to receive Japanese funding for his army (renamed "National Defence Army"), for which he was willing to grant Japan legal succession to the German rights in Shandong (see May Fourth Movement). High warlordism (1919–1925) Before May–June 1919, some combination of fighting and negotiation among the major Beiyang leaders was expected to lead to military unification, which in turn would permit the restoration of the constitutional political processes that Yuan Shikai had disrupted. By 1919 the three major northern military cliques had cemented, two of them – Anhui and Zhili – directly from the Beiyang Army and the third, Fengtian under Gen. Zhang Zuolin, from an amalgamation of Beiyang and local troops. They and their imitators on a smaller scale were willing to get money and arms from any source in order to survive, and the weaker factions would combine against the stronger. The history of the major warlord wars down to 1925 recount the failure of any of the military commanders in China to centralise political and military power to any degree. In a situation resembling the period of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms, most of South China remained beyond Beiyang control, to become the incubator for both the KMT and Chinese Communist Party movements. Northern Expedition The Kuomintang established the National Revolutionary Army with the help of the Soviet Union and Chinese Communist Party. Chiang Kai-shek then launched the Northern Expedition in 1926 in an attempt to bring the warlords under his control. Some warlords of the Beiyang Army, including Wu Peifu and Sun Chuanfang, were defeated by Chiang's forces, and the National Revolutionary Army gradually became dominant in China. The warlord era would be officially ended by 1928, when most of the warlords were either defeated or allied with the Kuomintang, although it was often in name only. The Chinese Civil War that had resulted from a fallout between Chiang and the Communists was already underway by this time. In 1930 the Central Plains War began after some of the warlords allied with the Kuomintang became disenchanted and attempted to overthrow Chiang. They weren't successful, but lack of cooperation and rivalry continued to plague China through much of the years following, eventually leading to the demise of Chiang's regime in the Chinese Civil War in 1949. Colours See also Beiyang government Military history of China New Army History of the Republic of China Whampoa Military Academy References