By: HISTORY.com Editors

1915

Yuan Shih-kai accepts Chinese throne

Published: November 05, 2009Last Updated: May 27, 2025

With war raging in Europe, conflict also reigns in the Far East between two traditional enemies, Japan and an internally divided China. On December 11, 1915, the first president of the new Chinese republic, Yuan Shih-kai, who had come to power in the wake of revolution in 1911 and the fall of the Manchu Dynasty in 1912, accepts the title of emperor of China.

Japan had declared war on Germany in August 1914, capturing the most important German overseas naval base at Tsingtao, on China’s Shantung peninsula, by amphibious assault. In January 1915, Japan’s imperialist-minded foreign minister, Kato Takaaki, presented China with the so-called 21 Demands, which included the extension of direct Japanese control over more of Shantung, southern Manchuria, and eastern Inner Mongolia and the seizure of more territory, including islands in the South Pacific controlled by Germany.

If accepted in their entirety, the 21 Demands would have essentially reduced China to a Japanese protectorate. Though Yuan, a former general and China’s president since February 1912, when he succeeded Sun Yat-sen, founder of the Kuomintang (KMT) or Nationalist Peoples’ party, was forced to accept all but the most radical of the demands, he attempted to use Chinese anger over them to justify his bid for restoring the monarchy and installing himself as emperor. Having already dismissed the Chinese parliament and expelled the KMT party from the government, he was now ruling through provincial military governors throughout the country. The return to monarchy was met by such strong opposition within and outside of China, including from some of those same military governors, that Yuan was quickly forced to return the country to the republican form of government. He died in 1916.

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Discover more of the major events, famous births, notable deaths and everything else history-making that happened on December 11th

1777

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1936

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1941

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1946

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1961

First U.S. helicopters arrive in South Vietnam

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1963

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1964

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1969

Soviets declare nudity a sign of “western decadence”

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1973

Gay rights advocate interrupts Walter Cronkite’s news broadcast

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1978

Millions stolen from JFK Airport in infamous ‘Lufthansa heist’

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1994

Russian forces enter Chechnya

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1997

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2008

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2019

16-year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg named Time’s Person of the Year

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