Feng Yuxiang

Early years and the Luanzhou Uprising (1882–1912)

Feng Yuxiang, born Feng Jishan with the courtesy name Huanzhang, was born on 6 November 1882 in Qing County, Zhili province, to a family registered in Chao County, Anhui. He grew up in Baoding; his father was a low-ranking army officer. According to the biography compiled by the China Anti-Japanese War Memorial website, he enlisted in the Huai Army in 1896, transferred to Yuan Shikai's Right Division of the Guards Army in 1902 and rose through the ranks of the Beiyang New Army, becoming a battalion commander in the 20th Division in 1910.

After the Wuchang Uprising of 1911, Feng joined officers and men of the 20th Division and other units in the Luanzhou Uprising; in January 1912 they proclaimed a Northern Revolutionary Military Government and declared for the republic, with Feng as chief of staff. The uprising was quickly defeated, and Feng was dismissed and imprisoned before his patron Lu Jianzhang secured his release and reinstatement. The biography published by the Revolutionary Committee of the Kuomintang (RCCK) holds that, although it failed, the uprising contributed to the overthrow of the Qing.

The Beiyang years and the Beijing Coup (1914–1925)

From 1914 Feng commanded the 16th Mixed Brigade. In this period he converted to Christianity: the Encyclopedia of World Biography says he became a Methodist in 1914, while the Memorial website's biography dates the start of his faith to 1913 in Beijing. He set up chapels in his army and invited pastors to preach to his troops, and became known as the 'Christian General'. In 1917 he took part in suppressing Zhang Xun's attempt to restore the Qing; the same year, when Duan Qirui sent him south to fight Sun Yat-sen's Constitutional Protection forces in Fujian, he issued a public telegram calling for a ceasefire and a negotiated settlement between north and south. He became Military Governor of Shaanxi in 1921 and of Henan in 1922, later that year being reassigned as Army Inspector General and stationed at Nanyuan outside Beijing.

When the Second Zhili–Fengtian War broke out in September 1924, the Zhili commander Wu Peifu made Feng commander of the Third Army. In October Feng turned his troops around from the front and took control of Beijing, an event known as the Beijing Coup; he renamed his forces the Guominjun (National People's Army) and became their commander-in-chief. President Cao Kun was placed under house arrest, and on 5 November the deposed emperor Puyi was expelled from the Forbidden City. Feng telegraphed Sun Yat-sen inviting him north to direct national affairs, but soon compromised with Zhang Zuolin and Duan Qirui, accepting Duan as Provisional Chief Executive. In 1925 Feng became Northwest Frontier Defence Commissioner, and his forces came to be known as the Northwest Army; Soviet military advisers began to work with them. Early in 1926, under attack from both the Fengtian and Zhili cliques, he announced his resignation and travelled to the Soviet Union.

The Wuyuan oath and the Northern Expedition (1926–1928)

Feng returned from the Soviet Union in September 1926 and reached Wuyuan in Suiyuan. According to the RCCK biography, acting on the advice of Li Dazhao, he held an oath-taking ceremony on 17 September, establishing the headquarters of the Allied Guominjun with himself as commander-in-chief, declaring that the whole army would join the Kuomintang, and sending troops to support the Northern Expedition; in November his forces lifted the siege of Xi'an. In April 1927 the Wuhan Nationalist Government reorganised the Allied Guominjun as the Second Group Army of the National Revolutionary Army, with Feng as commander-in-chief, and he led it east through the Tong Pass to join the Wuhan forces at Zhengzhou.

After the split between the Wuhan and Nanjing governments, Feng's choice became decisive. The Encyclopedia of World Biography writes that when the Nationalists divided into a Wuhan wing allied with the Communists and a Nanjing faction under Chiang Kai-shek, Feng threw his support to Chiang, enabling him to eliminate his left-wing rivals. In 1928 Feng led the Second Group Army in the second stage of the Northern Expedition, and the Nationalist armies entered Beijing in June; in October he went to Nanjing as Vice President of the Executive Yuan and Minister of Military Affairs.

The Central Plains War and resistance to Japan (1929–1945)

After the Northern Expedition Feng's differences with Chiang over troop disbandment deepened; in 1929 he resigned and went north, and the Nanjing government ordered his arrest. In 1930 he joined Yan Xishan, Li Zongren and others in a coalition against Chiang, taking office as deputy commander-in-chief of the anti-Chiang forces at the Tong Pass in April, and the Central Plains War began. After the coalition's defeat, Yan and Feng announced their retirement on 4 November; the Northwest Army disintegrated and Feng lost control of his troops, retiring first to Yudaohe near Fenyang in Shanxi and later to Mount Tai in Shandong.

After the Mukden Incident Feng issued telegrams criticising the Nationalist government's policy towards Japan. In May 1933, with Fang Zhenwu, Ji Hongchang and others, he organised the Chahar People's Anti-Japanese Allied Army in Chahar and became its commander-in-chief, recovering Duolun and three other counties in eastern Chahar; the RCCK biography describes this as the first recovery of territory from Japanese and puppet forces by Chinese troops since the Mukden Incident. The army, formed with Communist help, was eventually defeated, and Feng returned to Mount Tai. In 1935 he was made a full general, first class, and in December became Vice Chairman of the Nationalist Government's Military Affairs Commission.

After full-scale war with Japan began, Feng was appointed commander of the Third War Zone in August 1937 and moved to the Sixth War Zone in September, but was soon relieved of his field command. For the rest of the war he travelled the provinces as Vice Chairman of the Military Affairs Commission, calling for unity in the war of resistance.

Exile in the United States and death on the Black Sea (1946–1948)

In September 1946 Feng went to the United States, nominally to study water conservancy. According to the RCCK biography, before leaving he published an open letter to Chiang in the Ta Kung Pao urging him to end the civil war. On 26 May 1947 he published an 'Appeal to All Compatriots' in the Chinese World newspaper in San Francisco, publicly opposing the civil war, and went on to speak across the United States against American aid to Chiang's government; on 9 November he presided over the founding in New York of the Chinese Peace and Democracy League in America and became its chairman. He also testified before an investigative group of the House Appropriations Committee against aid to Chiang. At the end of 1947 the Nanjing government ordered him home, then revoked his post as water conservancy envoy, and the United States authorities cancelled his passport; on 7 January 1948 the Kuomintang expelled him from the party.

On 1 January 1948 the Revolutionary Committee of the Kuomintang was founded in Hong Kong with Li Jishen as chairman, and Feng, still in the United States, was elected to its Central Standing Committee and as Director of its Central Political Committee. That year he dictated, with his wife Li Dequan taking it down, a memoir titled Chiang Kai-shek as I Knew Him. After the Communist Party's 'May Day Slogans' of 30 April called for a new Political Consultative Conference, Feng decided to return to China. On 31 July he boarded the Soviet passenger ship Pobeda with his family to begin the journey home. On 1 September, while the ship was crossing the Black Sea, a fire broke out on board; Feng and one of his daughters were killed. He was 66. On the cause of the fire, the RCCK biography records only that 'the ship suddenly caught fire and could not be saved in time', while the Encyclopedia of World Biography describes it as 'an apparently accidental fire'.

On 7 September Mao Zedong and Zhu De sent condolences to the RCCK and to Li Dequan, praising Feng for having 'committed himself to democracy, to the great benefit of the nation'. According to a 2022 article by his granddaughter Feng Danlong, a member of the National Committee of the CPPCC, Li Dequan later brought her husband's ashes to Harbin, where she took part in preparations for the new Political Consultative Conference. A memorial meeting was held on 1 September 1949, the first anniversary of his death, and his remains were later buried on Mount Tai, beneath an inscription by Guo Moruo and a poem Feng had written about himself.

Assessments

Feng's career spanned the Beiyang era, the Nationalist government and the civil war, and he allied with and then broke from many of the leading figures of his time; in his lifetime he was called the 'Christian General', the 'Commoner General' and the 'Turncoat General'. The RCCK biography quotes Zhou Enlai's assessment that 'from the Luanzhou Uprising, through opposing the monarchy, the campaign against Zhang Xun, the overthrow of the bribery-elected government, the revolution in the capital, the Wuyuan oath and the Northern Expedition, to the resistance at Zhangjiakou, he showed a revolutionary spirit'. Official Chinese and RCCK accounts emphasise his cooperation with the Communist Party in his final years, his role in the RCCK and his response to the call for a new Political Consultative Conference.

Western scholarship places more emphasis on his role in warlord politics. The Encyclopedia of World Biography calls him one of the most colourful figures of the warlord era and one of the more serious social reformers among the warlords, with well-trained and tightly disciplined troops; it also writes that the exigencies of war and politics made him 'an unsteady friend', and that 'he climbed to power over a series of betrayed allies, most notably Wu Peifu'. The biography it recommends is James E. Sheridan's Chinese Warlord: The Career of Feng Yü-hsiang (Stanford University Press, 1966).