Zhang Zuolin - Fortress Manchuria

Fortress Manchuria

In 1920, when he had passed his mid-40s, Zhang was the supreme ruler of Manchuria. The Central Government acknowledged this fact by appointing him to be Governor-General of the Three Eastern Provinces. He started to surround himself in luxury, built a chateau-style home near Shenyang, and had at least five wives (an accepted practice of any powerful or wealthy Chinese at the time). In 1925, his personal fortune was estimated at over 18 million yuan (roughly 2.6 million USD).

His power rested on the Fengtian Army, which was composed of about 100,000 men by 1922 and almost triple that number by the end of the decade. It had obtained large stocks of weapons left over from World War I, and even included naval units, an air force, and an armaments industry. Zhang integrated a large number of local militias in his Army, and thus prevented Manchuria from falling into the chaos which reigned in China proper at this time. Jilin province was ruled by a military governor, who was said to be a cousin of Zhang; Heilongjiang had its own regional warlord, who never displayed any ambitions outside the province.

Although Manchuria officially remained a part of the Republic of China, it became more or less an independent kingdom isolated from China by its geography and protected by the Fengtian Army. The only pass at Shanhaiguan, where the Great Wall meets the sea, could easily be closed. In a time when the Central Government was hardly able to pay the salaries of its civil servants, no more revenues were forwarded to Beijing. In 1922 Zhang took control of the only rail link, the Beijing-Shenyang Railway, north of the Great Wall and also kept these revenues. Only postal and customs revenues were continued to be sent to Beijing, because they had been pledged to the victorious foreign powers after the failed Boxer rebellion of 1900, and Zhang feared their intervention.