The Red Spear Society staged a major uprising in 1928–1929 against the rule of Liu Zhennian, the Nationalist government-aligned warlord ruler of eastern Shandong province in Republican China. Motivated by their resistance against high taxes, rampant banditry and the brutality of Liu's private army, the Red Spear peasant insurgents captured large areas on the Shandong Peninsula and were able to set up a proto-state in Dengzhou county. Despite this, the whole insurgency was eventually crushed by Liu in late 1929. Background The Red Spear Society was a movement and network of peasant self-defense and vigilante militias that sprung up throughout China in response to the chaos of the Warlord Era in the 1910s and 1920s. As the influence of the Red Spears grew, branches of the movement were set up in several Chinese provinces, such as Shandong. The largest area of Red Spears activity in Shandong was its western counties, while the Shandong Peninsula in the east remained relatively calm until the late 1920s. The only eastern area with a large Red Spears presence was Laiyang county. This changed in fall of 1928, as banditry on the peninsula rapidly increased, leading to additional villages joining the Red Spear Society to defend themselves. The Red Spears' power and influence consequently grew greatly. Meanwhile, the situation for the civilian population in eastern Shandong worsened due to the ascension of Liu Zhennian. Liu, a former subordinate of Fengtian warlord Zhang Zongchang, defected to the Nationalists during the Northern Expedition in 1928. In return, the new Nationalist government in Nanjing allowed him to keep the Shandong Peninsula as his personal fiefdom. Liu's rule was marked by the brutality of his private army, and high taxes (though these taxes were still lower than those under the previous regime of Zhang Zongchang). Furthermore, Liu did nothing to curb the widespread and escalating banditry. All this motivated additional peasants to join the Red Spears and the peasant movement to take a more aggressive stance against the perceived oppression by the government. Uprising The situation began to escalate in late 1928, as the Red Spears organized a militant tax resistance, so that officials no longer dared to venture into areas held by the peasant movement such as Laiyang and Zhaoyuan. The escalating Red Spears' revolt was helped by the deteriorating security in Shandong, as elements of Liu's army mutinied at Longkou and Huangxian in January 1929 and then