warlord, in modern Chinese history, autonomous regional military commander. In the political chaos following the death (1916) of republican China's first president and commander in chief, Yüan Shih-kai, central authority fell to the provincial military governors and regional military groups emerged based on personal loyalties. During the next decade there was a series of wars between shifting coalitions of military cliques in N China for the collection of provincial and national revenues and for control of the republican government at Beijing. Between 1926 and 1928 the Northern Expedition of the Kuomintang party and the army under Chiang Kai-shek in alliance with prorevolutionary militarists wrested control of N China from the regional armies of Chang Tso-lin, Wu P'ei-fu, and Sun Ch'uan-fang. However, the new Kuomintang government at Nanjing was able to establish central administrative and fiscal hegemony over only a few provinces in SE China. Most provinces continued to be controlled by local militarists until the unification of China following the Communist victory in 1949.

In China, an independent military commander in the early 20th century. Warlords, supported by provincial military interests or foreign powers, ruled various parts of China following the death of Yuan Shikai, first president of the Republic of China. In southeastern China Sun Yat-sen and the Nationalist Party gained the backing of a warlord based in Guangzhou (Canton). In northern China three leading warlords emerged: Zhang Zuolin, a Japanese-backed bandit in Manchuria; Wu Peifu, a traditionally educated officer in central China; and Feng Yuxiang, who seized Beijing in 1924. The Nationalist Party consolidated its control in the south, and its forces swept northward, reuniting the country in 1928. Numerous local warlords continued to exert de facto power over their own domains until the Japanese invasion during what became World War II. Seealso Northern Expedition.

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