1. The Three Kingdoms at the end of the Han Dynasty
The Qin Dynasty pushed the county system to the whole country, and in the early Han Dynasty, it combined the feudal system, so it was called the county-state parallel system. After the middle of the Western Han Dynasty, the feudal power declined day by day, and counties became the vast majority of local administrative organs. During the reign of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, the Thirteen Thorns History Department was set up, and a first-level supervision agency was added to the counties.
In 184, in order to suppress the Yellow Turban Rebellion, the central government of the Eastern Han Dynasty allowed local governments and local warriors to recruit their own troops. In 188, at Liu Yan's suggestion, the central government changed the history to State Pastor. Formerly a central supervisory agency, Heshi became a state pastor with local administrative, financial, and military power.
Independent recruitment has greatly increased the military strength of the local clans, and the decentralization of state pastors has enabled the powerful and ambitious clans and powerful clans to justifiably steal local power. At this point, the division of the territory has been formed, the central government has existed in name only, and it has entered a period of chasing deer.
2. Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms at the end of the Tang Dynasty
During the reign of Emperor Ruizong of Tang, in order to prevent the invasion of foreign tribes, the Tang court expanded the military towns and set up jiedu envoys. By the time of Emperor Xuanzong, there were nine emissaries and one sutra in the world. The local economy has a heavy army, but also holds other positions, and in the local areas, it often has the power of finance, supervision and management of inner prefectures and counties. The system of moderation was not only a sharp weapon for the Tang Dynasty to expand the frontier, but also laid hidden dangers for the decline of the Tang Dynasty.
In 755, An Lushan, who was also the envoy of the Three Towns Festival, rebelled. In the process of counterinsurgency and subsequent stability maintenance, the central government relied more and more on the strength of the feudal towns, and the envoys of moderation, economic envoys, and observations set up more and more until there was no land to set up. Many of the towns were loyal to the imperial court and accepted the appointment and dismissal of central personnel, but they also had a certain degree of independence in internal affairs; there were also some fan towns represented by the three towns in Hebei, who did not listen to the announcements, and even did not obey the appointments of the Tang court.
In the late Middle and Tang Dynasties, the situation of the division of the feudal towns had in fact been formed. In the second year of Qianfu, the peasant war led by Huang Chao spread throughout the country, and the system of restriction of feudal towns constructed by the Tang court was broken. After the peasant army invaded Chang'an, the prestige of the Tang Dynasty was gone, and the forces in various places developed arbitrarily, and soon entered the five generations and ten kingdoms period of warlord chaos.
During the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period, although the local government initially formed a divided regime, within these regimes, the idea of the warriors prevailed, and there were often some hills in the army. Most of these regimes were short-lived, and many died in internal military coups. This was one of the most chaotic periods in Chinese history.
3. The Republic of China at the end of the Qing Dynasty
In the more than thirty years of the Republic of China government as China's (nominal) central government, the phenomenon of local support for the military and self-respect and self-reliance can be said to have accompanied it. The seeds of these phenomena were planted in the late Qing Dynasty.
In the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Movement, the Green Camp and the Eight Banners were useless and unable to suppress them, and the Qing government ordered the gentry in various provinces to hold regimental training and organize armed forces. During the suppression of the Taiping Army and the Foreign Affairs Movement, the Qing court also gave some localities the right to support themselves. This provides military and economic conditions for the division of the localities.
While making outstanding military achievements for the country, the regimental training organized by these local powerful factions also naturally has the characteristics of taking the place of origin as a link and maintaining internal unity, such as military trumpets: Xiang Army, Huai Army, Chu Army, etc., which have obvious regional characteristics. Later, the main figures of the three armies of Xianghuai and Chu not only managed military affairs, but also participated in central political affairs, and sometimes sat in local areas. This relationship, which is similar to "entering and inward, and being the outer king" is very delicate.
In the Eight-Power Alliance's War of Aggression against China (1900), Li Hongzhang (who served as the Governor of Liangguang) and others (as well as Liu Kunyi, Governor of Liangjiang, Zhang Zhidong, Governor of Huguang, Xu Yingqiu, Governor of Fujian and Zhejiang, Kui Jun, Governor of Sichuan, Sheng Xuanhuai, Minister of Railways, and Yuan Shikai, Governor of Shandong), believed that China would be defeated, and in order to preserve the locality, they even reached an agreement with the great powers on "mutual protection in the southeast" and ignored the war in the north.
Afterwards, Li Hongzhang was appointed by the Qing government as a negotiator. Regardless of Li Hongzhang's original intentions, these events have shown that the Qing government is not one-minded, and the central government's control over the localities has been greatly weakened; the Qing government does not trust the local and military factions, but has to rely on them. In an era when the building is about to fall, this unfavorable trend has not been reversed, but has been intensified. In the future, the warlords of the Republic of China divided the territory and fought a chaotic war, which had a certain relationship with this.
After the Sino-Japanese War (1894), the Qing government began to prepare for the establishment of a new army. Before the Xinhai Revolution, new armies in various provinces were successively prepared or established. However, during the Xinhai Revolution, the new army had both followers of the revolutionaries and effective loyal to the Qing court or opportunists who took advantage of the situation. Among them, the Wuchang New Army fired the first shot of the revolution; and the Beiyang New Army stationed in the north, with Yuan Shikai as the core, was the biggest chip in the confrontation and negotiation between the Qing government and the revolutionary forces.
Yuan Shikai was ambitious and seized the opportunity to become the president of the Republic of China. In the years that followed, the former Fresh Army, which was constantly seeking expansion of the Beiyang forces and stationed in various places, mostly became local power factions, while Revolutionaries such as Sun Yat-sen were still active in the south.
Before and after Yuan Shikai revised the treaty and became emperor, a group of patriotic soldiers broke with Yuan Shikai and no longer listened to his orders. In June 1916, Yuan died. The Beiyang forces immediately split into the Zhi and Anhui clans, and the Northeast Feng clan led by Zhang Zuolin also became a family of its own. The contradictions between the three series became increasingly intense, and the Zhiwan War, the Zhifeng War, the Second Zhifeng War, the Northern Expedition War and other major wars followed, and the smaller-scale warlord melee was even more numerous. These divisions and competitions are basically carried out in provinces.
In December 1928, the Warlord Zhang Xueliang announced in the northeast that he would support the Nationalist government in Nanjing. At this point, the Northern Expedition was over. The Northern Expedition ended the Beiyang warlord era, and the Nationalist government in Nanjing, led by Chiang Kai-shek, formally unified China. However, there are still large and small warlord forces throughout the country, and the Republic of China has entered the stage of new warlord melee. With the outbreak of the all-out War of Resistance, the warlords temporarily stopped fighting and jointly defended foreign insults.