The years immediately following the Revolution of 1911, when Yuan Shih-k'ai was president of the first Chinese republic emphasizes the beginnings of warlordism. It also stresses the continuities with the pre-revolutionary years and sees the Revolution of 1911 as an early climax in a nationalist movement to invigorate politics and society. The ambiguity of the revolutionary aftermath began with the negotiated settlement of the revolution itself. The social conservatism of the 1911 Revolution and the scope given to gentry power in the new order make understandable such politics among those most oppressed. It was apparently believed, at least by Yuan Shih-k'ai, that the switch to a monarchy would keep the Japanese, with their own monarchical proclivities, at bay until the war ended. It appears that the two failed political experiments of the early republic liberal government and dictatorship contributed to each other's destruction. Yuan's dictatorship collapsed with themonarchy.

The death of Yuan Shih-k'ai in June 1916 ushered in the era of the warlords and yet throughout the ensuing decade of militarism, the Peking government remained the symbol of China's national sovereignty and hoped-for unity. Constitutionalism served the interests of ex-bureaucrats and professionals because it offered them legitimate political roles without opening the political arena to the groups below them. The popular support it could command would provide the key to wealth and power for China. The institutional facade of the Peking government was constitutional: legislative, executive and judicial functions parcelled out by law, policy decisions made by institutional procedures. The reality was factional: personal followings, cutting across the boundaries of official institutions, each faction centred on a particular leader. Constitutionalism could not restrain the brutal forces. The tide of change washed the wealthy and fortunate ashore in the foreign concessions of treaty ports. The constitutional system exhausted its own vitality through its members' absorption in factional struggles.

This chapter reviews the political and institutional reforms made by the Ch'ing government after 1901 with some conspicuous points. First, there were many self-defeating contradictions among the reform plans. For example, while creating the National Assembly and Provincial Assemblies in order to widen the path for the expression of public opinion as part of the preparation for constitutionalism, the government put increasingly strict controls over all expression of thought. Once the Ch'ing had accepted the idea of constitutionalism, Chinese intellectuals began to demand the immediate opening of the parliament. Secondly, all the participants in the reform programmes sought their own interest. The reforms after 1901 were promoted mainly by Jung-lu, a Manchu grand councillor, and Chang Chih-tung, Liu K'un-i and Yuan Shih-k'ai, who were Chinese governors-general. Finally in 1908, when the emperor and the empress dowager both died, and Prince Ch'un became the prince regent, Yuan Shih-k'ai was forced to retire to Honan.