If not Yuan, then someone else:
- Let us assume, however, that a more attractive personality had attempted a similar enterprise.
- The deeper difficulty that a new dynasty would have faced would have been a crisis of legitimacy.
- Chinese dynasties made perfect sense in terms of Confucian ideology; they had been the only imaginable form of national government for upwards of two millennia.
- The Qing had indeed been overthrown in part because they were Manchurian foreigners.
- However, the movement against them had been informed, not simply by Han nationalism, but by a critique of the Confucian heritage itself.
- Throughout Chinese history, successful brigands and ambitious generals had become acceptable as the founders of dynasties by signaling their intention to follow traditional precedents of government and morality
- There was almost an established drill to go through, down to the wording of key proclamations.
- After a period of interdynastic chaos, even a personally horrible candidate who honored the forms could nevertheless get the support of the local gentry and magistrates.
- There were plenty of tradition-minded people in China still in 1916, even among the literate elites. However, they were not for the most part the people who managed new enterprises or who understood modern administrative techniques.
Here is an interesting 'what if' basing the new Chinese empire on the rise of the Pahlavi Dynasty of Persia.
http://www.changingthetimes.net/samples/ww1/a_new_dynasty_in_1916.htm
In 1900 after the OTL Boxer War, the key power-brokers in Chinese society as a whole were:
Experts, compradors and merchants
officials or officially employed experts such as technicians (
shen and
kuan), middlemen and compradors in foreign trade (
mai-pan) or ordinary merchants (
shan), who did business at the Treaty Ports, in the field of business and industry education and other forms of contact with the foreign powers and the outside world. Recruited among traditional merchant families, and were likely to become independent businessmen again upon leaving the service of their foreign employers. With the knowledge they had gained from these contacts they could also often find new jobs as official experts in government service. And official experts often found that their knowledge and skills enabled them to start successful businesses of their own.
As a whole these groups constituted only a fraction of the upper echelons of Chinese society, and they allied themselves with the old elite to exert political influence. They could and did serve as advisors and were often themselves related to influential literati families, but in spring 1901 the true power was still firmly in the hands of traditionally trained men.
Literati
Ideologically the Confucian mandate and demands of continuation of traditional paternalistic rule were the key guidelines of the older, conservative members of this group. Even the most commonly stated overall goal -
yung ju-sheng ling nung – “
use the scholars to lead the peasants” was only a slogan rather than the basis of a unifying political program. Their political demands for reforms in China were linked to the traditional social roles of literati. As managers of religious and educational institutions, guilds and welfare and public services they formed the low-and middle-level bureaucracy that any new regime would need to administer and run the state. Being fed up with Qing-era corruption and lack of opportunities, the younger and lower members of this group were especially vocal and active in their demands for reform.
Different ties of friendship, origin and common teachers connected the younger and older generations of educated Chinese, and to a large degree this group shared generally similar worldview, assumptions and objectives in all corners of China at the beginning of the century.
90% of the members of local assemblies were nobility with only classical Confucian education, and while they lacked the foreign connections of their more economically oriented urban kin of the Treaty Ports, they were far from ignorant of the status of the world. A few of them had already chosen to further educate themselves with Western curriculum, and many families were seeking opportunities to send their younger sons to study abroad or in Western model academies.
Soldiers
Traditionally looked down by the literati, these were the people who in OTL toppled the Qing. The armies that historically chose to topple the monarchy and declare their support for the new government were led by a new generation of officers. These commanders had started their military life in the campaigns against popular uprisings and rebellions fought in the later decades of the previous century. As organizers of militias and leaders of armies they had fought against Taipings, Niens, Muslims - and often Boxers as well. As a rule they also had official government degrees, and many had used military service as a mere stepping stone into the higher ranks of civilian bureaucracy, since even during the last years of the century positions within the hierarchy of civil officialdom were considered more valuable than military rank. These men knew how to read and write, and thus carried prestige due their high level of education and their technical understanding of Western methods and strategies. They military men were like their merchant and literati counterparts, but mainly sought to modernize the military life in China as a remedy against foreign incursions.
Revolutionaries
Liang Qichao is a typical example of this group.
The Boxer-era revolutionaries often had close links to older secret societies, and many among them still held romantic views where secret societies were seen as guardians of popular Confucian values of righteousness and loyalty, and as repositories of a genuine Chinese identity.
Liang and other intellectuals influenced by Japanese and Western ideas tended to stress the need for civic solidarity, popular sovereignty, and loosely democratic institutions based on clear sense of the nation. According to Liang, the right kind of education and state intervention were critical to achieve civic nationalism, a pivotal component of any successful modern state. Liang pointed out that modern imperialism did no longer stem from traditional state power like the empires of old, but from nationalistic expansions of whole peoples. Thus a new Son of Heaven would have to serve as a figurehead of an ethnic Han state instead of a new multi-ethnic empire.
Also, do remember that before WW1 the Powers absolutely wanted the Qing to continue.
They had already saved their bacon once against the Taipings, and wanted them to remain in power, keeping China docile and dormant.