Song Jiaoren's Assassination and Second Revolution

After becoming provisional president, Yuan Shikai repeatedly undermined the responsible cabinet system. Song Jiaoren, a Tongmenghui member, hoped to limit Yuan's power through parliamentary elections and a party cabinet. In August 1912 he built on the Tongmenghui and merged several other parties to form the Kuomintang. In the first parliamentary elections, from late 1912 to early 1913, the Kuomintang won a majority of seats in both houses and became the largest party, and Song prepared to form a responsible cabinet as leader of the majority party. On 20 March 1913, as Song was about to board a train north at Shanghai railway station, he was shot by an assassin and died, aged only 30. Investigation showed that the masterminds were linked to Yuan Shikai's government. Sun Yat-sen saw Yuan's reactionary face and called for armed action against him. In April, without parliamentary approval, Yuan took a loan of 25 million pounds from a five-nation banking consortium of Britain, France, Germany, Russia and Japan, the “Reorganization Loan”. He then dismissed Li Liejun, military governor of Jiangxi, Hu Hanmin of Guangdong and Bai Wenwei of Anhui. In July Li Liejun declared independence at Hukou in Jiangxi and raised troops against Yuan; Huang Xing responded in Nanjing, and Anhui, Guangdong, Hunan and other provinces followed. This is known as the “Second Revolution”. But because of divisions and lack of cohesion within the Kuomintang, Yuan crushed it in under two months, and Sun, Huang Xing and others were forced into exile in Japan. Its failure showed that a bourgeois republic would not work in China. In 1914 Sun formed the Chinese Revolutionary Party in Japan to continue the struggle against Yuan.