{"id":2751,"date":"2010-10-21T02:16:55","date_gmt":"2010-10-21T02:16:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/chinese\/?p=2751"},"modified":"2017-12-22T09:16:16","modified_gmt":"2017-12-22T13:16:16","slug":"prchistorypartthree","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/chinese\/prchistorypartthree\/","title":{"rendered":"History of the PRC – Part Three"},"content":{"rendered":"

In case you’re just joining us, here are the links to the first two parts of our history about the People’s Republic of China, founded in 1949:<\/p>\n

Part One<\/a><\/p>\n

Part Two<\/a><\/p>\n

After the failed reign of the self-proclaimed Emperor Yuan Shikai and his subsequent death in 1916, China was basically in complete disarray.\u00a0 The policies and changes enacted by Yuan combined with the National Protection War and the resulting rebellions by many provinces had caused mass division across the country.<\/p>\n

Li Yuanhong became the President upon Yuan’s death, and Duan Qirui<\/a> (\u6bb5\u797a\u745e) became the Premier.\u00a0 Immediately, the Provisional Constitution was restored, and it seemed to be smooth sailing for this new era of China.\u00a0 The ship of Chinese government would soon hit rough waters, however, with Li and Duan disagreeing on China’s position in World War I.\u00a0 Duan was interested in joining the Allies in hopes of securing loans from Japan, but Li had other ideas.\u00a0 In May of 1917, Li gave Duan the boot and removed him from his position.<\/p>\n

In an effort to establish somewhat of a Secret Service for his government, Li hired seasoned Beiyang (\u5317\u6d0b\u653f\u5e9c) general Zhang Xun<\/a> (\u5f20\u52cb) to offer protection.\u00a0 Apparently, Li’s people did not vet Zhang enough, because the former general promptly got to work pushing through his own agenda.\u00a0 Using funds secured from Germany – who was aiming to keep China netural in WWI – Zhang attempted to reestablish the Qing Dynasty.\u00a0 This backstabbing, sneaky move proves that Zhang would do quite well as a modern-day US politician.\u00a0 He reinstated Puyi<\/a> (\u6ea5\u4eea) to the position of Emperor in July 1917 and insisted that Li step down from his position.\u00a0 Not surprisingly, Li refused to give up his power.<\/p>\n

Perhaps fearing for his safety, Li escaped to the Japanese legation, where he would reinstate Duan to his former position, ordering him to protect the republic from the guy who he had previously hired to protect the republic (Chinese history sure can be confusing, can’t it?)\u00a0 Duan and his forces promptly marched on Beijing, even dropping a bomb on the Forbidden City in what is regarded as the first aerial bombardment ever in East Asia.\u00a0 After just 12 days on the throne, Puyi was expelled.<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=6N6nvUZO42o<\/a><\/p>\n

A trailer from the 1987 film about Puyi titled, “The Last Emperor.”<\/em><\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=ahwqY2ZBHWs<\/a><\/p>\n

More on Puyi – a fascinating character in China’s long history.<\/em><\/p>\n

After the very short-lived Qing Dynasty 2.0, Li resigned as President, handing the job over to Feng Guozhang<\/a> (\u51af\u56fd\u748b).\u00a0 With this move, two very<\/p>\n

powerful factions emerged – the Anhui Clique<\/strong> (\u7696\u7cfb\u519b\u9600 – W\u01cen x\u00ec j\u016bn f\u00e1) led by Duan, and the Zhili Clique<\/strong> (\u76f4(\u96b6)\u7cfb\u519b\u9600 – Zh\u00ed (l\u00ec) x\u00ec j\u016bn f\u00e1) led by Feng.\u00a0 Due to his toppling of the revived Qing Dynasty, Duan was seen as a hero.\u00a0 At this hectic time in China’s history, this gave him a lot of power.\u00a0 He even went ahead and declared war on Germany and Austria-Hungary on August 13, 1917.\u00a0 He then tried to mobilize troops in China to conquer the south.\u00a0 In his attempts to essentially control China, Duan secured financing from Japan in what would come to be known as the Nishihara Loans<\/strong>.\u00a0 These loans basically gave Japan control of former German territory in Shandong province along with stakes in railway ventures, in exchange for money that Duan insisted would be used to send men to Europe to fight in the war.\u00a0\u00a0 Of course, this was not the case at all.\u00a0 What Duan really wanted to do was raise money to assist his group in taking over the south.\u00a0 However, the rival Zhili Clique were more interested in negotiating than fighting (“We’re lovers, not fighters”).\u00a0 This basically made Duan lose a ton of face <\/strong>(\u4e22\u9762\u5b50 – di\u016b mi\u00e0n zi), which is just about the worst thing that can happen to a man in China.<\/p>\n

Down south, an old familiar face reappeared – Sun Yat-sen.\u00a0 In 1917, he established a military government in Guangzhou in order to protect the Provisional Constitution, in what is known as the Constitutional Protection Movement<\/strong> (\u62a4\u6cd5\u8fd0\u52a8 – H\u00f9 f\u01ce y\u00f9n d\u00f2ng).\u00a0 Despite his claims that this was about the Constitution, this was, in fact, a military government, and Sun became the Generalissimo<\/strong> (\u5927\u5143\u5e05 – D\u00e0 yu\u00e1n shu\u00e0i).\u00a0 His Constitutional Protection Army would go on to defeat Duan and his army in November 1917.\u00a0 As a result, Duan would resign from his position as Prime Minister.\u00a0 At this point, the north and south were in a temporary armistice, but not for long…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\"\"

In case you’re just joining us, here are the links to the first two parts of our history about the People’s Republic of China, founded in 1949: Part One Part Two After the failed reign of the self-proclaimed Emperor Yuan Shikai and his subsequent death in 1916, China was basically in complete disarray.\u00a0 The policies…<\/p>\n

Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":55,"featured_media":2761,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":""},"categories":[3,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2751","post","type-post","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/chinese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2751","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/chinese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/chinese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/chinese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/55"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/chinese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2751"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/chinese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2751\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14029,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/chinese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2751\/revisions\/14029"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/chinese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2761"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/chinese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2751"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/chinese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2751"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/chinese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2751"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}