Yuan Shikai was a Chinese military and government official who rose to power during the late Qing dynasty, and tried to save the dynasty with a number of modernization projects including bureaucratic, fiscal, judicial, educational, and other reforms. He established the first modern army and a more efficient provincial government in North China in the last years of the Qing Empire before the abdication of the last Qing Emperor in 1911. Through negotiation, he became the first president of the Republic of China in 1912.This army and bureaucratic control were the foundation of his autocratic rule as the first formal President of the Republic of China. He was frustrated in a short-lived attempt to restore monarchy in China, with himself as the Hongxian Emperor .
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