How could China stay under an Emperor?

Hong Xiuquan conquers the Qing, gets lots of western support, and makes a semichristian Heavenly Kingdom. OR, Zeng Guofan is even more successful than OTL, and is convinced to turn on the Qing. He establishes a Han dominated "Xiang dynasty".

Both will have a lot of goodwill from the peasantry for overthrowing the hated Manchus, but they're going to tackle land reform and get a few western allies to modernize and face the Japanese threat. Maybe Germany?

Maintaining the absolute monarchy will be tough, though, especially if the economy takes off.
 

Kaze

Banned
What about Yuan Shikai? After the fall of the Qing, he toyed with the title of emperor for a little bit. What if he was successful? He could have made an olive branches to Sun Yat-sen by making him Prime-Minister. Then under Yuan's son - Yuan Keding - he could have done the same with Mao as Prime Minister.
 
Depends on what "imperial dictatorship" means. I can't see Yuan getting support from the republicans for anything but a constitutional monarchy.
 
What about Yuan Shikai? After the fall of the Qing, he toyed with the title of emperor for a little bit. What if he was successful? He could have made an olive branches to Sun Yat-sen by making him Prime-Minister. Then under Yuan's son - Yuan Keding - he could have done the same with Mao as Prime Minister.

I do like that idea of Yuan Shikai’s Empire, but the problem was that Sun Yat-Sen was very anti-monarchy.

My alternative is that Yuan Shikai establishes his empire, but Sun Yat-Sen goes to the southern part of China, and all the Southern warlords that broke away, establish the Republic of China, in opposition of Yuan. After his Short rule, his son, Yuan Keding becomes emperor, but lifts the ban of the Kumontaing party and establish an Constitution, even making his best friend, Wang Jingwei, Premier, or Prime minister. However Sun Yat-Sen still won’t accept this empire, continuing his republic in the south.
 
I think that the Qing dynasty was probably too handicapped by the simmering resentment of the Han majority to endure that long. For a traditional empire to have a better chance to survive, the Qing would either have be replaced by an ethnically Han dynasty (the earlier, the better its chances) or they would have to relinquish enough of their cherished lineage roots that they can shed their image as outsiders. The first scenario is unlikely given the solidity of Qing rule throughout most of the dynasty's existence and the second is unlikely given their conservatism and hubris. For the second to happen, we need someone who is both a radical reformer and one of a far stronger character and conviction than any of the decadent and ineffectual stock the Qing produced after Qianlong, who was, by the way, a Manchu through and through. I can see no situation in which an emperor has both the strength to radically alter things while simultaneously being willing to throw out his ancestors' hard fought dynasty. Besides being an illogical act, it would probably get him killed.

A surviving Ming dynasty which resisted Manchu takeover would not necessarily have provided better leadership either, and that's assuming it even made it to the 20th century. Though a dynasty of such longevity and with a lack of association with Barbarian conquest could have helped it hang on, this centuries old Ming dynasty might still have limited staying power if the imperial system proved unable to adapt to changing circumstances and defend the country from external threats (and with an even longer imperial tradition, the Ming might have been a dinosaur even more stale and hard to reform than the Qing).

As for the Taiping, their empire was doomed by an absurd theology dreamt up, literally, by a delusional lunatic. Even though the proposed heavenly kingdom offered its share of cheerful reformism, I think the Taiping movement was a dead end that would ultimately lead not to modernization but to a deluge of fanaticism, destruction and death; its success would be followed by the imposition of a regime that might resemble an unsavory fusion of Mao's cultural revolution and ISIS. Indeed, given their behavior's trajectory, I think that a triumphant Taiping would have very likely imposed an extremely harsh and cruel dictatorship (and not an empire in the traditional sense) over the nation as soon as they had won the war and begun to consolidate their power. With the concern for military defeat removed, a movement with the beliefs and goals of the Taiping would be sure to turn on its allies quickly and those who did not sufficiently yield to the dogma would soon find themselves in a situation not unlike that which the Iranian communists did after the OTL 1979 revolution. Once their cult's intensely heretical nature became apparent, the short-lived myth of an englightened Taiping China disappeared; Europeans might do business with it but would continue to find little to like in a Taiping China. Indeed, I think that the country could have had a grim future in this scenario.

Yuan Shikai might have been able to put himself in as emperor if everything went his way, yes, but he was probably much too late to found a new empire with any real credibility; justifying an imperial tradition founded by a strongman in the 1910's is much harder in the face of emerging democratic movements around the world and in the context of the failure of the last imperial system to stand up to foreign encroachment for nearly 100 disgraceful years. I think it would be likely to devolve into either dictatorship or civil war upon Shikai's death. Since he only lived until 1916 and died of kidney failure, any reign of his would require an exceptional successor in short order.
 
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You would have to have the Qing dynasty avoid the defeat of the First Sino-Japanese War. It might be possible if China is a lot more flexible over Korea and/or China puts on a better show in this war. As long as China has time, her wealth and large population size might allow her regime to survive.
 
Well, one can go through Hendryk's Superpower Empire 1912 route. But it's pretty hard in the face of anti-monarchist forces like Sun Yatsen. If you want Qing Dynasty to remained, kill off Cixi and let the Hundred Days reform be more successful.
 
Pahlavis and Zogus were new monarchies in 1920s.
So, how to make a post-1912 strongman credible enough as an Emperor?
IMO, he would have to be almost miraculously successful in improving the country's condition, win a major war, retain the imperial mystique, and produce competent successors.
 
I still think you guys are going too late in the game, not least because this was posted in the "Before 1900" forum. :p
 
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