Fall of the Qing
With the defeat of the Boxers, even
the Empress Dowager realised that China was too weak to survive without
reform. But, while the civil service examinations based on irrelevant
1000-year-old Confucian doctrines were abolished, other court-sponsored
reforms proved to be a sham. Furthermore, by now secret societies aimed
at bringing down the Qing Dynasty were legion, even overseas where they
were set up by disaffected Chinese who had left their homeland.
To make matters worse for the Qing, in 1908 the Empress Dowager died and
the two-year-old Emperor Puyi ascended to the throne. The Qing was now
rudderless, and quickly collapsed in two events: the Railway Protection
Movement and the Wuchang Uprising of 1911.
The railway incident began with the public Chinese sentiment that newly
constructed railways should be in Chinese control, not in the hands of
the foreigners who had financed and built them. Plans to construct lines
to provincial centres using local funds soon collapsed, and the despairing
Qing government adopted a policy of nationalisation and foreign loans
to do the work. Opposition by vested interests and provincial leaders
soon fanned violence that spread and took on an anti-Qing nature. The
violence was worst in Sichuan, and troops were taken from the Wuchang
garrison in Wuhan to quell the disturbances.
As it happened, revolutionaries in Wuhan, coordinated by Sun Yatsen's
Tokyo-based Aliance Society, were already planning an uprising in concert
with disaffected Chinese troops. With the garrisons virtually empty, the
revolutionaries were quickly able to take control of Wuhan and ride on
the back of the largescale Railway Protection uprisings to victory over
all China.
Two months later representatives from 17 provinces throughout China gathered
in Nanjing to establish the Provisional Republican Government of China.
China's long dynastic cycle had come to an end.