Warlord Era The Warlord Era ( ) was the period in the history of the Republic of China , from 1916 to 1928 , when the country was divided among military cliques in the mainland China regions of Sichuan , Shanxi , Qinghai , Ningxia , Guangdong , Guangxi , Gansu , Yunnan , and Xinjiang . The Warlord Era lasted from the death of Yuan Shikai in 1916 until 1928 , when the conclusion of the Northern Expedition with the Northeast Flag Replacement began the " Nanjing decade " ; however , when old warlord s , such as Wu Peifu and Sun Chuanfang , were deposed , new minor warlords persisted into the 1930s and 1940s , as the central government struggled to keep its allies under rein , a great problem for the Kuomintang ( KMT ) through World War II and after the civil war . Some of the most notable warlord wars , post - 1928 , including the Central Plains War , involved nearly a million soldiers . The division of the country continued after the Warlord Era until the fall of the Nationalist government at the end of the Chinese Civil War . Origins . The Qing Dynasty did not have a national army but utilized regional armies and militia s which lacked standardization or consistency . The most powerful army was the northern - based Beiyang Army under Yuan Shikai which received the best in training and modern weaponry . Officers were loyal to their superiors and formed cliques based upon geography and shared academy experiences . Units were composed of men from the same province . This policy was meant to reduce dialectal miscommunication but encouraged regionalist tendencies . The Xinhai Revolution in 1911 brought widespread mutiny across southern China . Soldiers once loyal to the Qing government began to defect to revolutionary forces . Rebel troops established a provisional government in Nanjing the following year under Sun Yatsen . The revolutionaries were not strong enough to defeat the Beiyang army and continued fighting would almost certainly lead to defeat . Instead , Sun negotiated with the Beiyang commander , Yuan Shikai , to bring an end to the Qing and reunify China . In return , Yuan would become president . Yuan refused to move to Nanjing and set the capital in Beijing where his power base was secure . Reacting to Yuan ' s growing authoritarianism , the southern provinces rebelled in 1913 but were effectively crushed by Beiyang forces . Civil governors were replaced by military ones . In December 1915 , Yuan made clear his intentions to become emperor of China . The southern provinces rebelled again in the National Protection War only this time it was more serious because most Beiyang commanders abandoned Yuan . He renounced monarchy to woo back his lieutenants but by the time he died in June 1916 , China was fractured politically . The North - South split would remain during the course of the Warlord Era . North . Yuan ' s death split the Beiyang army into two factions : the Anhui clique led by Duan Qirui and the Zhili clique led by Feng Guozhang . The Northeast China - based Fengtian faction , led by Zhang Zuolin , was an amalgamation of Beiyang and local units . Diplomatic recognition was usually given to any government that ruled Beijing so capturing this city was a high priority . In addition , they could collect the customs revenue and apply for foreign loans . All the northern factions recognized the Beijing government as legitimate even if they opposed it . They would argue that while the government was legitimate , it lacked " authority " to dictate to provinces . The Beiyang government in Beijing would occasionally issue edicts to territory beyond their control to charge rival factions with treason when it was expectedly ignored and thus justify military action . This practice ended in 1923 when Cao Kun bought the presidency . The other northern factions were disgusted enough to refuse recognition . Anhui hegemony ( 1916 – 1920 ) . President Li Yuanhong was effectively sidelined by the Beiyang generals . Premier Duan Qirui dominated politics but had to work with the Zhili clique in order to maintain stability . Many provinces refused to recognize their government and called for the removal of all Beiyang generals from politics . Duan ' s heavy - handed efforts to push China into World War I and his secret loans from Japan led to his dismissal by Li in May 1917 . Knowing that Duan was plotting against him , Li asked influential Beiyang general Zhang Xun to protect the government . Instead , Zhang restored the Qing dynasty in July . Duan toppled the monarchist putsch and was hailed as the saviour of the republic , giving him greater clout . He was able to declare war against Germany . His next task was to subdue the south but differences with the Zhili clique , which preferred negotiating a treaty , led to his resignation to save the unity of the Beiyang . President Feng Guozhang , however , had to recall Duan due to pressure from the Anhui clique . The campaign in Hunan backfired resulting in attrition , low morale , and bitterness . Duan resigned again in October 1918 but made every effort to sabotage peace between north and south . His pro - Japanese policies weakened him during the May Fourth Movement . The Zhili clique made an alliance with the Fengtian clique of Zhang Zuolin and defeated Duan in the Zhili - Anhui War of July 1920 . Zhili hegemony ( 1920 – 1924 ) . After the death of Feng Guozhang in 1919 , the Zhili clique was led by Cao Kun . The alliance with the Fengtian was only of convenience and war broke out in the 1922 First Zhili - Fengtian War with Zhili driving Fengtian forces back to Manchuria . Next , they wanted to bolster their legitimacy and reunify the country by bringing back Li Yuanhong to the presidency and restoring the National Assembly . They proposed that Xu Shichang and Sun Yatsen resign their rival presidencies simultaneously in favor of Li . When Sun issued strict stipulations that the Zhili couldn ' t stomach , they caused the defection of KMT general Chen Jiongming by recognizing him as governor of Guangdong . With Sun driven out of Guangzhou , the Zhili clique superficially restored the constitutional government that existed prior to Zhang Xun ' s coup . Cao bought the presidency in 1923 despite opposition by the Kuomintang , Fengtian , Anhui remnants , some of his lieutenants , and the public . In the autumn of 1924 , the Zhili appeared to be on the verge of complete victory in the Second Zhili - Fengtian War until Feng Yuxiang betrayed the clique , seized Beijing , and imprisoned Cao . Zhili forces were routed from the north but they kept the center . Fengtian hegemony ( 1924 – 1928 ) . The alliance between Zhang Zuolin and Feng Yuxiang was tenuous . Feng had formed his own faction called the Guominjun ( Nationalist Army , or KMC ) which was ideologically sympathetic to the southern Kuomintang government but not a part of it . As a compromise , they gave the northern government to Duan Qirui whose Anhui clique was near extinct . Fengtian was far stronger in terms of manpower as KMC troops were stretched thinly across a vast area . Negotiations in north - south reunification went nowhere since Zhang and Duan had little in common with Sun Yatsen who died in March 1925 . Later that year , fighting broke out after Fengtian general Guo Songling defected to the KMC , sparking the Anti - Fengtian War . Zhili general Wu Peifu decided to ally with Zhang against the traitor Feng . KMC forces were driven to the northwest but later joined the Northern Expedition of Chiang Kaishek . Zhang took over the northern government in June 1927 as troops from the National Revolutionary Army ( NRA ) were flooding into his territory . On 2 June 1928 , Zhang resigned after agreeing to handover Beijing to the NRA . He was assassinated by a Japanese bomb while fleeing to Manchuria on 4 June . Five days later , NRA troops seized the capital and extinguished the Beiyang government . Zhang ' s son and successor , Zhang Xueliang , recognized the Nationalist government on 31 December . South . The south was a hotbed of revolutionary activity where opposition to the Beiyang cliques was the strongest . They revolted against the Qing in 1911 and against Yuan Shikai in 1913 and 1916 . After the Qing restoration debacle in Beijing , several southern provinces led by Tang Jiyao and Lu Rongting refused to recognize the new Duan Qirui cabinet and parliament . Sun Yat - sen gathered notable politicians , KMT members of the dissolved National Assembly , and southern militarists in late July 1917 to form a rival government in Guangzhou known as the Constitutional Protection government . The southern factions recognized Guangzhou as the legitimate capital even though it lacked international recognition . Like the north , southern militarists would occasionally rebel on the pretense of provincial rights , Guangxi especially . The southern provinces were : Yunnan , Sichuan , Guizhou , Hunan , Guangxi , and Guangdong ( including Hainan ) . Constitutional Protection ( 1917 – 1922 ) . In September , Sun was named generalissimo of the military government with the purpose of protecting the provisional constitution of 1912 . The southern warlords assisted his regime solely to legitimize their fiefdoms and challenge Beijing . In a bid for international recognition , they too declared war against the Central Powers but failed to garner any recognition . In July 1918 , southern militarists thought Sun was given too much power and forced him to join a governing committee . Continual interference forced Sun into self - imposed exile . While away , Sun recreated the Chinese Nationalist Party ( Kuomintang ) . With the help of KMT general Chen Jiongming , committee members General Cen Chunxuan , Admiral Lin Baoyi , and General Lu Rongting were expelled in the 1920 Guangdong - Guangxi War . On May 1921 , Sun was elected " extraordinary president " by a rump parliament despite protests by Chen and Tang Shaoyi who complained of its unconstitutionality . Tang left while Chen plotted with the Zhili clique to overthrow Sun in June 1922 in return for recognition of his governorship over Guangdong . Reorganization ( 1923 – 1925 ) . Loyalists drove Chen out and Sun returned to power in March 1923 . He reorganized the KMT along Leninist democratic centralism and made an alliance with the Communist Party of China which would be known as the First United Front . The southern government abandoned protecting the 1912 constitution since its rump parliament defected to the north to join Cao ' s puppet government . Instead , its new purpose was to create a revolutionary single - party state . The Whampoa Military Academy was formed to create a loyal officer corps to rid the KMT of its dependence on unreliable and opportunistic southern generals . With the ouster of the Zhili clique in 1924 , Sun traveled to Beijing to negotiate reunification with Guominjun , Fengtian , and Anhui leaders . He succumbed to cancer in March 1925 which ended the talks but also initiated a power struggle within the KMT . Tang Jiyao , claiming to be Sun ' s chosen successor , tried to seize control of the southern government during the Yunnan - Guangxi War but was routed . In the north the Anti – Fengtian War was waged from November 1925 to April 1926 by the Guominjun against the Fengtian clique and their Zhili clique allies . The war ended with the defeat of the Guominjun and the end of the provisional executive government . Northern Expedition ( 1926 – 1928 ) . KMT general Chiang Kai - shek emerged as the leader of the National Revolutionary Army , following the Zhongshan Warship Incident . He set out on the long delayed Northern Expedition in the summer of 1926 . NRA forces easily defeated the Zhili armies of Wu Peifu and Sun Chuanfang in central and east China . The Guominjun and Shanxi warlord Yan Xishan joined forces with the KMT against the Fengtian . In 1927 , the KMT - CCP alliance ruptured with the communists being brutally purged , which initiated the Chinese Civil War . Chiang established his capital in Nanjing but still needed to take Beijing to get international recognition . Yan Xishan , now a KMT general , occupied Beijing after the death of Zhang Zuolin . Zhang Xueliang , the new leader of Fengtian , submitted himself under the condition he would continue to rule over Manchuria , but the Japanese would later occupy Manchuria in 1931 . Reunification . By moving the capital to Nanjing , Chiang was secured in his power base , completing the Northeast Flag Replacement of Chinese reunification in 1928 . Many warlords were not defeated but co - opted into the new national government which would trouble Chiang . Feng Yuxiang and Yan Xishan rebelled in 1930 in the Central Plains War . The northwest erupted into the Xinjiang Wars from 1931 - 37 . Chiang had to put down the Fujian Rebellion in 1933 - 34 . Zhang Xueliang took part in the 1936 Xi ' an Incident . In addition minor warlords , bandits , ethnic minority militias , and the communists were active in the countryside and peripheral regions . The KMT itself was plagued by factionalism with influential leaders like Wang Jingwei and Hu Hanmin rebelling against Chiang . Chiang ' s actual power was weaker beyond the provinces surrounding Jiangsu . In short , warlordism did not end but took on a different appearance . All cliques now wore the Zhongshan suit and had party membership , effectively becoming KMT franchisees . It was not until after the end of the Chinese Civil War in 1950 that anything resembling a united , centralized government like that prior to 1915 re - emerged .