The Warlord Era

The Warlord Era, generally dated from 1916 to 1928, refers to the period following the death of Yuan Shikai, the strongman who had dominated China's new Republic since the 1911 fall of the Qing dynasty, during which the country fragmented into territories controlled by rival regional military commanders, or warlords, each commanding personal armies and openly ignoring the nominal authority of the Republican government in Beijing. Continuous shifting conflict among warlord factions, including the Zhili, Fengtian and Anhui cliques in the north, devastated large parts of the country and left China unable to present a unified front against foreign encroachment even as the Republican government retained formal diplomatic recognition abroad. The era also saw the founding of both the Chinese Communist Party in 1921 and the reorganization of the Nationalist Kuomintang, whose 1926-1928 Northern Expedition military campaign, led first by Sun Yat-sen and then Chiang Kai-shek, defeated the major warlord factions and nominally reunified China under Nationalist rule in 1928, ending the era though many former warlords retained significant regional autonomy for years afterward.