FIRST PRESIDENT OF CHINA, YUAN-SHI-KAI.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XXXIX, Issue 10958, 26 December 1911, Page 4

FIRST PRESIDENT OF CHINA, YUAN-SHI-KAI.

"By Eleotbio Telegbaph—Cofybight.]

(Pee Pbess Association.)

Received December 25, at 0.25 a.m. London, December 16. The Times' Pekin correspondent reports that it is confidently expected at Shanghai that Yuan-shi-kai will yield to the inevitable and become the hrst President of the Republic. CHINA UNDER THE TSINGS. If the little Emperor Puryi should.be the last of the Manchus to sit upon tho, , Dragbn Throne of China it would be a curious coincidence. The Manchu • dynasty would end as it began—witha child. , . ,''".,'.'' From the end of the sixteenth century to the beginning of the eighteenth one of the Manchu clan families produced a succession of able men. Ihe first was Noorhachu, a tribal chief who; toward the end of the sixteenth century began to consolidate the Manchu clans and to extend his authority. He defeated Chinese armies, and whom he died, in 1628, had advanced his frontier, to the Liaovang River, and made the city of the same name his capital. His son Taitsohg continued, the attack upon China, conquered Rpreji, and - in the course of a campaign into Shansi in IPSA assumed the title .at Emperor. He did net succeed', however, ;in reach--in" Peking. "'he- Ming dynasty was Hearing its fall, but its actual end was to come from within, and not from with-, out. The Great Wall, and the quadrilateral of fortresses formed by the cities Ningyuen, Shankaikwan, Kmgchow, aud'&oncshan, with the military genius of General Wou Sankwei, held him back from the desired goal. During the same years a military adventurer named Li Tecbing, a son of a Shansi peasant, had been carving Ins way to power. Beginning, as a robber, by 1640, his followers were said to - number half a million men. In succes- • sive campaigns he defeated the Im- ' perial forces, and in the year of Taitsong's death became master or Peking, and Tsongching, the last of the Mings to rule there, strangled himself with his girdle. ~•..., Wou .Sankwei, with his disciplined armv, had been called from the frontier to the defence of the capital, Summoned to recognise the rebel chief as his sovereign, Won' Sankwei preferred I to invite the Manchus to help m putting him Vlown. Th<? invitation was promptly accepted, and the .arrival or the Manchu cavalry turned the great battle on the Zaiiho "River from victory to defeat for Li Tseching, much as tlie arrival of Blucher and the Germans • turned the scale at Waterloo. Being in Peking, the Manchus resolved to stay. Chunchi, the eight-vear-old son of Taitsong, was proclaimed. Emperor, with his uncle Dorgun as regent. Under his administration the Manchu authority was gra<lually extended over the whole of China by'conciliation where possible,'by the sword where necessary. The actual reign of Chunchi riot long, but was capable, and he chose :n his second son Kaughi, a capable suc- • cessor. In his Jong reign, from 1661 to 1722, the Maiiehu pewer was consolidated, the Mongols of the Northwest represented, and the Chinese dominions extended into Tibet. lvanghi was succeeded by a capable son, Yuiig Ching, after whom followed in 1735 his son Kien Liing, in whom : the glories of the Manchu power reached their highest point. The authority of the dragon throne was recognised from Korea to Tibet, and from the Amur to Nepaul on the frontier of India and far down into Burma. Kien Lung abdicated in 1756, and the three Emperors who followed may be briefly described as Kiaking the In- '. competent, Taoukwang the ignorant, and Heinfung the Obstinate. In these three reigns, ending in 1861, China came into conflict with the Western 'owcrs and suffered the long devasta- '* tion of the great Tai-ping rebellion. The stupid pride of Hienfung and the treachery of his Ministers were punished by his expulsion from his capital ; by English and French bayonets. To Hienfung succeeded nominally his infant son Tungchi. The real power was in the hands of Prince Kung and two women Tsi-An, Hicnfung's chief wife, and Tsu-Tai, the young mother of Tungohi. The flatter was tho famous Dowager Empress of recent years. To Tungehi, dying not without suspicions of poison when he had barely attained his majority in 1875, nominally succeeded Kwangsu, another child. How Kwangsu, on attaining his majority in ISS9, attempted sweeping reforms, and how he was deposed by a palace intrigue is a familiar story. And so wo come to little Pu-yi, tho child of six, with '.whom tho Manchu dynasty scorns likely to end as ib began ; but with an important difference. The guardians, of little Chunchi 250 years ago were capable warriors and shrewd statesmen.. The guardians of little Pu-yi are neither. The Manchu stock seems to have run out. —Chicago Inter-Ocean.