Warlord Era in the context of "Power vacuum"

China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the second-most populous country after India, representing 17% of the world population. China borders fourteen countries by land across an area of 9.6 million square kilometers (3,700,000 sq mi), making it the third-largest country by area. The country is divided into 33 province-level divisions: 22 provinces, 5 autonomous regions, 4 municipalities, and 2 semi-autonomous special administrative regions. Beijing is the capital, while Shanghai is the most populous city by urban area and largest financial center.

China saw the first humans in the region arriving during the Paleolithic era. By the 2nd millennium BCE dynastic states had emerged in the Yellow River basin. The 8th–3rd centuries BCE saw a breakdown in the authority of the Zhou dynasty, accompanied by the emergence of administrative and military techniques, literature and philosophy. In 221 BCE, China was unified under an emperor, ushering in two millennia of imperial dynasties. With the invention of gunpowder and paper, the establishment of the Silk Road, and the Great Wall, Chinese culture flourished and has heavily influenced its neighbors and lands further afield. China began to cede parts of the country in the 19th century, to European powers by a series of unequal treaties. The 1911 Revolution overthrew the Qing dynasty and the Republic of China was established the following year. The country was unstable and fragmented during the Warlord Era, which ended upon the Northern Expedition conducted by the Kuomintang to reunify the country.

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 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.

Warlords are individuals who exercise military, economic, and political control over a region, often one without a strong central or national government, typically through informal control over local armed forces. Warlords have existed throughout much of history, albeit in a variety of different capacities within the political, economic, and social structure of states or ungoverned territories. The term is often applied in the context of China around the end of the Qing dynasty, especially during the Warlord Era. The term may also be used for a supreme military leader.

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.

The Beiyang Army (Chinese: 北洋軍; pinyin: Běi Yáng Jūn; lit. 'Northern Ocean Army'), named after the Beiyang region, was an army established by Yuan Shikai in 1895. It was the centerpiece of a general overhaul of the Qing military system in the wake of the Boxer Rebellion and the First Sino-Japanese War, becoming the dynasty's first regular army in terms of its training, equipment, and structure. The Beiyang Army played a major role in Chinese politics for at least three decades and arguably right up to 1949. It played an instrumental role in the 1911 Revolution against the Qing dynasty, and, by dividing into warlord factions known as the Beiyang clique (Chinese: 北洋軍閥; pinyin: Běiyáng Jūnfá), ushered in a period of regional division.

The Beiyang Army had its origins in the Newly Created Army established in late 1895 under Yuan Shikai's command, after China was defeated in the First Sino-Japanese War. Unlike its predecessors, it had a formal structure with infantry, cavalry, artillery, and logistical branches, and maintained strict training and discipline. The brigade-sized force was expanded over the years with new recruits and by incorporating other units, before serving as the core of a larger army after Yuan was appointed the Viceroy of Zhili and Minister of Beiyang in 1901. The tensions in Manchuria leading up to the Russo-Japanese War caused Empress Dowager Cixi to accept Yuan's request to raise more divisions, and he also used his influential position in the Army Reorganization Bureau to prioritize its funding. By 1907 the Beiyang Army had 60,000 men organized in six divisions, some of whom served in the Inner City of Beijing as the emperor's palace guard, and on the eve of the 1911 Revolution it was the strongest military force of the Qing dynasty.