YUAN SHIH-K'AI (1859-1916), Chinese statesman, was born at Hsiang Cheng, a member of a family belonging to the smaller landed gentry of the province of Honan. His first impor tant post was in Korea, where, as Imperial Resident and the trusted lieutenant of the Viceroy Li Hung-chang, he strove by adroit diplomacy to preserve China's shadowy suzerainty over the Hermit Kingdom and to check the steadily increasing ascend ancy of Japan. After the Chino-Japanese war (1894-95) he held office as judicial commissioner, with military functions, under the viceroy Li, in Chihli, where he brought the troops to a remarkable standard of efficiency.
In Aug. 1898, the emperor Kuang Hsii, hoping to secure Yuan's services in support of his scheme to seize and imprison the empress dowager, summoned him to a special audience at the Summer Palace. The subsequent coup d'etat by the empress dowager, which removed the emperor from the throne and replaced him under severe tutelage, owed its success to Yuan's betrayal of the emperor's confidence and to his active support of the conservative Manchu party. To the end of his unhappy career, the emperor never forgave Yuan's treachery, and on his death-bed (Nov. 1908) bade his brother, Prince Chun, see to it that he should not go unpunished.
Yuan received from the empress dowager the governorship of Shantung as reward for his services. In the summer of 1900, on the outbreak of the Boxer rising, he maintained order and protected foreigners throughout his jurisdiction. He had no sympathy with the empress dowager's anti-foreign policy. After the signature of the peace protocol (Peking 1901), as the aged Li Hung-chang desired to be relieved of further duty, Yuan was appointed to act in his place as viceroy of Chihli. At Li's death (Dec. 1901) the appointment was made substantive. Yuan now held the high est office in the gift of the Throne ; at the same time he was made a Junior Guardian of the heir apparent. A month later the Yellow Jacket was conferred upon him, together with the appoint ments of consulting minister to the Government council and director general of the northern railway. In the following year he became a minister of the army reorganization council. During
the five years of his viceroyalty, he raised and equipped six divisions of troops, greatly superior in every way to those of the Peking field force or the best provincial levies. But his rapid rise to place and power aroused much jealousy, and, in 1907, a cabal against him, led by his old rival, the ex-Boxer Tatar general Tieh Liang, persuaded the empress dowager to transfer him from the Tientsin viceroyalty to the capital. He was made grand coun cillor and president of the Board of Foreign Affairs, which post he held until the death of the dowager and the emperor in Nov. 19o8.
For a month after the death of the "Old Buddha," rumours were rife in the north concerning the regent, Prince Chun's, vindictive intentions with regard to Yuan. But he merely deprived Yuan of office (Jan. 2, 1909) and ordered him into retirement at his native place in Honan. But on the outbreak of the revolution the regent, by an edict of Nov. 14, 1911, appointed him viceroy of Hunan and Hupeh, with a mandate to proceed south with his foreign-drilled troops and put an end to the insurrection. Yuan clearly foresaw and declared that if the monarchy were overthrown, the result would be chaos, "amidst which all interests would suffer and for several decades there would be no peace." Thus his avowed policy was to preserve a limited monarchy, pledged to systematic and practical reforms. Had he been loyally served by his representative, Tang Shao-yi, in the negotiations with the revolutionary leaders at Shanghai, above all, had he received the support which he was entitled to expect in the shape of a foreign loan, he might have won. As it was, he continued to fight on, practically single-handed, against the forces of disruption, until Feb. 1912 when the terrified Manchu court decided to abdicate. Within two days of the issue of the abdication edict (Feb. 12), the southern revolutionaries, on the initiative of Sun Yat-Sen, exemplified the "unbroken con tinuity of immemorial tradition" in China by inviting him to stand for the presidency of the republic.