The revolution began with the people's struggle in the four provinces of Hunan, Hubei, Guangdong and Sichuan in the summer of 1911 against the Qing Government (1644-1911) which sold China's sovereign rights over railways to the imperialists under the pretext of nationalizing the railways. This struggle, called the movement for preserving railway rights in Sichuan Province, raged ever fiercer and soon developed into a gigantic armed uprising in early September.

The Wuchang Uprising broke out on October 10 as a result of the railway struggle in the four provinces, and Sichuan's movement for the preservation of railway rights in particular. Three days later when the armymen and civilians seized the triple city (Wuchang, Hankou and Hanyang) of Wuhan in central China's Hubei Province, many other provinces followed suit and by the latter half of November, 14 of the country's 24 provinces and regions had declared independence. To repulse the Qing government's armed counterattack, the revolutionary armymen and civilians of Hubei Province coordinated with relief troops from Hunan Province in waging a heroic struggle to defend Wuhan. On December 2, the united revolutionary army formed after the independence of Jiangsu and Zhejiang Provinces took Nanjing after a fierce fight. Then representatives from all the independent provinces met in Nanjing and formed the Provisional Government of the Republic of China with Sun Yat-sen as its provisional president. This spelled the end of the Qing government's autocratic rule as well as China's feudal monarchy.

The 1911 Revolution was the climax of the anti-Qing revolution led by Tong Meng Hui (Revolutionary League). But it did not embrace all anti-Qing revolutionary struggles. The Guangzhou Uprising on March 29 (Lunar calendar), for instance, should not be regarded as an episode of the 1911 Revolution, for it had no direct link with the revolution though it occurred in the same year and was an extremely heroic struggle.

The anti-Qing struggle had a long history. From the time the Manchu aristocrats conquered China by force in 1644, the various nationalities' struggle against oppression and racial discrimination, particularly the struggle of the Hans, the most populous nationality with the longest history, had never ceased. Though most Han landlords were later won over by the Qing government and established an alliance of reactionary rule with the Manchu aristocrats, the broad masses of the Han people and those scholar-bureaucrats who refused to be ruled by the Manchus had persisted in their struggle against the Qing court.

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After the Opium War in 1840 China was gradually reduced to semi-colonial and semi-feudal status. The Qing Government, which had been xenophobic. turned to betrayal of the country to foreign powers while suppressing its own subjects following a series of defeats in foreign wars. After signing the Protocol of 1901, the Qing government became a de facto court controlled by foreigners. The Chinese people's struggle against the Qing court thus naturally combined with their struggle against aggression by imperialist powers and for national salvation.

The 1851-64 Taiping Heavenly Kingdom was a great peasant uprising which was quelled by the Qing government aided and abetted by foreign aggressors. The Yi He Tuan (Boxer) Movement of 1900 was another great patriotic upsurge which was betrayed by the Qing court and consequently put down by the allied forces of eight imperialist powers. These two failures showed that without the leadership of an advanced class, the peasant uprisings in semicolonial and semi-feudal China could not achieve victory. The failure of the Reform Movement of 1898 signified that the power of the Qing government was still tightly held in the hands of Empress Dowager Ci Xi and other diehard conservatives supported by big landlords and comprador bureaucrats of the Han nationality. The Reformists, representing the orientation of developing capitalism, attempted reform from above through Emperor Guang Xu, who had neither power nor army. Their failure proved that their programme was a mere fantasy of the mind.

What then was China's way out? In 1905, Tong Meng Hui headed by Sun Yat-sen adopted a bourgeois revolutionary programme calling for "expulsing the Tartars (Manchus), recovering China, establishing a republic and equalizing land ownership," which was appropriate in that period of China's historical development. "Expulsion of the Manchus and the recovery of China" were the common desire of the entire Chinese people (except the reformists). "Equalization of land ownership," long-cherished by the peasants, was included in the programme to win the peasants' support, though it could not be realized at the time. "Establishment of a republic" meant to set up a bourgeois state in China which would institute a democratic republican system. Neither the landlord class nor the peasantry could conceive of this; only the bourgeoisie could advocate such a system, and Tong Meng Hui was a political party of the bourgeoisie representing the demands of national capital, which had initially developed at the beginning of the 20th century. The league had also included workers, peasants and anti-Manchu landlords. Though the bourgeoisie, its main class foundation, was weak, Tong Meng Hui was nevertheless a powerful political force, being based on an alliance of all anti-Qing classes and able to mobilize the broad masses of people with its anti-Manchu slogans.

A cartoon carried in a newspaper in 1909, satirizing the Qing government's Selling of China's sovereign rights and the imperialist powers' grabbing of the country's railways.

The Qing government then was extremely corrupt. Instead of following the trend of the time and establishing a constitutional government which would win over the upper stratum of the bourgeoisie calling for reform, it obstinately clung to its course and suppressed the constitutional movement, which pushed the bourgeois constitutionalists to its opposite. It also formed a royal cabinet which ostensibly prepared for constitutional government but in reality excluded the political representatives of major Han landlords who had always been loyal to it. The railway struggle took place in these circumstances, when the Qing government was extremely isolated. The struggle was brought on by the constitutionalists at the Provincial Assembly. The ruthless suppression by the Qing government, and particularly the promotion and leadership of the revolutionaries, considerably expanded this struggle and increased its intensity till the constitutionalists could not control it, nor could the Qing court put it down. In the end, the struggle developed into an armed uprising which overthrew the reactionary rule of the Qing government. The anti-Qing revolution of the Chinese bourgeoisie led by its political grouping, Tong Meng Hui, had achieved its aim.

The 1911 Revolution contributed a great deal in ending the Qing court's 260-plus years of reactionary rule and nearly 3,000 years of feudal autocracy in China. The revolution also gave the Chinese people a new understanding of democracy so that they foiled all such attempts and schemes as that of Yuan Shikai to put himself on the throne and of Zhang Xun to restore monarchical rule.