HUANG HSING

born Oct. 28, 1874, Chang-sha, Hunan province, China died Oct. 31, 1916, Shanghai Pinyin Huang Xing revolutionary who helped organize the Chinese uprising of 1911 that overthrew the Ch'ing dynasty and ended 2,000 years of imperial rule in China. Huang Hsing founded the Hua hsing hui (Society for the Revival of China), a revolutionary group dedicated to the overthrow of the Ch'ing government. After several abortive attempts at revolution, Huang was forced to flee to Japan. In 1905 the revolutionary leader Sun Yat-sen organized the T'ung-meng hui (Alliance Society) as a union of all Chinese revolutionary groups, and Huang was made Sun's second in command. Six years later Huang and his followers, aided by sympathizers among the imperial troops, attempted a military attack on the South China city of Canton. Because of a lack of coordination among the various units participating in the action, the Canton Uprising, one of the most celebrated events in Chinese revolutionary history, failed. On Oct. 10, 1911, a group of revolutionary-army officers in the central Chinese city of Wu-ch'ang began a revolt that soon spread to all parts of South China. With Sun Yat-sen in Europe, Huang was the most important leader on the scene, and he hurried to Wu-han to take charge of the revolutionary forces. In his heroic defense of the central Chinese city of Han-yang, he held off the Ch'ing forces for more than three weeks, giving the revolutionaries time to organize in other parts of the country. On Dec. 2, 1911, the revolutionaries captured Nanking, in South China, and made it their capital. On December 14, delegates to the provisional revolutionary government elected Huang generalissimo of the new republic. He declined the appointment, however, and Sun Yat-sen was made provisional president upon his return two weeks later. In March, Sun resigned in favour of the former Manchu military commander Yan Shih-k'ai, and the capital was moved to Peking. Although Huang was offered the premiership and the title general of the army, he refused. Instead, he disbanded his troops and set to work converting the T'ung-meng hui into a parliamentary political party. By 1913 it had become clear that Yan was not interested in cooperating with the parliament or obeying the new constitution, and Huang joined with Sun in organizing a new revolution. Yan's armies, however, soon crushed the forces of the so-called second revolution, and Huang was forced to flee to Japan. In 1916, after the death of Yan, Huang returned to China.