Puyi (Chinese: 溥儀; 7 February 1906 – 17 October 1967) , courtesy name Yaozhi (曜之) was the last emperor of China as the eleventh and final Qing dynasty ruler, becoming the Xuantong emperor at age two, but forced to abdicate on 12 February 1912 due to the Xinhai Revolution. He later served as the ruler of the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo during World War II.
He was briefly restored to the throne as Qing emperor by the loyalist General Zhang Xun from 1 July to 12 July 1917. He was first wed to Empress Wanrong in 1922 in an arranged marriage. In 1924, he was expelled from the palace and found refuge in Tianjin, where he began to court both the warlords fighting for hegemony over China, and the Japanese who had long desired control of China. In 1932, after the Japanese invasion of Manchuria, the puppet state of Manchukuo was established by Japan, and he was chosen to become emperor of the new state using the era-name of Datong (Ta-tung).
In 1934, he was declared the Kangde emperor (or Kang-te emperor) of Manchukuo and ruled the nation until the end of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1945. This third stint as emperor saw him as a puppet of Japan; he signed most edicts the Japanese gave him, including one making slavery legal. During this period, he was largely cooped up in the Salt Tax Palace, where he regularly ordered his servants beaten. His first wife's opium addiction consumed her during these years, and they were generally distant. He took on numerous concubines, as well as male lovers. With the fall of Japan, and thus Manchukuo, in 1945, Puyi fled the capital and was eventually captured by the USSR; he was extradited to the People's Republic of China after it was established in 1949. After his capture, he would never see his first wife again; she died of starvation in a Chinese prison in 1946.
Puyi was a defendant at the Tokyo Trials, and imprisoned as a war criminal for 10 years. He escaped execution because Mao Zedong realized that Puyi was more valuable as a reformed commoner than a murdered emperor. After his "reeducation" in prison, he wrote his memoirs (with the help of a ghost writer) and became a titular member of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and the National People's Congress. His time in prison greatly changed him, and he became much kinder and expressed deep regret for his actions while emperor. In 1962, he married a commoner, Li Shuxian, for whom he had a deep affection. He died in 1967, and was ultimately buried near the Western Qing tombs in a commercial cemetery.
