Yüan Shikai (1859–1916)

Chinese soldier and politician, leader of Republican China 1911–16. He assumed dictatorial powers in 1912, dissolving parliament and suppressing Sun Zhong Shan's (Sun Yat-sen's) Kuomintang (Guomindang). He died soon after proclaiming himself emperor.

Yüan was appointed governor of Shandong in 1900 by Empress Dowager Zi Xi and was viceroy of Chihli (now Hebei) province between 1901 and 1907, but was forced into retirement on Zi Xi's death in 1908. With a power base in northern China, he was appointed prime minister and commander-in-chief after the 1911 revolution against the Manchu Qings and was made president in February 1912. Having set up a dictatorship, he lost credibility after submitting to Japan's Twenty-one demands in 1915, ceding territory to Japan. A rebellion in southern China forced him to resign in April 1916.

Born in Xiangzheng, in Henan province, Yüan served in the Chinese Imperial Army and became imperial resident in Korea between 1885 and 1984. Although committed to military reform, Yüan betrayed the

modernizing emperor Guangxu (ruled 1875–1908) and sided with the conservative Empress Dowager Zi Xi during the Hundred Days' Reform in 1898.