In the conclusion of the negotiations Yüan played a part which would have filled Machiavelli with admiration. The imperial family was cajoled into taking the baby Emperor off the throne but was at the same time wheedled into refusing outright abdication. The edicts of February 12, 1912, are among the most curious state papers of modern times. They turned over "the power of government" to Yüan, admitted the faults of the dynasty, and ordered him to negotiate with the revolutionists and establish a Republic of China. Nothing was said about any eventual resumption of power by the dynasty, although provision was to be made for the comfort and dignity of the court. The Manchu house was to retain the Forbidden City (imperial palace) in Peking, where the monarch could continue to exercise his functions, freed from the cares of government.
Sun Yat-sen indignantly repudiated any idea that the Republic derived from a formal authorization extended by the hated Manchus—the Republic for which he and his revolutionists had struggled for decades. But he held his peace, unwilling to upset the chances of national unification on a point of form. Yüan was recognized as an able man, although he lacked trustworthiness and intellectual ability; it seemed possible to make use of him and simultaneously to satisfy him by giving him a position within the Republican framework. After the edicts of abdication, the issue became one of ultra-idealist constitutionalism versus brutal military realism.
It was agreed that Sun should keep the provisional presidency until Yüan could be inaugurated as president. Under the circumstances it was the only possible course. Yüan possessed decisive military power, and there could have been no hope of bending him. Furthermore, Sun actually did not wish the office of president. He realized that his own strength was that of ideologue and leader and felt that by enforcing his principle of min shêng[2] he could serve China best.
Yüan, it was arranged, was to come south to the new capital at Nanking. This was something which he had no desire to do, as the city was in the hands of the revolutionists and his army was in the north. When he was pressed to take office, he engineered a military mutiny in the Peking area, which did enormous property damage and gave him an adequate excuse for remaining where he was. By thus forcing the government to establish itself at Peking, he followed out the spirit of the imperial abdication edict and brought the Republican regime to the very city in which the Emperor still lived, and in which the imperial bureaucracy awaited its new Republican garments—socially and ideologically the stronghold of resourceful reaction. There was thus no problem of creating a new modern administration. The old Peking mandarinate continued, and the revolutionary Republicans came into the government offices as strangers intruding into a closed system. For the initial months of the Republican experiment Peking's novel status was merely the evidence of Yüan's prestige; thereafter, Peking was to become the embodiment of archaism, blind pragmatism, and corruption.
On March 10, 1912, Yüan Shih-k'ai took a solemn oath to preserve and defend the Republic and assumed office as president. On the same day a Provisional Constitution went into effect, whereby the National Convention placed the greater share of government power in the hands of a National Council, to serve until the promulgation of election laws for the choice of a national parliament. Republican mistrust of Yüan was evident in this action. Yet Sun Yat-sen was satisfied that his first principle, nationalism, had been realized in great part by the expulsion of the Manchus, and that his second, democracy, was in the process of fulfillment. He turned to the realization of the third, min shêng.[2] Yüan placed him in charge of all railway development in China, and Sun cherished the freedom to carry out the practical aspect of the revolution. He had passed beyond the stage of agitation and conspiracy, of wandering about in the world, his life in year-long daily jeopardy, seeking men and funds for a revolution which seemed Utopian to most. Now he could do his work quietly, without inducing simple merchants and workers to risk sudden death or the torture racks of the Board of Punishments. He had no way of realizing that his miraculous success was to be followed by defeat and that the revolution for which he had fought was not over but had only begun.
The presidency of Sun Yat-sen in Nanking, terminated by Yüan Shih-k'ai's assumption of office, was little more than a military and revolutionary junta linking together the various provincial revolutionary groups. It had to face no serious problems of administration, and the collection of taxes was the last thing that a brand-new revolutionary government would dare to stress in China. Its principles were republican, but it inaugurated no formal institutions and resorted to no elections, referenda, or plebiscites. The task of constituting democracy in China was placed under the stewardship of the most versatile military opportunist of the age: Yüan Shih-k'ai.
After Sun Yat-sen relinquished the presidency to Yüan Shih-k'ai and the Republican regime settled down in the citadel of the old regime, a form of government was set up which did not immediately reveal itself as patently unworkable but which in retrospect seems a curiously ill-conceived experiment in transplanting institutions. Sun and his followers assumed that democratic, parliamentary institutions were adaptable, that the existing grouping would soon lend itself to the purpose of effective multi-party government, and that parties would arise organically from honest differences of opinion. They considered the republicanization of the provincial and local governments of less immediate importance than the establishment of a national democratic order. They expected to have a constitutional government with the five "races" of China—Chinese, Mongol, Manchu, Tibetan, and Turkic (Mohammedan)—united under the new five-barred banner. At the time, these assumptions seemed practicable.
The Provisional Constitution of March, 1912, established a relatively weak presidency though with somewhat greater powers than the French. Article 45 required the countersignature of all presidential orders by the appropriate cabinet minister; the ministers were to be appointed by the president with the concurrence of the legislative. Unfortunately, the principle of ministerial responsibility to parliament was not explicitly stated, although it might have been expected that the far-reaching powers of the legislative body would have led to actual parliamentarism very shortly. It was obviously the intention of the Republicans to promote Yüan to a position of ineffectiveness. The premier and the cabinet selected by the president with legislative concurrence were to be subject to interpellation. On the other hand, they were granted the privilege of speaking in the legislative body (Articles 43-47). The unicameral National Council (ts'an-i-yüan)—to continue only until the election of the legislative body—was to be constituted in the following manner, under Article 18:
The Provinces, Inner and Outer Mongolia, and Tibet shall each elect and depute five members to the National Council, and Ch'inghai [Kokonor] shall elect one member.
The electoral districts and methods of election shall be decided by the localities concerned.[3]