In 1913, Yuan Shikai dismissed the Congress, but Yuan Shikai's big ** was elected by the disbanded Congress, which seems a bit unreasonable.
In order to justifiably hold the position of the big ** forever, Yuan Shikai proposed to convene a political conference, and the political conference decided to set up a convention conference to revise the "Provisional Covenant Law" formulated in 1912.
The meeting consisted of 60 delegates (2 delegates from each of the 22 provinces, 2 delegates from Inner Mongolia, Outer Mongolia, Qinghai and **, and 4 delegates from the Beijing Division Election Committee and the National Chamber of Commerce), which met on February 18, 1914, with the renegade Kuomintang celebrity Sun Yujun as the speaker.
On March 20, Yuan Shikai submitted a speech to the Covenant Conference on the amendment of the Provisional Covenant.
On May 1, the "Chinese Constitution" revised by the Covenant Conference in accordance with the Consultative Message was promulgated by **, changing the cabinet system to ** system, expanding the authority, and authorizing ** and the Senate to formulate a new constitution.
On May 24, the Organic Law of the Senate for the exercise of legislative power was promulgated
On June 20, the Senate was established with Li Yuanhong as the speaker and Liang Qichao among them
On December 28, the Senate passed an amendment to the Electoral Law, extending the term of office to 10 years, with the possibility of running for re-election indefinitely, and giving the right to nominate a successor.
The big ** thus becomes a lifelong ** that integrates the power of the country.
But Yuan Shikai was not satisfied, because at this time his desire was inflated with the political calculations that were taking place step by step, and he wanted the name of the "emperor" to act as a monarch, as Napoleon III did in France.
In order to obtain the political support of the foreign powers, Yuan Shikai signed an agreement with Britain in April 1914, under which Britain recognized China's suzerainty over **, and China recognized the autonomy of Waizang under suzerainty, which is the history of Sino-Indian territorial disputes**.
According to Chinese customs, there is a theory of Tibet before and after, and Tibet includes the Tibetan residential areas of Qinghai and Sichuan, but Qinghai has been regarded as a separate jurisdiction of China at the timeBut there is no such thing as a hidden thing. This is a term invented by the British, specifically referring to the ** area of the McMahon Line drawn by the British on the map, and the boundary drawn here has no legal basis, so it has not been recognized by me, so that it has become an unsolved case of territorial disputes between China and India today.
Later, in June 1915, a similar agreement was signed with ** on Outer Mongolia, in which Russia recognized China's suzerainty over Outer Mongolia and China recognized the autonomy of Outer Mongolia.
The Anglo-Russian agreement once again offended China's sovereignty and left a legacy for the secession of Outer Mongolia in 1945 and the Sino-Indian territorial dispute on the border.
During this period, when the First World War broke out in 1914, the British and Japanese garrisons in China jointly attacked Germany and its garrison in Shandong, and after the Germans were expelled, Britain retreated, but Japan occupied the Jiaoji Railway and Qingdao Customs, and put forward five 21 demands to China to occupy Germany's original Shandong rights and interests and expand other rights and interests in China (this is the infamous "21"), and on May 7, 1915, he issued an ultimatum to China On May 25, the company signed a contract with Japan (item 5 was not agreed).
After Japan and the great powers got the benefits, they were really willing to help Yuan Shikai, so Japanese Prime Minister Shigenobu Okuma, Yuan's American adviser Hopkins University President Goodnow, and Japanese adviser He Nagao made remarks, believing that from the perspective of China's tradition, a constitutional monarchy should be more suitable than a republican form of government, like Japan and Britain, a constitutional monarchy can become a source of national strength, and since Yuan has controlled China's political power and transformed into an imperial system, it will also make the situation and national conditions conform to Yunyun.
These specious remarks were undoubtedly regarded by Yuan Shikai as the acquiescence of the great powers to his restoration of the imperial system, and also made the planning of the imperial system change from concealment to openness.
All of a sudden, the imperial movement was in full swing, and Yang Du, who originally advocated the establishment of a constitutional monarchy, publicly proposed that the salvation of the nation should be achieved through a constitutional monarchy.
With Yuan's acquiescence, Yang Du, together with Sun Yujun, Yan Fu, Liu Shipei, Hu Ying, and Li Xiehe, organized the Preparatory Security Association, claiming that they were the masterminds who supported Yuan's claim to be emperor by studying the issue of the national system from a theoretical point of view.
The head of the Six Gentlemen of Choo'an was Yang Du, who learned the art of the emperor from Wang Minyun in his early years, and was the same as Yang Rui and Liu Guangdi, who changed the law of the Six Gentlemen, so he was tired and failed to obtain the 1903 Economic Special Science Fellow, and later went to Japan to study law and politics, and was promoted to the secretary general of the International Student Association, then known as the constitutional theorist.
In April 1915, Yang Du wrote an article "On the Salvation of the Country", which was appreciated by Yuan, and wrote down the words "Kuang Dynasty Yicai" in his own handwriting, and made a gold plaque for Yang Du.
Since then, Yang Du has been waving the flag and shouting for Yuan's emperor.
The three people he was looking for, Sun Yuyun, Li Xiehe, and Hu Ying, were all important members of the League, and Hu Ying also conspired with Wu Yue in 1905 to blow up the five ministers who went abroad to investigate the constitutional monarchy, in order to ease the ambition of the Qing DynastyYan Fu and Liu Shipei are masters in the academic world, Yan Fu served as the first president of Peking University (Beijing Normal University), and Liu Shipei is known for his classics, primary schools, and Han and Wei poetry, and is as famous as Zhang Taiyan.
Yan Fu is proficient in Western studies, but he strongly advocates "retro respect for Confucius", and once initiated the Confucian Church, because he had doubts about whether democracy is suitable for China, he was pulled into the Preparatory Security Association by Yang Du.
There will be such figures in the security meeting, and the influence is naturally quite large.
After its establishment, he sent a telegram to the military and civilian governors and chambers of commerce of various provinces to send people to Beijing to discuss the proposal for the change of the national system, and also organized a citizens' group in Beijing, and asked the Senate of the legislative advisory organ to decide on the change of the national system, in order to seek the legitimacy of Yuan's claim to be emperor.
However, the Senate is an advisory body, and the statute stipulates that changes in the state structure shall be decided by the National Assembly.
The delegates to the National Assembly had to be elected by the provinces, which took too long.
At this time, it was October 1915, and in order to ensure that Yuan's plan to ascend the throne in the New Year would not be affected, the Preparatory Security Council decided to adopt the written voting method of the provincial primary election of national representatives, that is, "please fill in the words 'Junxian' or 'Republic' on the voting ballot, and the Council will take the number of votes as the standard for resolution."
Therefore, from October 25th to November 20th, the voting of the provincial representatives was completed, and the national representatives voted 1993 times, fully agreeing to the change of the national system to a constitutional monarchy, and the provincial support letter used "I would like to respect Yuan Shikai as the emperor of the Chinese Empire with the public will of the people, and enshrine it to the emperor with the highest and complete sovereignty of the country.
Such a major issue of changing the national system was so easily solved by Yang Du "legally", Cao Juren's evaluation of this is: "China's public opinion has always been so easy for the people in power to go." ”⑥
Liang Qichao may have woken up from party politics, and once wrote an article "The So-called National System Problem", opposing Yuan's claim to the emperor, and having his own sophisticated understanding of the farce of support:
Since the occurrence of the national system issue, the so-called discussants have all discussed by YuanThe so-called people who are in favor of it are all praised by Yuan;The so-called ** people are all Yuan's own volunteers;The so-called voters are all self-determined;The so-called pushers are all self-pushed and worn by Yuan's family. ......With a sharp blade in his right hand and money in his left hand, he gathers the most lowly and shameless few people in the country, such as puppet actorsOne person is pulling the line in the curtain, and more than a dozen people on his left and right are wriggling and moving;These dozens of people are the second line, and the provincial governors and even the Senate are creeping and moving;His commanders and others re-led the third line, and more than 1,000 people who did not know the integrity and pretended to be the representatives of the people wriggled and moved. ”⑦
Liang Qichao said it with pleasure, but he forgot how when Yuan dissolved the Kuomintang a year ago, his Progressive Party was full of ambition to form a "first-rate cabinet" with Xiong Xiling as prime minister.
In fact, in Yuan's puppet play, he Liang Qichao also played a role.
Not only Liang Qichao, but also Sun Wen and Huang Xing have also acted. Sun Wen once commented on Yuan's "In the next ten years, he will be the only one who will be the first position".
What does this mean?
This shows that after the revolutionaries, the Restoration Constitutionalists, and the Beiyang New Army joined forces to force the Qing Emperor to abdicate, the alliance of the three was bound to collapse, because the three had no common ideological basis in the first place.
Liang Qichao and other constitutional figures of the Restoration, originally born in Kang Youwei's constitutional monarchy ideology, were still within the scope of tolerance for Yuan's seizure of state weapons and power, and it was only after losing his political foothold that he knew that he had become Yuan Shikai's puppet.
Another key issue was that the Beiyang New Army could use force against or intimidate the revolutionaries and constitutionalists.
Although the revolutionaries and constitutionalists had a certain amount of support in the localities, they were not entirely reliable, and the result was a confrontation between the Beiyang New Army and the revolutionaries.
The constitutionalists first supported the Yuan family, and then the revolutionaries, both because of their beliefs and snobbery, and finally gradually withdrew from the political arena with the destruction of Yuan's imperial dream.
And Yuan's dream of being an emperor is not unique to Yuan.
It is difficult to assess how much time it will take for a society that has been immersed in imperial power for more than 2,000 years to suddenly emerge from the infinite honor of shouting "long live".
Yuan Shikai once told a reporter from The Times after the Xinhai Revolution: "Yu is convinced that seven-tenths of the people are still old-fashioned elements......The progressive faction accounts for only three-tenths of the ear. If the Qing dynasty is overthrown now, the old party will rise up again in the future to seek to restore the imperial system. ”⑧
Of course, this is not to say that he had the idea of becoming emperor.
But after the abdication of the Qing Dynasty, it was really not very accustomed to the days without an emperor all of a sudden, and it would be fine if the republican form of government could run smoothly, but it was impossible to operate in the midst of this controversy, and even the great powers were still in China to dominate the land and eat tariffs.
The quarrel between the parliamentarians and the struggle for power, whether it is better to be a republic or an empire, this is originally a question that the upper gentry of the constitutionalist and the lower class of the republican party have not figured out at all.
In the eyes of those who are independent of political power, there is neither order nor a way to establish order in society under revolutionary and republican regimes, and the republic is only a sudden increase in chaos.
At that time, Wang Minyun, an academic titan who wrote a pair to scold Guo Songtao for "being out of his class and outstanding", was not used to all kinds of fame and reputation fishing behaviors of party politicians, and was also extremely dissatisfied with Yuan Shikai's power grabbing, so he gave him irony:
The people are still there, the country is still the same, how can there be a distinction between north and south;
All in all, in general, not a thing!
End of this article] Note.
Li Jiannong, A Political History of China in the Last Hundred Years (1840-1926), pp. 367 370.
See Lü Simian, Modern Chinese History, p. 262.
Goodeno's article is "The Republican Monarchy" in Chinese, translated by Yang Du, who once had the phrase "republican monarchy, each has its own suitability", and Yang Du translated it as "the republic is not as good as the imperial system", which caused Gu's displeasure, and later had to publish its original English text in the "Beijing News" that year.
He Changxiong's article is entitled "The Three Elements of the New State." This person also presented the Japanese "Imperial Family Code" to Yuan for reference.
Xu Zhongyue, Modern History of China, p. 383.
Cao Juren, The History of China in the Past 100 Years, pp. 73-74.
Li Jiannong, A Political History of China in the Last Hundred Years (1840-1926), pp. 380 381.
Copyright Notice:Welcome to the article compiled by the **, the copyright of the content of this article belongs to the author Ju Yuan, in order to respect and maintain the original rights, please be sure to indicate the article** and the original creator. This is from**content of**or**data**network, if there is any infringement, please contact us to delete. To read more exciting content, please pay attention to this self-number.