisdiction and protected foreigners there, following the policy of non-involvement adopted by the governors-general of South and Central China.⁠[3]

His forces thus stayed intact and were reinforced; Britannica notes that his division was the only part of China’s army to survive the Boxer Rebellion of 1900.⁠[3][1]

By July 1901 he commanded the largest and best-trained Chinese force in North China, and foreigners perceived him as following a pro-Western policy.⁠[3]

After the death of Li Hongzhang in 1901 he became governor-general of Zhili and northern commissioner (superintendent of trade for the northern ports).⁠[2][3][1]

Britannica writes that he was the first Han Chinese to hold a viceroyalty, and later to become a grand councillor, without any academic qualification, and that he had the trust of the empress dowager; JACAR’s note calls him the most important person in the Qing government after Li Hongzhang’s death.⁠[1][2]

After the invasion by the Eight-Nation Alliance the Boxer Protocol barred China from stationing troops in Tianjin; then governing Zhili, he quickly organized a Western-style police force, which did not count as an army, to take over the city.⁠[7]

During his years in office in North China he carried out military, educational, legal and industrial reforms, giving priority to the military.⁠[3]

He helped to plan and build the Beijing–Zhangjiakou Railway, supported the abolition of the imperial examinations, promoted new-style schools and banned opium and gambling.⁠[7]

In 1902 he had Zhou Xuexi found the Tianjin Guanyinhao (an official bank); with his backing Zhou Xuexi also ran the Zhili General Bureau of Industrial Arts, the Qixin cement company and the Beijing waterworks company, the last of which he proposed when the empress dowager asked him how fires could be prevented.⁠[6]

Yuan Weishi holds that he was among the most outstanding promoters and pillars of the five reforms of the late Qing New Policies, in education, justice, the political system, the military and the economy, and that Zhili under him was unmatched among the provinces.⁠[11]

In December 1903 the Qing government set up the Commission for Army Reorganisation, with Yikuang (Prince Qing), Yuan Shikai and Tieliang appointed to deal with military training; the account on the website of the Academy of Chinese Studies states that he, far more competent than the other two, soon took de facto control of the commission.⁠[8]

In 1905 the force was reorganized and enlarged from three divisions to six, which he commanded as viceroy of Zhili.⁠[8]

He paid his troops regularly, looked after their welfare and promoted his protégés to secure their loyalty, so that this well-equipped northern army was filled with subordinates loyal to him.⁠[3]

The same account holds that the late Qing reform thus paved the way for the rise of the Beiyang warlord clique led by him.⁠[8]

In 1905 he signed the Sino-Japanese Treaty on Manchuria as the Qing plenipotentiary; by it the Qing government consented to the articles of the Russo-Japanese Peace Treaty on the cession of Russian interests in South Manchuria.⁠[2]

In 1904 the constitutionalist Zhang Jian, who had broken with him twenty years earlier, wrote to urge him to take the lead in establishing a constitution; when the question returned to the court’s agenda in 1905 he became a mainstay of the constitutional cause.⁠[12]

He memorialized repeatedly for constitutional preparation and set up in Tianjin a self-government bureau, a self-government research institute, a deliberative assembly and similar bodies.⁠[12]

On August 16, 1906, he again memorialized for constitutional preparation; two weeks later the empress dowager issued an edict to that effect.⁠[12]

He proposed abolishing the Grand Council and creating a responsible cabinet, which the Manchu princes and nobles opposed; in the reform of the official system that followed he was relieved of all his concurrent posts in the central government and kept only two divisions of his army, and those merely for deployment and training.⁠[12]

In the political storm of 1907 he and Yikuang prevailed in their contest with Qu Hongji and Cen Chunxuan, both of whom lost their posts.⁠[13]

In the seventh lunar month of that year the empress dowager transferred him and Zhang Zhidong to the Grand Council as grand councillors at the same time; he was also minister of foreign affairs.⁠[13][6]

The article by Xu Jing carried by The Paper judges that with this transfer he lost the real power he had held.⁠[6]

On August 8, 1908, he gave the draft of a memorandum on the outline of a constitution to Xu Baoheng, a secretary of the Grand Council, for revision; the memorandum was submitted on August 14.⁠[13]

On his fiftieth birthday that year the empress dowager presented him with Buddhist statues and he received more than 500 pairs of birthday couplets and more than 120 sets of birthday screens, and a censor impeached him for using the occasion to amass money and build a faction; the article by Li Honggu relates that, leaving the palace after a reprimand from the empress dowager, he fell on the steps and injured his right leg.⁠[12]

After the Guangxu Emperor and the empress dowager died in quick succession, the child Puyi succeeded to the throne with Zaifeng as regent.⁠[14]

When the Xuantong Emperor was enthroned on December 2, 1908, a mission led by his confidant Tang Shaoyi had already reached the United StatesUnited StatesThe United States is a federal country in North America made up of 50 states, the District of Columbia as the seat of government, and territories such as Puerto Rico and Guam; its capital is Washington, D.C. The Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. The 2020 census (April 1, 2020) counted a resident population of 331,449,281, and the 435 seats of the House of Representatives are apportioned among the states on the basis of the census.Open the full entry; Li Honggu writes that its ostensible task was to settle with the United States how the Boxer indemnity would be returned, while its real purpose was to arrange a three-power understanding with the United States and Germany to preserve China’s integrity, a plan that fell through because Japan and the United States had already exchanged notes.⁠[12]

On December 19, 1908, the regent Zaifeng rewarded the senior ministers, and he and Zhang Zhidong received the title of Grand Guardian of the Heir Apparent.⁠[13]

On January 2, 1909, the court issued an edict relieving him of his posts and sending him home to recuperate, less than two months after the deaths of the Guangxu Emperor and the empress dowager.⁠[13][14]

The pretext was that a foot injury had incapacitated him.⁠[3][12]

The study by Zhu Wenliang quotes an account by a disciple of Zhang Zhidong: the regent Zaifeng, acting on the wishes of Empress Dowager Longyu, ordered the grand councillors to draft an edict, and his fate hung in the balance until, after repeated representations by Zhang Zhidong, the order became one sending him home to recuperate.⁠[14]

Early on the day after his dismissal he hurried to Tianjin with his eldest son, Yuan KedingYuan KedingYuan Keding, courtesy name Yuntai, was the eldest son of Yuan Shikai; fluent in German and English, he commanded the Army Model Regiment and in 1915 was a core member of the Chouanhui, the society that campaigned for a constitutional monarchy; he came to be called the “crown prince of Hongxian.” After Yuan Shikai’s death he lived for a time in seclusion; under the Japanese occupation he disavowed in print a statement supporting the “New Order in East Asia” that had been published over his name without his consent, and he spent his last years in the household of his cousin Zhang Boju, dying at the end of the 1950s.Open the full entry, then returned to Beijing and went on to Henan.⁠[14][12]

After his dismissal he lived in retirement at Huanshang village in Zhangde, Henan.⁠[12][15]

He kept in touch with his protégés; by the count of Luo Baoshan, at least 120 to 130 visitors who can be identified by name called on him during the two years and eight months of his retirement.⁠[3][12]

In 1910 Zaitao repeatedly recommended him to Zaifeng and Yikuang sent an emissary to Henan to urge him to return; he declined on grounds of illness and proposed that Tang Shaoyi be employed first, while the empress dowager Longyu and the faction of Zaize opposed his recall.⁠[14]

The so-called imperial kinsmen’s cabinet was formed on May 8, 1911, and the next day the associate premier Natong asked to resign and recommended him as his replacement.⁠[14]

On June 7, 1911, Zhang Jian called on him at Zhangde while traveling from Hankou to Beijing.⁠[15]

A 2019 paper by Nicholas L. Chan states that Yangshouyuan, his garden at Huanshang, was built when he was dismissed and sent home to convalesce at the beginning of the Xuantong reign, and that he then styled himself the Old Fisherman of Huanshang and gave himself the air of a recluse.⁠[16]

Another paper by Chan, devoted to these poems, states that while living in retirement at Huanshang village in Zhangde prefecture in the first to third years of the Xuantong reign (1909–1911) he often exchanged verses with friends; that the poems, 25 in all under 19 titles, are preserved mainly in Guitang changheshi, compiled by Yuan KewenYuan KewenYuan Kewen (1890–1931), art name Hanyun, was the second son of Yuan Shikai, known as a poet, calligrapher and collector of Song and Yuan printed books, old coins and stamps, and as an amateur performer of Peking opera and Kunqu. He remonstrated in verse when his father prepared to take the throne; the physicist Luke Chia-Liu Yuan was his son.Open the full entry, and Huancun yixing, compiled by Yuan Keding; and that literary study of them is still at an early stage.⁠[17]

Chan’s 2019 paper quotes a note by Zhang Boju which says that he could write verse and had much of the air of Cao Cao composing poetry with his spear laid across the saddle.⁠[16]

The Wuchang Uprising broke out on October 10, 1911; at the court conference of October 12 Natong and Xu Shichang asked that he be recalled, but Zaifeng did not agree and instead sent the minister of war, Yinchang, south with an army.⁠[14]

On October 14 the court appointed him governor-general of Huguang with charge of suppressing and pacifying the rising.⁠[14][13][12]

He at first declined on grounds of illness, and Yuan Keding and others also opposed his return; he complained that the Beiyang units were under Yinchang and that he had neither troops nor funds, and put to the court a memorandum of eight points concerning the raising of troops, funding, freedom from remote control of operations and other matters.⁠[14][13]

His memorial of thanks and the memorandum were laid before the throne on October 18; on October 21 the court granted most of his requests; and on October 24 he proposed Feng Guozhang and Duan Qirui as commanders of the First and Second Armies.⁠[14]

On October 27 the court made him imperial commissioner, with all the relief forces and the Yangzi naval squadron under his orders and free from remote control by the General Staff Council and the Ministry of War.⁠[14][12]

Zhu Wenliang concludes that his return in 1911 resulted mainly from the Qing court’s own decision and from the support and acquiescence of the factions of the imperial clan, and that the pressure exerted by the foreign powers was very limited.⁠[14]

On November 1, 1911, Yikuang and the other members of the cabinet resigned and the court appointed him prime minister of the cabinet; that day he was directing the army in Hubei from Xiaojiagang in Xiaogan.⁠[13][15]

On the twentieth day of the ninth lunar month he sent Liu Cheng’en and Cai Tinggan across the river as his personal representatives to discuss peace, and the next day they called on Li Yuanhong in Wuchang; after taking Hankou and Hanyang his army did not go on to attack Wuchang but proposed peace talks.⁠[15][12]

On November 8 the Political Advisory Council elected him prime minister under the constitutional articles; he reached Beijing on November 13 and formally took up the office after an audience the following day.⁠[13]

On November 22 he obtained approval to end the practice of daily audiences and from the next day worked at the cabinet offices; Ma Zhongwen regards that day as the point at which the responsible-cabinet system under his premiership took effect.⁠[13]

On December 6 the regent Zaifeng withdrew to his residence; the next day, after an audience in the Hall of Mental Cultivation, the empress dowager Longyu entrusted the whole conduct of affairs to him.⁠[13]

From December 3 to 6 he and Li Yuanhong observed a three-day truce, the first between the revolutionary forces and the Qing army in 1911; it was renewed five times and extended to January 29, 1912.⁠[15]

On December 7 the court named him plenipotentiary, and he appointed Tang Shaoyi as his delegate to the peace talks.⁠[13][15]

On the afternoon of December 18 the first session of the North–South peace conference was held at the town hall of the Shanghai International Settlement, with Wu Tingfang representing the South.⁠[15][11]

Britannica writes that the delegates agreed that the abdication of the Qing and his appointment to the presidency were to be formally decided by a National Assembly yet to be formed, an arrangement he renounced; on January 2, 1912, having charged Tang Shaoyi with exceeding his powers, he accepted Tang’s resignation as delegate and thereafter dealt with Wu Tingfang directly by telegraph.⁠[18][15][11]

Sun Yat-sen was elected provisional president on December 29, 1911, and took office on January 1, 1912; Sun Yat-sen telegraphed him a promise of the presidency if he agreed to a republic, and on January 14 gave a further assurance by telegram that he would be the first to be put forward once the Qing emperor had abdicated.⁠[11][12][19][15]

Xu Baoheng’s diary, as quoted in Ma Zhongwen’s article, records that on January 2, 1912 (the 14th day of the eleventh month of the xinhai year), he informed the empress dowager Longyu that Yikuang had put up 150,000 in silver; she replied that 150,000 would not go far and that he need have no scruples and should simply demand money of them. At the same audience he informed her that Tang Shaoyi had telegraphed his resignation as delegate.⁠[13]

On January 16, 1912, on his way back from court, he was attacked with bombs at Dingzi Street by the Donghua Gate; six of his guards and two civilians were killed, and he himself was unhurt.⁠[15]

On January 25 the empress dowager Longyu sent Zaifeng to the prime minister’s office to announce his creation as a marquis of the first class; the diary quoted by Ma Zhongwen records that he firmly declined, whereas Britannica states that he was made a marquess in the last days of the empire.⁠[13][1]

On February 2, 1912, the empress dowager Longyu received the ministers of state to discuss the terms of favorable treatment for the imperial house, and he then telegraphed the outcome to Wu Tingfang.⁠[13]

On February 12 the edict of abdication was issued, ending 268 years of Qing rule; Britannica writes that a passage in it purporting that he was to organize a republican government had been fabricated and inserted by him.⁠[13][18]

He at once sent a circular telegram to the country declaring that a republic was the best form of state.⁠[15]

Xu Baoheng’s diary records that on February 14, 1912 (the 27th day of the twelfth month of the xinhai year), he asked Xu Baoheng whether he understood what had happened and said that he was fifty-three and that it could not but grieve him to have come to such an end; Xu Baoheng answered that everything would now have to be put in order in earnest and swept clean, or the republic would be an empty name. He went on to say that the foreigners, too, were helping the other party and that, once the announcement had been made the day before, the loan was handed over.⁠[13]

Reckoned from his date of birth, September 16, 1859, he was 52 years old when he said this.⁠[1][13]

On February 13 Sun Yat-sen resigned before the provisional Senate in Nanjing and recommended him as successor; on February 15 the Senate elected him provisional president by all seventeen votes.⁠[15][11]

The Senate’s telegram called him the second Washington of the world and the first Washington of the Republic of China.⁠[15]

Soon after his election a mutiny broke out among the troops in Beijing. The traditional view is that he engineered it; Ma Zhongwen argues that this needs to be reconsidered, and that he seized the opportunity the incident offered more than he created it.⁠[13]

On March 6 the provisional Senate agreed that he might take office in Beijing; on March 10 he was sworn in there as provisional president and notified the Senate in Nanjing by telegram.⁠[11]

The Provisional Constitution was taken up on February 6, passed on March 8 and promulgated over Sun Yat-sen’s signature on March 11; he was not consulted while it was under deliberation.⁠[11]

Xu Baoheng’s diary, as quoted in Ma Zhongwen’s article, places the Beijing mutiny on February 29, 1912 (the 12th day of the first lunar month): that night Xu Baoheng took refuge with him in an underground chamber; Xu Baoheng advised him that the troops that had not mutinied ought not to be sent out lightly in the dark, and he accepted the advice and kept them in their barracks.⁠[13]

On taking office he faced an empty treasury, provinces in the hands of local warlords, an unfinished constitution and a National Assembly that he found too quarrelsome.⁠[1]

Tang Shaoyi became premier, with Song Jiaoren, Chen Qimei, Wang Chonghui and Cai Yuanpei entering the cabinet as ministers; Tang Shaoyi resigned within three months.⁠[15][12]

In July 1912 he appointed Zhou Xuexi minister of finance, with responsibility chiefly for foreign borrowing.⁠[6]

George Ernest Morrison gave him more and more direct support during the revolution and its aftermath and was appointed a presidential adviser in July 1912.⁠[20]

In August 1912, acting on a secret telegram from Li Yuanhong and without recourse to the courts, he had the military law office arrest and execute Zhang Zhenwu and Fang Wei.⁠[11]

From August 24 of that year Sun Yat-sen held talks with him in Beijing, in which Sun Yat-sen said that for the next ten years no one but he should be president.⁠[11]

In August 1912 Song Jiaoren founded the Kuomintang (Nationalist Party), an amalgamation of small political groups, which won a majority of the seats in the parliamentary elections of February 1913.⁠[21][18]

On March 20, 1913, Song Jiaoren, the main organizer of the Kuomintang’s electoral victory, was assassinated at a railway station in Shanghai.⁠[11][4][18]

Britannica’s history of China states that the evidence strongly implicated the premier and possibly Yuan Shikai himself, while the Library of CongressLibrary of CongressThe Library of Congress is the library of the United States Congress. Founded in 1800 and housed on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., it answers reference requests from Congress, the public and other federal agencies.Open the full entry country study and the article by James Carter state outright that he had Song Jiaoren assassinated.⁠[18][21][22]

Shan’s biography is reluctant to assert that he was directly involved in the killing; the review in the Asian Review of Books reproduces the book’s statement that recent studies indicate he was not involved and that the assassination did not meet his political needs. The reviewer, Jonathan Chatwin, writes in his own narrative that he would apparently engineer the assassination, and considers that exactly what role he played will probably never be known with certainty.⁠[4]

He issued a general order that the criminal case must await the judgment of the courts; the article by Yuan Weishi notes the traditional account that the premier, Zhao Bingjun, and others planned the killing, and gives as its own opinion that two lines crossed in the case and that two parties, whose interests coincided, were both behind it.⁠[11]

Xu Baoheng’s diary records that he moved his residence to Xiyuan (the Western Park) on April 6, 1913; the entry for April 11 notes that the Yiluan Hall had been renamed the Huairen Hall and that its main room was where he transacted business, and the entry for May 15 that he had moved to Fengzeyuan to work.⁠[13]

An article by Zhu Dongjun in the magazine Huanqiu Renwu in 2016 states that he established the presidential office in Zhongnanhai and that it was there that he spent his last days.⁠[23]

The first parliament opened in Beijing on April 8, 1913.⁠[11]

The contract for the Reorganization Loan was initialed on April 24 and formally signed on April 26; the loan totaled 25 million pounds sterling and was secured on the salt tax, the customs revenue and the central taxes of Zhili and three other provinces; the lender, originally a six-power banking consortium, had become a five-power consortium after the United States withdrew.⁠[11][12][3]

The biography on the BYU library website states that the loan was signed without the approval of the National Assembly; Britannica writes that the Kuomintang obstructed it in parliament, and its history of China gives the face value of the loan as 125 million dollars. Yuan Weishi, by contrast, holds that the loan was both necessary and entirely legal. On May 2 he sent a message to both houses explaining how it had been arranged.⁠[3][1][11][18]

After the loan was signed Zhou Xuexi resigned as minister of finance.⁠[6]

The biography on the BYU library website judges that the loan gave him the means to move against his opponents.⁠[3]

After the loan was concluded he dismissed three Nationalist military governors.⁠[18]

In the summer of 1913 seven southern provinces rose against him in what is known as the Second Revolution; his military followers quickly suppressed the rising, and Sun Yat-sen and other leaders fled to Japan.⁠[18][21][22]

On August 6, 8 and 16 he ordered the dissolution of the provincial assemblies of Jiangxi, Guangdong and Hunan in turn, and on August 27 he ordered the arrest of eight members of parliament.⁠[11]

In Britannica’s judgment his victory ended the hopes for parliamentary democracy.⁠[1]

On October 4, 1913, the constitutional conference passed and promulgated the Presidential Election Law; two days later parliament held the election while a crowd calling itself the Citizens’ Corps surrounded the building, and the members, under coercion, elected him president.⁠[11][18]

On October 10, the second anniversary of the Wuchang Uprising, he was inaugurated as the first formal president of the Republic of China and received the foreign envoys in Beijing.⁠[18][15][24]

By the time of his inauguration his government had been recognized by most foreign powers; the Library of Congress country study states that to achieve international recognition he had to agree to autonomy for Outer Mongolia and Tibet, with China remaining suzerain.⁠[18][21]

In 1913 the United States was among the first countries to establish full diplomatic relations with the Republic of China, and Britain, Japan and Russia followed.⁠[19]

Between August and November 1913 he addressed six messages and telegrams on the constitution to parliament and others; the draft constitution that passed its third reading in the constitution-drafting committee on October 31, however, made the cabinet responsible to the legislature.⁠[11][18]

On November 4 he denounced the draft in a circular telegram, ordered the Kuomintang dissolved and revoked the credentials of its members of parliament; 98 senators and 252 members of the lower house had their certificates withdrawn.⁠[11][21]

Lacking a quorum, the two houses could not meet and from November 14 issued no further order of business. In January 1914 he ordered all members of parliament to cease their functions and parliament was dissolved; Britannica dates the dissolution to January 10, the article by Yuan Weishi dates the order to January 14.⁠[11][18]

On February 28, 1914, he ordered the dissolution of the provincial assemblies.⁠[11]

After dissolving parliament he appointed another body to prepare a constitution to his own specifications and abolished the Provisional Constitution; the new constitution granted unlimited powers to the president.⁠[18][7][3]

On December 29, 1914, the Council of State passed the Revised Presidential Election Law; the account on the Academy of Chinese Studies website states that the president’s term was extended to ten years and made renewable by re-election, while Li Honggu’s article says that he thereby held the office for life.⁠[12][7]

The central government’s revenue was less than 30 million yuan in the whole of 1912; by 1915 revenue had risen to 130 million yuan.⁠[6]

Chan’s paper states that the Army Model Regiment was set up by him in 1914 and that, after holding the post of regimental commander himself for a time, he handed it to Yuan Keding.⁠[16]

In 1914 Japan, using its declaration of war on Germany as a pretext, occupied Qingdao.⁠[25]

In January 1915 Japan put the Twenty-one Demands to his government; Britannica gives the date as January 18.⁠[25][26]

The demands fell into five groups: Group 1 (four articles) confirmed Japan’s takeover of the German concessions in Shandong; Group 2 (seven) recognized Japanese privileges in southern Manchuria and eastern Inner Mongolia; Group 3 (two) provided for joint Sino-Japanese control of the Han-Ye-Ping Company; Group 4 (one) barred China from leasing or granting any further coastal or island concessions to foreign powers; and Group 5 (seven) required China to employ Japanese advisers on its political, financial and military affairs.⁠[25][26]

On May 7 Japan issued an ultimatum demanding a reply within 48 hours; on May 9 he accepted most of the terms, leaving Group 5 for later discussion.⁠[25][26]

On May 25 a series of Sino-Japanese agreements was signed.⁠[26][25]

Britannica writes that the European powers, engaged in World War I, could not oppose Japan, and that his forced acceptance greatly increased anti-Japanese feeling in China.⁠[26]

The account on the Academy of Chinese Studies website states that he accepted the demands in exchange for Japanese support; the biography on the BYU website suggests that this may have been linked to his wish to found a new imperial dynasty, for which he needed Japanese indifference, if not cooperation.⁠[7][3]

He engaged the American Frank Johnson Goodnow as his legal adviser; at his request Goodnow wrote a memorandum holding that in theory and in the abstract a monarchy was “better adapted to conditions in China,” while reserving any opinion on whether the existing system should be changed.⁠[7][27]

On August 14, 1915, the monarchist Chouanhui (Plan for Peace Association) was founded, with Yang Du as director and Sun Yuyun, Yan Fu, Liu Shipei, Li Xiehe and Hu Ying among its members.⁠[7]

On August 20 Liang Qichao published an article opposing a change in the form of state.⁠[7]

In a telegram of August 25 the American chargé d’affaires in Beijing, MacMurray, wrote that the question of re-establishing a monarchy had been widely discussed for some weeks, that the President had declined to intervene to restrain the activities of the so-called Peace Planning Society and had given publicity to Goodnow’s memorandum, and that extensive use was being made of Goodnow’s name in support of the propaganda.⁠[27]

On September 6 his message was conveyed to the Council of State, acting in the capacity of the Li Fa Yuan; it called the proposed change “unsuitable to the circumstances of the country,” said that a hasty decision would raise serious obstacles, and added that if the opinion of the majority of the people were consulted, good and proper means would be found.⁠[28]

By the summer of 1915 many in his cabinet were agitating to restore the monarchy, and officials such as Liang Shiyi financed and organized groups claiming to speak for rickshaw pullers, women, Confucians and even beggars who wanted him to become emperor.⁠[22]

Yuan Keding took an active part in the monarchical movement; the article by Yu Ge on the Yangtse Evening Post website states that Yuan Keding doctored copies of the newspaper Shuntian Shibao to mislead his father.⁠[29]

A National Representative Assembly was to gather one vote from every county, and from certain other groups, on the question of restoring the monarchy; James Carter writes that the voting, carefully controlled, began in October and that the results announced on December 11, 1915, showed all 1,993 votes in favor of his becoming emperor.⁠[22]

He at first declined and accepted after a second invitation; the Academy of Chinese Studies website dates his acceptance to December 12, James Carter’s article to December 13.⁠[22][7]

The state was renamed the Empire of China and 1916 was designated the first year of the Hongxian reign, which began on January 1, 1916.⁠[7][22]

On January 1, 1916, the officials bowed three times to him at the Huairen Hall.⁠[13]

He named Xu Shichang and three others the Four Friends of Mount Song; Xu Shichang, who thought the monarchy lacked popular support, withdrew first to Shandong and then to Henan.⁠[9]

James Carter writes that by the autumn of 1915 he was fitting himself for imperial robes.⁠[22]

An article by Xu Xiao carried by The Paper states that when Feng Guozhang, his closest confidant, came north to sound out whether he meant to take the throne, he flatly denied it; that at the congratulatory audience he wore only the uniform of a generalissimo; and that the New Imperial Household Regulations abolished eunuchs, palace maids and the kowtow for good.⁠[30]

Chan’s paper states that the fifth son, Yuan KequanYuan KequanYuan Kequan (1898–1941) was the fifth son of Yuan Shikai and a poet in the classical style; after his father’s death he lived in seclusion in Tianjin, and he left six collections of verse.Open the full entry, a steady man of few words who was much respected among his brothers, was favored by him and wore the dress of a crown prince as his eldest brother Yuan Keding and his second brother Yuan Kewen did; glossing a line of verse by Zhang Boju, the paper says that Yuan Keding, though his place as heir had not been settled, already liked people to kowtow to him and carried himself as crown prince.⁠[16]

A 2008 article in Huanqiu Renwu states that during the monarchy the fourth son, Yuan KeduanYuan KeduanYuan Keduan (died 1951) was the fourth son of Yuan Shikai; a skilled calligrapher, he was a counselor in the Dayuanshuai Fu (generalissimo’s headquarters) of Zhang Zuolin and a nominal director of the Kailuan Kuangwuju (Kailuan mining administration).Open the full entry, had a seal cut reading Fourth Imperial Son, likening himself to the Yongzheng emperor of the Qing; an article by Wang Zhenliang in the newspaper Cangshu Bao points out that the seal stamped in a book of Yuan Kewen’s now held by the National Library of China reads Shang di er zi (second son of the sovereign), not Huang er zi (second imperial son) as is commonly said.⁠[31][32]

A note by Zhang Boju quoted in Chan’s paper records that the copies of the Shuntian Shibao forged by Yuan Keding all described Japan as favoring the monarchy, and that when he discovered that the copies he had been reading were all forgeries printed by Yuan Keding he flew into a rage and ordered Yuan Keding to be beaten. The note explains that by the rule of the Yuan household an erring junior was beaten by another person at an elder’s order, but that no one dared really strike the heir apparent and the blows were only mimed. The historian Su Quanyou, writing in Beijing Daily, states instead that once the matter came out he summoned Yuan Keding, who knelt and begged for mercy, and took up a whip and beat him, cursing him as a wicked son who had deceived his father and ruined the country.⁠[16][33]

In November 1915 Cai E left Beijing with the help of Liang Qichao; on December 25 Cai E, at the head of the National Protection Army in Yunnan, took up arms against him.⁠[7]

Sun Yat-sen called for resistance and organized an army that occupied a handful of cities in Shandong.⁠[22]

Japan was the first to protest, and former supporters deserted him; Britannica writes that the opposition had Japan’s backing, that the European powers were occupied with World War I and that his former lieutenants were unwilling to fight for him.⁠[3][1]

Feng Guozhang and Duan Qirui urged him to resign.⁠[7]

During his reign as emperor Morrison grew increasingly disillusioned because of his frequent refusal to follow Morrison’s advice.⁠[20]

On March 22, 1916, he ordered the monarchy cancelled and returned the petition of enthronement to the Council of State; the next day he ordered the Hongxian reign title abolished.⁠[13]

Dissatisfied with the first draft of the order cancelling the monarchy, he had Zhang Yilin redraft it, and acknowledged to him that the fault was his own and that no one else could be blamed.⁠[29]

The Hongxian reign had lasted 83 days; the planned enthronement ceremony had first been postponed and was then cancelled.⁠[22][12][2]

He resumed his role as president and never resigned; about half a dozen southern provinces declared independence, and through the spring of 1916 he tried to negotiate a settlement with the military commanders of the southwest. The introduction on the State Library of New South Wales page, by contrast, states that he held the presidency from 1912 until he proclaimed himself the Hongxian Emperor in 1915 and that he abdicated in 1916 having reigned for only 83 days.⁠[22][3][20]

Zhu Dongjun’s article states that in late April 1916, as the weather grew warm, he was still wearing a padded gown, and that by the end of May he was very gravely ill, his face and hands swollen and livid.⁠[23]

The article states that what he had at first was only a bladder stone, which was not hard to treat, but that he distrusted Western medicine and refused an operation, so that the condition dragged on into uremia; the article quotes the record of a man it calls Simpson, long a Beijing correspondent of British newspapers and later engaged by Li Yuanhong as an adviser to the presidential office, who wrote that the surgeon of the French legation was in attendance throughout, almost to the end.⁠[23]

The article adds that he had a kind of expectation of death and had always said that for several generations no one in his family had lived past 60; Xu Xiao’s article likewise writes that he did not escape the spell under which no member of the Yuan family lived past 60.⁠[23][30]

The article relates that on June 5 he had Xu Shichang, Duan Qirui and others brought in and said that he was now gravely ill and could no longer read official papers himself, and that he hoped they would work together in carrying on the government and keeping order; the article adds that before his death he said to Xu Shichang, Duan Qirui and Liang Shiyi that he entrusted the affairs of state thenceforth to the three of them, charging them to work in harmony and support one another, and that he took out the seal of the president for Duan Qirui to pass on to Li Yuanhong.⁠[23]

Yu Ge’s article states that when his illness was at its worst Yuan Kewen complained to Yuan Keding that it was entirely his doing that their father had come to this.⁠[29]

He died of illness at 10 a.m. on June 6, 1916, aged 56.⁠[29][22][1][13]

Both the biography on the BYU website and the review in the Asian Review of Books give the cause of death as uremia.⁠[3][4]

At his bedside in his last hours were Xu Shichang, Wang Shizhen, Duan Qirui and Zhang Zhenfang; the article by Yu Ge relates that when Xu Shichang asked whether he had any instructions he managed to utter the two-character word for the constitution (yuefa).⁠[29][9]

His seventh son, Yuan KeqiYuan KeqiYuan Keqi was the seventh son of Yuan Shikai. In 1913 he and two of his elder brothers accompanied Yan Xiu on a journey to Europe and then attended Cheltenham College in England; he married the fifth daughter of Sun Baoqi, a foreign minister of the Republic of China, and left a recollection of his father’s last day.Open the full entry, recalled that on the day of his death he called Yuan Keding into the inner room and warned him not to be taken in by those few men again.⁠[29]

James Carter writes that his last act was to designate Li Yuanhong as his successor and that the provinces in revolt then pledged their loyalty to Li Yuanhong.⁠[22]

The National Protection War ended with his death.⁠[7]

James Carter gives his age at death as 56; Zhu Dongjun’s article, writing of him in 1916, calls him 57 at the time.⁠[22][23]

Xu Baoheng wrote in his diary for June 6 that at twelve o’clock he heard that he had died and that Li Yuanhong was being brought in to act in his place; the diary comments that he had cherished very large ambitions all his life and was bent on achievement and fame, that he was resolute and strong and had met his hour, and that in his five years at the head of the state, though his detractors were many, he was not to be matched by men of ordinary talent, and it notes that fortune-tellers had mostly said the year would be unlucky for him. Ma Zhongwen writes that over the following month Xu Baoheng went in several times through the Xinhua Gate to make offerings at the Huairen Hall and attended the regular offerings, the officials’ public memorial and the grand memorial rite punctually, until the funeral procession of June 28.⁠[13]

On the cause of death, Su Quanyou’s article and the record by Simpson quoted in Zhu Dongjun’s article also name uremia, the latter putting the time of death at a few minutes past ten in the morning; the Library of Congress country study states that he died of natural causes in June 1916, deserted by his lieutenants; Yuan Weishi’s article says that, abandoned by followers and kin alike, he died in dejection; and Chan’s paper says that he died of shame and anger.⁠[33][23][21][11][16]

On his last words, Yu Ge’s article states that the most widely circulated version has him say at the end that a certain person had ruined him, and that on some occasions this was changed into a complaint that Yang Du had led him astray; the article cites a line of verse by Zhang Ruiji lamenting him, the first half of which, it says, points to his eldest son Yuan Keding and the second half to his adviser Yang Du. The article holds that such versions are badly at odds with his repeated insistence in life that no one else was to blame, and that the version in which he spoke of the constitution is perhaps the more credible.⁠[29]

Su Quanyou’s article likewise has him say with difficulty at the end that someone had ruined him, and states that the Yuan family judged the person meant to be most probably Yuan Keding; it also mentions a deathbed complaint that Yang Du had led him astray. Xu Xiao’s article gives the last words in the same sense.⁠[33][30]

Yuan Keqi’s recollection, as quoted by Yu Ge, adds that on the day of his death, speaking to Yuan Keding in the inner room, their father first said that he had been wrong in this matter, and that he died half an hour later. Yu Ge’s article states that after his death Yuan Keding wept over the coffin; Su Quanyou’s article has Yuan Keding striking his head against the coffin before the bier and weeping aloud, crying out to his father that he had failed him.⁠[29][33]

Zhu Dongjun’s article quotes Zhang Ming as saying that under the Yuan constitutional compact he could designate his successor and that after his death the gold casket in the stone chamber in which he had placed the name of his successor was opened and the successor he had written down proved to be Li Yuanhong; Zhang Ming adds that some say he had originally meant to pass his position to his son and changed it to Li Yuanhong only because he had no choice, but that none of this can be verified.⁠[23]

The Beiyang government set up a funeral office near the Huairen Hall in Zhongnanhai, and the funeral procession took place on June 28.⁠[34][13]

In keeping with his wish, the Beiyang government buried him at Taipingzhuang, northeast of Huanshang village in Anyang county, Henan, and named the burial ground Yuan Gong Lin.⁠[34]

The Beiyang government allotted 500,000 silver dollars for the funeral and the burial, most of which went on buying the land, building the vault and moving the coffin; Tian Wenlie, the civil governor of Henan, together with Duan Qirui, Wang Shizhen, Duan Zhigui, Zhang Zhenfang and others, appealed to senior officials in the provinces and raised a further 250,000 silver dollars.⁠[34]

The construction of the tomb complex was put out to tender and won by the Xinglong timber works; work began in June 1916 and the main structures were finished on June 14, 1918; the construction report records an area of about 139 mu and an outlay of a little over 732,754 silver dollars.⁠[34]

The complex was modeled, on a somewhat smaller scale, on the Ming imperial tombs, while the burial mound followed the form of the tomb of the American president Ulysses S. GrantUlysses S. GrantUlysses S. Grant (1822–1885) was an American soldier and politician who commanded the Union armies in the final years of the Civil War (1864–1865) and served as the 18th president of the United States from 1869 to 1877.Open the full entry; the stele in the pavilion bears a nine-character inscription written by Xu Shichang that styles him President Yuan Shikai.⁠[34]

In 1952 Mao Zedong visited his mausoleum in Henan and declared that it should be preserved as a negative example for future generations.⁠[4]

Zhu Dongjun’s article states that his funeral was arranged by his former subordinates, who all agreed that it should be a state funeral conducted with the utmost generosity and grandeur; at the procession of June 28 the coffin was borne by 80 men and a salute of 108 guns was fired, and the coffin was taken from the Xinhua Gate of Zhongnanhai to the Qianmen railway station and thence by train to Anyang. The article also quotes the American minister to China, Paul S. Reinsch: when the Beiyang government held the public memorial ceremony half a month later, the coffin lay on a high platform in the hall (identified by the article as Juren Hall in Zhongnanhai) where he had received congratulations and envoys; on the day of the procession Reinsch saw that the onlookers standing behind the soldiers and police showed silent respect but no grief, and judged that he had not won the hearts of the people.⁠[23]

James Carter writes that his casket lay draped with the imperial robes he had never worn.⁠[22]

Ma Jinsheng’s article quotes his wish, expressed in his lifetime, that his coffin be taken back to his home region and that he be buried at Huanshang; Chan’s paper states that Yuan Kequan, with his brothers, escorted their father’s coffin to Huanshang for burial.⁠[34][16]

Chan’s paper states that Yuan Keding at first wished to call his father’s burial ground Yuanling (the Yuan Mausoleum), that Xu Shichang, whom the paper styles president, objected, and that Xu Shichang proposed the name Yuan Gong Lin, Yuanlin for short. Ma Jinsheng’s article notes that a place was reserved in the burial ground for his wife to be interred beside him. Ma Jinsheng’s article, by contrast, states that it was the Beiyang government that decided to bury him at Taipingzhuang, in the north-east corner of Huanshang Village, and named the burial ground Yuangonglin.⁠[16][34]

He formally married one wife and nine concubines and had 17 sons, 15 daughters, 22 grandsons and 25 granddaughters.⁠[31][35]

Three of the nine concubines were Korean; one of them, née Wu, was the mother of his fourth son, Yuan Keduan.⁠[31]

Next after Yuan Keding came his second son, Yuan Kewen; other sons whose place in the family is given in the sources are the fourth, Yuan Keduan, the seventh, Yuan Keqi, and the tenth, Yuan KejianYuan KejianYuan Kejian was the tenth son of Yuan Shikai. He went to the United States to study in 1920; his second son, Yuan Jiacheng, says that he studied at Harvard University and, after returning to China, worked only briefly as an English-language secretary and thereafter lived on the family property. His wife, Lu Yuxiu, was a daughter of Lu Jianzhang, a former military governor of Shaanxi.Open the full entry.⁠[12][31][29][35][36]

A 2019 paper by Nicholas L. Chan records that in 1913 the fifth son, Yuan Kequan, with his sixth brother Yuan KehuanYuan KehuanYuan Kehuan was the sixth son of Yuan Shikai; he went to Europe in 1913 and attended Cheltenham College in England. His son-in-law Bai Junhe says in an oral account that he entered industry in North China in 1926, served as assistant manager and then general manager of Qixin Yanghui Gongsi (the Qixin cement company), and died in 1956.Open the full entry and his seventh brother Yuan Keqi, accompanied Yan Xiu on a journey to Europe, and that the three then attended Cheltenham College in England; in 1920 Yuan Kequan’s ninth brother Yuan KejiuYuan KejiuYuan Kejiu was the ninth son of Yuan Shikai; Phillips Academy’s record gives his year of birth as 1905 and Wang Birong’s book as 1903. Wang Birong writes that in 1914 his father betrothed him to Li Shaofang, the second daughter of Li Yuanhong, and that they married in 1934. He went to the United States to study in 1920 and attended Phillips Academy from 1921 to 1924; Bai Junhe, the husband of one of his nieces, says that after returning to China he served continuously as a director of Qixin Yanghui Gongsi (the Qixin cement company).Open the full entry, tenth brother Yuan Kejian, eleventh brother Yuan Ke’anYuan Ke’anYuan Ke’an was the eleventh son of Yuan Shikai; he went to the United States to study in 1920 and attended Phillips Academy from 1921 to 1924, whose student record gives his year of birth as 1906 and lists a later career in civil aviation in Taiwan and service as secretary to Claire Lee Chennault.Open the full entry and twelfth brother Yuan KeduYuan KeduYuan Kedu was the twelfth son of Yuan Shikai, born in 1907. In 1920 he went to the United States to study together with several of his elder brothers and a nephew; he attended Williston Junior and then Phillips Academy, which he left in 1925 without completing the course.Open the full entry went to the United States to study, together with Yuan Jiarong, the son of Yuan Keding.⁠[16]

After his death his cash was divided into 17 shares of 120,000 silver dollars, one for each son; each of the 15 daughters received 8,000 silver dollars as a dowry.⁠[31]

Almost all of his children married descendants of Qing princes and warlords: a son of Cao Kun married one of his daughters and a daughter of Li Yuanhong married one of his sons; his family and that of Zhou Fu also later became linked by marriage.⁠[31][6]

The physicist Luke Chia-Liu YuanLuke Chia-Liu YuanLuke Chia-Liu Yuan (1912–2003) was a Chinese-born American experimental physicist and the husband of the physicist Chien-Shiung Wu; he worked mainly at Brookhaven National Laboratory, where he was a senior physicist. He was elected an academician of Academia Sinica in 1959 and chaired the steering committee of Taiwan’s Synchrotron Radiation Research Center from 1983 to 2002.Open the full entry was a son of Yuan Kewen and a grandson of Yuan Shikai, and the husband of the physicist Chien-Shiung WuChien-Shiung WuChien-Shiung Wu (1912–1997) was a Chinese-born American experimental physicist who spent most of her career at Columbia University and worked on the Manhattan Project. Her cobalt-60 beta-decay experiment of 1956–1957, carried out with collaborators, provided the first experimental proof that parity is not conserved in weak interactions.Open the full entry.⁠[37][36][31]

Before Luke Chia-Liu Yuan returned to China in 1973, Zhou Enlai instructed the authorities in Tianjin to settle within three days the treatment of Yuan Shikai’s descendants living in that city.⁠[35]

Shan’s biography draws on a 36-volume Chinese-language edition of his complete works, which contains thousands of official documents and personal letters.⁠[4]

Records relating to him can be consulted through JACAR, among them the Korean government’s request for Qing troops, the ratification of the Sino-Japanese Treaty on Manchuria, and a file in the Diplomatic Archives of Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs entitled “Yuan Shikai’s plan for the Imperial System (secret) Vol. 1.”⁠[2]

In the Morrison collection of the State Library of New South Wales the material relating to him includes diaries for 1899–1915 and subject files for 1905–1916.⁠[20]

The Historical Photographs of China project of the University of BristolUniversity of BristolThe University of Bristol is a research university in Bristol, England, United Kingdom. It began as University College, Bristol, which opened in 1876, became a university under a royal charter in 1909 and is a member of the Russell Group.Open the full entry holds a photograph of him receiving the foreign envoys on October 10, 1913, and another, dated to about 1915, entitled “Yuan Shikai, the Hongxian Emperor.”⁠[24][38]

The construction of his tomb is documented in a report on the works published in the Republican period, a copy of which is held in the rare books department of the National Library of China.⁠[34]

The biography on the BYU website sums up that he has not been well treated by either foreign or Chinese historians, though foreign historians were not as vituperative as the Chinese; he is usually portrayed as an unscrupulous political operator, yet he was a capable administrator and his leadership was seen as the only alternative to chaos.⁠[3]

James Carter writes that both Nationalist and Communist historiography reviled him as the betrayer of the revolution; the review in the Asian Review of Books refers to the long-held view of him as a stereotypical historical villain, in Chinese a fanmian lishi renwu.⁠[22][4]

James Carter writes that he was a genuinely popular figure, compared to George WashingtonGeorge WashingtonGeorge Washington (1732–1799) was the first president of the United States, serving from 1789 to 1797. Earlier he commanded the Continental Army in the American Revolutionary War and presided over the Constitutional Convention of 1787.Open the full entry for his part in founding the republic; UBC Press’s description of Shan’s book says that he has been both hailed as China’s George Washington and condemned as a counter-revolutionary, and that much Chinese historiography portrays him as a traitor, a usurper and a villain.⁠[22][39]

Shan’s Yuan Shikai: A Reappraisal was published by UBC Press in September 2018, and the review in the Asian Review of Books calls it the first English-language biography of Yuan Shikai since 1961; the review says that the book portrays him as a conservative reformer keen to see the Qing reshape itself so as to safeguard its survival, finds his ultimate undoing in historiographical terms in his ill-advised resurrection of imperial rule, and presents him as a figure who represents the incomplete transformation of early twentieth-century China.⁠[4][39]

Among the reviews quoted by UBC Press, Qiang Fang calls the book a “powerful and mostly convincing reappraisal of Yuan,” and Huaiyin Li calls it “the most detailed and refreshing account of Yuan Shikai ever published.”⁠[39]

James Carter holds that there is a consensus that the restoration of the monarchy was a disaster, but that it is perhaps too easy to blame his seizure of power alone for the failure of the first republic.⁠[22]

The early Republican journalist Huang Yuanyong credited him with five strengths, namely composure, rich experience, breadth of vision, vigor and readiness to promote talent, but judged that, for want of modern knowledge and of morality, the good he did grew less and the harm greater by the day.⁠[12]

Yuan Weishi argues that the first cause of the failure of constitutional government in the early Republic was faulty institutional design; his article, whose title speaks of two poles jointly destroying that government, says that Yuan Shikai showed the true colors of an autocrat while the Kuomintang and China’s elite displayed the infantile disorder of idealists.⁠[11]

Ma Jinsheng, who has studied his tomb, considers that he remained in the main a political figure of the traditional type and that the tomb is a microcosm of China’s passage from traditional monarchy to modern politics.⁠[34]

After his death China entered a period of fragmented warlord rule.⁠[20][22]

Bai Junhe, the husband of one of his granddaughters, says in an oral account that his principal wife was Lady Yu and that he took nine concubines besides; Zhang Boju’s note likewise calls Lady Yu his principal wife. The abstract of a 2019 study of his polygamous household by Patrick Fuliang Shan states that he married ten women and fathered thirty-two children.⁠[40][41][16][42]

Bai Junhe says that the first concubine was Lady Shen, that the second, third and fourth were Korean princesses and noblewomen, and that, although some history books place the home of the fifth consort, Lady Yang, at Yangliuqing in Tianjin, to his knowledge she came from Yixingfu in Tianjin; he adds that Yuan Shikai put Lady Yang in charge of coordinating and managing the sixth, seventh, eighth and ninth consorts who came after her.⁠[40][41]

The 2008 Huanqiu Renwu article, an interview feature on his granddaughter Yuan Jiati, gives a different account of the three Korean concubines: Lady Jin, a younger sister of the Korean queen, came expecting to be the principal wife and was instead taken as a concubine together with the two maids who had accompanied her as part of her dowry, one of whom was Lady Wu, Yuan Jiati’s grandmother.⁠[31]

The article states that he liked women with bound feet and that these three Koreans were the only ones among his wife and concubines whose feet were unbound, so that they had to imitate the stilted shoes worn by actors of female roles in Peking opera in order to give the appearance of bound feet; that, unable to speak the language and ignorant of Chinese etiquette, they suffered every humiliation and torment in the Yuan household; and that the principal wife, when he was away from home, regularly beat and scolded them and even ill-treated them. It adds that Lady Wu died while he was governor-general of Zhili and that the other two gave up the stilted shoes only when he died, by which time they could hardly walk.⁠[31]

The sources do not agree in every particular about the Korean concubines and the sons they bore: Wang Zhenliang’s article states that Yuan Kewen was born in Seoul in 1890, that his birth mother, Jin Yuexian, was Korean, and that he was brought up by Lady Shen, whom the article calls his principal mother; Chan’s paper states that the fifth son, Yuan Kequan, was born to the second concubine, Lady Wu, a Korean; and the Huanqiu Renwu article calls Lady Wu, the mother of the fourth son, Yuan Keduan, the fourth concubine.⁠[32][16][31]

Bai Junhe says that Lady Yang bore four sons, who by his reckoning of Yuan Shikai’s fifteen sons in all were the sixth, Yuan Kehuan, the eighth, Yuan KezhenYuan KezhenYuan Kezhen was the eighth son of Yuan Shikai. His wife, Zhou Ruizhu, was a daughter of Zhou Fu, who served as governor and governor-general of several provinces in the last years of the Qing dynasty. Bai Junhe, the husband of one of his nieces, says in an oral account that his mother was Lady Yang, Yuan Shikai’s fifth consort, that he helped his sixth brother, Yuan Kehuan, in industry, and that he died relatively early.Open the full entry, the ninth, Yuan Kejiu, and the eleventh, Yuan Ke’an; the account writes the ninth son’s given name with a different final character from the one used in Chan’s paper. Lady Yang had the four sent to school in England and the United States while very young; Bai Junhe adds that, as he had heard it, before her death she left word that Yuan Shikai had gone to the very top in politics, becoming president of the Republic and then emperor, and had found it lonely and very hard there, and so enjoined her sons not to follow the path of politics again but to build up their own industrial undertakings.⁠[40][41]

Zhang Boju relates in his notes that after his death Lady Yu lived at Huanshang village in Zhangde; one year, on her birthday, Zhang Boju rode there with his fourth to eighth sons to offer congratulations, was received in the rear hall with the courtesies used within the family, and found the household simple and countrified in its ways. When the talk on the way turned to which historical figure he resembled, Yuan Keduan named Cao Cao and Wang Mang, Yuan Kequan said he could be compared to Huan Wen, and the company settled on that.⁠[16]

The Huanqiu Renwu article states that there was formerly a compound of six large buildings at Dayingmen in Tianjin, in which most of his concubines and their descendants lived together before 1949; Wang Zhenliang’s article calls it the Yuan family mansion at Dayingmen and says that nothing of it now remains.⁠[31][32]

Chan’s paper states that he never spared expense on the education of his 17 sons and 15 daughters and that the Yuan household kept its young under strict discipline; Wang Zhenliang’s article states that in 1902 (the 28th year of the Guangxu reign), when the seat of the governor-general of Zhili moved to Tianjin, he engaged Yan Xiu, Fang Dishan, Dong Bingu and others to teach his sons. Of the sons’ accomplishments the paper says that the eldest, Yuan Keding, was widely learned, proficient in German, English and Latin, and skilled in calligraphy and painting; that the second, Yuan Kewen, excelled in poetry, calligraphy, painting, antiques and book collecting; and that the sixth, Yuan Kehuan, the fourth, Yuan Keduan, and the thirteenth, Yuan Kexiang, among others, were skilled calligraphers.⁠[16][32]

The Huanqiu Renwu article sets out the household rules as Yuan Jiati describes them: the younger generation had to pay their respects to him every day, in an exchange of questions and answers that hardly varied, and anyone who angered him might be beaten with a whip or a stick; now and then he had the sons who came to pay their respects stay to eat with him, and the story goes that once, when Yuan Kewen had already eaten his fill, he handed him a hot steamed bun, which Yuan Kewen, not daring to refuse, slipped into his sleeve, where it scalded off a layer of skin.⁠[31]

The article states that he was strict with his sons but comparatively indulgent with his daughters, and that the boys of the family all had pet names while he allowed none for the girls. Yuan Jiati says that her grandfather regarded daughters as belonging to other families and as his means of forming alliances by marriage; that the marriages of the Yuan children were all arranged; and that the marriage of her fourteenth aunt to a son of Cao Kun and that of a daughter of Li Yuanhong to her ninth uncle were brought about by her grandfather, as was that of her own parents.⁠[31]

Chan’s paper records that Yuan Kequan’s wife, Tao Yong, was a daughter of the late-Qing high official Duanfang and brought a composite (baina) edition of the Shiji as part of her dowry; Yuan Kequan’s granddaughter Yuan Xin says that her grandfather was married, by Yuan Shikai’s arrangement, soon after his return to China, in about 1914.⁠[16]

Wang Zhenliang’s article states that Yuan Kewen’s wife, Liu Meizhen, was a daughter of Liu Shangwen, an expectant circuit intendant at Tianjin; the Huanqiu Renwu article states that Yuan Keduan’s wife was a daughter of He Zhongjin, a great salt merchant of Tianjin.⁠[32][31]

Three of his sons appear in the student records of Phillips Academy; in each the father is entered as Yuan Shi Kai, president of China from 1912 to 1916, the guardian as Professor Everett Skillings of Middlebury, VermontVermontVermont is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States; its capital is Montpelier and its largest city is Burlington. It joined the Union on March 4, 1791, as the 14th state, and its population in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) was 643,077.Open the full entry, and the student as having left with his course incomplete. Yuan Kejiu, entered as William Ke Chiu Yuan and with a Chinese name whose final character differs from the one used in Chan’s paper, was born on February 10, 1905, and attended from September 13, 1921, to June 13, 1924, in the class of 1925; Yuan Ke’an, entered as Henry Ke An Yuan, was born on January 15, 1906, and attended over the same dates in the same class; Yuan Kedu, entered as Thomas Ke Tu Yuan, was born on May 1, 1907, had previously attended Williston Junior, and attended from September 16, 1924, to June 12, 1925, in the class of 1928.⁠[43][44][45]

Of what became of several of the sons, the Huanqiu Renwu article states that Yuan Keduan graduated from Xinhua Shuyuan (the Xinhua academy) in Tianjin, was a counselor in Zhang Zuolin’s generalissimo’s headquarters and afterwards a nominal director of the Kailuan mining administration drawing 300 silver dollars a month, and died in 1951; the article says that he acquired from childhood a habit of feasting and free spending, that he and his wife were both addicted to opium, and that when his father died in 1916 he went overnight from Fourth Imperial Son to ordinary commoner. Bai Junhe says that among the fifteen sons the eldest, Yuan Keding, was very active in politics and the second, Yuan Kewen, was known in literature and the theater; that Yuan Kehuan went into industry and died in 1956, that Yuan Kezhen died fairly young, that Yuan Kejiu was for many years a director of the Qixin cement company, and that Yuan Ke’an was secretary-general of the Kailuan mining administration and later went to Taiwan; the Phillips Academy record enters the career of Yuan Ke’an as civil air transportation in Formosa and the aircraft industry, and as secretary to Claire Lee ChennaultClaire ChennaultClaire Chennault (1890–1958) was an American military aviator and Army Air Forces general. An adviser to the Chinese air force from 1937, he organized the American Volunteer Group, known as the Flying Tigers, in 1941 and commanded the U.S. Fourteenth Air Force from 1943 to 1945.Open the full entry.⁠[31][40][41][44]

An article by Zhang Xiong carried in the digest Renmin Wenzhai in 2011 states that the tenth son, Yuan Kejian, came home at 21 from study at Harvard UniversityHarvard UniversityHarvard University is a private research university in Massachusetts, established by the Massachusetts Bay Colony legislature in 1636 and named in 1639 for early benefactor John Harvard. Its principal campuses are in Cambridge and the Allston and Longwood neighborhoods of Boston. It includes Harvard College, graduate and professional schools, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Two governing boards share oversight. Alan M. Garber was president as of October 2026, and the endowment stood at $56.9 billion at the end of fiscal 2025.Open the full entry in the United States and, apart from a spell as English secretary at the Hebei–Chahar Political Council, never held a job in his life; it describes Yuan Kewen as a man of letters and refinement with many wives and concubines who led a dissolute and unconventional life and was counted among the Four Young Masters of the Republic; and it says that the 32 children of the ten branches he left behind lived free of want, off the family property, all their lives.⁠[35]

Bai Junhe says that his fourteenth daughter died of illness in New York in 2005, the last of his children to die.⁠[40]

Wang Zhenliang’s article lists the four sons of Yuan Kewen: the eldest, Yuan Jiagu, whose wife, Fang Chuguan, was Fang Dishan’s daughter; the second, Yuan Jiazhang, whose wife, Lü Shizhu, was the daughter of Lü Haihuan, a founder of the Red Cross Society of China; the third, Luke Chia-Liu Yuan; and the fourth, Yuan Jiaji, who served in his early years as a junior officer in the Nationalist navy and after 1949 was a member of the Tianjin municipal committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference.⁠[32]

Zhang Xiong’s article calls Luke Chia-Liu Yuan the best-known member of his generation of the family and relates that when Zhou Enlai received him in 1973 he remarked that in the Yuan family his grandfather, Yuan Shikai, was a statesman, his father, Yuan Kewen, a man of letters, and he himself a physicist; the article also writes of Yuan Jiacheng, the son of Yuan Kejian, and of Yuan Jiaji, the son of Yuan Kewen.⁠[35]

Yuan Jiati, the daughter of Yuan Keduan, was born in 1924 in the compound at Dayingmen in Tianjin; the 2008 Huanqiu Renwu article, whose title describes her as still hard at work at 84, presents her as the proprietor of a Western-style restaurant named Suyishi.⁠[31]

Bai Junhe says that Yuan Kehuan’s wife, Chen Zheng, was the only daughter of Chen Qitai, a late-Qing governor of Jiangsu, and that the couple had seven children, five daughters and two sons; that the elder son, Yuan Jiachen, studied chemistry at Yenching University and then read economics at the graduate school of New York UniversityNew York UniversityNew York University is a private university in New York City, founded in 1831, and one of the largest private universities in the United States.Open the full entry, returned to China in about 1950 and thereafter taught for many years in secondary schools; and that Bai Junhe’s own wife, Yuan Jiaxin, was Yuan Kehuan’s youngest daughter. He adds that in 1973, on their first return to China, Luke Chia-Liu Yuan and Chien-Shiung Wu, visiting relatives in Tianjin, made a point of calling on Chen Zheng.⁠[41][40]

Chan’s paper states that he is said to have liked people with a hearty appetite, holding that a man who could eat could work, and to have set the example himself; a note by Zhang Boju quoted in the paper says that he was fond of fish.⁠[16]

Xu Baoheng’s diary, as quoted in Ma Zhongwen’s article, preserves a few glimpses of his working day: on November 23, 1911, he arrived at the cabinet office at seven in the morning and dealt with business, and three edicts were drafted that day; on December 2 Xu Baoheng went into the palace with him at half past nine and returned to the office at eleven; on December 7 his audience in the palace lasted more than an hour. When Xu Baoheng asked to be released on July 1, 1912, he wrote in reply that Xu Baoheng should make the effort to carry on; when Xu Baoheng raised the matter again on July 5, he once more urged patience.⁠[13]

Ma Zhongwen’s article also mentions that Xu Baoheng read the family letters of his uncle Yuan Baoling, which contain words of admonition to him: be loyal and sincere in handling affairs and do not rely on stratagems; be modest and gentle in dealing with people and do not show elation.⁠[13]

Chan’s paper calls Zhang Boju (1898–1982) the son of a cousin of his, and states that Zhang Boju’s father, Zhang Zhenfang, rose to high office precisely through his kinship with him.⁠[16]