How Did The Collapse Of The Qing Dynasty

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Since the start of the Qing Dynasty in 1644, the anti-Qing rebellions had never stopped, but all of them failed and Qing Empire continued its ruling in China until 20th century. However, in 1911, the poorly-prepared uprising in Wuchang ended the empire rapidly. This could be explained by the collapse of the traditional political structure without successfully establishing the constitutional structure. The traditional structure was that the imperial court appointed and supervised the regional governors, who were responsible for all the matters within the region. In the region, the governors cooperated with the local gentry to rule the huge rural area of the country (Fairbank 2006, 240-243). However, this structure was destroyed during the failed centralisation. As a result, neither Qing government nor regional governor could control the country (X. Li 2014), and the empire collapsed rapidly. …show more content…

Li 2014). The vacuum was filled in by local gentry during the Rights Recovery movement (Fairbank 2006, 244-245) and the constitutional reform when they could participate in provincial matters in the consultative provincial assembly in 1908. The assembly further weakened the governing of the regional governors as the elected representatives could express disagreement in the policies. It happened in Guangdong assembly in 1910 for the gambling ban (Z. Li 2014). The weaken governing in the regional level reduced the governing ability in the local level. During the Wuchang uprising, those governors could only flee or commit suicide (X. Li