Volumes previously published by the University of Cali- THE PRESIDENCY OF YUAN SHIH-K'AI fornia Press,Berkeley,Los Angeles,London,for the Center for Chinese Studies of The University of Michigan: MICHIGAN STUDIES ON CHINA Communications and National Integration in Communist China,by Alan P.L.Liu Mao's Revolution and the Chinese Political Culture,by Richard Solomon Capital Formation in Mainland China,1952-1965,by Kang Chao Small Groups and Political Rituals in China,by Martin King Whyte Backward Toward Revolution:The Chinese Revolutionary Party,by Edward Friedman Peking Politics,1918-1923:Factionalism and the Failure of Constitutionalism,by Andrew Nathan Michigan Studies on China Published for the Center for Chinese Studies of The University of Michigan
95104 89良3 Ml MICHIGAN STUDIES ON CHINA The Presidency of China's Economic Development:The Interplay of Scarcity Yuan Shih-k'ai and Ideology,by Alexander Eckstein The Chinese Calculus of Deterrence:India and Indochina, by Allen S.Whiting Liberalism and Dictatorship in The Presidency of Yuan Shih-k'ai:Liberalism and Dictator- Early Republican China ship in Early Republican China,by Ernest P.Young ERNEST P.YOUNG The research on which these books are based was supported by the Center for Chinese Studies of The University of Michigan. Ann Arbor The University of Michigan Press
Acknowledgments My interest in the period of China's 1911 Revolution began in seminars at Harvard University.It led to work on the late Ch'ing revolutionary move- ment and to a dissertation on Liang Ch'i-ch'ao,the writer and politician, during the 1911 Revolution and the immediately following years.Liang's essays and letters provided a convenient point of entry into the politics of the period.But a wider view was necessary,it seemed to me,if one were to interpret adequately the various political forces and their interaction during the early years of the Chinese republic.After publishing some of this ear- lier work in articles,I turned to the task of researching a fuller range of political movement when Yuan Shih-k'ai was Chinese president.This book is the result. I have gained inestimably from the careful reading and perspicacious criticisms of the manuscript by Joe Esherick,Stephen MacKinnon,Donald Sutton,and Marilyn Blatt Young.Ch'i Hsi-sheng,John Fairbank,Albert Feuerwerker,Andrew Nathan,and Keith Schoppa also read the manuscript in whole or in part,and I am grateful for their comments and suggestions. Chang Hao and George Sun-Chain Lin provided extraordinary linguistic as- sistance at different stages of my research,although neither they nor any of the readers are responsible for errors of fact,interpretation,or translation. While pursuing this project,I was courteously served by the staffs of these libraries and archives:Asia Library,University of Michigan;East Asiatic Library,University of California at Berkeley;Eisenhower Library, Johns Hopkins University;Gaiko Shiryokan,Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Tokyo;Harvard-Yenching Library,Harvard University;Hoover Library, Stanford;Houghton Library,Harvard University;Institute of Modern His. tory,Academia Sinica,Taipei;Kensei Shiryoshitsu,Diet Library,Tokyo; Kuomintang Archives,Taiwan;Mitchell Library,Sydney;National Ar- 4
viⅷAcknowledgments chives,Washington,D.C.;Library of Congress,Washington,D.C.;Public Record Office,London;and Toyo Bunko,Tokyo.For guiding me to li- braries and archives in their countries and for their generous hospitality,I wish to thank Professors Banno Masataka,Chang Peng-yuan,Ichiko Chuzo,Ikei Masaru,Kato Yozo,and Nakamura Tadashi. The extensive traveling and the research leaves,without which this study could not have been completed,were sustained by grants from the Contents Center for Chinese Studies at the University of Michigan,the East Asian Research Center at Harvard University,the U.S.Office of Education,and the Social Science Research Council. I am grateful to Penny Greene and Eva Chan for their patience and per- severance in typing the manuscript.The work of Elnor Parker and her staff at the University of Michigan Press has been careful and creative,as they Introduction 1 have wrestled with the special problems of scholarly publishing on China. Chapter 1. China in the Early Twentieth Century 5 To Chang Ch'un-shu,friend and colleague,I owe a special debt for his calligraphic contribution to the design of the book jacket. Chapter 2.The Birth of the Republic 27 Finally,I should note that I follow the customary adaptations of the Chapter 3. The Presidential Team 50 Wade-Giles system of transliterating Chinese.I am perhaps more sparing Chapter 4.The Liberal Republic 76 than most with the umlaut,which I reserve for circumstances where it is phonemically necessary.Hence,Li Lieh-chun,but Yuan Shih-k'ai. Chapter 5.Yuan's Confrontation with Liberal Government and the Provinces 105 Chapter 6. Establishing the Dictatorship 138 Chapter 7.Yuan's Programs 177 Chapter 8.The Monarchical Attempt 210 Chapter 9.The Presidency in History 241 Abbreviations 255 Notes 257 Glossary 319 Works Cited 323 Index 339 Illustrations (following page 146)
Tables 1.Chinese Generals as of March,1913,with Training at Japan's Army Officers'Academy 61 2.Japanese-Trained Chinese Generals,March,1913,in Positions Appointed by the Peking Government 61 3.Inventory of Public and Private Schools in Hunan,Mid-1913 95 4.Modern-Style Divisions in the Early Republic by Province 101 5.Estimates of the Number of Chinese Soldiers,1911-28 164 Maps Revolutionary Provinces in 1911 29 Degrees of Integration into Peking's Administration by Province,July,1915 141
Introduction China's last dynasty,the Ch'ing,showed signs of a declining vigor as early as the end of the eighteenth century.For the next one hundred ten years, the court and its political system were subjected to a qualitatively unprece- dented combination of internal and external assaults.In the face of rebel- lion and encroachment by Western imperialism,the dynasty's capacity to survive was remarkable.One price was major concessions to the desires of Western nations during the latter half of the nineteenth century.Another price was conceding greater scope to the local power of the social elite out- side the government.Meanwhile,a variety of efforts were made to reverse the unfavorable trend,notably during the 1860s and the first decade of the twentieth century.But apparent achievement bred further difficulties. The Ch'ing dynasty,the result of a seventeenth-century conquest by Manchus,who nonetheless had ruled in established Chinese patterns and with Chinese assistance,was overthrown by a republican revolution that broke out in 1911.A newly formulated nationalism was a conspicuous in- gredient in the agitation surrounding the revolution. This book is about Chinese politics in the aftermath of the 1911Revo- lution.In particular,it concerns the problems prominent in the period de- fined by the presidency of Yuan Shih-k'ai,which emerged in the wake of the revolution and lasted four and one-half years.It describes and evalu- ates the strategies devised by political leaders to deal with these problems, with special attention to the policies of Yuan Shih-k'ai and their fate. By the early twentieth century,the overriding issue in Chinese politics was how to stop and turn back foreign encroachments on China's political and economic autonomy>The issue was not new but had been developing since the Opium War(1839-42).The changing strategy of China's leader- ship can be analyzed in terms of both its external and internal aspect.That
2 The Presidency of Yuan Shih-k'ai Introduction 3 is,there was the question of what policy to adopt toward foreign states After 1900,the government cautiously invited this sort of participation in and their impingement on China,and there was the question of how to or- a variety of ways.The modest achievements in the recovery of rights be- ganize forces within China in support of the policy. tween the Boxer affair and the 1911 Revolution owed as much to the By the time of the 1911 Revolution,the government had already energy thereby elicited as they did to the adoption of Western technology undertaken a variety of external policies:war (five times between 1839 or institutions.A significant increase in the portion of the society mobilized and 1900),footdragging and evasion,accommodation,and militant resis- behind the government's foreign policy had occurred. tance short of war.In brief,it had tried just about everything.But the Despite this increase in energy,the imperialist position was too strong results seemed not to vary with the policy.Deterioration remained almost to be seriously shaken.Perhaps in an earlier decade,when the Western pres- constant,with some marginal improvement after 1901.Indeed,between ence was smaller and more tentative,a movement to recover rights that 1839 and 1949,only the first decade of the twentieth century and the was based in the social elite might have succeeded,in the manner of Meiji 1920s registered any appreciable recovery of sovereignty,and that quite Japan.By the early twentieth century,it was insufficient.Political leaders partial.(The wartime termination of Anglo-American extraterritoriality among the extrabureaucratic elite blamed the government (and this con- in 1943 was accompanied by so much American intervention in Chinese tributed largely to the overthrow of Ch'ing power in 1911 and 1912). affairs that it signified no overall advance.)Yuan's presidency employed Many bureaucrats,including some who survived the 1911 Revolution in virtually the whole stock of external strategies but that of war.It was power,blamed the uncontrolled and undisciplined political activity of the marked by the same failure in resisting foreign pressure that charac- social elite.Once again,there was the smell of failure in the air. terized most other years. For those grappling with the continuing issue of foreign imperialism in The internal aspect of China's strategy is usually discussed in terms of China,there were two options remaining.One,favored by certain intel- the pace of the adoption of Western technology and institutions,that is, lectuals and officials,was to recover authority from the nonbureaucratic reform or modernization.The pace was slow and jerky,but the trend was elite and centralize power in the national government.The other was to growth in the size of this "reformed"sector from the 1860s onward.The consolidate,and perhaps even broaden further,the social base of organized correspondence between the advance of Western-style reforms and the political movement. recovery of rights was reasonably high in the first decade of the twentieth In the period with which this book is concerned,between the 1911 century,but reform of this sort turned out,by itself,not to hold the key Revolution and the onset of warlordism,the prominent political events to sovereignty.The Western powers and Japan were,after all,"reforming" were marked by the conflict between two tendencies:the continuing de- at a much faster rate.Competition in this category was,to say the least, mand for political participation and power by the social elite (with a decen- unequal. tralizing effect on the national political structure),and the efforts by some, China's strategy toward foreign encroachment had another internal as- especially Yuan Shih-k'ai,to recentralize.The leading advocates of both pect that changed over time.That was the portion of the society asked or positions were nationalist and defended their strategies as the best means allowed to participate.The people at the top would presumably have pre- of attaining sufficient Chinese power to turn back foreign encroachments. ferred to continue to handle the question by themselves.But this luxury The comparative advantages of centralized or decentralized authority was denied them,as the pressure of imperialism increased.What began in (chiin-hsien versus feng-chien)have enjoyed centuries of debate among the first half of the nineteenth century as a matter for court politics soon China's political thinkers.2 The main theme of this book is how the prob- became a subject of general concern in the bureaucracy.1 Regional officials lems China faced in the early twentieth century became enmeshed in this took the initiative and in an extreme case operated independently of the old tension in the Chinese polity.Advocates of administrative centralization court in foreign relations.A crucial further breakthrough occurred in the gained confidence and a sense of urgency from the demands of nationalism. 1890s when elite members of the society outside the bureaucracy began to It seemed self-evident to some that political power had to be concentrated advocate and organize around questions of high policy in foreign affairs. in order to stave off foreign encroachment.It was not enough merely to
4 The Presidency of Yuan Shih-k'at regain those levels of centralization that had characterized the Ch'ing and earlier dynasties.The new character of the external challenge required un- precedented degrees of centralization.On the other hand,the heightened desire among the elite outside the government for participation in politics- Chapter 1 a desire traceable in part to nationalist concerns and abetted by reforms stimulated by nationalism-invigorated institutions and movements that China in the Early Twentieth Century seemingly reduced the center's power.Nationalism,the liberal call for participation in government,the appeal to the efficiency of concentrated autocratic power-these issues entered into the old debate about degrees of centralization.The debate was not closed in Yuan Shih-k'ai's time,nor is it yet. In this sense,then,the period is a further chapter in an ancient question After the 1911 Revolution,the republican president Yuan Shih-k'ai estab- about China's polity.But the new circumstances in which the question was lished a bureau for the compilation of an official history of the Ch'ing dy- restated mark off the contemporary answers as conspicuously twentieth nasty.As he did so,he praised the Ch'ing for having"abolished its old century.The towering presence of Western and Japanese imperialism ways and reformed itself,effecting a revival in its declining years."This means that,as we look back,Yuan's presidency also partakes of patterns evaluation,rare among Chinese,was common before the revolution among that refer not so much to a Chinese past as to a Third World future.Its foreign observers,who were partly admiring,partly fearful.For foreigners, problems and its policies often evoke the experience of other Asian coun- that China had finally undertaken the voluntary adoption of Western insti. tries and some African ones as they have struggled in recent decades for tutions confirmed feelings of cultural superiority.After decades of resis- national autonomy.My understanding of Yuan's presidency comes from tance or paltry modifications,it seemed that China was,in the first years looking at China's experience in the aftermath of the 1911 Revolution in of the twentieth century,seriously altering her institutions along Western both a Chinese and a global context. lines.On the other hand,with the flattery of imitation went demands for equality and redress of grievances and,more disturbing,the beginnings of means to exact attention for her demands. Impressive as the reforms of the late Ch'ing may have been compared with past efforts,they were not for all Chinese.At the elite level,the ef- fects of the reforms were apparent.New political relationships(notably through representative institutions of government)were being established. New methods of administering the law (a new court system)with new laws (modifications in old codes)were spreading from the top down,with a great distance to go to reach many ordinary people.New security agencies (a modernized army and police system)were in partial operation by the end of the dynasty,protecting the elite from its foreign and domestic chal- lengers.New schools with new curricula,new professions,new ideas,new styles of life were emerging.The urban environment was acquiring a new face.A foreigner with long experience in China commented on Peking's aspect on the eve of the revolution:"...I find that the city is being trans- formed.Macadamised roads are being made everywhere;every important
6 The Presidency of Yuan Shih-k'ai China in the Early Twentieth Century 7 house is lit with electricity;there is an excellent telephone system;there is down with the demise of the empire.On the contrary,it adapted most a postal service with delivery eight times a day.The police force cannot be adroitly to the changing circumstances of the period surrounding the 1911 too highly praised-a well-paid,well-equipped,well-disciplined body of Revolution.To understand the politics of the first years of the republic, men."The water supply was good,some Chinese were taking to buying two characteristics of the gentry must be marked:their continuing social English bedsteads,rickshaws were now rubber tired,and there were a few predominance and their considerable cohesion despite a growing diversity motor cars.?For those participating in these changes,both monumental of interests.and activity. and trivial,the feeling of movement,of expectancy,of potential achieve- The question of what constituted the elite in the late empire (Ming and ment was quickening. Ch'ing)and how it maintained its status has been controversial.The con- At the same time there was a stifling sameness for the majority,for troversy extends to nomenclature.Deviations from the unsatisfactory but whom political relationships,the law,security,schooling,and style of life well-established term "gentry"(in Chinese,commonly shen-shih),al- had barely been touched.An official British medical report on China in though handy as variants,either remove the particularity inherent in the 1911 noted an improvement in draining and cleaning the streets in Peking, gentry's cultural distinctiveness (for example,"local elite")or emphasize but also a terrible toll from disease:"The number of infant deaths is so too much only one feature,albeit an important one,to be generally use- great that it is beyond individual burial,and the small bodies are simply ful (for instance,"landlord class").The gentry in each successive period wrapped in matting and placed in carts which go through each district col- was not quite what it had been in the previous one.An argument could be lecting bundles,which are afterwards thrown en masse into a hole outside made for changing the name for the twentieth century.But for the first the city gates."3 The gap between an elite conscious of moving into a new two decades,at least,the importance of the continuities warrants reten- age and a mass left even further behind by changes toward which it contri- tion of the traditional term.This issue here is,of course,the degree of the butes its labor and taxes but from which it gains nothing-this gap,which continuity of this dominant social class,not the terminology. characterizes many countries drawn into Western ways without changes in A member of the Chinese gentry was distinguishable from someone social structure,also characterized China in 1911. lower down the social scale by a combination of education,a cultured Chinese society on the eve of the revolution contained several divergent manner that was concretely expressed in cultural talents acquired by years tendencies,as well as significant continuities.As background to an investi- of classical studies,and abstention from physical labor and petty com- gation of politics in the early republic,we need to identify the main fea- merce.The majority of gentry sustained this special style of life by securing tures of the period and their relationships one to another.The discussion annually a disproportionate per capita share of the output of agriculture- in this chapter concerns aspects of Chinese society in the early twentieth and agriculture was and continued to be the overwhelmingly dominant century that set the terms and boundaries of politics. economic activity.Most gentry,then,were landlords,moneylenders,or managers of enterprises (often related to charity or to clan)that directly tied in with the peasant economy.This dependence on access to the The Social Elite returns from peasant farming and the social control to ensure access charac- terized them as a class,even though individuals with the proper educa- In contemplating the changes sweeping China from the end of the nine- tional and cultural attainments might prosper as gentry by other means. teenth century,we must not lose sight of the endurance of a particular Although commerce was frowned upon and most traders were far from species of social and economic elite,the Chinese gentry.This historical gentry levels of prestige and power,gentry did participate as investors in class had persisted for centuries through different circumstances.4 Under commercial enterprises,and wealthy merchants strived for and often at- the special requirements of a China besieged by the industrial nations,it tained gentry social characteristics.The exact point of division blurred, was forced to adapt to a new set of demands.But it was not forced to.step especially in the early twentieth century.In the larger cities gentry and
8 The Presidency of Yuan Shih-k'ai China in the Early Twentieth Century 9 prosperous merchants joined together in an'amalgamated community lead- change in the economic structure through rapid development.A country- ership or in friendly alliance.In the country as a whole,however,the gen- wide revolution in the social structure came only after 1949,and rapid try retained its numerical and social dominance over potentially competing economic development still later.The gentry had recovered smartly from social elites. the Taiping Rebellion of the 1850s and 1860s and in the first two decades Before 1905 the central government,with its regional branches,both of the twentieth century enjoyed a notable flowering of activity and in- reinforced and regulated the gentry through a system of examinations and fluence. degrees.By certifying their educational attainments (and making these The continuing dominance of the gentry well into the twentieth cen- attainments more valuable),the government enhanced the gentry's legiti- tury despite storms of rebellion,reform,and revolution underlines the macy in the society (and its own legitimacy with the gentry).It also pro- peculiarity of change in modern China when measured against familiar vided satisfaction for the wealthy by selling the less valuable degrees.Mean- Western models.(Whether these models accurately state the realities of while,for a small number who successfully scaled the higher reaches of the change in the West is a separate question.)We find radically new ideas examination ladder,it offered government jobs and enormous economic penetrating the literate population without a substantial rising "middle rewards.The achievement of these few reflected glory on those of similar class"to advocate them.We find a new range of prestigious occupations- cultural attainment who stayed at home. military officer,newspaperman,politican,engineer,scientist,even lawyer- Since the degrees granted through the examination system and by pur- but recruited largely from the same class which had in the past aspired chase clearly separated the possessors from those without,and since they chiefly to roles in education and the government bureaucracy.We find are readily counted,they were a major yardstick for determining gentry strong movements for reform and revolution without any profound change status and have been an important quantitative tool in Chinese social his. in the structure of the early twentieth-century economy.Foreign trade tory before 1905.By this measure,gentry and their families numbered and the few new industries in the treaty ports had made little penetrating over seven million,or about 2 percent of the population in the late nine- impact,quantitatively,on the agrarian economy and its traditional com- teenth century.s But the degrees were one aspect of the gentry,not the mercial adjuncts,where the center of economic gravity remained.?The entire content of their social and economic role.Indeed,the social func- political changes sweeping China did not arise from some new economic tions and characteristics that have been ascribed to the gentry were in the system,from altered relations in the factors of production,or from a new nineteenth century by no means confined to degree holders.6 Hence,if we layer in the social system.Such as there was that was new in these respects look at this culturally distinctive elite from the vantage point of their rela- played its role in advancing change,but its limited strength could not ac- tionship to the larger society rather than of their formal links to the gov- count for the turmoil that was occurring even before the May Fourth ernment,the gentry class extends beyond the degree holders even before Movement.(The meagerness of structural change in society and the eco- 1905.As landowners of education and cultural talents,roughly the same nomy also helps explain gentry success in maintaining ultimate control group remained the dominant social element on the local scene after the over political movement until after World War I.)The main stimulus to examinations were no more.They remained the people with whom govern- change came in these years not from structural alterations already accom- mental authority,whether extending out of Peking or from some closer plished within the society but from imperialism.More,accurately,the source,had to make its peace or perish.They remained those in most direct demand for change stemmed from Chinese perceptions of imperialist competition with the peasant for the agricultural product and who had the threats and of the remedies required. most personally at stake in containing "disruptive elements"in the coun- The demand for change did not leave the gentry elite untouched.The tryside. old cultural qualifications for membership in the gentry seemed unsuit- Things could not be quite the same after the ancient manner of award- able for leadership in a world of competing nations-a world where,it was ing the old degrees was terminated in 1905.But neither could a profound finally admitted,China was far behind in the competition."Western learn- change occur in the social structure without either social revolution or a ing,"science,industrial entrepreneurship,modern military expertise,the
