The Cambridge History of China. Vol. 12: Republican China, 1912-1949, Part 1
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THE SECOND REVOLUTION 233
first to go. Then Yuan ordered in succession the removal of the KMT
military governors of Kwangtung and Anhwei. And on 8 July northern
troops, dispatched from their camps nearby in Hupei, began to occupy
stretches of Kiangsi along the Yangtze. Li Lieh-chiin, who like the others
had overtly accepted his dismissal for tactical reasons, returned to Kiangsi
at about the same time to rally the troops. On 12 July 1913, Kiangsi for-
mally declared itself independent of Peking, and the provincial assembly
selected Li Lieh-chiin to command a campaign to punish Yuan Shih-k'ai
for his misdeeds.
The spring planning of the revolutionary leaders was then implemented.
Nanking was seized for the anti-Yuan cause by revolutionary army
officers, despite an unwilling military governor, Ch'eng Te-ch'iian, who
departed. Huang Hsing came from Shanghai to lead. A brief sortie up the
Tientsin-Pukow railway into Shantung took the war to Yuan's territory.
And in Shanghai five intense assaults on the city's large arsenal were
almost successful in overwhelming the defending garrison of northern
troops, and would probably have taken this strategic point if the Chinese
navy in Shanghai had not sided with Peking.
Varying degrees of favourable response to the rising came from a few
other provinces, especially Hunan and Kwangtung. But the dispersion of
Yuan's enemies highlighted the concentrated power of Yuan's own forces.
The issue was decided in Kiangsi, Nanking and Shanghai, with no signi-
ficant military contribution to the revolution from elsewhere. In a few
weeks the anti-Yuan movement had collapsed. The leaders escaped,
mostly to Japan.
Three years later, when Yuan seemed to control so much of China, he
proved incapable of suppressing a movement against him. But in 1913
from a much more limited base he prevailed easily over his challengers.
Yuan had in the Second Revolution two advantages that he subsequently
lost: considerable support at home for his political stand and foreign
help.
Yuan's domestic advantages over his opponents in 1913 were several.
Even though his power did not then extend to much of the country, he
emerged from the first year of the republic with a firm grip on the Peking
bureaucracy, both civil and military. And this bureaucratic group in
Peking was not the dispirited lot of later warlord years. A sense of mission
lent cohesion to Yuan's political machine: to bring effective administrative
unity to the country, a goal that seemed both possible and desirable.
On this point Yuan was publicly and privately emphatic. Shortly after
fighting began in July 1913 he declared that the self-made military gov-
ernors, whom the 1911 Revolution left in charge of civil and military
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
234 THE ERA OF YUAN SHIH-K'AI, I 9 I 2-1 6
matters, 'customarily disregarded
the
[higher] authorities.
How
were
they
to
be
held responsible
for
their performance? Later
the
division
of
[civil
and
military] administration
was
repeatedly planned,
and
civil
affairs were
to be
placed under
a
separate
top
[provincial] post.
But
when
the order
of
appointment
was
promulgated
in the
morning,
the
telegram
of rejection
was
reported
in the
evening.'
The
first order
of
business
was
'to restore
the
legal framework
of
governmental orders
and
build
the
prestige
of
the
nation.'
2
'
As
John Jordan, British minister, reported after
a long conversation with
the
president
in
early June, 'Yuan
was
deter-
mined
at all
costs
to
secure
the
unification
of
the
provinces under
the
Central Government.
.
.\
JO
The
achievement
of
this goal would serve
the interests
of
Yuan
and
his regime;
but
Yuan could
and did
persuasively
argue that
a
loose federation left China weak
and
defenceless.
The attractiveness
of
this position reached beyond Yuan's entourage
and helped isolate
the
radicals.
The
major non-KMT parties supported
a
policy
of
centralization.
The
minority
of
military governors
who
were
not natives
of
the
provinces they ruled
had
some interest
in
allies
at
the
national level
and
hence might find common cause with Yuan
as he bat-
tled against extreme versions
of
provincial autonomy. Ts'ai
O,
Hunanese
military governor
of
Yunnan, seems
to
have been
a
case. Less than three
years later Ts'ai would lead
a
successful assault
on
Yuan's regime.
In
1913,
however, espousing
a
centralized national administration,
he
co-
operated with Yuan against
the
revolutionaries.'
1
Military governors
who
were
not
of
the KMT but
presided over provinces where pro-KMT
sen-
timent
was
considerable might
at
first also welcome Yuan's interventions.
Examples include
Li
Yuan-hung
in
Hupei
and Hu
Ching-i
in
Szechwan.
Only later, when
it
was too
late,
did
they learn that Yuan's distaste
for provincial autonomy would also sweep them
out of
power.
Meanwhile,
the
anti-Yuan movement
was not
adept
at
forging
a
broad
coalition.
The
KMT
itself
was
divided
on the
issue
of
provincial
au-
tonomy.
The
revolutionaries
of
1913, though making
use
of
accumula-
tions
of
autonomous provincial power,
did not,
in
contrast with Sung
Chiao-jen's electoral campaign
of the
previous winter, clearly present
themselves
as
defenders
of
provincial rights
and
local self-government.
The assassination
of
Sung
and
Yuan's treatment
of the
parliament
in
Peking were
by
themselves remote issues
for
many whose preoccupations
29 Pai Chiao, Yuan Shih-k'aiyii
Chung-hua min-kuo
(Yuan Shih-k'ai and the Republic
of
China),
reprinted
in
Shen Yun-lung, ed. Yuan Shih-k'ai
shih-liao
hui-k'an
hsu-pien
(Supplement
to
the serial publication
of
historical materials
on
Yuan Shih-k'ai), 68-9.
30 John Jordan, Peking (5 June 1913),
FO
228/1852.
31 Hsieh Pen-shu, 'Lun Ts'ai
O'
(On Ts'ai O), Li-shih
yen-chiu
(Nov. 1979),
47-61;
Donald
S. Sutton,
Provincial militarism and
the
Chinese
Republic:
the
Yunnan
Army, rfoj-if27,
141-61.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
THE SECOND REVOLUTION 235
were provincial and local. The impression of observers at the time was
that the risings of 1913 did not win over the gentry and merchant elites.
And massive popular mobilization was not attempted.
In addition to considerable domestic backing for his political stand
against the leaders of the Second Revolution, Yuan enjoyed a second
advantage: foreign support. The attention of the foreign powers was
a mixed blessing, since it came with many strings attached. But Yuan's
needs of the moment were served by a belief widely held among the
powers that he could best preserve a Chinese order favourable to their
interests. This conviction meant that Yuan could unconstitutionally
contract the Reorganization Loan, in defiance of the national assembly.
And the proceeds of the Reorganization Loan, while they lasted, gave
Yuan an important edge over his opponents. He could purchase support,
not only of defecting KMT members of the national assembly, but also
of autonomous military commanders, like Chang Hsun in Shantung,
who was also wooed, unsuccessfully, by Yuan's opponents. Further, with
these funds Yuan's own forces were assured of solvency, a condition good
for morale. The monetary and political price of the loan ran high, but
the advantage of having lots of cash on the eve of a military campaign
was ample compensation. One might fairly say that the consortium banks
financed Yuan's victory over the KMT leaders.
The British belief that a unified and centralized China played to British
strength in trade and could best protect foreigners and their interests in
China was an old one. It was still held after the 1911 Revolution. Hence,
the British diplomats and bankers in China, as well as the Foreign Office,
were particularly keen in their support of Yuan, who was well-known to
them. During the Second Revolution the bounds of neutrality and non-
interference were frequently breached. Most dramatically, the British
arranged to channel Reorganization Loan funds directly to Chinese naval
vessels at Shanghai, to secure their adherence to Peking.'
2
The remittance
was timely. The following day a revolutionary attack on the Shanghai
arsenal was frustrated by the guns of Chinese warships.
The revolutionaries in 1913 also had foreign friends. In the spring Sun
Yat-sen and others among the conspirators had approached Japanese
officials for support." But the Japanese government was not yet ready to
depart overtly from its cooperation with Britain in China, and no major
assistance was provided the revolutionaries. Small amounts of money
32 Beilby Alston, charge d'affaires, Peking, two telegrams (20 July 1913), FO 228/2498.
Telegram from the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, Peking, to the Group
Banks at Shanghai (21 July 1913), enclosed in R. C. Allen, Peking, to Alston (21 July 1913),
FO 228/2498.
33 Nihongaiko
bunsho,
1913, 2.340-41, 352.
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236 THE ERA OF
YUAN
SHIH-K'AI,
I 9
I
2-1 6
probably reached them, and a handful of Japanese military advisers
graced the rebel camps. Most usefully, the Japanese navy in China escorted
many of the failed leaders to safety and eventual sanctuary in Japan. But
this half-hearted Japanese assistance in no way matched what Yuan was
getting - even from the Japanese, insofar as Japan participated in the Re-
organization Loan.
Yuan's victory over the Second Revolution resolved some of the
ambiguities of the first, 1911 Revolution. Revolutionary contribution to
the overthrow of the Ch'ing dynasty would no longer serve as a cre-
dential for high office, although it was not by itself a disqualifying one.
On the matter of the organization of national unity, the federalism of the
first year and a half of the republic was to give way to a centralized admin-
istration. The curious conjunction of increased political participation
and maintenance of the social hierarchy, which characterized the imme-
diate aftermath of the 1911 Revolution and had produced the KMT
electoral victory of 1913, was to be replaced by a polity conservative
botk
socially
and
politically.
Two further, less obvious points about this turning-point should be
made. First, the liberal style and the liberal institutions of the first two
years of the republic failed to survive, but for rather particular reasons.
Perhaps constitutionalism and representative, electoral forms of govern-
ment would have eventually fallen of themselves, out of some incompa-
tibility with Chinese preferences and political habits. But that is not what
happened in 1913. Liberal politics were struck down with military force.
The failure was in an inability to recognize the danger and mobilize the
necessary defence. Although the conditions of 1912 and 1913 proved
difficult to recapture, the
idea
of reviving the forms understandably lived
on. The experiment had not been played out to its conclusion (whatever
that might have been) but had been forcefully and prematurely terminated.
Second, the conservatism of the next few years was, in the main, not a
reversion to 'traditional China' or to old views of Confucian politics.
The nationalist definition of the aims of politics, which had been for-
mulated in the 1890s and refined in the next decade, was still accepted.
Yuan Shih-k'ai in his new role as dictator was still part of the modernizing
movement that sought to fulfil nationalist aspirations. He and his suppor-
ters had reacted against what they saw as the extremes of political par-
ticipation, self-government and liberal social attitudes. The proposition
that China must change to survive was not rejected. Rather, Yuan thought
he had a better idea of how to go about the necessary changes. China was
to undergo another round of experimentation.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
THE DICTATORSHIP 237
THE DICTATORSHIP
Yuan Shih-k'ai is remembered among Chinese for his treachery towards
the reformers in 1898, towards the Ch'ing court in the 1911 Revolution,
and towards the republic after becoming its president. The repeated
opportunity to betray was provided, in this view, by control over strong
military forces, known collectively as the Peiyang Army, and by skill at
devious manipulation of
people.
He lied, cheated, manoeuvred, and mur-
dered his way to predominance. In this quest for personal power, he
represented the most reactionary social forces in his society and served the
foreign imperialists. In short, he was just about everything morally
despicable and politically backward that could be found in twentieth-
century China. In later years one convenient way to vilify a Chinese leader
was to suggest his similarities in these respects to Yuan Shih-k'ai, as was
done to Chiang Kai-shek in the 1940s and to Lin Piao in the 1970s.'
4
As we turn to the period of Yuan's greatest power, it is worth con-
sidering Yuan's personality as an ingredient in his politics. Unlike Sun
Yat-sen, but like most of the prominent figures of his generation, his
personal life-style was firmly rooted in old ways, even as he laboured to
adapt China to twentieth-century requirements as he saw them. He had
more than a dozen wives and many children. He wore Chinese-style
clothes, except on formal occasions, when he appeared in Western mili-
tary dress. He knew no foreign languages, and he never travelled farther
out of China than Korea. Although unsuccessful in the imperial examina-
tions,
he had been schooled in Confucian texts and seemed to believe in
their moral efficacy.
On the other hand, his greatest prominence under the Ch'ing came to
him as a leader in official reform, along Western and Japanese lines. He
recruited into his entourage many with foreign education or experience.
He carefully cultivated foreigners who might be useful to him. Some of
his sons were sent abroad for their education. He seemed always to be
searching for a blend between old and new, in the belief that this mixture
would best serve China's conditions.
That, at least, is the better face than can be put on Yuan's career. His
survival in positions of increasing status through the turbulence of 1898,
the Boxer episode, and the 1911 Revolution indicates a talent for seizing
the main chance. It can also be taken as an index of opportunism and
34 Ch'en Po-ta,
CKieh-kuo
la-tao
Yuan
Shih-k'ai (Yuan Shih-k'ai, the great thief who stole the
country), Peking, 1949; first published in 1945. Sun K'o-fu and Fan Shu-sheng,
Yuan
Shih-
k'ai tmn-K'ungfu-pi
ch'ou-chti
(The ugly drama of Yuan Shih-k'ai's veneration of Confucius
and imperial restoration).
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
238 THE ERA OF
YUAN
SHIH-K'AI,
I 9 I 2-1 6
ambition. His cautious approach to change, blending the old and the new,
though appropriate to his period as Chihli governor-general under the
Ch'ing, appeared, in the exuberant aftermath of the 1911 Revolution, to
lack purpose and firm direction. The one constant during the presidency -
his push for a stronger central government - fits too well the hypothesis
of a lust for personal power to be free of moral suspicion.
Although ambitious for himself and his ideas of how the Chinese polity
should be organized, Yuan was not an egomaniac, demanding servility
and flattery. He was ruthless and thought nothing of killing for political
purposes. And yet his personal working relationships were genial and
informal. He valued political loyalty among his subordinates but fostered
no broad cult of
his
person. His excesses as president seemed inspired, not
so much by self-aggrandizement, as by a rigidly bureaucratic outlook.
He was entranced by regulations and procedural prescriptions. He
preached bureaucratic discipline and valued administrative experience
above all virtues. He distrusted spontaneity and uncontrolled political
behaviour. Shaping governing structures and staffing them with 'reliable'
officials were his nostrum for China's ills. What was most dangerous in
his ruthlessness was its service to such formal notions of order. He might
bide his time, but his urge to expunge the unpredictable and the irregular
proved formidable.
After the summer of 1913 Yuan no longer had to bide his time. The
liberal institutions and provincial autonomy of the previous months were
swept away. The ensuing republican dictatorship was constructed around
the principles of administrative centralization and bureaucratic order.
Yuan built his dictatorship in several stages. The first was the military
occupation of large areas of China from which Yuan's troops had pre-
viously been excluded. The opportunity arose from victory over the
Second Revolution. Not only did Yuan's conquering armies stay on after
defeating the revolutionaries. They spread to some provinces where
there had been no serious participation in the uprising. Eventually, all
but six of the home provinces were so occupied, and the remaining six,
mostly in the extreme south and containing less than a fourth of China's
population, were intimidated to the extent that their leaders complied
with Yuan's programmes. Military occupation, however, was merely the
initial stroke in a grand scheme of reorganization. The second stage,
therefore, was to root out the administrative expressions of provincial
autonomy that had flourished since the 1911 Revolution. The power of
official appointment in the provinces reverted to Peking. The old Ch'ing
rule that one should not serve in one's own province - a rule that in 1912
had in practice been virtually reversed - was resurrected and gradually
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
THE DICTATORSHIP 239
applied. The effect
of
these
two
changes was
the
extensive sacking
of
local
officials. Even
in
Chekiang, which
was one of
the
six
home provinces
not
invested with Peiyang troops and which retained its previous, Chekiangese
provincial
chief,
the
proportion
of
Chiekiangese county magistrates
declined dramatically under
the
dictatorship."
The
centralized coherence
of China's official system
in
1914
and 1915 was not
surpassed until
1949.
For
a
time
in
late 1913,
it
was the
declared policy
of
the
cabinet
(in
which Liang Ch'i-ch'ao played
a
leading role)
to
work
for the
complete
abolition
of
the
provincial administrative unit. Yuan finally proved
un-
willing
to go so
far. But
in a
major recasting
of
roles
in
the
spring
of
1914,
Yuan promulgated regulations increasing
the
authority
of
civil
provincial governors
at the
expense
of
the military. Titles were changed;
rules
of
precedence were established favouring civil officials;
and par-
ticipation
in
civil affairs, including taxation
and
appointment
of
magis-
trates,
was
taken away from
the
military.
To
promulgate such regulations
was
not the
same
as
effecting their underlying purpose
-
the
recovery
of
civilian political predominance, eroded since
the
Taiping Rebellion
in
the
mid
nineteenth century
and
substantially lost
in the
1911 Revolution.
For example, Feng Kuo-chang
at
Nanking,
a
leading Peiyang general,
could
not
easily
be
confined
to
the
barracks.
And yet the
attempt
was
made;
and
his
style
was
sufficiently cramped
by
Peking's controls
for
him
to
harbour grievances. Yuan's nationwide
net of
influence, initially
established
by
military action, could
not be
converted overnight
to a
purely civilian administration.
But the
dictatorship was designed
to
move
in that direction.
Much attention
was
devoted
to
the
selection
of
proper civil officials.
Examinations were instituted, particularly
for
aspirants
to
county magis-
tracies.
The new
examinations tested,
not the
mastery
of
Confucian texts,
but
a
range
of
bureaucratic skills
and
general knowledge. Thousands took
them
in
Peking
in
1914 and
1915,
and
performance
in
them became
an
important, though
not
universal, criterion
for
appointment.'
6
Simultane-
ously,
the
prosecution
of
official corruption
was
publicly stressed.
The
censorate
was
revived,
and,
in an
innovative move,
a
special court
for
judging official crimes was established (P'ing-cheng yuan). Accompanying
the stick
of
punishment went
the
carrot
of
increased salaries
and
pension
schemes.
35 Robert Keith Schoppa, 'Politics
and
society
in
Chekiang, 1907-1927: elite power, social
control and the making
of
a province' (University
of
Michigan, Ph.D. dissertation, 1975),
296-8.
36 Odoric
Y. K.
Wou, 'The district magistrate profession
in the
early republican period:
occupational recruitment, training
and
mobility', Modem Asian
Studies,
8.2
(April
1974)
z
19-24.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
24O THE ERA OF
YUAN
SHIH-K'AI,
I 9 I 2-1 6
Opinion about the local results of this campaign for an improved offi-
cialdom was mixed. Local responsiveness to central instructions was
broadly achieved. The dignity of office, and its alienating distance from
ordinary citizens, returned. Along with improved efficiency went the re-
vival of mandarin airs and a bureaucratic conservatism that contradicted
the heady, liberal spirit of 1912. In the words of one Chinese observer in
the summer of 1914: 'I fear that, although the original intention was to
stress experience, only old habits have been preserved; although the
original intention was to systematize, there has only been a restoration of
the defects in the system.. .'."
One reason that the civilian structure neither fully subordinated the
military nor won plaudits for its efficiency was the atmosphere of terror
in which it was born. Not only was the initial military occupation of
revolutionary areas often brutal. In all parts of the country Yuan, through
military and police organs, conducted a campaign of repression against
people linked with the 1915 uprising. An indirect or remote linkage was
often sufficient to make one a target. The blood-letting, which lasted
for more than a year, varied in dimension from province to province, but
victims seem to have numbered in the several tens of thousands. The
most prominent and more radical of the KMT leaders had escaped to
Japan and elsewhere. The assault was out of all proportion to the amount
and intensity of the remaining opposition to Yuan's regime in the im-
mediate aftermath of the Second Revolution.
The severity of the terror presumably left an abiding distaste for Yuan
in that substantial part of the electorate which had voted for the KMT
the previous year. Further, it fed social disturbances that otherwise
might have been easier to contain. The conspicuous case was the bandit
force under Pai Lang, or White
Wolf.
The man commonly known as White Wolf emerged after the 1911
Revolution as a successful bandit leader in southern Honan, with perhaps
one thousand adherents by the summer of 1912.'
8
White Wolf's consti-
tuency seems to have been like that of many other bandit groups: poor
and landless peasants, and demobilized soldiers. The politics of his band
in 1912 was anti-republican and pro-Ch'ing. One of their slogans was,
'Avenge the wrong done the great Ch'ing court in
1911.'"
The social
37
Huang
Yuan-yung,
Yuan-sheng
i-chu
(Posthumous
collection
of
writings
of
Huang
Yuan-
yung),
reprinted
in Wu
Hsiang-hsiang,
ed.
Chung-kuo
hsien-tai shih-liao
ts'ung-shu,
2.246.
38
This account
of
White Wolf's
band
is
based
on
Philip Richard
Billingsley,
'Banditry
in
China,
1911 to 1928,
with
particular
reference
to
Henan
province'
(University
of Leeds,
Ph.D.
dissertation,
April
1974). See
also
Edward
Friedman,
Backward
toward
revolution:
the
Chinese
Revolutionary
Party,
117-64.
39
Billingsley,
'Banditry
in
China',
373.
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THE DICTATORSHIP 241
conservatism of the 1911 Revolution and the scope given to gentry power
in the new order make understandable such politics among those most
oppressed. But as the KMT faced off against Yuan Shih-k'ai in 1913,
contact between the revolutionaries and White Wolf began. Then, as
Yuan's victory was followed by such pervasive terror against the revolu-
tionaries, many joined White Wolf's group, which was induced to par-
ticipate in subsequent revolutionary strategies.
As a result of the accretion of refugees from Yuan's terror and of more
demobilized soldiers, White Wolf's band became formidable. As a purely
bandit group, it was a nuisance to the authorities but hardly different
from many such containable, if persistent, nuisances. Linkage with revo-
lutionary, anti-Yuan politics changed the circumstances in two ways. The
suppression of this enlarged band became a special project of the central
government. And by venturing beyond its established base area in sou-
thern Honan, where there were local ties and protective assistance from
the population, the bandit army became vulnerable to being isolated and
destroyed piecemeal. In December 1913 and January 1914 the band
attacked into Anhwei and provoked an inter-provincial suppression
effort. In March 1914 major contingents from the group marched west,
apparently inspired at least in part by a request from Sun Yat-sen to
establish a base in Szechwan. A core force of three to ten thousand
fighters, multiplied several times by local groups joining for the duration
of White Wolf's presence in their area, crossed Shensi triumphantly. Cut
off from entering Szechwan, it met a hostile population in Kansu, where
localism was reinforced by ethnic and religious differences from the
White Wolf
group.
Dispirited remnants of the band were hunted down as
they attempted the return to Shensi and Honan. White Wolf himself died
in August 1914, either from wounds received in earlier fighting or through
betrayal to government troops, whose hundreds of thousands had taken
an embarrassingly long time to disperse his small force.
From White Wolf's saga, we can observe that the sources of social
upheaval and the desperation of portions of the population had not been
dissipated by the 1911 Revolution. So we might have guessed, since the
revolution had hardly taken cognizance of such problems. White Wolf's
success in winning adherents outside his home area, both from local bandit
groups and from the ranks of the government armies, testifies to this.
We can also observe the continuing struggle of the revolutionaries to
oppose Yuan. From his exile in Japan, Sun Yat-sen and a reduced cohort
strove to keep the fires lit at home. Striking ties with those, like White
Wolf's band, whose disaffection was primarily social rather than political,
formed one of several tactics.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
242 THE ERA OF YUAN SHIH-K'AI, I 9 I 2-1 6
If Yuan had limited his enemies to persevering revolutionaries and the
socially oppressed who sought survival in banditry, his regime might
have put down roots in the substantial remaining parts of the Chinese
social order. But Yuan's vision of a smoothly functioning bureaucratic
order was too grand to allow such modesty. As his indiscriminate cam-
paign of terror implied, he worked on the assumption that much more was
wrong with China than endemic banditry and revolutionary conspiracy.
The whole phenomenon of political participation had got out of hand.
The gentry and other socially elite parts of the population, including mer-
chants, were made to surrender many of the political privileges accumu-
lated since the beginnings of formal representative institutions about a
decade before.
The campaign to restrict political participation began as an attack on
the KMT and soon expanded its scope. The national assembly had sur-
vived the Second Revolution because the parliamentary wing of the KMT
had dissociated itself from the armed uprising and because Yuan desired
from it one further formality. That formality was his election as regular
president (as distinct from the provisional post he already had), according
to procedures specified in the provisional constitution of 1912 and sub-
sequent legislation. Arbitrary arrest and even executions of assembly
deputies had induced an atmosphere of extreme tension. Plied with bribes
and intimidated by a threatening mob, the assembly assented on
6
October
1913.
Even so, by prolonged balloting before confirming Yuan's presi-
dency and by drafting a defiantly parliamentary constitution to replace
the provisional one of 1912, the parliament demonstrated its alienation
from Yuan's purposes. On 4 November 1913, citing guilt in the Second
Revolution by political association, Yuan ordered the complete dissolu-
tion of the KMT and removed remaining KMT deputies from their seats.
The KMT as a whole was defined as a rebel organization. This event
marked a heightening of the terror throughout the country; and the
parliament was crippled.
Not stopping there, Yuan in several quick strokes dismantled all elected
assemblies in the first months of 1914. The remaining members of the
parliament were told to go home. The thousands of local assemblies,
introduced skeletally in the late Ch'ing and flourishing at the prefectural,
county and sub-county level in the first year of the republic, were without
exception dismissed. And the provincial assemblies, that had been so
vociferous in the last two years of the Ch'ing and had been so important
in the politics of the 1911 Revolution, were abolished. What an affront
to the educated and propertied classes who had participated in building
this structure of
representation!
The British minister in Peking, comment-
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