The Wild Hope of the "King of Guizhou": Why did the Qian warlord Zhou Xi become the one who dared to decisively unite with Gui and resist Jiang At the beginning of the contradiction between Jiang and Gui?

Wen | Zhou Yu

Why did the Qian warlord Zhou Xi dare to decisively unite with Jiang Gui to resist Jiang at the beginning of the contradiction? This is closely related to the development of the Qian warlords in Guizhou. Geographically, Guizhou is closer to the interior than Yunnan, which also directly affects its political pattern, in general, the political independence of Guizhou warlords is not as good as Yunnan, but compared with Sichuan, where central forces often infiltrate, Qian Province is relatively independent, but it is in constant conflict with neighboring provinces.

Twenty-four days after the first uprising in Wuchang, Guizhou, thousands of miles away, also launched an uprising on the night of November 3, and Inspector Shen Yuqing was forced to hand over his stamps to the revolutionary party; on November 4, the military government of Guizhou in the Han Dynasty was established, and the province was restored, and the Guizhou Revolution was declared successful. However, less than four months after the establishment of this Han military government, it was overthrown by the provincial constitutionalists and tang Jiyao, who carried out a round of massacres against the Han government forces in Guizhou and entered the Government of Qian, forming a government system of Dian and Qian. During the Republic of China period, the local warlords in Guizhou had two major systems, the Xingyi system and the Tongzi system, and the Xingyi system was divided into the old school and the new school. Liu Xianshi, who was supported by Tang Jiyao during the Reign of Qian, was a representative of the old warlords of the Xingyi clan, and by the end of the 1910s, the Dian army was gradually out of control of Qian Province, and the new faction of soldiers led by Wang Wenhua also began to swell in strength. Wang Wenhua was Liu Xianshi's nephew, and he had several military achievements in the Patriotic War, and in the later Dharma Protection Movement, Wang Wenhua was very close to Sun Yat-sen, and Sun Yat-sen once lamented: "The warlords of the north and the south are like a hill of raccoons, and Du Wenhua is not the same as the warlords of the southwest", calling him "the rising star of the southwest". He Yingqin, who later became the minister of military affairs of the Nationalist government, was a brigade commander under Wang Wenhua in his early years, and this group of people was a new faction in the Xingyi clan.

In 1920, Wang Wenhua remotely commanded He Yingqin and other new soldiers in Shanghai to launch the "Minjiu Incident", forcing Liu Xianshi to step down and seize the military and political power in Guizhou in one fell swoop. Unexpectedly, the overall situation was not stable, Wang Wenhua was assassinated in Shanghai by the killers sent by his own general Yuan Zuming, guizhou fell into the chaos of the five brigades for power, He Yingqin also lost his position in this struggle and left Qian, and went south to join Sun Yat-sen. After Yuan Zuming came to power in Guizhou, the province was always in a scuffle, and coupled with the resurgence of the Dian warlords and the infiltration of Tang Jiyao's forces, the Yuan clan had to rely on the Guangdong government headed by Sun Yat-sen. In August of that year, his Qian army was successively reorganized into the National Revolutionary Army, and Yuan Zuming was the commander-in-chief of the left wing of the Northern Expeditionary Army, with 4 corps, 1 division and 3 directly administered brigades under his command, the chief of staff was Zhu Song, and the commander-in-chief of the former enemy was Wang Tianpei.

However, yuan Zuming's essence was still to divide the warlords, especially in the early days of the Northern Expedition, when the victory and defeat of the two sides were not yet clear, they began to bet on both sides, and secretly communicated with Wu Peifu of Beiyang, and as a result, they died and were booby-trapped by Tang Shengzhi in Changde, Hunan. In addition, Wang Tianpei, the commander of the 10th Army, was also held accountable for the loss of Xuzhou, and because of his old grudge with He Yingqin, Wang Tianpei was executed in Hangzhou under the impetus of He Yingqin (when Chiang Kai-shek had already left the field). The left wing army of the Northern Expedition, which led its troops out of Qian, was almost completely disintegrated, and at this time in Guizhou Province, the Tongzi warlord Zhou Xicheng had taken advantage of the situation. As early as June 1926, Zhou Xicheng ousted the former governor Peng Hanzhang and made himself the military governor and governor of Guizhou. Yuan Zuming, who led his troops, was unable to compete with him, and Guizhou completely fell into the hands of Zhou Xicheng, marking the end of the Xingyi era.

In the early years of the Republic of China, the instructors of the Yunnan Army's Martial Arts School took a group photo

Among the warlords in the southwest, Zhou Xicheng was an ambitious political strongman, who himself had no deep roots with the Kuomintang and the Beiyang government, and could be said to be a pure local power faction. During his reign, he implemented a series of policies that effectively promoted the development of the province; in the military field, he not only stared at the neighboring province of Yunnan with the intention of getting involved, but also paid no attention to Chiang Kai-shek, and even more strictly guarded against the infiltration of the Kuomintang forces. Of course, there was a big reason why Zhou Xicheng always kept a distance from Chiang Kai-shek and the Kuomintang, and he was worried that after the Kuomintang forces infiltrated Guizhou, He Yingqin, a former Xingyi person around Chiang Kai-shek, and others would replace him as the "King of Guizhou" by others. Therefore, when Chiang Kai-shek sent Zhang Daofan and Li Yizhi to Guiyang in 1926 to "assist", Zhou Xicheng was so displeased that he shot Li Yizhi to death. After Chiang Kai-shek stepped down, Zhou Xicheng predicted that he would inevitably rise again, but lobbied Li Jishen to say: "They will go down to the wilderness again or will soon be reinstated." Jiang Zhi is a man, and if he has a vendetta, he will repay it. Therefore, it must be arranged as soon as possible. From the Central Party Department to the provinces concerned, they have tended to be public and equal, and they cannot but coexist and die. There is nothing he can do to reinstate Jiang, that is, to reinstate him. After that, the two sides not only signed the Qiangui Alliance, but also exchanged envoys, making it like two countries.

In stark contrast to Long Yun, Zhou Xicheng made a desperate bet and always implemented the policy of putting local interests first. When civil unrest broke out in Yunnan, Zhou Xicheng once wanted to get involved, and joined forces with the Dian general Hu Ruoyu to attack Yunnan, but was unsuccessful. The ensuing Jiang-Gui War soon pushed the warlords of Yunnan and Guizhou provinces onto the stage of hegemony.