New Guangxi Clique

After the founding of the Republic of China, Guangxi served as the base for one of the most powerful warlord cliques of China: the Old Guangxi clique. Led by Lu Rongting (陆荣廷) and others, the clique was able to take control of neighbouring Hunan and Guangdong provinces as well. The Old Guangxi clique crumbled in the early 1920s, and was replaced by the New Guangxi clique, led by Li Zongren, Huang Shaohong, and Bai Chongxi.

In 1920, Chen Jiongming drove Lu Rongting and the Old Guangxi clique out of Guangdong, in the First Yue-Gui War. In 1921 Chen pushed into Guangxi, starting the Second Yue-Gui war, forcing Lu Rongting to step down in July 1921. By August, Chen had occupied Nanning and the rest of Guangxi. Chen Jiongming and the Cantonese forces occupied Guangxi until April 1922. Their occupation was largely nominal because armed bands of Guangxi loyalists began to gather under local commanders, calling themselves the Self-government Army. Sun Yat-sen and Chen Jiongming soon split over the continuation of the Northern Expedition. Chen, however, aspired merely to be the warlord of Guangdong and after the Zhili clique in Beijing recognized his power in the south, he abandoned Sun Yat-sen. By May 1922 the Cantonese forces had evacuated Guangxi leaving a power vacuum.

Lu Rongting could construct a political and military machine from the forces that composed the Self-government Armies, by calling on friendship, family, and Zhuang ethnicity, but the lack of such a leader led to a rapid collapse into localism, which occurred as the Guangdong forces withdrew. There was intense fighting to re-occupy territory or to attempt to strip the retreating forces of their supplies and munitions.

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