"What happened is so sensitive it has taken more than 100 years before it can be revealed," said Jia, who assembled his latest work, The Extraordinary Life of the Last Emperor, from the secret archives at Zhongnanhai, the Chinese leadership compound, and interviews with relations of the imperial courtiers.
Puyi, whose life was immortalised in the film The Last Emperor by Bernardo Bertolucci, is still a figure of public fascination in China. "He was unique," said Jia. "He lived through three dynasties. The entire tumult of China's last century can be summed up in him. He went from emperor to gardener, and in his last years he hung a picture of himself with Chairman Mao on his bedstead."
Indeed the key moments of Puyi's life strike a familiar chord even today, making some of the details of his biography still too sensitive to be published in China.
"The time of his abdication was a time of corrupting and buying government officials," said Jia.
The imperial court in the last days of the Qing dynasty was a shadow of its former self. Foreign countries, particularly the UK, had humbled the Qing in battle, carved out rich territories and extracted huge payments.
Outside the Forbidden City, uprisings were sweeping the land as citizens called for a republic.
In order to stabilise the situation, the court appointed Yuan Shikai, a general with influence over a powerful northern army, to be prime minister.
But according to Jia, Yuan was determined to remove the last emperor from power, by cajoling, threatening and then bribing key figures at court.
After abdicating, Puyi briefly became a puppet ruler for the Japanese in a corner of northeast China that they had conquered.
After the Communist Party came to power, Puyi was treated cordially by Chairman Mao and allowed to live out his days in Beijing. He died in 1967.
