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Zhang Zuolin | |
---|---|
張作霖 | |
Generalissimo of the Military Government of China | |
In office 18 June 1927 – 4 June 1928 | |
Premier | Pan Fu |
Preceded by | Wellington Koo (as acting president) |
Succeeded by | Tan Yankai (as chairman of the national government) |
Warlord of Manchuria | |
In office 1922 – June 4, 1928 | |
Succeeded by | Zhang Xueliang |
Personal details | |
Born | Haicheng, Fengtian, Qing Empire | March 19, 1875
Died | June 4, 1928 Shenyang, Fengtian, Republic of China | (aged 53)
Manner of death | Assassination |
Nationality | Chinese |
Political party | Fengtian clique |
Spouses |
|
Children | 14, including: |
Awards | Order of Rank and Merit Order of the Golden Grain Order of Wen-Hu |
Nickname(s) | Old Marshal Rain Marshal Mukden Tiger King of the Northeast |
Military service | |
Allegiance | |
Years of service | 1900–1928 |
Rank | Grand Marshal of the Republic of China, generalissimo |
Battles/wars | |
Zhang Zuolin[a] (March 19, 1875 – June 4, 1928) was a Chinese warlord who ruled Manchuria from 1916 to 1928. He led the Fengtian clique, one of the most important factions during China's Warlord Era. During the last year of his life, he briefly installed himself as President of the Republic of China.
Zhang was born to a poor peasant's family in Manchuria. At the age of twenty, he enlisted as a cavalry soldier to fight in the First Sino–Japanese War (1894–1895). After the end of the war, he returned to his hometown and became a bandit. During his time of banditry, he became close with some figures who later occupied important positions in his military clique. The weakness of the empire after the Boxer rebellion caused the bandit groups of the region to become the only important military force in the area, so the authorities tried to recruit them. Thus, all of Zhang's bandit gangs joined the regular army in 1903. After the Russian-Japanese War, Zhang's forces retained the ambiguous characteristics of a regular military unit and an outlaw gang.
He played a prominent role in the 1911 Revolution in Fengtian. In 1916, he was appointed Fengtian's Civil and Military Governor and in 1919, he had already taken control of the three northeastern provinces–Fengtian, Jilin and Heilongjiang. He controlled these territories until his death in 1928 as commander-in-chief of the Fengtian clique, which grouped his supporters. Considered as one of the main military leaders; from 1918 he began to extend his power into Mongolia and northern China. At the beginning of 1925, it became the most powerful military leader in the north of the country. However, He became the important target for the Kuomintang’s Northern Expedition in 1926 directed against the Beiyang government that was dominated by him.
He managed to influence national politics, thanks to the great resources he obtained from the exploitation in the northeastern provinces, which were plentiful, sparsely populated and in full development, and to the protection granted to them by successive Japanese governments. He gathered around him his clique, made up of both military and skilled civilian administrators, who remained fundamentally faithful for Zhang. Believing them to be anti–nationalist and communist-led, he harshly repressed the urban protests that spread throughout the country in 1925. His survival in the mid-1920s was due to the determined Japanese support; for the Japanese, Zhang was the best person to defend his interests, compared to other military leaders.
Increasingly enmity with the Japanese, who wanted him to abandon his national ambitions to concentrate on reforming the northeastern provinces in favor of their interests, Zhang was assassinated by Kwantung officers in 1928. At that time, he was in full retreat to his bases in the northeast before Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek's offensive. Zhang Xueliang, his son, maintained control of the northeastern provinces until 1931.
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