Beiyang government in the context of "Warlord Era"

The Republic of China (ROC) was established on 1 January 1912 as a sovereign state in mainland China following the 1911 Revolution, which overthrew the Manchu-led Qing dynasty and ended China's imperial history. From 1927, the Kuomintang (KMT) reunified the country and initially ruled it as a one-party state with Nanjing as the national capital. In 1949, the KMT-led government was defeated in the Chinese Civil War and lost control of the mainland to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The CCP established the People's Republic of China (PRC) while the ROC was forced to retreat to Taiwan; the ROC retains control over the Taiwan Area, and its political status remains disputed. The ROC is recorded as a founding member of both the League of Nations and the United Nations, and previously held a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council until 1971, when the PRC took the seat of China from the ROC in the United Nations General Assembly Resolution 2758. It was also a member of the Universal Postal Union and the International Olympic Committee. The ROC claimed 11.4 million km (4.4 million sq mi) of territory, and its population of 541 million in 1949 made it the most populous country in the world.

The Republic of China was officially proclaimed on 1 January 1912 by revolutionaries under Sun Yat-sen, the ROC's founder and provisional president of the new republic, following the success of the 1911 Revolution. Puyi, the final Qing emperor, abdicated on 12 February 1912. Sun served briefly before handing the presidency to Yuan Shikai, the leader of the Beiyang Army. Yuan's Beiyang government quickly became authoritarian and exerted military power over the administration; in 1915, Yuan attempted to replace the Republic with his own imperial dynasty until popular unrest forced him to back down. When Yuan died in 1916, the country fragmented between local commanders of the Beiyang Army, beginning the Warlord Era defined by decentralized conflicts between rival cliques. At times, the most powerful of these cliques used their control of Beijing to assert claims to govern the entire Republic.

The 1911 Revolution, also known as the Xinhai Revolution or Hsinhai Revolution, ended China's last imperial dynasty, the Qing dynasty, and led to the establishment of the Republic of China (ROC). The revolution was the culmination of a decade of agitation, revolts, and uprisings. Its success marked the collapse of the Chinese monarchy, the end of over two millennia of imperial rule in China and the 267-year reign of the Qing, and the beginning of China's early republican era.

The Qing had long struggled to reform the government and resist foreign aggression, but conservatives in the Qing court opposed the program of reforms after 1900 as too radical and reformers considered it too slow. Several factions, including underground anti-Qing groups, revolutionaries in exile, reformers who wanted to save the monarchy by modernizing it, and activists across the country debated how or whether to overthrow the Qing dynasty. The flashpoint came on 10 October 1911 with the Wuchang Uprising, an armed rebellion by members of the New Army. Similar revolts then broke out spontaneously around the country, and revolutionaries in every province renounced the Qing dynasty. On 1 November 1911, the Qing court appointed Yuan Shikai (leader of the Beiyang Army) as prime minister, and he began negotiations with the revolutionaries.

The Kuomintang (KMT) is a major political party in the Republic of China (Taiwan). It was the sole ruling party of the country during its rule from 1927 to 1949 in Mainland China until its relocation to Taiwan, and in Taiwan ruled under martial law until 1987. The KMT is a centre-right to right-wing party and the largest in the Pan-Blue Coalition, one of the two main political groups in Taiwan. Its primary rival is the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), the largest party in the Pan-Green Coalition. As of 2025, the KMT is the largest single party in the Legislative Yuan and is chaired by Cheng Li-wun.

The party was founded by Sun Yat-sen in 1894 in Honolulu, Hawaii, as the Revive China Society. He reformed the party in 1919 in the Shanghai French Concession under its current name. From 1926 to 1928, the KMT under Chiang Kai-shek successfully unified China in the Northern Expedition against regional warlords, leading to the fall of the Beiyang government. After initially allying with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in the First United Front, the party under Chiang purged communist members. It was the sole ruling party of China from 1928 to 1949 but gradually lost control while fighting the Empire of Japan in the Second Sino-Japanese War and the CCP in the Chinese Civil War. In December 1949, the Kuomintang retreated to Taiwan following its defeat by the communists.

The Northern Expedition was a military campaign launched by the National Revolutionary Army (NRA) of the Kuomintang (KMT) against the Beiyang government and other regional warlords in 1926. The purpose of the campaign was to reunify China, which had become fragmented in the aftermath of the 1911 Revolution. The expedition was led by Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, and was divided into two phases. The first phase ended in a 1927 political split between two factions of the KMT: the right-leaning Nanjing faction, led by Chiang, and the left-leaning faction in Wuhan, led by Wang Jingwei. The split was partially motivated by Chiang's Shanghai Massacre of Communists within the KMT, which marked the end of the First United Front. In an effort to mend this schism, Chiang Kai-shek stepped down as the commander of the NRA in August 1927, and went into exile in Japan.

The second phase of the Expedition began in January 1928, when Chiang resumed command. By April 1928, the nationalist forces had advanced to the Yellow River. With the assistance of allied warlords, including Yan Xishan and Feng Yuxiang, the nationalist forces secured a series of decisive victories against the Beiyang Army. As they approached Beijing, Zhang Zuolin, leader of the Manchuria-based Fengtian clique, was forced to flee and was later assassinated shortly thereafter by the Japanese. His son, Zhang Xueliang, took over as the leader of the Fengtian clique, and in December 1928, announced that Manchuria would accept the authority of the nationalist government in Nanjing. With the final piece of China under KMT control, the Northern Expedition concluded successfully and China was reunified, heralding the start of the Nanjing decade.

The Nationalist government, Nationalist regime and Nationalist China, officially the National Government of the Republic of China, refer to the government of the Republic of China from 1 July 1925 to 20 May 1948, led by the nationalist Kuomintang (KMT) under Chiang Kai-shek.

Following the outbreak of the Xinhai Revolution, revolutionary leader Sun Yat-sen was elected to be China's provisional president and founded the Provisional Government of the Republic of China. To preserve national unity, Sun ceded the presidency to military strongman Yuan Shikai, who established the Beiyang government. After a failed attempt to install himself as Emperor of China, Yuan died in 1916, leaving a power vacuum which resulted in China being divided into several warlord fiefs and rival governments. They were nominally reunified in 1928 under the Nanjing-based government led by Chiang Kai-shek, which after the Northern Expedition initially governed the country as a one-party state under the Kuomintang, and was subsequently given international recognition as the legitimate representative of China, with Chiang as a de facto leader of the country under a military dictatorship. The Nationalist government would then experience many further challenges such as the Second Sino-Japanese War, and the Chinese Civil War. The government was in place until it was replaced by the current Government of the Republic of China in the newly promulgated Constitution of the Republic of China of 1947.

Yuan Shikai (traditional Chinese: 袁世凱; simplified Chinese: 袁世凯; pinyin: Yuán Shìkǎi; Wade–Giles: Yüan Shih-k'ai; 16 September 1859 – 6 June 1916) was a Chinese general and statesman who served as the second provisional president and the first official president of the Republic of China, head of the Beiyang government from 1912 to 1916 and Emperor of the Chinese Empire from 1915 to 1916. A major political figure during the late Qing regime, he spearheaded a number of major modernisation programs and reforms and played a decisive role in securing the abdication of Puyi in 1912, which marked the collapse of the Qing regime and the end of imperial rule in China.

Born to an affluent Han family in Xiangcheng county, Yuan began his career in the Huai Army. He was sent to Joseon to head a Qing garrison in Seoul and was appointed imperial resident and supreme adviser to the Korean government after thwarting the Gapsin Coup in 1885. He was recalled to China shortly before the outbreak of the First Sino-Japanese War, and received command of the first New Army, which paved the way for his rise to power. In 1898, Yuan formed an alliance with Empress Dowager Cixi and helped bring an end to the Guangxu Emperor's Hundred Days' Reform. Promoted to Viceroy of Zhili in 1902, Yuan quickly expanded the Beiyang Army into the best trained and most effective military force in China. He played an active role in the Late Qing reforms, which included the abolition of the imperial examination. Upon the death of Cixi in 1908 he fell from power and was forced into exile, but retained the loyalty of the Beiyang Army and as such remained an influential figure.