Yuan Shikai's Dictatorship and Twenty-One Demands

After crushing the Second Revolution, Yuan Shikai forced parliament to elect him full president. In early 1914 he dissolved parliament. Soon after, he abolished the Provisional Constitution and issued the Constitutional Compact of the Republic of China, replacing the responsible cabinet system with a presidential system in which the president's powers were almost unlimited. At the end of the year the Presidential Election Law was revised so that the president served a ten-year term, could be re-elected and could nominate his successor, making him president for life. After World War I broke out in 1914, Japan used a declaration of war on Germany as a pretext to send troops into Shandong, occupying Qingdao and the Jiaozhou–Jinan Railway and seizing Germany's rights in Shandong. In January 1915 the Japanese minister Hioki Eki secretly presented Yuan with the “Twenty-One Demands”, aimed at subjugating China. They included: recognition of Japan's succession to all of Germany's rights in Shandong; recognition of Japan's special interests in South Manchuria and eastern Inner Mongolia, with the leases of Lushun, Dalian and the South Manchuria Railway extended to 99 years; joint Sino-Japanese operation of the Hanyeping Company; and a ban on leasing or ceding any coastal harbors or islands to other powers. On 7 May Japan issued an ultimatum, and on 9 May Yuan's government accepted most of the demands, except Group Five, which was left “for later negotiation”. When the news came out, the whole nation was outraged and an anti-Japanese patriotic movement swept the country; 7 and 9 May were designated “National Humiliation Days”. The Twenty-One Demands exposed Japan's ambition to monopolize China, and also fully exposed Yuan Shikai's betrayal of the nation.