Fragmentation and Central Government Authority

To address the host of political, administrative, military, fiscal, and foreign policy problems buffeting its rule from the mid nineteenth century on, the Qing imperial court looked increasingly toward regions and provinces to help bear the burden for reform. The court hoped that decentralising everything from military reform to revenue extraction and even suppressing rebellions could provide the central government some relief from the financial obligations of governance.⁴ Devolution, however, spelt disproportionate gains in administrative efficiencies and capacities that benefited provinces and regions more than the imperial government. Even though these reforms aimed to save the empire, the fact that regions and provinces were growing in their independent ability to enact and execute policy softened the ground for an erosion of Beijing’s rule.

By the turn of the twentieth century, most regions and even individual provinces were largely responsible for managing their own tax bases.⁵ Indeed, local collections of the land tax provided the bulk of revenues for regional and provincial governments both in the late Qing and the early Republican periods.⁶ Local regimes could further independently raise “emergency” taxes such as the pingzhai or tankuan to supplement their income. Notably, although tax remittances to Beijing from some of the richer provinces continued intermittently, especially before 1911, this reflected residual central authority rather than Beijing’s ability to coerce regional regimes or extract from local populations directly.⁷

Some more prosperous regions even developed heavy industry and modern arsenals with foreign assistance to meet the economic and military needs of their reform programmes. This was despite official restrictions on regions and provinces taking foreign loans.⁸ Governors and governors-general enjoyed such leeway to accumulate capital because administrative changes since the mid nineteenth century left the Qing court with limited direct oversight in, much less active responsibility for, provincial and regional governance.⁹

The growing autonomy of regions and provinces extended to external affairs. As the Boxer episode played out in 1899 and 1900, the foreign powers jointly invaded and occupied areas around Beijing in response to a declaration of war by the Qing court and the unrest caused by Boxer groups. However, governors-general in central and south China were able to make a separate peace, known as the Dongnan hubao yundong, or Southeast Mutual Protection Movement, with the intervening powers.¹⁰ Under the pact, governors and governors-general in south and central China protected the life and property of foreign nationals by controlling and suppressing the Boxers in return for nonintervention.

Through the Dongnan hubao, regional administrations in south and central China avoided the invasions and occupations that befell north China. By doing so, these provincial and regional officials departed from the imperial decree to support the Boxers and declare war on all foreign powers active in China, highlighting the capacity of regional and provincial authorities to act independently of the central government.¹¹ Beijing’s inability to rein in administrations in south and central China signalled a decline of imperial control.

For all the decentralisation of government capacities, the Qing court managed to maintain a degree of authority over regional and provincial administrations until the 1911 Revolution, in part due to the personal loyalties of various governors and governors-general. I distinguish authority – influence over and the acknowledged submission of subordinates – from capability – the ability to pursue and implement a certain course of action.¹² So long as Qing authority persisted, power-holders in Beijing – like the Empress Dowager, Cixi, and the Prince Regent, Zai Feng – could change and remove top officials in various localities. Zai Feng and his associates even managed to force an official as important as Yuan Shikai, then-Governor-General of Zhili and Beiyang Minister, into retirement after Cixi’s death.¹³

Nevertheless, central government rule in the final years of the Qing became highly dependent on the institutional capacities of various regional and provincial administrations as well as their continued deference to the court. The breakdown of imperial authority following the Wuchang Uprising in 1911, therefore, triggered the collapse of the Qing government.¹⁴ As regional and provincial governments declared independence from the court in late 1911, the Qing court found continued survival increasingly untenable. The final push came when Beiyang military officials, allegedly instigated by Yuan Shikai, indicated their inability to defend the court in a memorial to the Prince Regent.¹⁵ This forced the Qing court to announce the Xuantong Emperor’s abdication and the Empire’s dissolution.

The erosion of central rule in the late Qing period spurred further political fragmentation in China following the fall of the empire.¹⁶ Even as Yuan Shikai attempted to reestablish central authority and control after coming to power as President in 1912, regions and provinces provided much of the capacity for an anti-Yuan opposition. Provincial leaders like Jiangxi’s Li Liejun and Yunnan’s Cai E supplied military forces and leadership to the 1913 Second Revolution against Yuan as well as the Anti-Yuan Campaign of 1916.¹⁷ Following the Second Revolution’s failure, Sun Yat-sen and the Nationalists were similarly able to continue their anti-Yuan efforts with help from regional leaders in south China.¹⁸

Yuan Shikai’s ability to install himself into the presidency likewise rested on the support he was able to muster from military leaders and officials in regions and provinces that submitted to his command. It was with the support of forces led by former Beiyang subordinates like Duan Qirui and others that Yuan managed to install himself as president, as well as defeat opponents like those behind the Second Revolution.¹⁹ Yet, when regional and provincial leaders either opposed or shied away from fully supporting Yuan’s attempt to enthrone himself as emperor in 1916, Yuan had to annul his ascension.²⁰ Even at the height of his power, Yuan’s central government did not possess unquestioned authority in, much less direct control over, vast areas of China.

With Yuan Shikai’s death in 1916, the political fragmentation of the Chinese polity became more extensive even if central government rule persisted, albeit nominally. Without their leader, Yuan’s former subordinates and supporters began to assert their own regional, provincial, and local prerogatives even more. Consequently, regional and provincial militarist cliques took on greater prominence.²¹ This was despite the fact they still formally acknowledged the preeminence of Beijing central government.²²

These militarist cliques and their members generally worked to guard and expand areas under their control. Militarist cliques, especially those in north and central China, would also attempt to seize Beijing in order to access additional revenues from foreign loans, as well as funds left over from foreign administered customs duties after the servicing of external debt.²³ These were among the main prizes that victory in the many wars between different militarist cliques during the 1910s and 1920s seemed to promise.²⁴

Militarist cliques in south China likewise fought over territory and resources. Examples include conflicts between the Yunnan, Sichuan, and Hunan militarists, as well as between the militarists controlling Jiangxi and Fujian.²⁵ Relying as they did on the support of various militarists, these conflicts often embroiled the Nationalists as well. Sun Yat-sen and the Nationalists depended on Chen Jiongming to seize Guangzhou in 1917 when setting up the southern Guangzhou National Government to rival Beijing.²⁶ When Chen and Sun had a falling out in 1920, the Nationalists allied themselves with the Guangxi Clique to expel Chen from Guangzhou in 1922.²⁷

Relations within various militarist cliques too were far from unproblematic. Allies often defected and subordinates, in many instances, turned against their ostensible superiors.²⁸ Importantly, such realignments could determine the outcome of major conflicts. Liu Xun’s unwillingness to pit his forces against his old Zhili Clique allies, for instance, contributed to the defeat of the Anfu Clique in the Zhili-Anfu War of 1920.²⁹Feng Yuxiang’s defection in the Second Zhili-Fengtian War of 1924 was key in the defeat of Zhili forces and the rise of the Fengtian Clique to national prominence.³⁰Even the Nationalists were prone to severe internal divisions. A major reason for ongoing Nationalist reorganisation efforts after 1912 was to address the many serious party splits that emerged following Yuan Shikai’s bid for absolute power.³¹ This instability in relations amongst and within various political groupings is indicative of the extent of fractures in authority.

Territorial Exclusivity and Foreign Administration

Apart from the obvious decline in political centralisation, the years between 1893 and 1922 witnessed an erosion of China’s territorial exclusivity. Despite the fact that much of China’s territory and population largely remained under indigenous rule, external actors managed important aspects of domestic governance. The British were essentially in charge of China’s Maritime Customs Service since the 1850s, whilst the French and others administered various parts of the Salt Gabelle in areas under their sway.³² These foreign-run military and police forces controlled and protected major lines of communication, such as the South Manchurian Railway and the Yangzi River.³³

Due to the granting of extraterritoriality from the mid nineteenth century on, authorities in China had no legal jurisdiction over foreign nationals in the polity. In carving out spheres of influence, various foreign powers also were able to maintain special, and often semiexclusive, economic and political prerogatives over much of China. Foreign law courts even enjoyed final jurisdiction over Chinese nationals living within externally administered regions of China. Such exclusive political and economic privileges were evident in the Japanese, Russian, and French spheres of influence respectively in northeast, northwest, and southwest China, just as they were in German-dominated Shandong. Even the British enjoyed similar concessions in the Lower Yangzi despite not claiming a formal sphere of influence.³⁴

External Autonomy and China’s Diplomatic Independence

Various internal and external pressures notwithstanding, the Chinese polity managed to retain moderate to high degrees of external autonomy between 1893 and 1922. Central governments from the Qing court and the Nanjing Provisional Government to the Beijing Government of Yuan Shikai, the various Beiyang regimes, and even the Guangzhou National Government were able to avoid being subordinate to any other government or authority outside China.³⁵

Successive central Chinese governments were even able to represent the polity as an independent actor in the international arena in the face of external pressure. Despite its debt and indemnity obligations, for instance, the Qing court was able to come to its own disastrous decision to declare war on the foreign powers during the Boxer episode. Xu Shichang’s government in Beijing could likewise declare war on and make peace with the Central Powers on its own accord during World War I.

Rival claimants to leadership of the central government too managed to create joint missions to represent China in major international conferences such as the Versailles Conference in 1919.³⁶ As an independent diplomatic actor, representatives of China were able to withhold official recognition of Japanese attempts to occupy Shandong at the Paris Peace Conference.³⁷ They even managed to elicit support for a withdrawal of Japanese military forces from Shandong at the end of the Washington Conference.

Through its representatives at the convention in Washington, China also managed to acquire de jure recognition of her borders from the major powers of the day.³⁸ As a member of the League of Nations, the Chinese government also secured a degree of international aid and technical assistance.³⁹ For all its internal turmoil, therefore, China from 1893 to 1922 remained a fully independent corporate actor in world politics.

China as a Feudalised State

Accordingly, the time between 1893 and 1922 marked the feudalisation of the Chinese polity from what was an already decaying imperial state. These three decades witnessed the height of political decentralisation within China, with regional, provincial, and even subprovincial authorities being able to assert ever-increasing political, military, and economic autonomy at the expense of central control. The period too saw the continuation and expansion of foreign administration over key areas of governance in China. Figure 3.1 and the maps shown here approximate variations in state form, my dependent variable.⁴⁰

Figure 3.1 Feudalising the Chinese Polity, 1900–1922

Map 1 Chinese Polity under Direct Qing Jurisdiction, c.1893

Map 2 Militarist and Other Regimes in China, c.1917

Given the state of political fragmentation in early twentieth-century China, observers note that the polity resembled world politics more than domestic politics. Historian Lei Haizong characterised China’s political structure during this period as a return to the Spring and Autumn and Warring States system of antiquity.⁴¹Ch’i Hsi-sheng observed that the “Chinese political system of this period more closely resembled an international system than a national system”.⁴² Certainly, the hold that regional and provincial authorities enjoyed over both internal and external governance made them seem more like independent actors than subordinates of a central government.

All these developments took place in spite of the fact that China’s central government maintained nearly singular diplomatic representation regardless of the regime in power, and did so without having to answer to a higher external authority. Likewise, central government rule remained ostensibly unbroken throughout the period despite regular changes in who wielded power in the Beijing. Given the low to moderate levels of political centralisation and territorial exclusivity coupled with a high degree of external autonomy, state form in late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century China resembled the feudalised pre-Capetian France and Holy Roman Empire.

Nationalism and Self-Determination

Nationalism and self-determination offer some promise in laying out the feudalisation of late Qing and early Republican China, especially the concurrent existence of fragmentary and centralising tendencies. A sense of common identity along with a belief in self-determination could motivate regional leaders, militarist cliques, and political parties to resist erosion of central rule in the face of internal and external pressures. Such sentiments may lead local actors to try to limit foreign involvement in domestic governance and to preserve the polity’s external autonomy. Nonetheless, the inability of local actors to resolve differences over parochial interests impeded the attainment of shared goals, and fuelled feudalisation. Nationalist and self-determination arguments do less well in addressing the willingness of local political actors to seek foreign support at the expense of territoriality, autonomy, and even centralisation.

It is certainly possible to make a strong initial case for the force of nationalism and self-determination norms. Efforts by Yuan Shikai, Duan Qirui, Sun Yat-sen and the Nationalists, and the intellectuals of the May Fourth Movement to push for greater centralisation, exclusivity, and autonomy may be consistent with beliefs in national self-determination.⁴³ Attempts by nationalist revolutionaries to replace the Qing court with a republic, late Qing efforts to maintain the empire, and the 1912 power grab by Yuan Shikai and his Beiyang allies all aimed to create a sovereign Chinese state. Regionally based regimes – especially those based in north and central China – such as Duan Qirui’s Anfu Club, the Zhili Clique, and Zhang Zuolin’s Fengtian Clique arguably sought to expand their hold over China to do the same.⁴⁴ Such actors consistently supported central government rule and external autonomy.

Along these lines, the Qing court and the various Beiyang governments established after Yuan’s death tried to expand political and economic control across China. Efforts to whittle away the political foundations, financial base, and administrative autonomy of rivals outside Beijing included attempts control taxation, external relations, foreign borrowing, and the funding and arming of military forces.⁴⁵ The Qing court’s retirement of Yuan Shikai in 1908 is representative of such efforts.⁴⁶Xu Shichang’s attempt to broker a negotiated settlement between feuding militarists in north and south China that would unite them under his presidency also exemplifies such political manoeuvring.⁴⁷

Concurrently, the promise of being able to reconstitute the entire polity according to their aspirations encouraged actors out of power at the centre to respect at least nominal authority and avoid permanently dividing China. Hence, many political groups shied away from separating areas under their sway from the rest of China even when under pressure from the central government. This was as true of the Nationalists when they established the Guangzhou National Government to rival Beijing, as it was of the Anfu, Zhili, Fengtian, and other militarist cliques when they did not control the central government.

However, following the nationalist and self-determination logics, local disagreements over who was to lead a unified state, determine the domestic distribution of surpluses, and represent China internationally could also stymie any move toward sovereign statehood. The vision of creating sovereign statehood in the late Qing and early Republican periods led to clashes amongst political actors in China, exacerbating political divisions even if it preserved nominal central government rule. That many political actors were unwilling to see others rule a sovereign Chinese state brought stiff resistance to attempts to create strong central government rule. This dynamic is clear in the tensions between the Nationalist-led southern government and the northern governments of Yuan Shikai, Duan Qirui, and Li Yuanhong as well as between Sun Yat-sen and his erstwhile ally, Chen Jiongming.⁴⁸ It is also evident in intraregional conflicts like the 1917 North-South War, the 1920 Zhili-Anfu War, the 1920 and 1924 Fengtian-Zhili Wars, and Zhang Xun’s 1917 Qing Restoration attempt.⁴⁹

In spite of any sincere belief in nationalist and self-determination ideals, political actors also did not wish to lose control of the locales they held and the ability to manage the distribution of surpluses in these areas. Groups were ready to resort to arms to protect such privileges. This moved many provincial and regional regimes to defy the writ of the central government, as seen in the 1913 Second Revolution and the 1916 Anti-Yuan Campaign against the Yuan Shikai government.⁵⁰This desire of local regimes to resist encroachments on their prerogatives is also clear in the broad provincial and regional opposition to Zhang Xun’s 1917 attempt to restore Qing rule.

It is possible to see Chen Jiongming’s decision to turn against Sun Yat-sen and the Nationalists in 1922 as driven by a desire to maintain local prerogatives as well. If Sun and the Kuomintang succeeded in creating a strong central government under their leadership, one of the first things to go would be Chen’s hold over Guangdong and southern Fujian. Accordingly, the Nationalist ascendancy helped give rise to Chen’s vehement defence of a federalist ideal that afforded regional administrations significant political and economic privileges.⁵¹ Wars amongst regimes in Guangxi, Yunnan, Sichuan, and Hunan were similarly efforts to secure local surpluses as well as other advantages from control of a population and geographic space.⁵² Even Yan Xishan’s assiduous avoidance of entanglement in national-level politics was to maintain his hold over Shanxi.⁵³

In not attending fully to how various groups acquired the ability to affect domestic politics, the picture of China’s feudalisation presented by nationalism and self-determination remains incomplete. Since ideology alone does not produce financing, weapons, training, or organisational capacity, the effectiveness of nationalism and self-determination in state formation processes may require the presence of other forces. Moreover, when considering funding, arms, and military training, almost all groups – including those with explicit nationalist agendas – readily sacrificed national interests to secure advantages vis-à-vis their domestic opponents.⁵⁴ So long as actors could enhance their capacity to maintain and extend control over parts of China and the surpluses they promised, almost anything seemed negotiable with almost anyone. This is problematic for nationalist and self-determination views, as supposedly patriotic local actors actively and knowingly undercut territorial exclusivity to forward goals that eroded political centralisation.

This trading of benefits went beyond the Anfu Club and Fengtian Clique’s well-known acceptance of Japanese oversight over communications, commercial activity, natural resource extraction, and security in Manchuria for military as well as economic assistance.⁵⁵To acquire funds for the Guangzhou National Government, Sun Yat-sen and the Nationalists were as ready to exchange exclusive railroad, mining, forestry, and minting rights for Japanese funding and arms as Anfu and Fengtian.⁵⁶ The Nationalists too had few qualms about trying to win over British, French, and American aid using similar means.⁵⁷

Likewise, Wang Zhanyuan’s regime actively sought accommodation with both the British and Japanese in efforts to control Hubei province, whilst Feng Yuxiang was able to dominate Chahar, Suiyuan, and Sha’anxi provinces by cultivating Soviet support.⁵⁸ In these cases, political, military, and financial assistance came at the price of permitting significant foreign influence over economic activity and security. Apart from local gentry, economic elites, and peasants, then, foreign powers were simply another potential partner that political groups could cut deals with – even at the expense of sovereign statehood. Nationalist and self-determination arguments need to explain how such “selling out” to foreign powers is consistent with their position to be fully persuasive.

Exogenous Shocks and Patterns of Political Support

It is possible to make a strong case for structural shocks and corresponding shifts in institutional bargains over the distribution of surpluses as key reasons for China’s feudalisation between 1893 and 1922. The burdens created by rapid population growth, natural disasters, internal unrest, and foreign pressure since the early nineteenth century led the Qing court to embark on a process of administrative decentralisation to sustain the empire. By increasing the administrative, economic, and military wherewithal of the regional and provincial governments, Qing rulers also laid the groundwork for later challenges to central rule. Nevertheless, this perspective says little about the simultaneous persistence of political centralisation, enduring external autonomy, and the serious, but limited, erosion of territorial exclusivity. Moreover, the fluidity of domestic political support amongst different segments of Chinese society at the time makes it difficult to identify the institutionalised arrangements between various political actors, classes, and other segments of society.

According to institutional commitment perspectives, Qing efforts to devolve governance in response to various exogenous shocks facilitated the rise of administrative, coercive, and extractive and revenue-producing capabilities beyond Beijing’s direct control.⁵⁹ Such circumstances afforded regional and provincial governments substantial autonomy in their actions, even to the extent of being able to contravene the wishes of the central government in Beijing. Accordingly, this rise in regional administrative, economic, and political autonomy enabled regional regimes to strike arms, financing, and political deals with foreign actors that cut against territorial exclusivity, even if Beijing retained its capacity to manage foreign policy.

Focusing on the fragmentary aspects of governance in the late Qing and early Republican periods, however, leaves the persistence of even nominal central government rule unexplained. After all, the logical conclusion of various regions and provinces increasingly pulling away from the centre would be total disintegration. As Edward McCord suggests, broad recognition of Qing authority among regional, provincial, and even local officials existed through the last years of the dynasty even if Beijing lacked the ability to exert direct oversight in most locales.⁶⁰ Regional and provincial leaders generally submitted to Qing authority until the Revolution and to Yuan Shikai’s presidency during its first years. Titles and positions bestowed on militarist leaders by the central government after the 1911 Revolution even appeared to confer an air of prestige regardless of the regime in Beijing.⁶¹

Yet, despite the incessant fighting between those in control of the central government and different regional regimes during the early Republican period, attempts to eradicate the central government were notably absent. The Second Revolution, Anti-Yuan Campaign, North-South War, Zhili-Anfu War, and Zhili-Fengtian Wars were conflicts in part over control of the central government rather than its dissolution.⁶² In a diminished sense, the authority of the central government persisted into the second decade of the twentieth century under various militarist governments. Institutional commitment perspectives do not sufficiently account for why regional actors did not dismantle central government rule more completely, even if they explain the fragmentary aspects of China’s feudalisation.

Further challenging institutional commitment accounts is the noticeable absence of the sorts of long-standing, regularised partnerships amongst political actors and particular social segments that such arguments identify as key to shifts in state form after exogenous shocks. If anything, political groups and members of different social classes proved adept at switching allegiances in light of changing circumstances, complicating efforts to institutionalise relationships. This was despite the fact that structural crises upset preexisting surplus distribution arrangements.

Certainly, nationalist groups drew heavily from an emergent Western-educated professional elite. Many early nationalist leaders, such as Sun Yat-sen and Huang Xing, came from this professional class; Sun was a Western-trained medical doctor, and Huang a Japanese-educated teacher. The many foreign-trained officers within the New Armies in the late Qing period were members of various revolutionary nationalist societies too.⁶³ Up to perhaps a third of the troops and even more of the officers in Hubei’s New Armies belonged to revolutionary groups.⁶⁴

Professional support went beyond nationalists and revolutionaries. Apart from leaders such as Wu Peifu, Duan Qirui, Li Yuanhong, and Feng Guozhang, various militarist cliques also boasted large numbers of modern military professionals.⁶⁵ Many civilian professionals also served militarist regimes in Beijing as well as in various provinces and regions. Educator and Chinese Communist Party cofounder, Chen Duxiu, for instance, worked for Guangdong’s education system under Chen Jiongming, just as the eminent geologist Ding Wenjiang held various official posts within Sun Chuanfang’s regime in the Jiangnan area.⁶⁶ Some professionals noted for service in militarist-led Beijing governments are Wellington Koo, Wang Chonghui, and Alfred Sze in the diplomatic corps.⁶⁷

Some nonmilitary professionals even became important powerbrokers in their own right. The Communications and New Communications Cliques, which enjoyed substantial influence over the finances of various Beiyang governments through their roles in banking, railroad, and communications, consisted largely of professional technocrats.⁶⁸ Waseda-educated Cao Rulin, a leader of the New Communications Clique, for example, headed the Railroad and Finance Ministries in addition to the semiofficial Bank of Communications as part of several Beiyang cabinets.

As economic modernisation was a largely official effort in China until the early twentieth century, an influential commercial class did not mature until the 1920s. Even then, this emergent commercial class remained small relative to the rest of the population and generally was found in large urban areas along the coast.⁶⁹ Actors outside these regions had less opportunity to ally with this segment of society. However, the political persuasion of the commercial class was quite ambivalent.

Business people and commercial concerns worked with actors across the political spectrum, sometimes simultaneously.⁷⁰Even as some business interests in the south assisted the Nationalist Party, others were urging the Feng Guozhang and Li Yuanhong governments in Beijing to take action against the Nationalists.⁷¹ To consolidate their position in Guangdong, the Nationalists even had to suppress widespread opposition from Guangzhou commercial interests that formed an armed militia to resist taxation.⁷² During the Zhili-Anfu War, commercial interests generally supported the Wu Peifu-led Zhili Clique rather than Duan Qirui and the Anfu Clique, which controlled the central government in Beijing.⁷³ Perhaps this political vacillation should not be surprising given the commercial class’s need to secure business interests in an environment of constant flux.⁷⁴

Nevertheless, in dealings with political actors, business and commercial concerns played a role in providing some regional and provincial regimes with funding through the purchase of short-term bonds during the late Qing and early Republican periods. Despite the general dearth of information on such transactions, extant studies suggest that short-term debt was an important source of income for many local administrations.⁷⁵ However, much of this lending occurred because of speculation, threats, or even coercion, making commercial support often unstable and unpredictable.⁷⁶

Where actors settled into agreements with local social groups, their allies were generally traditional elites and segments of the local population. Apart from being important for establishing order, support from these groups was crucial in providing recruits for the armies of the regional militarist regimes. Traditional elites tended to be landowners and members of the local gentry, as exemplified by the backers of Wang Zhanyuan in Hubei and the many supporters of Yuan Shikai’s regime.⁷⁷ To dominate regions under their control, the regimes of Yan Xishan in Shanxi, Feng Yuxiang in northwest China, and, to a degree, Zhang Zuolin in Manchuria, worked with peasants, small traditional businesses, and workers.⁷⁸ To bolster their political standing the Nationalists similarly cultivated students, workers, landowners, and members of the gentry in localities across China.⁷⁹

Perhaps the only social group that had some political coherence was the overseas Chinese. Members of this group were active in supporting centralising nationalist groups, in terms of both funding and membership.⁸⁰ In fact, significant funding for the activities of the various nationalist groups both before and after the 1911 Revolution came from overseas Chinese donations.⁸¹ There was, however, also an important minority amongst overseas Chinese that supported Qing rule. They included reformer Wing Yung (Rong Hong), lawyer and diplomat Wu Tingfang, physician Wu Lien-teh, and philosopher Gu Hongming amongst others.⁸² Nevertheless, general physical absence from China and relatively small numbers limited the direct political influence of overseas Chinese.

Popular support for different political actors varied greatly. From militarist cliques to nationalist groups, patterns of support looked similarly mixed and fluid. As a result, institutionalised relationships amongst political groups and different parts of society were difficult to achieve and sustain. For groups competing over the Chinese polity, almost everyone was fair game as targets for soliciting support as and when necessary. This complicates the ability of actors to maintain the kinds of stable, long-term relationships necessary for successful institutionalised arrangements.

Regional Accumulation of Capital and Coercion

Bellicist arguments do well in depicting how political groups in China developed the independent ability to accumulate both capital and the tools of coercion that enabled them to assert increasing autonomy from the central government. Many of the more competitive militarist cliques and political parties maintained their viability on the financial and coercive capabilities initially inherited from nineteenth-century Qing responses to both internal and external security pressures. However, standard bellicist arguments are much better at addressing fragmentation in late Qing and early Republican China than how centralisation and external autonomy persisted alongside eroding territorial exclusivity.

A legacy of Qing reform efforts in the mid nineteenth century was to give regional and provincial regimes an independent means to supplement their income. Central to the Qing’s Self-Strengthening Movement was the development of heavy industry under the oversight of regional and provincial governments.⁸³ This saw local regimes control major industrial concerns such as the Hanyeping Company, Jiangnan Shipyard, Fuzhou Shipyard, Jiangnan Arsenal, and other metalworking, chemical, and railroad-related businesses.⁸⁴ The operations of these corporations gave regional and provincial governments an additional revenue stream. Even when foreign governments or private business owned and ran such facilities, local administrations could tax their use.⁸⁵ These operators generally accepted such taxation to minimise disruption to business.⁸⁶

Local regimes further augmented their independent access to capital with the growing delegation of tax collection responsibilities to provincial and regional governments around the turn of the twentieth century.⁸⁷The lijin transit tax provides perhaps the best example of local regimes’ rising extractive autonomy from 1893 to 1922.⁸⁸ According to historian Ch’i Hsi-sheng, even though the number of official lijin stations remained at 735 throughout the late Qing and early Republican periods, the number of locally administered points where the tax was collected had grown several fold by the early 1920s.⁸⁹ There was often a lijin station every sixty to seventy miles of railroad or major road.

Between 1916 and 1928, estimated annual lijin revenues totalled between Mex.$96 million and Mex.$240 million.⁹⁰ Since total annual expenditures by governments across China was roughly between Mex.$500 and Mex.$600 million, the income that came from the lijin tax was no trifling amount.⁹¹ In contrast, estimates put contemporaneous total yearly outlays by the central government in Beijing at about only Mex.$52 million.⁹² Local taxes were in fact a major source of regular income for regional and provincial governments, and by extension, those running these regimes.⁹³

By taking charge of tax collection as well as advancing industrial development, regional and provincial authorities were largely financially independent. Ch’i Hsi-sheng further notes that resulting from these developments, collectively:

Whether they were militarists or nationalists, so long as political actors controlled provincial or regional governments, they were in a position to expand their ability to engage in organised coercion and challenge the position of rivals.

With their growing wealth, regional and provincial regimes went about building up their military prowess. Using funds collected by their respective provincial and regional administrations in the Zhili and Liangjiang regions, Yuan Shikai and Zhang Zhidong established the first of the modern, foreign-trained New Armies in 1895.⁹⁵ Subsequent late Qing New Armies like the Beiyang Army and the various provincial standing armies created in and after 1901 similarly drew from the enlarged revenue base of local governments.

As rivalries amongst domestic political actors intensified, the use of provincial and regional finances to build military forces continued into the 1920s and beyond. Part of the Fengtian Clique’s military might during the 1910s and early 1920s, for example, came from its ability to harness economic growth in the Chinese northeast as a steady source of revenue on which to build coercive capabilities.⁹⁶ This situation repeated itself amongst domestic political actors across China. Whether from taxation, rents from industrial and commercial development, or even the sale of opium, revenues raised by local governments financed a range of political groups, their armies, and their wars. Control of regional and provincial administrations gave local political actors the financial and coercive wherewithal to resist, challenge, and even replace central political authority.

Changes in the relative concentration and accumulation of coercion and capital in China due to growing internal and external security pressures clearly provide a strong explanation of political decentralisation in the late Qing and early Republican periods. However, such a perspective can afford a better account of the persistence of central government authority and rule, even if nominal. After all, the logical conclusion of rising fragmentation would be the dissolution of the polity, an eventuality that never occurred. Looking at changes in capital, coercion, and competitive security pressures alone also says little about external autonomy and territorial exclusivity, which are also important elements of state form.

Centralisation, Fragmentation, and Major Power Influence

Going into the Republican era, external pressure was key in fostering negotiations and pauses in fighting that helped to prevent the complete collapse of central authority. These include the 1912 North-South Armistice between the “independent” revolutionary provincial regimes and nonrevolutionary forces, which permitted the creation of Yuan Shikai’s presidency after the collapse of the Qing regime.⁹⁷ Similarly, British and American diplomatic pressure on the various belligerents, notably the Duan Qirui cabinet, gave rise to the 1919 Shanghai Peace Conference between the Beijing government and various regional regimes.⁹⁸ This forestalled an exacerbation of the armed conflict resulting from Duan’s armed unification efforts between 1918 and 1919. In helping to compel Yuan Shikai and Zhang Xun to respectively retreat from imperial ascendancy and restore the Qing, joint foreign political pressure also was useful in defusing threats to central authority caused by strong domestic resistance to such moves.⁹⁹

Involvement of the powers in domestic politics was also important in making the continued survival of central political authority, albeit in reduced form, attractive to many competing factions within China. Since only central governments in Beijing received official foreign diplomatic recognition, actors holding sway in the capital were able to retain a sense of legitimacy.¹⁰⁰ This enabled those who controlled the Beijing government to negotiate over foreign loans, railroads, and treaty ports, and even to confer official recognition on regional regimes.¹⁰¹ Such talk and bestowal of titles allowed groups to manipulate domestic politics by playing to nationalist feelings or showing support to particular actors.

Control of the central government spelt access to large external loans secured on national assets like the railroads under the Ministry of Communications, as well as surpluses from customs and salt revenues remitted exclusively to the central government.¹⁰² Such income enhanced the fortunes of the faction controlling Beijing. Central government status could also avail an actor to more foreign loans and arms given the presence of foreign embargoes on arms and foreign loans to nonofficial groups in China.¹⁰³ Foreign support for the central government helped make it into a prize for contending domestic actors to seize. Hence, groups with major political pretensions were unwilling to see the disappearance of all central authority. This helped preserve a degree of central government rule.

Nevertheless, external intervention was also a key driver behind the rising ability of a growing number of actors in China to accumulate capital and coercion from 1893 to 1922, and consequently resist central government rule. Efforts at economic, administrative, and military modernisation throughout early-twentieth-century China were underwritten to an important degree by foreign funds and expertise. From foreign investments to direct loans and the floating of bonds, external financing was central to projects under official-led economic modernisation efforts in China since the mid nineteenth century. These included attempts to develop telegraph networks, mines, shipyards, and arsenals.¹⁰⁴

Critically, many of the assets resulting from these modernisation efforts fell under the oversight of various regional governors-generalship and provincial governorships. This allowed regional and provincial jurisdictions important and substantial infusions of capital and financial resources independent of the central government. Much of the Hanyeping Company’s capital was provided by loans from British, French, Russian, German, and Japanese firms through the support of their respective governments, just as foreign funds accounted for a significant proportion of the China Merchants’ Steam Navigation Company’s capital.¹⁰⁵ Borrowed foreign funds paid for the establishment of the Jiangnan Arsenal and Shipyards under the Liangjiang Governors-generalship, while German, French, and British money financed the development of the Beiyang Army and Navy.¹⁰⁶

Apart from infusing financial support, outside backing gave local political actors added means to generate revenue. Development and industrialisation projects drew heavily on the expertise provided by foreign governments through official and unofficial advisors. Modern economic concerns in late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century China relied heavily on foreign training, advisors, and consultants for their establishment and operation.¹⁰⁷British and American engineers, for instance, ran the Beijing-Hankou-Guangdong Railroad, while French experts managed the Sichuan-Yunnan-Guangxi Railroads.¹⁰⁸ This was despite the fact the central government ostensibly owned these rail lines. Critically, the collection of taxes along railroads in the various provinces and regions became important sources of funds for actors in control of regional and provincial regimes.

External funding too was important to other income-generating modernisation projects across China. These included both British and later American and Japanese loans that went toward the construction of telegraph networks and the development of air transport links, notably in East and South China.¹⁰⁹ The development of modern mining concerns around China, which involved revenue-sharing arrangements with various provincial administrations, likewise witnessed substantial foreign financial backing.¹¹⁰ Notably, although much external financing came from corporations, many had official ties, and still more secured business through assistance from their home governments.

Foreign actors also featured prominently in allowing regional and provincial regimes to acquire means of coercion beyond what local extraction and economic development could provide. German, British, and Japanese arms, equipment, and military and technical expertise provided foundations for the regional New Armies established in the last decade of Qing rule.¹¹¹ Expertise, technology equipment, and, to a degree, funds from Germany, France, and Britain, for example, lay behind the establishment and maintenance of the Beiyang Army and Navy.¹¹² New Armies under governors-general and governors elsewhere in China too were established on foreign advice and funding. As internal conflicts mounted from the 1910s to early 1920s, so did demand for using foreign loans, arms, and expertise to build up regional and military capabilities.¹¹³

In examining the early-twentieth-century arms trade, Anthony Chan notes that few domestic arsenals could produce armaments of adequate quality and quantity to equip the various armies in China by the 1910s.¹¹⁴ Even the largest and most advanced arsenals at Shenyang, Taiyuan, and Hanyang were only capable of arming little more than a regiment, and at most a brigade. Moreover, the general quality of their output was inferior to even used foreign equipment. Through official trade agents working out of the legations as well as more shady middlemen, then, weapons, ammunition, and equipment from Britain, Japan, Germany, Italy, and elsewhere began to flow to various regional and provincial regimes.¹¹⁵

The Anfu Clique under Duan Qirui and the Fengtian Clique, for example, received much funding, military training, and war material from Japan.¹¹⁶ These included active strategic and tactical advice, light arms, heavy machine guns, artillery, and even light aircraft. The French provided similar assistance to Tang Jiyao in Yunnan and Lu Rongting in Guangxi, while Soviet Russia later did the same with Feng Yuxiang’s Guominjun in Northwest China and the Chinese Nationalists in Guangdong.¹¹⁷ Simply, the ability of political actors in early-twentieth-century China to accrue the coercive capabilities that kept them competitive rested on a capacity to access external support.

Further, revenue brought about by external involvement in the economy meant ready funds with which local regimes could purchase coercion. This accelerated the potentially generations-long process of accumulating economic and military capabilities Charles Tilly and others deem key to political power.¹¹⁸ Once Qing central authority started to increasingly waver, the availability of external economic and military resources enabled those controlling various localities to assert autonomy.

By reducing barriers to the attainment of independent tools of coercion and wealth creation, external intervention permitted more assertion of political prerogatives by a growing number of domestic actors. Foreign backing spelt an increasing ability by groups in China to face off against adversaries within China’s domestic political milieu, including from those claiming central authority. The numerous civil wars between Yuan Shikai’s presidency and the Second Zhili-Fengtian War exemplify this fracturing of politics.

Outsiders and the Preservation of Limited Territorial Exclusivity

Outside intervention between 1893 and 1922 brought limited territorial exclusivity. During this time, external powers continued to administer various functions of government within China, which they seized over the course of the previous century. Most notable was the Maritime Customs Service. Foreign administration of customs meant that governments in China could not set tariffs without prior consultation with and approval by the relevant external powers, and that the ability to police ports, as well as coastal and inland shipping, was ceded to outside actors.¹¹⁹

Other areas of governance under foreign control were the postal, Salt Gabelle, and telecommunications services. Chinese central governments and regional regimes often did not have full oversight and control over the major railroads either.¹²⁰ Despite efforts by central and regional authorities in China to reclaim the ability to manage agencies responsible for these functions during the first two decades of the twentieth century, foreign opposition meant that they at best met with only partial success.¹²¹ This was perhaps most evident with attempts to reclaim railroad rights. Despite efforts across China, most of the more than 13,000 kilometres of railroad built between 1876 and 1927 remained under foreign ownership and management either in part or in whole.¹²² This was also the case with the other government functions discussed previously.

Outside funding, expertise, and equipment came at a price. This is clear when looking at the agreements that sealed foreign support in the 1910s and 1920s. External financing, advice, and equipment were almost always either conditional on exclusive access privileges over raw materials, markets, and communications networks, or secured on key assets and internal revenue streams.¹²³ Given the high degrees of political and economic instability across most of China, arrangements between domestic groups and foreign players usually translated into foreign management of the official organs overseeing the various assets used as guarantees.¹²⁴ External actors had interests to forward and preserve too.

The most well known example of a foreign-run agency was the Maritime Customs Service.¹²⁵ The years between 1894 and 1901 saw the pledging of customs and salt revenues to service loans undertaken to pay for wars and indemnities incurred by the Qing.¹²⁶ Customs revenues also secured many of the subsequent foreign loans taken out by central governments in Beijing into 1922.¹²⁷ To ensure proper collection of customs duties and the remittance of revenues, the central government’s main creditors, notably Britain, France, and the United States, further placed Chinese customs under their joint supervision, with Britain effectively administering the service.¹²⁸

In the regions and provinces, entities related to foreign governments ran mines and other raw material extracting concerns, just as advisors from these countries managed policing and military affairs. In addition to Russian-owned railroads, the Russian government ran, guarded, and policed mines in South Manchuria whilst overseeing police, military, and administrative affairs in the area until the Japanese took over this role in 1905.¹²⁹ Even then, St. Petersburg maintained such privileges in areas of northern Manchuria not under Japanese influence.¹³⁰ These were amongst the conditions for Russian and Japanese financial and military assistance to both regimes in Manchuria and central governments in Beijing.¹³¹

Such relationships saw replication across China, with the Germans in Shandong until 1914 and the French in Yunnan as well as parts of Sichuan until the early 1930s being just two examples.¹³² On the other hand, even though the British government took a less area-specific and intrusive approach, they were still able to similarly extend their influence over the management of trade, transportation, and communications in China between 1893 and 1922.¹³³ They did so by similarly linking financial and military assistance to provincial, regional, or central governments with the ownership or operation of railroads, telegraph networks, and transportation systems by British firms.¹³⁴

External Autonomy

By supporting the persistence of central authority, even in diminished form, the major outside powers enabled the Chinese polity to retain a relatively high degree of external autonomy between 1893 and 1922. British, American, and intermittent Japanese and Russian insistence on the autonomy of the Chinese polity allowed central governments from the Qing court to the Xu Shichang government to remain fully responsible for official external relations.¹³⁵ To be sure, material inadequacies, political divisions, and conditions set by agreements of various sorts hindered the ability of various central governments to negotiate with other external actors. Nevertheless, the Qing and various Republican regimes that represented China’s central government between 1893 and 1922 were not subject to any higher sources of authority in their foreign relations.

The fact most major powers were only willing to deal with one central Chinese government in external, as opposed to domestic, affairs forced competing groups within China to present a single external front. To have any claim on central authority, the different domestic political actors needed foreign governments to treat them as such. Part of this lay in being able to represent more than the narrow interest of the group holding power in Beijing.¹³⁶ This led to the formation of joint delegations approved by at least some of the major factions, and ostensibly representing a single “China” at major diplomatic events.¹³⁷

The Chinese delegation to the 1919 Paris Peace Conference is representative of this phenomenon. The personnel makeup as well as the positions that the “Chinese” delegation took were the result of negotiations amongst the major political actors in China, notably the Beiyang government of Xu Shichang and the Guangzhou National Government.¹³⁸ The backbone of the Chinese delegation to the Versailles Conference was Lu Zhengxiang, Wellington Koo, Wang Zhengting, and Alfred Sze, who, on top of their expertise and experience as professional diplomats, were individuals acceptable to local powerbrokers.