China as a republic

There is a little over a century, China was ending four centuries of empire, from the Xia Dynasty to the last, the Qing Manchu and on 1 January 1912, Sun Yat-sen became the first President of the Republic of China. But a century later, when the 18th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) convened on November 8 will confirm the arrival of a new management team, the struggle for power does not seem as likely to have changed ...

The fall of the empire marked, in fact, nearly two centuries of decline since the peak had represented the reign of Emperor Qianlong in the eighteenth century, when China weighed alone, nearly a third of the the global economy. Indeed, the republic did not last long. Four months later, Sun Yat-sen gave way to the real strongman of this transition period, Yuan Shikai, a general whose career began in the Empress Cixi.

The new regime found the imperial empty crates and had to negotiate an international loan of 10 million pounds sterling in particular humiliating terms: Europeans took control of the administration of the tax on salt and installed a control office expenses which all departments were asked to submit their accounts.

China began to quickly descend into chaos, the central government does not control a dozen provinces. On 23 December 1915, however, Yuan proclaimed himself emperor, taking the name of reign as Hong Xian (the "Constitutional Abundance" ...). The new empire lasted only three months and death carried the dream of Yuan Shikai.