The Central Plains War

The Anti-Chiang Alliance and the War of Telegrams

After the Northern Expedition and the Northeast Flag Replacement, the Nanjing National Government had nominally unified China, but conflict among the major military groupings continued. According to the History of the Communist Party of China compiled by the CPC Central Party History Research Office, the Chiang–Guangxi War broke out in the spring of 1929, followed by fierce struggles among Chiang Kai-shek, Yan Xishan and Feng Yuxiang and by anti-Chiang moves involving Zhang Fakui, Tang Shengzhi, Shi Yousan and others; after these failed, Yan, Feng, Li Zongren and others began consultations in January 1930 and in March formed an anti-Chiang alliance headed by Yan. A 2014 investigation report of the Control Yuan of the Republic of China says that “measures to reduce and reorganise the armed forces set off the Central Plains War.”

From February 1930 Yan Xishan and Chiang Kai-shek fought a war of circular telegrams. According to reports by the U.S. minister in China, Nelson T. Johnson, Yan telegraphed Chiang on 10 February that “force cannot be depended upon as an ultimate arbiter” and recommended “that we both retire for the benefit of the country”; Chiang replied on the 12th that he too wished to retire but could not do so until the revolt in Guangxi had been suppressed. On the 15th Zhang Xueliang urged both men to settle their differences peacefully. On the 21st Chiang accused Yan of mobilising his army to fight the Central Government and told him to demobilise and to release Feng Yuxiang, whom Yan had in effect been holding near Taiyuan. On the 24th Yan sent another telegram said to bear, besides his own, the names of Feng, Li Zongren and 42 other generals, though some of the generals later denied having signed it. On 28 February Feng left for Taiyuan escorted by Yan.

Yan Xishan Takes Command

The U.S. legation’s report on March said the break was now clean, with China divided into two camps, North and South, although the leaders on both sides emphasised that no geographical or political issue was at stake, “it being a question of personalities.” Yan took over the railways, telegraphs and all revenue-producing administrations in Beiping and Tianjin, leaving only the Maritime Customs in Nanjing’s hands, while Feng, with Yan’s acquiescence, went to Tongguan to take command of the Guominjun. On 1 April Yan assumed office as Commander-in-Chief of the Army, Navy and Air Forces of the Republic of China, telling the foreign envoys that he had sworn to lead a punitive campaign against “a certain person” illegally occupying the Central Government; Feng and Li Zongren were his deputies.

According to an estimate of 21 April by the legation’s military attaché, the Nanjing government had some 715,000 troops and the anti-Chiang coalition some 872,000, while Zhang Xueliang’s Northeastern Frontier Defense Forces, about 409,000 strong, remained neutral. The legation remarked that neither side’s announced aim—Chiang’s maintenance of unity, Yan’s establishment of a “legal” government by removing the allegedly corrupt Chiang family—aroused any enthusiasm among the Chinese people.

The Longhai, Jinpu and Hunan Fronts

According to the History of the Communist Party of China, in early May Yan and Feng opened a large-scale war against Chiang on three fronts in the Central Plains and southwestern Shandong, while Li Zongren and Zhang Fakui attacked on the Hunan–Guangdong–Guangxi border; more than one million troops were engaged in all, at a cost of some 500 million yuan. The main front lay along the Longhai Railway. The U.S. legation reported severe fighting there at the end of May, with Nanjing’s forces at first successful but later suffering serious reverses and many casualties on both sides; by early June the front at Xuzhou was at a stalemate and Xuzhou was crowded with uncared-for wounded. Between 18 and 26 June Nanjing’s forces advanced to within a few miles of Kaifeng before Feng held them in check, and in July Feng’s Guominjun, about 200,000 strong, was still deadlocked with Nanjing’s troops on the Longhai line.

In the south, forces under Zhang Fakui, Li Zongren and Bai Chongxi entered Hunan and took Changsha on 5 June with scarcely any resistance; He Jian retook the city on the 17th and the Guangxi troops withdrew eastward. In Shandong, Shanxi troops captured Jinan on 25 June and Nanjing’s commander Han Fuju withdrew to the east. According to an article from Dangshi Bolan republished by rmzxw.com.cn, Chen Cheng’s 11th Division fired its first shot of the war at Mamuji on the Longhai line and later relieved the siege of Qufu; Chiang then expanded the division into the 18th Army with Chen as its commander. On 2 August Chiang launched an offensive on Jinan with some 100,000 of his best troops and retook the city on 15 August; the Shanxi forces were driven back across the Yellow River and Shandong largely returned to Nanjing’s control.

The Enlarged Conference and a Rival Government in Beiping

While the armies were deadlocked, the anti-Chiang camp set up a rival political centre. On 13 July the “Enlarged Plenary Session of the Central Headquarters of the Kuomintang” held its inaugural meeting in Beiping, bringing together the party’s Left Wing under Wang Jingwei and the Right Wing (the Western Hills group) represented by Xie Chi; according to the U.S. legation, one of its purposes was to invalidate the Third National Congress held in Nanjing in March 1929. Wang, who came to Beiping in July, told interviewers: “If we want to complete the national revolution, there is no alternative but to overthrow the personal dictatorship of Chiang Kai-shek.” The conference held its first formal meeting on 7 August; its manifesto called for a people’s conference as soon as possible and a provisional code (yuefa) for the period of political tutelage. On 1 September its fifth formal meeting promulgated a General Outline of Organization of the National Government, with Yan Xishan as chairman of the State Council and Tang Shaoyi, Wang Jingwei, Feng Yuxiang, Zhang Xueliang, Li Zongren and Xie Chi as members. Yan arrived in Beiping on 7 September and was sworn in early on the morning of 9 September.

Not everyone named accepted. The U.S. consul general at Mukden reported that Zhang Xueliang’s name had obviously been used without his consent, and in early September Zhang telegraphed Yan demanding an explanation; Wellington Koo, slated to become foreign minister, also declined, and Tang Shaoyi stayed in the south.

Zhang Xueliang Enters the Pass

For most of the war Zhang Xueliang stayed neutral. In June the Nanjing government gazetted him as Vice Commander-in-Chief of the Army, Navy and Air Forces, an appointment he did not accept, and both sides kept sending emissaries to win him over. On 10 September the U.S. consul general at Mukden reported that Zhang was inclined to side with Chiang but did not want to see southern troops occupy Hebei. The Northeastern Political Council met in Mukden from 10 to 17 September. On 18 September Zhang issued a circular telegram (the “Qiao telegram”) appealing to all sides for an immediate cessation of hostilities and declaring that “in order to undertake the reconstruction of China the first essential is to eliminate warfare”; the mobilisation order had already been given, and on the 19th the first troops entrained for Tianjin. They reached the outskirts of Tianjin on the 20th, when the Beiping government dissolved and Wang Jingwei and his colleagues left for Shijiazhuang; on the 22nd the vanguard reached Beiping, and the Beiping–Tianjin area was taken over without bloodshed. Nanjing then appointed Wang Shuchang chairman of Hebei and Yu Xuezhong garrison commander of Beiping and Tianjin.

In late September Zhang told a Reuters correspondent that his intervention had been delayed by the need to arrange details with Nanjing first. The U.S. legation’s report on September listed several considerations that may have shaped his decision: the discovery in August of a mutiny plot in his army allegedly instigated by Nanjing, the fall of Jinan on 15 August, Manchurian anxiety about the spread of “communism” south of the Wall, and his determination to keep control of the Beiping–Mukden Railway. Once the Northeastern Army had entered the Pass, the Shanxi and Guominjun forces lost their outlet to the outside world through Tianjin.

The Retirement of Yan and Feng and the Postwar Settlement

In Henan Chiang concentrated some 27 divisions in the Kaifeng–Zhengzhou area by early September and launched an offensive, and there was severe fighting from 7 to 16 September; on the 25th Feng was forced to give up Lanfeng, one of his strongest positions on the Longhai line, and then fell back toward Shaanxi. According to the U.S. legation, the civil war may be said to have ended when government troops occupied Xi’an on 27 October. On 3 October Chiang telegraphed Nanjing from the front proposing an amnesty for all rebel leaders except Yan Xishan, Chen Jiongming and the communists, saying, “I am not free from reproach and should, therefore, not be hard on others.” On 9 October Zhang Xueliang was sworn in as Vice Commander-in-Chief.

Using Chiang’s and Yan’s papers held by the Academia Historica in Taipei, the Taiwanese researcher Huang Yu-fang shows that the Shanxi side asked that Yan be allowed simply to retire to Wutai and that Shanxi generals keep Shanxi, Chahar and Suiyuan; Chiang judged these demands excessive, ordered He Yingqin to bomb Taiyuan, Jincheng, Tongguan and other places daily from 28 October, and warned that unless Yan left Shanxi to go abroad the centre would not discuss the rehabilitation of Shanxi and the Shanxi army would get no funds; on 30 October Yan agreed to step down and leave. The U.S. legation reported that the people of Shanxi suffered casualties for the first time only when Nanjing bombers attacked Taiyuan and other cities in October and November. On 4 November Yan and Feng jointly announced their retirement. In his circular Yan said he had tried to persuade Chiang, Feng and Wang Jingwei all to resign so as to create democratic party politics, but because of opposition in Nanjing he “was forced to meet them in the battlefield,” and that he had now “lost nearly all of my military strength.”

On 12 November Zhang Xueliang arrived in Nanjing and held repeated talks with Chiang. The U.S. legation understood that Zhang agreed to let Nanjing collect the salt and tobacco revenues in Manchuria and to limit his army to 150,000 men; Huang Yu-fang, citing Chiang’s papers, notes that Chiang in principle left northern affairs to Zhang and handed him the reorganisation of the Shanxi army, concluding that “Chiang forced Yan out, but Zhang became the greatest beneficiary.” In December Zhang conferred in Tianjin with Shanxi and Guominjun commanders about demobilisation; about 160,000 Shanxi troops and 80,000 Guominjun troops were estimated still to be under arms. On 22 December Yan left Tianjin for Dalian, declaring that he had “no intention whatever to return into China’s political life in future,” while Feng stayed in Shanxi. Huang notes that Yan did not go abroad as he had said and returned to Shanxi with Japanese help on 5 August 1931.

Differing Accounts

The belligerents each had their own account at the time. Nanjing’s foreign minister, C. T. Wang, told the American minister that this was a struggle between two ideas—Sun Yat-sen’s unified China against a confederation of a few autonomous areas under independent heads, which amounted to “a reversion to semi-feudalism”—and in October Chiang declared, “I am firmly convinced that the present war is the last one fought for the cause of unification in China.” The northern coalition presented its cause as the establishment of a “legal” government and the overthrow of Chiang’s “personal dictatorship.” The Communists at the time regarded the conflict as a “war over the division of spoils” among warlords; in May 1930 Wang Ming called in the party journal Bolshevik for “turning the warlord war into a revolutionary civil war.” According to the History of the Communist Party of China, Li Lisan and others concluded after the war broke out that the revolutionary situation had matured nationwide, and the Politburo’s resolution of 11 June put the “Left” adventurist line in control of the party centre. After the war ended, Chiang promptly massed troops for “encirclement campaigns” against the revolutionary base areas.

Later accounts differ in emphasis. CPC party history calls it the “Central Plains War between the Kuomintang new warlords,” describes the unification after the Northeast Flag Replacement as merely “superficial,” and says the warlord wars “objectively provided favourable conditions for the growth of revolutionary forces.” The Control Yuan report in Taiwan stresses Zhang Xueliang’s telegram and his willingness “to carry out an armed mediation in the Central Plains War.” The U.S. legation at the time judged that Zhang intervened only when the Shansi cause seemed hopeless, so that his intervention “may have saved the ‘rebel armies’ from complete destruction at the hands of Chiang,” and that the victory over Yan and Feng was “largely a personal triumph” for Chiang. On casualties, the legation said only that there had been “unusual losses on both sides”; no reliable figures were found for this entry.