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.Although in disarray after the assassinationof Song, the Nationalist Party s power to obstruct Yuan in Parliament and itsdeep roots in the south made it a threat.In May of 1913 Yuan dismissed theNationalist Party s provincial governors.The so-called Second Revolution broke out during the summer when the former revolutionaries in the south,calling Yuan a dictator, took up arms.But the revolutionary governors weredivided, and most of the urban elites were either neutral or supported Yuan asthe best hope for stability.Merchants had grown to resent the NationalAlliance s taxes in the south, fearing they were being expected to pay for revo-lution as much as for local government.Yuan thus had little trouble puttingdown the revolt.Sun Yat-sen and others had to flee back to Japan.Yuan, offi-cially elected president in October, proscribed the Nationalist Party anddissolved Parliament even though the Nationalist Party s own MPs hadcondemned the Second Revolution.Yuan also disbanded all local and provin-cial assemblies.Suspected revolutionaries were tortured and killed, and evenprominent gentry were executed.Zhang Xun, one of Yuan s generals, pillagedNanjing, and martial law was declared in much of the country.Yuan thus brought an end to the Qing experiment with local self-govern-ment.To all intents and purposes Yuan thenceforth ruled by decree.Yuandid not simply eliminate political opposition.He also instituted new censor-ship laws, and the post office searched out seditious materials.The headyfreedoms of 1912 and the rise of political participation over the last fewyears were suddenly shown to be vulnerable.But fundamental trends thathad been opening the public sphere could be obstructed only temporarily.When Yuan moved to make himself emperor of a new dynasty in 1915, hedid so in the name of the people. No matter how hypocritical Yuan s lipservice to the principles of constitutionality, he was still forced to acknowl-edge the existence of a new kind of politics.Foreign affairs and monarchismWhen World War I broke out, China initially remained neutral.British andGerman embassy staffs could thus still mingle at official functions.Japan, a 80 The road to revolution, 1895 1919British ally since 1902, urged that China support the Allies, and China sentover 100,000 workers to fill the vacancies left in British and French factoriesas the Europeans slaughtered each other on the battlefields.The Chinese alsoworked as general laborers, construction workers, and porters.Many of theseworkers and a few students returned to China after the war as committedlabor activists and Communists.At the time, the Chinese simply hoped thatsupporting the winning side would benefit them.Such was not to be the case.Left with a clear field, Japan took over Shandong, the German concession, inNovember 1914, just three months after the outbreak of the war.Then in January 1915, Japan presented Yuan with the Twenty-oneDemands. Aside from control over Shandong, these stipulated recognitionof Japanese interests in Manchuria and Mongolia, including mining rights;new business rights in Fujian Province (opposite Japan s colony of Taiwan);a Japanese interest in the huge Han-Ye-Ping iron and coal enterprise incentral China and a final set of demands that would have led to extensiveJapanese participation at all levels of the Chinese government.AlthoughYuan had long made use of foreign advisers, who offered an extra-diplo-matic avenue of communication back to their own countries, he certainly didnot want Japanese police and administrators in his government.TheChinese were horrified, although, given the imperialist trends of the twen-tieth century, Japan s demands were hardly startling.As we have seen,foreigners already ran much of the tax system.For once in his politicalcareer, Yuan tried to make use of popular sentiment by deliberately leakingthe contents of the Twenty-one Demands, hoping that protests would forcethe Japanese to back off.Japanese goods were indeed boycotted, but to noeffect.Finally facing an ultimatum, Yuan agreed to all but the last set ofdemands in May.Thenceforth, 25 May became National Humiliation Day.At this point, Yuan made his fateful decision to try to found a newdynasty.One could argue that the idea did make a lot of sense.After all,Liang Qichao and others (even revolutionaries) had long asked how a back-ward people could understand republican institutions.Furthermore, Yuanwould be a progressive, twentieth-century emperor like those of Europe andJapan.Even his reign name sounded modern: Hongxian, or GrandConstitutional era.More immediately, the emperorship might give Yuan thestanding to resist further Japanese and Western encroachment.He may evenhave thought his monarchy would create a kind of popular nationalism,although he made no attempt to mobilize mass support.6 Yuan also calcu-lated that compromise on Japan s Twenty-one Demands would assure him ofthe support of Japan, which after all was itself a constitutional monarchy.But these were vain dreams.Some Japanese leaders did signal their supportfor a new dynasty but then turned against the plan.Japan even sold arms tothe opposition, including its old friend, Sun Yat-sen.Japanese ambitions in China were of long standing.Japanese imperialismwas a product of the successful development of the Meiji state against some,though not all, of the same pressures that the Qing and Yuan faced
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