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Show MANGHUS GIVE WAYT0PE0PLE DYNASTY WHICH HAS LASTED NEARLY THREE CENTURIES PASSES INTO HISTORY. s New China, With Four Hundred Million Mil-lion Subjects, Begins Career as a Republic Upon Surrender of the Throne by Child Emperor. Pekin. China has joined the sisterhood of the world's republics. In three imperial edicts the Manchu dynasty on Monday changed 400,000,-000 400,000,-000 subjects of an absolute ruler to citizens of the largest self-governing nation on the earth. The first edict announced the abdication ab-dication of the ' dynasty after 300 years of absolute rule, the second declared that the . throne accepted the republic, and the third approved all the conditions agreed on by Premier Pre-mier Yuan Shi Kai and the republicans. repub-licans. The third edict created great astonishment. as-tonishment. It had been expected that the Manchus would : demand conditions which would safeguard many of their privileges, but according accord-ing to the proclamation the surrender surren-der is unconditional. The edict informed in-formed the viceroys and provincial governors of the retirement of the throne from politcal power and instructed in-structed them to continue doing their duty and to preserve order throughout the land. It declared that the step taken by the throne was In order to meet the wishes of the people. peo-ple. . Victory Won by People. The abdication of the Chinese throne by Pu Yi, the child emperor,' brings to an end' the powerful Manchu Man-chu dynasty which has reigned in Chiiia since 1644. The boy ruler has been on the throne since November, 1908, when the Emperor Kwang Su, his uncle, died. His father, Prince Chun, was appointed regent and was the chief figure in China for three years. Surrounded by a large number of princes of the Manchu clan and. Manchu Man-chu officials with reactionary ideas, the regent was brought lace to face with a revolutionary movement in favor of modern reforms. He endeavored en-deavored to placate both parties, but ended by causing general dissatisfaction dissatisfac-tion which led to his resignation on December 6, 1911. The promise of a constitutional government made by the dowager empress on her death bed in 1908 was not fulfilled in any way until May last year. In that month an imperial im-perial edict abolished the old grand council which, together with the court, held absolute power, and substituted sub-stituted a constitutional cabinet. Revolutionary ideas had been spreading in the meantime and the southern provinces declared against the continuation of the Manchu rule and broke into open revolt. After much fighting the revolutionists proclaimed pro-claimed a republic at Nankin and Dr. Sun Yat Sen accepted the presidency pres-idency on December 29. Negotiations between the republicans republi-cans and the imperialists followed and an armistice was arranged. This was not strictly observed, but the negotiations continued with the result re-sult that the Manchu rulers, seeing that China proper was almost entirely en-tirely in favor of the republican Idea and the the outlying dependencies of Tibet, Turkestan, Mongolia and Manchuria Man-churia were breaking away, decided that it was their best policy to yield to the popular demand and abdicate from power. |