The last Chinese emperor was Puyi, who ascended to the throne at the age of three in 1908 as the Xuantong Emperor of the Qing dynasty. Following a republican revolution, the Qing dynasty formally collapsed in 1912, bringing an end to more than two thousand years of imperial rule in China.
Puyi was born on February 7, 1906, into the royal Aisin-Gioro family of the Manchu people, who had been ruling China as the Qing dynasty since 1644. His father, Zaifeng, was made a prince in 1905 and served as the regent to the Qing court during his son’s infancy. Puyi, whose childhood nickname was “The Little Japanese Emperor,” was the only surviving son of the family, making him heir to the Qing dynasty.
When Puyi turned three in 1909, a ceremony was held to officially designate him as the new Emperor of China. He was crowned with lavish pomp and circumstances, and presented with the symbolic Imperial Sword and Nine-Dragon Imperial Robe to signify his accession to the throne. In 1911, the year of the Xinhai Revolution — which was an armed uprising that overthrew the Qing dynasty and established a provisional government in Nanjing — Puyi had already been the reigning monarch for three years.
After the revolution, the Qing dynasty was replaced by the Republic of China, and the position of the Emperor was abolished. Puyi was forced to abdicate the throne and move out of the Forbidden City palace complex in Beijing, where he had been living. He was then placed under house arrest at the Summer Palace, north of Beijing, where he remained until 1924.
Afterwards, Puyi was allowed to travel out of China and spent most of his life in Japanese-occupied Manchukuo, in northeast China. He was proclaimed the “Emperor of Manchukuo” in 1934 by the Japanese, who granted him the title. This puppet state sought to re-establish the Qing dynasty, but was ultimately unsuccessful and was dissolved in 1945 when World War II ended.
Puyi’s reign as the last Chinese emperor was short but significant, as it marked the end of over two thousand years of imperial rule over China. The collapse of the Qing dynasty in 1912 ushered in an era of rapid political turmoil and transformation in the Chinese nation, which continues today.
Although Puyi was no longer considered the emperor of China after 1912, he was still viewed as a symbol of the country’s past imperial rule. He was widely known as the “last emperor,” and has been remembered in books, films, and other works of art about China’s history. He passed away in 1967 at the age of sixty-one.