During the period between the wars, China
was a hot bed of martial activity. After the death of Yuan Shi-kai, the armies
which he had mobilised to defend himself and to maintain his power ran amok and
sought to claim the country in a mad grab for control. The north consolidated
loosely under a series of military cliques, while the south mobilised, just as
loosely, under the banner of the Kuomintang and set about unifying the country.
Let no-one be deceived however: every faction had its own interests in mind and
joined together for mutual benefit as long as that arrangement served
themselves over everyone else. This was the rotten fruit of Sun Yat-sen’s
glorious vision; he would die in 1925 before his dream ever became reality,
leaving the unification of China in the incendiary, paranoid hands of Chiang
Kai-shek.
Origins
The Ching Dynasty had no standing army of
its own; instead it utilised the resources of regional militias to enforce its
will. In the north, these units combined as the Beiyang Army under the
leadership of Yuan Shi-kai. After the fall of the Manchus, Yuan maintained this
battle force in the vicinity of Peking. The various leaders within the army
were used to receiving the best training and supplies by their support of Yuan
Shi-kai and so remained loyal to him. The individual units were comprised of
men with shared military experience as well as regional associations: this
policy was used as a means to get around dialectical miscommunication but
instead brought about a nepotistic favouritism within the army’s various
factions.
After the Shin hai Revolution in 1911, a provisional government under Sun Yat-sen
was established in Nanking. Rather than continue fighting against the far
superior Beiyang Army, Sun approached Yuan to create a unified National
Government in Nanking with Yuan as President. Yuan accepted the role but kept
his capital in Peking, close to the base of his personal power.
Yuan’s growing authoritarianism promoted
a southern revolt in 1913 which was ruthlessly suppressed by the Beiyang Army.
In the aftermath, all civil regional governors in China were replaced by
military ones with loyalties to Yuan. In 1915, in opposition to Yuan’s
declaration to become Emperor of China, the southern rebels broke loose again
in the War of National Protection:
this time most of Yuan’s military supporters abandoned him due to his dynastic
ambitions, and Yuan was forced to back down from this proposition in order to
win back his troops. The damage was done however, and by the time Yuan Shi-kai
died in 1916, the government of China was a fractured mess, divided into two
loose alliances in the north and south.
The
Northern Alliance
As has always happened throughout China’s
history, the north separated sharply from the south. Despite their
unwillingness to back Yuan Shi-kai and his imperial claims, these leaders
maintained a strict loyalty to Peking and its resident government. This was not
out of some historical sentimentality: the force which held the capital could
engage in diplomatic wheeling and dealing and could lay claim to taxes and
other levies demanded of the populace. This was the sort of practical,
cash-backed power that the warlords could get their teeth into. These generals
did their utmost to hold onto the power that Yuan Shi-kai had amassed and were
as wary of each other as they were of the southern factions. Ironically, the star
emblem under which they operated was made up of five colours each representing
their various ethnic groups combined as one force.
Ownership of Peking changed throughout
this period as the warlords bickered and fought over its control. Despite other
factional disagreements, the generals would always agree over the right of Peking to issue edicts and
place demands but could not agree as to the extent, or ability, of Peking to enforce its will. Consequently, demands
were issued against enemy warlords by Peking, knowing that these would be
ignored as unenforceable, and this response would be deemed an act of treason
allowing the controlling warlord to attack with impunity.
In short order, the warlord armies became
nothing less than bandit forces, pillaging the towns and cities and enforcing
martial chaos. The usual means of extorting money from the Chinese peasantry
came back into play: kidnapping, vice, drug-running and protection rackets
flourished. Even westerners were not free from the lawlessness and several
instances are recorded of trainloads of foreigners being held hostage until
enormous ransoms were paid.
Between the years 1911 and 1930, the
power amongst the northern warlords shifted in three main phases, representing
three separate coalitions that controlled the north over this time. The first
such group or ‘clique’ was the Anhwei
Clique.
The
Anhwei Clique – 1916 to 1920
The President at the time of Yuan
Shi-kai’s death was Li Yuanhong, however he was virtually deposed by the
Beiyang Generals. Instead the Premier, Tuan Chi-jui, took over as the
government leader. Tuan pacified the Chihli clique to maintain control but many
provinces rebelled, calling for Tuan’s dismissal. Tuan tried repeatedly to get
China to join the First World War
siding with the Allies but he met with strong opposition. Finally, when it was
revealed that he had undertaken several secret loans from the Japanese, he was
deposed in 1917. Li Yuanhong took over again but fearing reprisals from Tuan
and his supporters, he asked the general Chang Shun for protection. Instead,
Chang took the unprecedented move of reinstating the Ching Dynasty; he was
defeated by Tuan who was restored to power and named the saviour of the nation:
he used this new clout to declare war on Germany and then turned his attentions
to the fractious south.
Here however he ran into further trouble:
the Chihli clique was opposed to the notion of fighting the south, preferring
negotiation to open warfare. Tuan was forced to resign in order to maintain the
solidarity of the Beiyang Generals. Conversely, the Anhwei clique put pressure
on President (and leader of the Chihli clique) Feng Kuo-chang to have Tuan
reinstated and this was done shortly afterwards. In Hunan, where the fighting
in the southern campaign was strongest, a series of reversals led to a steady
war of attrition and low morale reigned: Tuan resigned once more but tried to
cause as much trouble between north and south as he could whilst he did so. The
end of World War One and the Treaty of Versailles had caused much
disillusionment in China with Chinese efforts during the conflict largely
downplayed or ignored by the foreign community: China was forced to surrender
the province of Shantung to Japan (The
Shantung Problem) and this in turn led to the May Fourth Movement in China, a re-evaluation of China’s cultural
identity and place on the world stage. Tuan’s pro-Japanese stance alienated the
growing socialism in the provinces and he was again forced from power: the
Chihli clique sided with the Fengtian clique under Chang Tso-lin and forced the
Anhwei clique into submission.
The
Chihli Clique – 1920 to 1924
Feng Kuo-chang died shortly after the
rise of the Chihli clique and was replaced, in 1922, by Tsao Kun who
immediately dissolved the relationship with the Fengtian clique, attacking them
and driving them back into Manchuria. Seeking to legitimise their claims to
power, Tsao Kun proposed the reinstatement of Li Yuanhong as leader of a
reformed National Assembly: he asked that Sun Yat-sen and Hsu Shih-chang, civilian
President of the Beiyang Government, unilaterally resign their presidencies in
favour of Li. Sun attached several conditions to this proposal, none of which
were palatable to the Chihli clique and the effort was abandoned. In
retaliation, Tsao took steps to recognise southern warlord Chen Jiongming as
the legitimate governor of Kwangtung, thereby causing him to defect from the
KMT and drive Sun from the province and into hiding. In 1923, Tsao bought the
presidency of Beiyang despite some opposition and the power of the Chihli
clique seemed absolute until they were betrayed: Feng Yu-hsiang seized the
capital and imprisoned Tsao, attacking the Chihli forces and driving them from
the north and into the central plains.
The
Fengtian Clique – 1924 to 1928
After seizing control of the capital,
Feng Yu-hsiang formed a new nationalist government sympathetic to the KMT but
not a part of it: he called it the Kuominchun
(KMC) or ‘Nationalist Army’. Feng’s troops were nowhere near as strong as
ChangTso-lin’s men and their alliance was shaky: they agreed to the
installation of Tuan Chi-jui as President, given the Anhwei clique’s near
extinction. Thereafter negotiations with the KMT slowly broke down as Tuan and
Chang had nothing in common ideologically with Sun Yat-sen, who died of cancer
in 1925. Shortly afterwards, Kuo Song-ling defected from the Fengtian forces
and joined the KMC, forcing a retaliation against Feng’s forces under the
leadership of Wu Peifu. The KMC was driven into the northwest but Chang was
forced to recall his forces to face the onslaught of the Northern Expedition under Chiang Kai-shek and the KMT. A protracted
battle for control of the capital ensued until Chang finally resigned the
Presidency in 1928: he was assassinated by a Japanese bomb while fleeing to
Manchuria. His son, Chang Hsueh-liang, formally acknowledged the new government
of the Northern Revolutionary Army
under Chiang Kai-shek on the 31st of December.
Anhwei
Clique
Tuan Ch’i-jui
Chihli
Clique
Feng
Kuo-chang
Ts’ao
K’un
Wu
Peifu
Feng Yu-hsiang (KMC)
Fengtian
Clique
Chang
Tso-lin
Chang
Hsueh-liang
Kuo Song-ling (KMC)
*****
A
Prime Example of the Warlord Breed:
Chang Tsung-chang
A subordinate of Chang Tso-lin’s Fengtian
clique and a fearsome military organiser, Chang was instrumental in toppling
Shanghai for his master’s benefit. Unlike many other warlords he was less
self-indulgent than his superiors, largely foregoing the peacock uniforms and
masses of medals; instead, he concentrated on the amassing of power for its own
end. The son of a witch and an itinerant trumpet player, at his height, he was
referred to as the “Warlord of the Three Don’t Knows” – he said he didn’t know
how many concubines he had; how much money he had, or how many troops he
commanded. He was called the “Dog–Meat General” due to his fondness for a
Manchurian form of gambling called Pai
Gow, or ‘eating dog meat’. He was said to command a huge harem of women –
Chinese, Western, White Russian, whatever – whom he referred to only by numbers
- as he found it too hard to recall their names - and to each of whom he gave a
washbowl and a washcloth, printed with the flag of their home country. He was
fond of decorating telegraph poles with ‘cut melons’ (that is, the heads of his
enemies) and he never travelled anywhere without his own heavily lacquered and
decorated coffin. He was notable among the warlords as the first to recruit
women into his army as nurses and significantly boosted morale and the effectiveness
of his troops by doing so. In 1925 he entered Shanghai with his troops, forced
its capitulation in the name of Chang Tso-lin and held it in his master’s name
until 1928, when Chiang Kai-shek won it back through the efforts of his Northern Expedition. Instrumental to
Chang Tsung-chang’s power was his use of armoured trains which he manned with
the help of White Russian refugees fresh from defending the tracks of the Trans-Siberian Railway. For his efforts
on his warlord master’s behalf he was named the administrator of Shantung under
the Fengtian clique. He was captured by KMT forces but allowed to leave the
country in 1932; unfortunately, he was assassinated by the son of one of his
rivals before he could escape.
*****
The
Southern Alliance
Sun Yat-sen had been distracted by the
political skulduggery of Yuan Shi-kai and some had felt that he was losing his
mind; however, he rallied and brought his administrative powers to bear in his
native Canton. Despite some complications he drafted a provisional constitution
and rallied a Military Government. He contacted the Russian Communists for
advice in structuring his armies and they sent him an advisor in the form of
Michael Borodin. With the establishment of the Whampoa Academy, the newly-formed Kuomintang had a ready source for
its military commanders: within months, leaders were being drilled for the
great Northern Expedition.
Formation
– 1917 to 1922
In September of 1917, Sun Yat-sen was
named generalissimo of the military government in Kwangtung in order to protect
the provisional republican constitution. Many southern warlords joined the
alliance, mainly in order to legitimise the criminal kingdoms they had already
established in the region: they declared war on the Beiyang powers in charge of
Peking in order to attract international attention but failed to attract much
notice. In the following year, the other warlords forced Sun from his position
and made him accept a position as part of a governing committee; he went into
self-imposed exile thereafter due to malicious interference by the committee
members. Loyalist party members worked to oust the remaining members of the
committee in his absence and paved the way for Sun’s return and the
establishment of the Chinese Nationalist Party or Kuomintang (KMT). In 1921,
Sun was elected extraordinary president despite the protests of Chun Jiongming
and T’ang Shao-i who both claimed the vote was unconstitutional. Tang absented
himself while Chun began to plot with the northern Chili clique to overthrow
the KMT in return for the governorship of Kwangtung in 1922.
Reorganisation
– 1923 to 1925
Chen Jiongming was ousted by loyalists in
1923 and Sun was returned to power. He reorganised the KMT by allying with the
Russian Communists creating the First
United Front. The remainder of the representatives of the southern military
government defected to the northern alliance under Tsao’s puppet government in
Peking. With the assistance of the Russian, Michael Borodin, the Whampoa Military Academy was created to
end reliance on opportunistic warlords by creating a military elite for the
proposed one-party state. With the fall of the Chili clique, Sun travelled to
Peking to initiate talks with the Kuominchung (KMC) and the Anhwei and Fengtian
cliques. His death from cancer (poison?) ended these negotiations and a power
struggle within the KMT ensued: Tang Jiyao stepped forward claiming to be Sun’s
chosen successor but he was swiftly ousted.
Invasion
– 1926 to 1928
Communist and Left Wing elements in the
KMT attempted to kidnap Chiang Kai-shek aboard the warship Chongshan in Canton harbour; Green Gang elements and Chiang
loyalists thwarted this plan causing a sharp break between the Left and Right
factions of the KMT. Chiang emerged from the fracas as leader of the National Revolutionary Army (NRA) and
proceeded to mount the Northern
Expedition against the Beiyang factions. NRA forces easily overcame the
central plains and eastern defenders under Wu Peifu and Sun Chuanfang,
thereafter allying themselves with the KMC and the Shansi warlord, Yen
Hsi-shan, to oust the Fengtian clique. Chiang established his base in Nanking
but still needed to gain Peking in order to obtain international recognition.
In 1927 a purge of the Communist elements of the KMT (the April 12 Incident) caused the Chinese
Civil War. With the death of Chang Tso-lin, Yen Hsi-shan occupied Peking
for the KMT and forced the capitulation of Chang Hsueh-liang.
Kuomintang
(KMT)
Sun
Yat-sen
Chiang Kai-shek
Kwangtung
Warlord Faction
Chen Jiongming
Shansi
Clique
Yen Hsi-shan
Yunnan
Clique
Tang Jiyao
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