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The “Warlord Officers”: a Collective Biography of the Anguojun Officers During the Republican Period and Beyond

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The “Warlord Officers”: a Collective Biography of the Anguojun Officers During the Republican Period and Beyond Journal of Chinese Military History 8 (2019) 115-158 brill.com/jcmh The “Warlord Officers”: A Collective Biography of the Anguojun Officers during the Republican Period and Beyond Kwong Chi Man Hong Kong Baptist University [email protected] Abstract This article argues that there existed a group of modern professional officers in the warlord armies during the Republican period (1912-1949); they were caught in the mid- dle of a political situation that distorted their career development, disrupted their in- tellectual growth, and undermined their group cohesion. Using the prosopographical approach and drawing on theories of military culture and professionalism, this article looks at the lives and careers of the middle and high-ranking officers of the National Pacification Army (Anguojun), as they formed the backbone of the warlord armies that controlled a substantial part of China before the Northern Expedition (1926-1928) and that played an important role in the wars in China from the 1910s to 1949. Some of these officers, despite their background, rose to high rank in the Nationalist and Communist armies; the less fortunate ones, however, were purged after 1949 by the new Communist government. It elaborates how political strife affected the lives of the professionally trained officers in China, discusses the development of modern military education in China, and sheds lights on the self-understanding of these officers, their relationship to the state and society, and the sources of their cohesion as a group. Keywords China ‒ warlord ‒ officers ‒ modernization ‒ prosopography © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/22127453-12341344Downloaded from Brill.com10/02/2021 01:55:07AM via free access 116 Kwong 1 Introduction The military history of China during the Republican period (1912 to 1949) has been seen as a period of almost continuous modernization, during which the emergence of the party armies of the Chinese Nationalist Party (Guomindang or KMT) and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has rightly been considered as the central event.1 More recently, the “warlord period,” between the death of Yuan Shikai in 1916 and the end of the Northern Expedition in 1928, has been discussed by scholars as a period of increasing technological sophistication of Chinese warfare.2 However, there has been little discussion of the officers of the warlord armies, who have sometimes been compared unfavorably to the Whampoa-trained Nationalist officers, and the latter have generally been seen as the first group of modern professional Chinese army officers.3 The collec- tive image of the warlord officers has been distorted by the more colorful fig- ures such as Zhang Zongchang, Feng Yuxiang, or the notorious bandit-warlord Sun Dianying (1887-1946), who broke into and looted the Eastern Mausoleums of the Qing emperors in 1928. Diana Lary and Edward McCord have rightly challenged this simplistic portrayal and argued that, in the complex military and political circumstances of the period, there were various types of warlord officer.4 However, while the phenomenon of warlordism has been thoroughly investigated—and there have been numerous studies on the major warlords such as Zhang Zuolin, Feng Yuxiang, Yan Xishan, Wu Peifu, Han Fuju, and the members of the Guangxi Clique—on the other hand, little attention has been devoted to their subordinate officers.5 The major warlord armies could not have existed and operated effectively without a cohort of professional of- ficers. These officers were involved on most sides and most fronts of the wars in China during the 1920s to 1930s and during the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-45) and the Chinese Civil War (1946-49). A prosopographical approach is adopted in this article to try to understand the lives and thoughts of the warlord officers who were caught between the Nationalist and Communist parties. Such a study of this often-overlooked group should help to fill a gap in the study of the military history of modern China. Prosopography, or collective biography, is “the investigation of the 1 For a more recent example, see Li 2007. 2 Waldron 1995; Elleman 2001. 3 Ch’en 1979; Ch’i 1976. 4 Lary 1980; Lary 1985; McCord 2014. 5 Pye 1971; Lary 1974; Lary 1980; Lary 1985, 439-70; Ch’i 1976; Ch’en 1979; Waldron 1991; McCord 1993; Van de Ven 1997; for studies on individual warlords, see Sheridan 1966; Gillin 1967; McCormack 1977; Wou 1978; Lary 2006; Liu 2009. Journal of Chinese MilitaryDownloaded History from 8 Brill.com10/02/2021(2019) 115-158 01:55:07AM via free access The “Warlord Officers” 117 common background characteristics of a group of actors in history by means of a collective study of their lives.”6 The adoption of this approach serves both to compensate for the scarcity of information about any individual officer and also to identify and elucidate general patterns. This approach has been used to illustrate the lives of various historical groups, and has already been used to study certain scientific and business communities in China. Chang Jui-te, John Wands Sacca, and Chen Yuhuan have previously adopted a similar ap- proach to study the Nationalist Chinese officers and the Chinese graduates of US military academies.7 This paper focuses on the officers of the National Pacification Army (Anguojun, also sometimes romanized as Ankuochun), which was formed in November 1926 when the Manchurian warlord Zhang Zuolin (1875-1928) ral- lied the warlord armies in North China to fight against the coalition of the northwestern warlord Feng Yuxiang, the Shanxi warlord Yan Xishan, and the Nationalists. The Anguojun was dissolved soon after Zhang was assassinated by the Japanese Kwantung Army in June 1928.8 The wars in China between the northern warlords and the Nationalist coalition are now collectively known as the Northern Expedition. The Anguojun officers are here adopted as a case for the following reasons: the lives of this group of officers are better documented compared to more local military forces, as many of these officers served in the Nationalist Army from 1928 (for sources concerning these officers, see below); they shared a similar upbringing and education; they often served in the same unit for an extended period, despite their units’ affiliations changing over time; and they came from several major warlord camps in China (see below), thus representing a wider geographical area than the more local forces. This article does not claim to provide an overview of the lives of all warlord officers; as Edward McCord suggests in his detailed case studies of the war- lords in Hubei, Hunan, and Guizhou, Chinese warlords applied military force to their goals in different political, social, and geographical contexts. Case stud- ies help to reveal the importance of context, thus preventing an overly sim- plistic understanding of the role played by military force in shaping modern China.9 This article attempts to deepen our understanding of the Chinese mili- tary during the late Qing and early Republican period by studying the largest group of professionally trained officers in China before the emergence of the 6 Stone 1971, 46. 7 Chang 1996, 1033-56; Sacca 2006, 703-42; Chen 2007; Chen 2008; Chen 2009; McCord 2014. 8 For a detailed study of the Northern Expedition, see Jordan 1976; for a study of the same war that focuses on the northern warlords, see Kwong 2017a. 9 McCord 2014, 10-12. Journal of Chinese Military History 8 (2019) 115-158Downloaded from Brill.com10/02/2021 01:55:07AM via free access 118 Kwong Whampoa Military Academy. It tries to identify the patterns of upbringing, ed- ucation, career path, network, ideological inclination, and political choice of these officers. It suggests that this group of officers shared similar educational backgrounds, self-understanding, and even behaviorial patterns. They were the product of the modern military education introduced by the Qing Empire during the last decade of its rule, and in turn they were active in shaping the Chinese military during the subsequent decades. The analysis also reveals the complexity and diversity of the lives of the warlord officers during one of the most turbulent periods of Chinese history. The notion of military professionalism has been discussed and theorized by political scientists such as Samuel Huntington and Morris Janowitz, who mainly used the American military as example. A modern professional offi- cer corps, as Huntington argues, has features such as monopoly of expertise and education, responsibility for the protection of the society they serve, and corporateness that makes them distinctive from other professionals and members of the society.10 This article draws inspirations from the theoretical studies on officer corps as a professional group, particularly the model built by Peter Wilson that focuses on the aspects of “mission, relationship to the state and other institutions, relationship to the society, internal structure, and resources.”11 The issue of expertise is also discussed, as formal military train- ing was an important distinctive feature of the group of officers studied. This article suggests that the officers of the Anguojun were members of a modern officer corps created by the reforms of military education in China during the last decade of the Qing Empire. Many of the Anguojun officers received formal training in military academies in Japan and China (after the Japanese model); this set them apart in terms of expertise and self-understanding from other professionals or the general public in China. They were in possession of expert knowledge of modern warfare, although that knowledge was far from com- plete by the international standard. Many of these officers saw themselves as modern soldiers who had the mission not only of defending China against for- eign encroachments but also of modernizing the country. Some, as suggested below, also saw their mission as defending the Chinese way of life against for- eign influences.
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