History of the Republic of China
On the other hand, since the failure of the Second Revolution, Sun Yat-sen and his allies were trying to rebuild the revolutionary movement. In July 1914 Sun established the Chinese Revolutionary Party (). He felt that his failures at building a consistent revolutionary movement stemmed from the lack of cohesiveness among its members. To that end, Sun required that party members to be totally loyal to Sun and follow a series of rather harsh rules. Some of his earlier associates, including Huang Xing, balked at the idea of such authoritarian organization and refused to join Sun. However, they agreed that the republic must not revert to imperial rule.
Economic history of China before 1912
Although the Qing dynasty established by the Manchus had quickly seized Beijing in 1644, hostile regimes still existed in other parts of China, and it would take the Qing a few decades to take control of all of China. During this period, especially in the 1640s and 1650s, people died of starvation and disease, which resulted in a decline in population. In 1661, facing attacks by overseas Ming loyalist forces, the Qing government adopted a policy of clearing the shore line, which ordered all people residing along the coast of Zhejiang to the border with Vietnam to move inland and guards were positioned on the coast to prevent anyone from living there. Thus, until 1685 few people engaged in coastal and foreign trade. During these decades, although grain harvests improved, few participated in the market because the economy had contracted and local prices hit bottom. Tang Chen, a retired Chinese scholar and failed merchant described a dismal picture of the market economy of the preceding decades in his writing in the early 1690s.