Beiyang Army The Beiyang Army ( Pei - yang Army ; ) was a powerful , Western - style Imperial Chinese Army created by the Qing Dynasty government in the late 19th century . It was the centerpiece of a general reconstruction of China ' s military system . The Beiyang Army played a major role in Chinese politics for at least three decades and arguably right up to 1949 . It made the Xinhai Revolution possible , and , by dividing into warlord factions known as the Beiyang Clique ( Pei - yang Clique ; ) , ushered in a period of regional division . Origins under Li Hongzhang ( to 1900 ) . The Beiyang Army was created from Li Hongzhang ' s Huai Army , which first saw action during the Taiping Rebellion . Unlike the traditional Green Standard or Banner forces of the Qing , the Huai Army was largely a militia army based on personal , rather than institutional , loyalties . The Huai Army was at first equipped with a mixture of traditional and modern weapons . Its creator , Li Hongzhang , used the customs and tax revenues of the five provinces under his control in the 1880s and 1890s to modernize segments of the Huai Army , and to build a modern navy ( the Beiyang Fleet ) . It is around this time that the term " Beiyang Army " began to be used to refer to the military forces under his control . The term " Beiyang " , meaning literally " Northern Ocean " , refers to the customs revenues collected in North China , which were used first to fund the Beiyang Fleet and later the Beiyang Army . However , funding was usually irregular and training by no means systematic . By the mid - 1890s the Beiyang Army was the best regional formation China could field . The First Sino - Japanese War ( 1894 – 1895 ) was fought almost entirely by the Beiyang Army , unsupported by the forces of other provinces . In the war the Beiyang Fleet , which included two pre - Dreadnought battleships , was overwhelmed by the well - served quick - firing gun s of a lighter Japanese fleet . Similarly , on land , Japan ' s German - styled conscript army , led by academy trained professional officers , handily defeated the Beiyang Army . Some Beiyang officers were also academy trained at the Tianjin Military Academy in western style drill with foreign advisors . The Chinese Muslim Kansu Braves formed part of the Beiyang Army . Yuan Shikai ' s ascendancy ( 1901 – 1908 ) . Li Hongzhang died in 1901 and was replaced by Yuan Shikai , who took on Li ' s appointment as Viceroy of Zhili and as Minister of Beiyang ( 北洋通商大臣 ) . Yuan had been given command in 1895 of the brigade - sized New Created Army . Many of his officers later became leading figures of the warlord period . They included Zhang Xun ( who attempted to restore the Qing dynasty in 1917 ) , Xu Shichang ( President of the Republic of China 1918 – 22 ) , Cao Kun ( President 1922 – 24 and leader of the Zhili military clique ) , Duan Qirui ( " Prime Minister " during much of 1916 – 20 and leader of the Anhui military clique ) and Feng Guozhang ( President 1917 – 18 and founder of the Zhili clique ) . Yuan Shikai oversaw the reform — albeit piecemeal — of Qing military institutions after 1901 . He founded the Baoding Military Academy , which allowed him to expand the Beiyang Army . With the creation of the Commission for Army Reorganisation in December 1903 , the Beiyang Army became the model on which the military forces of other provinces should be standardized . By 1905 Yuan had increased the Beiyang Army to six divisions . In October he held manoeuvres near Hejian in central Zhili using the newly completed Beijing - Hankou railway . Similar exercises were held the next year with Zhang Zhidong ' s army in Hubei . It was the opinion of foreign observers that the Beiyang Army was the largest , best equipped and best trained military force in China at the time that was not western and / or colonial . The Beiyang Army under Manchu control ( 1909 – 1910 ) . The Empress Dowager Cixi died on 15 November 1908 and was succeeded by the three - year - old Puyi . The new regent , Prince Chun ( 醇親王 ) , had Yuan Shikai dismissed the next year . Yuan bided his time in retirement , carefully maintaining his network of personal contacts in the Beiyang Army . At the time of the 1911 Revolution , command of the Beiyang Army was supposedly in the hands of the Manchu minister Yinchang . In reality , Yuan Shikai still had the ability to manipulate it due to the loyalties of its officers to him personally . Four divisions were located in Zhili , the 3rd Division being in Manchuria and the 5th Division in Shandong . Almost all the officers were ethnically Chinese , many of whom were returned students from Japan . Armament was not standardized , but was better in that respect than either before or later . Most of the infantry were armed with either the standard 1896 Japanese Type 30 rifle or the Mauser 7 . 9 mm . The 1911 Revolution . The events of the revolution demonstrated that the Beiyang Army , which formed the core of the 36 - division New Army , was absolutely the dominant military force within China . Controlling the fragmented loyalties of its formations was the key to political power in post – 1911 China . The insurrection that actually set off the 1911 Revolution took place in Wuchang on 10 October . On 12 October Yinchang was ordered to take two Beiyang Army divisions down the Beijing - Hankou Railway to suppress the uprising at Wuchang . He attacked the revolutionary army commanded by Huang Xing on 27 October . Covered by their own field artillery and the guns of the imperial fleet , the Beiyang infantry attacked with a cloud of skirmishers followed by a line of close - order company fronts . These textbook tactics were soon to be discredited in the intense fighting of the First World War , but against an undisciplined revolutionary force with no machine guns , they worked perfectly . On that same day Yuan Shikai was ordered to take command of the forces at Wuchang . He refused , instead securing high commands for his two most trusted associates , Feng Guozhang and Duan Qirui . Fighting continued in Hubei for another month as Yuan negotiated with the dynasty and the revolutionaries using the Beiyang Army as a weapon of coercion . The end result was that he was elected provisional President of the Republic of China . Beiyang clique in power ( 1911 – 15 ) . During the period 1911 – 15 , Yuan Shikai remained the only man who could hold the Beiyang Army together . He and his followers strongly resisted any attempt by the Kuomintang ( KMT ) to insert outsiders into their chain of command . They negotiated a £25 - million ( sterling ) loan from a five - power banking consortium to support the Beiyang Army , despite an uproar from the KMT . In 1913 Yuan Shikai appointed four of his loyal lieutenants as military governors in southern provinces : Duan Qirui in Anhui , Feng Guozhang in Jiangsu , Li Shun in Jiangxi and Tang Xiangming in Hunan . The unified Beiyang military clique now attained its maximum extent of territorial control . It exercised firm control over North China and the Yangtze River provinces . Throughout 1914 it supported Yuan in making revisions to the constitution to give himself treaty - and war - making powers as well as substantial emergency powers ( the three commanders were nicknamed by the newspapers of the time as angel , tiger and dog . Angel was Duan Qirui , tiger Wang Shizhen and dog Feng Guozhang ) . In December 1915 Yuan Shikai declared himself Emperor . This was opposed by almost all the generals and officers of the Beiyang Army , from Duan Qirui and Feng Guozhang on down . More importantly , many outlying provinces such as Yunnan openly opposed him . Shikai was forced to back down from his imperial designs . Both Duan and Feng refused to support him in power any further , and in the end the only prominent Beiyang general to remain loyal was the irrepressible Zhang Xun . Yuan died soon afterward . After his death the Beiyang Army split into cliques led by Yuan ' s principal protégés . Duan Qirui ' s Anhui clique and the Zhili clique , founded by Feng Guozhang but led after Feng ' s death by Cao Kun and Wu Peifu , were the principal Beiyang cliques . Disunited , the power of the Beiyang Army was challenged by provincial armies such as Yan Xishan ' s forces in Shaanxi and Zhang Zuolin ' s Fengtian clique . Fragmentation of the Beiyang army ( 1916 – 18 ) . Pressure from the Beiyang commanders prevented any political figure of the left taking power in the government of the Republic of China . For almost a decade after Yuan ' s death , the agenda of the leading Beiyang warlords was to reunify China by first reuniting the Beiyang Army and then conquering the lesser provincial armies . For a period from mid - 1916 , the ultraconservative Beiyang Gen . Zhang Xun managed to maintain the unity of the army via collegial contacts and negotiation . As Yuan Shikai had done , the Beiyang generals used their military power to intimidate the parliament into passing legislation they wanted . Following a dispute with President Li Yuanhong over a loan from Japan in early 1917 , Duan Qirui declared independence from the government along with most of the other Beiyang generals . Zhang Xun then occupied Beijing with his army , and on 1 July shocked the Chinese political world by proclaiming the restoration of the Qing dynasty . All the other generals condemned this and the restoration soon collapsed . The elimination of Zhang Xun soon afterwards destroyed the balance of power between the rival factions of Feng and Duan and inaugurated a decade of warlordism . Feng Guozhang went to Beijing to assume the presidency after securing the appointment of his protégé as military commander in Jiangxi , Hubei and Jiangsu . These three provinces became the power bases of the Zhili military clique . Duan Qirui resumed his position as Prime Minister ; his Anhui ( sometimes called Anfu ) clique dominated the Beijing area . Using Japanese funding to build up his so - called " War Participation Army " , Duan continued to struggle with Feng Guozhang . Feng was eventually eliminated from political life in 1918 , when Xu Shichang , the Beiyang elder statesman , became President . His deputy Cao Kun replaced him as leader of the Zhili clique . At the end of World War I , Duan dominated Chinese representation at the Treaty of Versailles and used the Shanghai peace conference in 1919 to bring pressure on the non - Beiyang militarists supporting Sun Yat - sen ' s government in Guangzhou . He continued to receive Japanese funding for his army ( renamed " National Defence Army " ) , for which he was willing to grant Japan legal succession to the German rights in Shandong ( see May Fourth Movement ) . High warlordism ( 1919 – 1925 ) . Before May – June 1919 , some combination of fighting and negotiation among the major Beiyang leaders was expected to lead to military unification , which in turn would permit the restoration of the constitutional political processes that Yuan Shikai had disrupted . By 1919 the three major northern military cliques had cemented , two of them - - Anhui and Zhili — directly from the Beiyang Army and the third , Fengtian under Gen . Zhang Zuolin , from an amalgamation of Beiyang and local troops . They and their imitators on a smaller scale were willing to get money and arms from any source in order to survive , and the weaker factions would combine against the stronger . The history of the major warlord wars down to 1925 recount the failure of any of the military commanders in China to centralise political and military power to any degree . In a situation resembling the period of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms , most of South China remained beyond Beiyang control , to become the incubator for both the KMT and Communist Party of China movements . Northern Expedition . The Kuomintang established the National Revolutionary Army with the help of the Soviet Union and Communist Party of China . Chiang Kai - Shek then launched the Northern Expedition in 1926 in an attempt to bring the warlords under his control . Some warlords of the Beiyang Army were defeated by Chiang ' s forces , and the National Revolutionary Army gradually became dominant in China . The warlord era would be officially ended by 1928 , when most of the warlords were either defeated or allied with the Kuomintang , although it was often in name only . The Chinese Civil War that had resulted from a fallout between Chiang and the Communists was already underway by this time . In 1930 the Central Plains War began after some of the warlords allied with the Kuomintang became disenchanted and attempted to overthrow Chiang . They weren ' t successful , but lack of cooperation and rivalry continued to plague China through much of the years following , eventually leading to the demise of Chiang ' s regime in the Chinese Civil War in 1949 .