Yüan Shih-kai (yüän` shē`-kī`), 1859–1916, president of China (1912–16). From 1885 to 1894 he was the Chinese resident in Korea, then under Chinese suzerainty. He supported the dowager empress, Tz'u Hsi, against the reform movement (1898) of Emperor Kuang Hsü, and she rewarded him with the vice regency of Zhili (now Hebei). As governor he suppressed the Boxer Uprising Boxer Uprising, 1898–1900, antiforeign movement in China, culminating in a desperate uprising against Westerners and Western influence.

By the end of the 19th cent. the Western powers and Japan had established wide interests in China.
..... Click the link for more information. , winning foreign favor, which enabled him to build the strongest military force in China. During the revolution of 1911, he procured a truce in which Emperor Hsüan T'ung (Pu Yi Pu Yi (p
..... Click the link for more information. ) abdicated on Feb. 12, 1912, and Sun Yat-sen Sun Yat-sen (s
..... Click the link for more information. , president of the provisional government, resigned in Yüan's favor as President of a Republic. Opposition to Yüan's dictatorial methods soon developed. In 1914 he dissolved the parliament and on Jan. 1, 1916, he assumed the title of emperor. A rebellion in Yunnan forced him almost immediately to restore the Republic. He died in June.

Bibliography

See biographies by J. Ch'en (2d ed. 1972) and E. P. Young (1976).

Yuan Shikai

or Yüan Shih-kai

(born Sept. 16, 1859, Xiangcheng, Henan province, China—died June 6, 1916, Beijing) Chinese army leader and president of the Republic of China (1912–16). He began his military career serving in Korea in the 1880s. In 1885 he was made Chinese commissioner at Seoul; his promotion of China's interests contributed to the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War (1894–95). The war destroyed China's navy and army, and the task of training a new army fell to Yuan. When his division was the only one to survive the Boxer Rebellion (1900), his political stature increased. He played a decisive part in China's modernization and defense programs and enjoyed the support of the empress dowager Cixi. On her death he was dismissed, only to be called back following the overthrow of the Qing dynasty in 1911–12, when he became the first president of the new republic; Sun Yat-sen had previously served as the provisional president. Impatient with the new National Assembly, he ordered the assassination of Song Jiaoren, leader of the Nationalist Party in 1913. He quelled a subsequent revolt, but his efforts to found his own dynasty (1915–16) failed.