Beiyang Army: Encyclopedia II - Beiyang Army - High warlordism 1919-1925

Beiyang Army - High warlordism 1919-1925

Before May-June 1919, some combination of fighting and negotiation among the major Beiyang leader was expected to lead to military unification, which in turn would permit the retoration of the constitutional political processes that Yuan Shikai had disrupted. By 1919 the three major northern military factions had cemented, two of them - Anhui and Zhili - directly from the Beiyang Army and the third - Fengtian, under 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.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "High warlordism 1919-1925", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki