Activities and affiliations

Monarchs and royalty Qing dynasty 1906–1967 ↓ Abdicated 1912 · natural causes

Last emperor of the Qing, puppet emperor of Manchukuo, and a “remoulded” citizen of the People’s Republic

Crowned China's last emperor before he was seven, he lost the throne to the 1911 revolution and was restored once in 1917. Through Manchukuo's chief executive and emperor to Soviet captivity in 1945, he was amnestied in 1959 and shown as a model of reeducation.

Enthroned at three as the Xuantong Emperor, he abdicated in the 1911 revolution. Expelled from the Forbidden City in 1924, he went to the Japanese concession in Tianjin and in 1932 became chief executive, then emperor, of Japan’s puppet state Manchukuo. Captured by the Soviets in 1945 and returned to China in 1950, he was “remoulded” at the Fushun war criminals’ prison and pardoned in 1959. He lived as a gardener and later a political-consultative delegate in Beijing and died of illness in 1967, early in the Cultural Revolution.