North
Yuan's death split the Beiyang army into two factions: the Anhui clique led by Duan Qirui and the Zhili clique led by Feng Guozhang. The Northeast China-based Fengtian faction, led by Zhang Zuolin, was an amalgamation of Beiyang and local units. Diplomatic recognition was usually given to any government that ruled Beijing so capturing this city was a high priority. In addition, they could collect the customs revenue and apply for foreign loans. All the northern factions recognized the Beijing government as legitimate even if they opposed it. They would argue that while the government was legitimate, it lacked authority to dictate to provinces. The Beiyang government in Beijing would occasionally issue edicts to territory beyond their control to charge rival factions with treason when it was expectedly ignored and thus justify military action. This practice ended in 1923 when Cao Kun bought the presidency. The other northern factions were disgusted enough to refuse recognition.
Read more about this topic: Warlord Era
Famous quotes containing the word north:
“The North American system only wants to consider the positive aspects of reality. Men and women are subjected from childhood to an inexorable process of adaptation; certain principles, contained in brief formulas are endlessly repeated by the press, the radio, the churches, and the schools, and by those kindly, sinister beings, the North American mothers and wives. A person imprisoned by these schemes is like a plant in a flowerpot too small for it: he cannot grow or mature.”
—Octavio Paz (b. 1914)
“I know no East or West, North or South, when it comes to my class fighting the battle for justice. If it is my fortune to live to see the industrial chain broken from every workingman’s child in America, and if then there is one black child in Africa in bondage, there shall I go.”
—Mother Jones (1830–1930)
“By the North Gate, the wind blows full of sand,
Lonely from the beginning of time until now!
Trees fall, the grass goes yellow with autumn.”
—Li Po (701–762)