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History: How complicated do you want your civil war to be?
Me: Yes

"Why was China divided before WW2?"

[Points to Yuan Shikai]

This video is a simplified version of the warlord era. One major mistake: Sun Yat-sen passed away in Beijing (the north) due to illness, and not in the south when he was invited by the northern warlords to go to Beijing to mediate between Feng Yuxiang's Guominjun (after Feng ousted the last emperor Puyi from the Forbidden City) and Zhang Zuolin's Fengtian Clique when both sides were still technically allies.

One minor mistake: Yuan Shikai did not immediately declare himself emperor. He was the 1st president of the ROC (not to be confused with Sun Yat-sen being the intern president udring the Xinhai Revolution of 1911-12 that overthrew the Qing Dynasty. He made himself emperor in 1916, which was hugely unpopular and opposed by basically everyone except maybe Feng Guozhang.

Also, Xinjiang passed from Yang Zengxin, to Jin Shuren, then to Sheng Shicai, whilst southern Xinjiang experience separatists uprising called East Turkestan Islamic Republic and the Yutian Islamic Kingdom, which were crushed by northwestern warlords Ma Zhonging and Ma Hushan, with the support from Chiang's central government. But the Xinjiang Wars were not limited to these, as the ousting of Jin Shuren by force by Sheng Shicai was also part of the Xinjiang Wars.

Sichuan was the most chaotic province before 1937 when Sichuan warlords finally decided to unite and defend China against Japan when Japan launched full scale invasion of China that year. Some prominent warlords include Liu Xiang, Liu Wenhui, Yang Sen, Deng Xihou, who would sometimes fight each other, and other times unite briefly to counter Chiang's encroachment on Sichuan, or when they fought the CPC's Red Army during CPC's Long March. This province is so backwards that during the ROC between 1912 to 1949, there were no train track or train service in Sichuan. (Apart from Tibet not having any tar roads and Xinjiang not having any power plant and electric lamps unlike Shanghai) But it is this chaotic and warring province that also contributed the most military commanders and statesmen that will ultimately establish the PRC, such as former paramount leader Deng Xiaoping, and marshals like Zhu De, Liu Bocheng, Nie Rongzhen and Chen Yi. In fact, Liu Bocheng was blinded in one eye during the war to oppose Yuan Shikai.

Some minor warlords not mentioned included Yunnan's 1st warlord Cai E, who was the first to denounce Yuan Shikai when Yuan declared himself emperor. Another one is Sun Dianying, which is most-known for tomb raiding the tombs of past Qing Emperor Qianlong and Empress Dowager Cixi when KMT forces took Beijing. This contributed in part to Puyi deciding to defect to the Japanese when Japan established the puppet state of Manchukuo. Sun's army was then banished to what is today's Inner Mongolia, where the Ma Clique didn't welcome him and fought a minor war called the Four Mas War to Resist Sun. Another one is Anhui Clique's Xu Shuzhen, who led the brief reclamation of outer Mongolia. Others included Hunan's He Jian who killed Mao Zedong's 1st wife Yang Kaihui, Zhu Peide of Jiangxi who led the taking of Hainan island during the KMT's expedition to unify China.

Zhang Xueliang's rule over Manchuria was brief, and his most prominent accomplishment was the Xi'an Incident when he kidnapped Chiang and forced him to end civil war with CPC and to counter Japanese invaders instead in end of 1936, less than 7 months before Japan were to launch the full-sacle war with China. By then, he had already lost Manchuria to Japan, who in turn founded the puppet state of Manchukuo in his absence.

I remember those guys from Kaiserreich. Someone should make a mod about this alternate timeline

Teacher: The test isn't that complicated.

The test:

Thank you for covering this. The Warlord Era of China is a personal favorite of mine and what I'm pursuing my Doctorate to write about.

Russian civil war : how many factions do you want ? China : hold my beer.

With how many people died within short periods of time in China all the time, it's a miracle there's 1.5 billion of them today

This looks like China was playing musical chairs. 🤣🤣🤣

With a period such as this I understand why unification was so important to the CCP

You could make a good Game of Throne style show out of this

What people don't understand about why Sun gave up his seat in the KMT and gave power to Yuan was because Sun knew he didn't have the capability to beat Yuan in military might.

When the whole Xinhai Rebellion kicked off in 1911, Yuan was the defacto most powerful Qing army general out there as he was holding the frontier of China facing what was the Russian Empire up the far North-west. Thus, his army was the most advanced military unit that the Qing had that were armed with state-of-the-art rifles like the Gewher 88, Gewher 98, Austrian Mannlicher M95s, some Krupp cannons and at least a squadron of Maxim MG team. That said, his entire army strength was evaluated to about 150,000 men alone, guarding the entire frontier.
Thus, Sun knew right out he can't fight with Yuan as his men were all stupidly outgunned and even after raiding Qing armouries, modern repeating arms wern't a Qing thing thus it was far and few for the rebels too.

Sun straight up went into negotiation with Yuan, asked him to negotiate the surrender and abdication of the Qing emperor and then he'll personally give Yuan the presidency in a prevention of another chaos.
Thus when Yuan backstabbed everyone and declared himself emperor despite bad policies by him, Sun came back and wrest control from him but alas, too bad that after Yuan died, Sun died not long after. However, that wasn't the end.

When the Fengtian Clique formed from the death of Yuan Shikai, they still held tons of modern military equipment, modern stuff that the provisional southern KMT didn't have and one way the KMT did was rally even more funds from foreign Chinese businessmen, mostly from Malaya (Modern-day Malaysia), Singapore, Borneo, Dutch East Indies and Siam (Present-day Thailand) and from these funds, they went out to buy arms too and surprisingly, they were even allied with the USSR at one point who gave tons of military equipment to them and also sent advisors to them to buff up their military structure and from there, 2 clique formed in the KMT themselves. One Communist wing, one ultranationalist wing which, surprise surprise, would lead to conflict later on too but because still up to 1920, the balance of power still wasn't on the KMT's side but at the faction that took over Yuan's constituency and military authority, the Fengtian Clique and now more widely known as the "Beiyang Government" when you lump in the Zhili Clique into it.

When you really look into the history of China, it really is amazing how it exists to the outside world as one country. It has enough diversity of people and ideas to behave as a continent by itself.

I was going through you 3 minute vids on Warlord era China the other day. I knew you were working on a continuation of your China trilogy. Looks like Christmas came early!

The Chinese civil war is literally every online political argument.

China after the collapse of the Qing Dynasty: "How many warlords do you want?"
Yes

This has got to be the best video on the warlord era done by a history youtuber. You actually cover the whole period and many of the little wars and incidents that get glossed over. Also appreciate that you didn't waste time on anecdotes of the dogmeat general which I feel has been way overdone

Chinese Philosopher Mozi (墨子) once stated:

"If one does not preserve the learned in a state he will be injuring the state; if one does not recommend the virtuous upon seeing one, he will be neglecting the ruler. Enthusiasm is to be shown only to the virtuous, and plans for the country are only to be shared with the learned. Few are those, who, neglecting the virtuous and slighting the learned, could still maintain the existence of their countries"

Chinese history be like "the wu ching clique engaged the flying panda faction at the battle of heavenly ascension, 20 Million perished"