There was much spirited disagreements as the British were unwilling to consider returning the colony, despite the fact the 25-year lease had expired in 1923. The talks were broken off when the warlord General Feng Yuxiang, aka "the Christian General" seized Beijing, forcing Koo to flee for his life. Much to Koo's own humiliation, he was forced to take refuge in Weihaiwei. The British authorities in Weihaiwei refused Feng's demand to hand over Koo to his men, who would almost certainly had executed him. Feng's rule over Beijing did not last long as the capital was soon taken by the army of another warlord, Marshal Zhang Zuolin, the "Old Marshal" of Manchuria. With Beijing in the hands of Zhang, Koo returned to the city. Koo disliked Zhang, an illiterate bandit turned warlord who professed to be fighting to restore the "Great Qing Empire", but was willing to work with him as Zhang favored diplomacy to revise the "Unequal treaties" instead of war, a choice of options that coincided with Koo's own preferences. Zhang had a reputation as one of China's most brutal warlords, but his inability to read and write led him to crave the approval of intellectuals. Zhang appointed Koo as his premier and foreign minister, hoping this would add luster to his regime and would lead to foreign governments recognizing his government. Ominously, for Zhang, the British refused to recognize his government and dropped hints that they favored the rival government based in Canton led by Dr. Sun Yat-sen. He was twice Acting Premier, in 1924 and again in 1926 during a period of chaos in Beijing under Zhang Zuolin in 1926–7. Koo was Acting Premier from 1 October 1926 and acted concurrently as Interim President. (On March 12, 1925, Sun Yat-sen died in Wellington Koo's home in Beijing, where he had been taken when it was discovered he had incurable liver cancer.) As Foreign Minister, he often clashed with Sir Miles Lampson, the British minister-plenipotentiary in Beijing over his demands that China have the right to control its own tariffs and the end of British extraterritoriality, demands that Lampson vehemently rejected. Lampson had essentially Victorian views of China and his relations with Koo were stormy. Lampson reported to London that after one meeting that he had "harangued Koo till I had exhausted my vocabulary". He served as Premier from January until June 1927, when he resigned after