CHINESE REPUBLIC

Taranaki Daily News, 14 October 1933, Page 8

CHINESE REPUBLIC

MANCHU DYNASTY OVERTHROWN.

ANNIVERSARY YESTERDAY.

A public holiday was observed by the Chinese community on Tuesday in . honour of the twenty-second anniversary of the Republic of China. To comemorate the occasion a meeting was held in Wellington, and an address was given by the Chinese Consul, Mr. Chunhow H. Pao. The office of the Chinese Consulate was closed all day. The establishment of the Republic followed upon the revolution of 1911, which abolished the Imperial Office and the time-honoured machinery of administration. All through the nineteenth _ century the dynasty had been declining, and with the death of the Empress Dowager it lost its last able leader. In 1911 the Emperor was an infant and the regency utterly incompetent to guide the nation through the stormy waters ahead. The unsuccessful contests with foreign Powers had shaken not only the dynasty but the entire machinery of government. The chain of x events immediately leading to the revolution began. with the signing on April 5, 1911, with a four-Power group of foreign bankers, of the Hukwang railway loan agreement for the construction of roads in Cental China. The Peking Government decided to take over from the local company a line in Szechwan, on which construction had been barely begun, and to apply part of the loan to its completion. The sum offered did not meet the demands of the stockholders, and in September, 1911, the dissatisfaction, mishandled, boiled over into open revolt. On October 10, in consequence of “the uncovering of a plot in Hankow, which had little or no connection with the Szechwan episode, a mutiny broke out among the troops in Wuchang, which was regarded as the formal beginning of the revolution. By the end of the year fourteen provinces had declared against the Manchus, in. several cities Manchu garrisons had been massacred, the regent had been forced out of office, • a provisional republican Government had been set up at Nanking, and the archrevolutionist, Sun Yet-sen, had returned from abroad and had been elected President. , , _ On February 12, 1912, the boy Emperor was made to abdicate the in a proclamation which transferred the government to the people’s representatives, declared that the constitution should henceforth be republican and gave Yuan Shih-k’ai full powers to organise a provisional government. The Nanking authorities agreed that the Emperor was to retain his title _ for life and to receive a large pension. _ To unify the country, Sun Yet-sen resigned the Presidency and Yuan was chosen in his place. Li Yuan-hung, who had come into prominence in Wuchang in the initial stages of the rebellion, _ was elected vice-president. A P rovl ? constitution was promulgated in March, 1912, by the Nanking Parliament, and in April the Government was transferred to Peking. , The republic, established with such startling rapidity and comparative ease, was destined to witness the progressive collapse of national unity and °y derl y government, .The chaos was accentuated

by new ideas from the West. For 2000 years a change in dynasty had been followed by no very great alteration in the form of Government. Each ruling house took over, with some modification, the laws and institutions of its predecessors. This, however, was no longer possible. The governmental machinery, which had on the whole worked better over a longer period than any other ever devised by man for so numerous a people, was being abandon-

ed. It was ill-adapted to the new conditions, and theoretical radicals, imbued with Occidental ideas, and militarists tended to ignore, or to modify it more greatly than at any time since the Han. Such thorough-going political experimentation meant chaos, and new institutions were not quickly evolved for so enormous a section of mankind. Since the revolution of 1911 China has passed through a bewildering series of political changes and civil wars.