WEBVTT

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A presidency bought with cash.

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Shenzhou Dadi. Episode Thirty. The Beiyang
Fall: Cause for Celebration?

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Last time we followed the secret war in the
south: Guangzhou, Wuchang, and that
breathless

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night aboard the Zhongshan gunboat.

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Now turn the lens north, and you will see a
different collapse - quieter, and far more

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fatal.

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Five thousand silver dollars bought one
vote.

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Tens of millions bought the dragon throne
of a republic.

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Yet in the year before that absurd
transaction, Beijing's newspapers still
pointed at

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the president and called him a thief to his
face, and its universities still made room

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for every school of thought, left and
right, new and old.

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An age in which even the presidency could
be priced turned out to be one of the
loosest,

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liveliest periods in modern Chinese
history.

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Corruption and vitality grew on the same
vine. That vine was the Beiyang system.

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And the Beiyang curtain did not fall with
one gunshot.

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It fell as a serial drama, one actor
replacing another: a president who bought
his chair,

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a general who changed sides, a statesman
travelling north, an army taking its oath

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in Guangzhou. We begin with the chair that
had a price tag.

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Two threads, then. Let us take the north
first.

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Cao Kun, the Zhili strongman who bought his
way into the presidency, believed he had

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purchased the country. What he had
purchased was a one-way ticket to a cliff.

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October fifth, nineteen twenty-three,
Beijing.

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The House of Representatives met at
Xiangfang Bridge outside the Xuanwu Gate to
elect

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a president.

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Cao Kun's men put a public price on every
ballot: five thousand silver dollars a
vote,

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paid on the spot. The deputies queued, took
their money, and raised their hands.

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Later accounts reckoned the whole business
at no less than tens of millions of silver

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dollars. A president of a republic had been
given a price.

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The deputies who took the money were
nicknamed the piglet deputies - a hundred
and

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thirty-five of them.

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Wu Jinglian, speaker of the House, had been
promised the premiership after the
election.

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Instead Cao Kun nominated Sun Baoqi.

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Wu stuffed the speaker's seal into his
pocket and fled Beijing by night.

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When even the spoils cannot be divided
evenly, you can imagine the foundations of
that

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purchased regime.

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But fairness requires the other half of the
picture.

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In those same years Beijing's press still
abused the president in print, and its

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universities still tolerated left and
right, radicals and conservatives.

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An age that let the presidency be bought
also let you say so out loud.

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That looseness was not seen again for a
very long time.

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Historians have never agreed on the
bribery.

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One reading calls it the moment
constitutional government in the republic
finally

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collapsed, with the presidency turned into
a silver-dollar trade.

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Another points out that the parliament had
long been broken by the warlords, and that

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vote-buying did not begin with Cao Kun -
only that this time the price was posted
too

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openly, and too uglily, to ignore.

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Two threads. Now the south.

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While the deputies in the north were
counting silver dollars, three young men in
the

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mountains of Guangxi were piecing their
broken province back together, piece by
piece.

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Li Zongren, born eighteen ninety-one, from
Lingui, brought the Pacify Guangxi Army he

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had fought out of Yulin.

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Bai Chongxi, born eighteen ninety-three,
from Guilin, was the mind of the trio and
served

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as chief of staff.

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Huang Shaohong, born eighteen ninety-five,
from Rong County, had been a regimental

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commander under Shen Hongying;

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in nineteen twenty-three he broke with
Shen, seized Wuzhou, and joined hands with
Li

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Zongren.

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All three were about the same age, all
three were stubborn, and together they
fitted:

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one who dared to fight, one who could
calculate, one who could hold the rear.

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In nineteen twenty-four their two forces
met on the Xun River and became the Pacify

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Guangxi and Punish the Traitors Army: Li
Zongren as commander-in-chief, Huang
Shaohong as

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deputy commander and provincial governor,
Bai Chongxi as chief of staff.

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One to strike, one to keep house, one to
plan.

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Three men squeezed a province of loose sand
into a single fist.

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That fist struck first at Lu Rongting, the
old master of the Guangxi clique.

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They did not use brute force.

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In the spring of nineteen twenty-four Lu
Rongting was pinned inside Guilin by
another

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warlord, Shen Hongying.

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Shen sent two divisions under Deng Youwen
and Shen Rongguang to surround the city so

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tightly that not a man could slip through;

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the assault went on day and night for more
than seventy days.

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Li, Bai and Huang saw their chance: Lu's
best troops were nailed to Guilin, and his
base

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at Nanning lay empty. They settled on a
stratagem - ally with Shen, bring down Lu.

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Instead of meeting Lu head-on, they waited
until he pulled his Nanning garrison north.

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In late June Bai Chongxi moved overland
through Binyang, Shanglin and Wuming;

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Li Zongren came up the river from Guixian
straight at Nanning;

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Huang Shaohong stayed at Wuzhou as the
inside anchor.

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Three routes closed, and the old master's
nest was taken almost without a fight.

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The seal of the Guangxi military governor's
office was still warm when Governor Zhang

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Qihuang packed his valuables and slipped
away through Annam to Wu Peifu.

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With his base gone, Lu Rongting in Guilin
became a tree without roots.

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On July ninth the three men raised the
banner of the United Pacify Guangxi Army at

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Nanning: eleven columns and six guerrilla
units, in three routes.

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The right, under Li and Bai, drove at
Liuzhou and Guilin;

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the centre, under Yu Zuobai, cleared Lu's
remnants around Du'an and Nama;

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the left, under Hu Zongduo, pushed all the
way to Longzhou and drove what was left of

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Lu across the Vietnamese border. On August
eleventh Bai Chongxi took Liuzhou.

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On September twenty-first Lu Rongting
announced his retirement from the Xiangshan
Temple

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and left for Shanghai to live as a private
citizen.

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The Old Guangxi Clique, which had held the
province for more than a decade, came

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apart.

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Shen Hongying still stood in the way.

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With Lu gone he occupied Guilin, Pingle and
Liuzhou and wanted the province for

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himself.

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On January twenty-ninth, nineteen
twenty-five, he struck at Li and Huang in
three

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columns. Li Zongren refused a head-on
clash;

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he avoided the strong point, massed against
the weak one, and destroyed each column in

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turn.

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Between February and April Shen's left,
centre and right were broken one after
another

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at Wuxuan, at Jinzhu'ao in Yongfu, and
around Guilin.

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The last battle came at Liangjiangtang near
Guilin: Bai Chongxi laid an ambush on the

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Luoqing River.

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As Shen's main force crossed a pontoon
bridge, a mountain flood swept down,
snapped

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the bridge and cut their retreat.

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Two hundred were killed, seven hundred
captured, and hundreds drowned in the
swollen

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river.

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Shen Hongying disguised himself as a
merchant and escaped through Guangdong to
Hong

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Kong.

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I never imagined I would be beaten by a few
little company commanders, he told the

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press as he left.

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Those little company commanders were Li,
Bai and Huang - once minor officers in the

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very same Old Guangxi ranks.

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For the first time in more than a decade of
chaos, Guangxi had been pulled into one
fist

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by three young men. The fire in the south
was lit in these mountains.

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At its other end lay Guangdong.

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Li Zongren later recalled that Guangxi was
too poor to feed a large army - and that
this

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very poverty forged the New Guangxi
Clique's hard edge.

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Men with no capital are the ones willing to
stake their lives on a knife point.

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Only when Guangxi was steady did Sun
Yat-sen's headquarters next door in
Guangdong have

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a neighbour it could rely on.

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Back to the north.

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In the autumn of nineteen twenty-four,
Zhang Zuolin and Wu Peifu, the two
strongest men

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in the Beiyang world, tore off the last
layer of courtesy.

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On September fifteenth the Fengtian army
entered the pass in three columns: one
through

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Shanhaiguan, one through southern Rehe
towards Jinzhou, one through northern Rehe
at

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Chengde and Xifengkou.

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On September eighteenth Wu Peifu took
personal command of the Punitive Army and
went to

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meet them.

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A hundred and fifty to a hundred and
seventy thousand Fengtian troops, two
hundred to

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two hundred and fifty thousand Zhili troops
- more than four hundred thousand men
hacking

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at each other along the Shanhaiguan line.

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Once the guns started, Cao Kun could not
sit still.

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He sent Wu Peifu to the front in person -
and never imagined his own rear would catch

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fire first.

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The Zhili side put Peng Shoushen on the
Shanhaiguan front with Zhang Fulai in
support;

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the Fengtian side threw Jiang Dengxuan and
Zhang Xueliang into the attack.

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Around Jiumenkou and Shimenzhai the
artillery never stopped, and the casualties
were

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beyond counting.

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The Zhili and Fengtian cliques had been the
two pillars of one Beiyang house;

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now they were killing each other over who
would sit in that chair.

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Cao Kun had thought he had bought the
country.

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Only now did he discover he was a piece on
Wu Peifu's board - and a piece never
decides

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the game.

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Wu Peifu, the general who had won so many
hard battles, did not see that the real
danger

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was not in the artillery at Shanhaiguan. It
was in a quiet coup inside Beijing.

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Wu Peifu had won many victories in his
life, but he committed the classic error of
war:

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he pushed every able unit to the front and
left his rear empty.

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He trusted the speed of his own blade and
forgot that the blade behind him was
faster.

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While the two armies were still trading
blows at Shanhaiguan, the board in Beijing
had

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already been changed, quietly.

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Two threads - and the south flares again.

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Tang Jiyao of Yunnan, born eighteen
eighty-three, from Huize, had named himself

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commander-in-chief of the
Sichuan-Guizhou-Yunnan Allied Army and
meant to march through

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Guangxi and swallow the two Guang provinces
in one bite.

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In January nineteen twenty-five he sent two
armies into Guangxi: one under Long Yun,

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out of Guangnan, taking Baise and driving
down the You River at Nanning;

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the other, commanded by Tang Jiyao's own
younger brother, entering from Rongjiang in

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Guizhou, taking Sanjiang and Rong County,
and driving down the Rong River at Liuzhou.

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Together they came to nearly eighty
thousand men, and claimed a hundred
thousand.

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One point must be clear: the northern route
was led by Tang Jiyao's younger brother,

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not by Tang Jiyao himself. Tang Jiyao never
left Yunnan.

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From here on we will call that force the
Northern Route Yunnan Army.

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What they ran into was the New Guangxi
Clique, barely formed into a fist: Li
Zongren,

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Bai Chongxi and Huang Shaohong, twenty
thousand men all told, and worse equipped
than

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their enemy.

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It was a hard fight against odds, and more
than that, a contest of heads.

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Li Zongren was cold-eyed.

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He saw the Yunnan army's weak point: the
Yunnan-Guangxi-Guizhou border is all high

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mountains and broken roads;

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tens of thousands of men cannot pour in at
once, they have to be fed forward column by

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column.

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Long Yun's spearhead pushed ahead and took
Nanning, but the follow-up never arrived -

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and the spearhead became a living target.

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Li settled on a plan of beating them one at
a time, and Nanning first.

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On May sixteenth Li Zongren came to the
front to direct the assault on Kunlun Pass.

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The pass sits on hard ground, easy to
defend and hard to take.

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The Guangxi troops fought a full day and
night, losses piled up, and still could not

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bite through.

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Seeing Fan Shisheng on the left flank
standing still, Li made his decision on the
spot:

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he pulled two columns around to the left to
envelop the position.

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Hit from front and rear, the Yunnan force
lost more than two thousand men and gave up

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Kunlun Pass;

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the Guangxi troops pursued, took Batang,
Qitang and Wutang in succession, and drove
Long

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Yun back inside Nanning.

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Nanning's walls were high and thick, and
the Guangxi army had no heavy guns to break

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them.

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Li simply surrounded the city without
attacking, cut the grain, cut the water,
and waited

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to see how long they could hold. The siege
ran for the better part of a year.

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Long Yun grew desperate, offered heavy
rewards and formed a suicide corps of more
than

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a thousand men to break out at night;

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Fan Shisheng, guarding the city, was caught
off guard and fell back dozens of miles.

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Li Zongren heard of it and rushed Yu Zuobai
back to the rescue.

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The breakout force was cut to pieces. The
breakout failed.

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While Nanning was stalled, Liuzhou sent an
alarm: Wu Xuexian of the Northern Route
Yunnan

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Army had taken Sanjiang and was besieging
Liuzhou;

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its defender Li Shiyu had been killed at
the front, and the city was about to fall.

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Li Zongren wired Bai Chongxi to come back
from Guilin;

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Huang Shaohong shifted Wu Tingyang and
Zhong Zupei from Nanning to Liuzhou.

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The Yunnan army fell back to Shatang and
Shapu.

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Bai Chongxi deployed: Zhong Zupei on the
left, Lin Zhufang in the centre, Wu
Tingyang

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on the right, Lu Huanyan in reserve. It was
a savage battle;

00:14:02.56 --> 00:14:05.14
Baima Mountain changed hands five times.

00:14:05.14 --> 00:14:10.68
In the end, attacked on three sides, the
Yunnan line broke and retreated through
Chang'an

00:14:10.68 --> 00:14:16.22
and Qingyuan, then by Donglan and Fengshan,
and escaped home to Yunnan by way of

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Lingyun.

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Inside Nanning, Long Yun heard that the
main force at Liuzhou had collapsed.

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Epidemic disease was running through the
city, food and ammunition were gone.

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On the night of July seventh, nineteen
twenty-five, under cover of dark, he
crossed the

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Zuo River with what was left and slipped
back to Yunnan.

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Li Zongren sent Yu Zuobai after him;

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Yu moved half a beat too slowly, and Long
Yun got away.

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Seven months. Eighty thousand Yunnan
troops. Not one of them swallowed Guangxi.

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Tang Jiyao's dream of being deputy marshal
broke against the hills and rivers of

00:14:56.63 --> 00:14:56.88
Lingnan.

00:14:56.88 --> 00:14:59.17
There is a footnote to the campaign.

00:14:59.17 --> 00:15:04.63
As the Yunnan army retreated, Tang Jiyao
sat in one corner of Yunnan and lost
because

00:15:04.63 --> 00:15:10.09
his command was tangled and every commander
had his own plan: Long Yun and the Northern

00:15:10.09 --> 00:15:15.36
Route fought separate wars and obeyed no
one. The New Guangxi Clique won cleanly;

00:15:15.36 --> 00:15:20.82
from then on no strong neighbour coveted
the two Guang provinces, and they were free
to

00:15:20.82 --> 00:15:23.55
take the olive branch Guangdong held out.

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Tang Jiyao never recovered from the defeat,
and years later his own subordinates, Long

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Yun among them, forced him from power.

00:15:31.49 --> 00:15:34.53
That is a later story, and not for this
episode.

00:15:34.53 --> 00:15:40.14
While the northern battlefield was at full
heat, a Zhili general named Feng Yuxiang

00:15:40.14 --> 00:15:42.03
quietly turned his guns around.

00:15:42.03 --> 00:15:46.50
Feng Yuxiang, born eighteen eighty-two,
from Chaoxian in Anhui.

00:15:46.50 --> 00:15:52.60
On October twenty-third he marched his army
back to the capital, imprisoned Cao Kun in

00:15:52.60 --> 00:15:58.56
a single night and scattered the Zhili
clique. That night is called the Jiazi
Coup.

00:15:58.56 --> 00:16:04.26
Cao Kun, the president who had bought his
office, announced his retirement on
November

00:16:04.26 --> 00:16:07.31
second. Wu Peifu heard the news at the
front;

00:16:07.31 --> 00:16:11.95
his army dissolved and he fled south from
Tanggu on a naval transport.

00:16:11.95 --> 00:16:17.32
Duan Qirui took over the government, and
Zhang Zuolin rode into Beijing in state.

00:16:17.32 --> 00:16:23.02
Feng Yuxiang did one more thing that
startled the country: on November fifth he
drove

00:16:23.02 --> 00:16:28.72
Puyi, long since abdicated, out of the
Forbidden City and abolished the Articles
of

00:16:28.72 --> 00:16:31.23
Favourable Treatment for the Qing House.

00:16:31.23 --> 00:16:34.88
Even many who cursed the Beiyang system
nodded at that.

00:16:34.88 --> 00:16:37.85
That night has never had one agreed
account.

00:16:37.85 --> 00:16:43.66
Feng said he could not stomach Cao Kun's
bribery and Wu Peifu's monopoly of power,
and

00:16:43.66 --> 00:16:44.74
wanted renewal.

00:16:44.74 --> 00:16:50.54
His enemies called it desertion and bad
faith, and said he had been in secret
understanding

00:16:50.54 --> 00:16:55.33
with Zhang Zuolin, Duan Qirui, and even Sun
Yat-sen in the south.

00:16:55.33 --> 00:17:00.79
The telegram that follows was issued by
Feng Yuxiang, with Hu Jingyi, Sun Yue and
others,

00:17:00.79 --> 00:17:06.24
on October twenty-third, nineteen
twenty-four - the day he brought his army
back to

00:17:06.24 --> 00:17:09.22
Beijing - and addressed to the whole
country.

00:17:09.22 --> 00:17:14.67
Because the code word for that day in the
telegraphic calendar was yang, later
writers

00:17:14.67 --> 00:17:18.67
call it the Yang Telegram. Here it is, in
English translation.

00:17:18.67 --> 00:17:22.75
Armies are raised originally to defend
against insult from abroad;

00:17:22.75 --> 00:17:28.01
for countrymen to slaughter one another is
a shame before China and before the world.

00:17:28.01 --> 00:17:33.33
Unhappily, since the troubles of the ninth
year, nameless campaigns have risen again

00:17:33.33 --> 00:17:38.34
and again; the sharper the quarrel, the
deeper the wound to the nation's vitality.

00:17:38.34 --> 00:17:43.67
If those who govern had the slightest
conscience, how should they have sought
peace and

00:17:43.67 --> 00:17:48.80
given the people rest? Instead, trouble in
the southeast spread to the northeast;

00:17:48.80 --> 00:17:54.12
the soldiers of the whole country were
moved, and the bones of ten thousand people
were

00:17:54.12 --> 00:17:54.80
dried up.

00:17:54.80 --> 00:18:00.12
Ask what they fight for, and for whom they
fight: those who ordered it could hardly

00:18:00.12 --> 00:18:05.01
answer. We, Yu-xiang and the others, pace
at midnight with no tears left to shed;

00:18:05.01 --> 00:18:08.66
driven by conscience, we take our stand for
ending the war.

00:18:08.66 --> 00:18:13.99
Therefore on October twenty-third we
resolved to bring our troops back, and with
all

00:18:13.99 --> 00:18:19.31
the units under our command have formed the
National Army of the Chinese Republic,
sworn

00:18:19.31 --> 00:18:22.09
to be of use to the country and the people.

00:18:22.09 --> 00:18:27.41
If any still toy with war and bring
calamity to our people and our country,
this army,

00:18:27.41 --> 00:18:31.87
in order to shorten the war, will not
shrink from meeting them in arms.

00:18:31.87 --> 00:18:34.53
The whole army has now reached the capital.

00:18:34.53 --> 00:18:39.85
Here the legations of all friendly powers
are placed, and local order is of the first

00:18:39.85 --> 00:18:43.25
importance; we shall be responsible for
maintaining it.

00:18:43.25 --> 00:18:48.57
As for all questions of political
settlement, we ask the wise and able of the
whole

00:18:48.57 --> 00:18:53.83
country to rise at once, to meet and devise
a remedy, and to open together a new order.

00:18:53.83 --> 00:18:57.79
Perhaps it is from many hardships that a
nation is strengthened.

00:18:57.79 --> 00:19:01.75
As we send this telegram we look up, and
await your instruction.

00:19:01.75 --> 00:19:06.76
One line after the reading: the telegram
handed the question of the country's
direction

00:19:06.76 --> 00:19:09.56
back to the wise and able of the whole
nation.

00:19:09.56 --> 00:19:14.57
The sentence about where power lies is, we
ask the wise and able of the whole country

00:19:14.57 --> 00:19:17.25
to rise at once and open together a new
order;

00:19:17.25 --> 00:19:20.05
and its last line is, we await your
instruction.

00:19:20.03 --> 00:19:24.06
Two threads, and here they twist into one
rope.

00:19:24.06 --> 00:19:29.17
After the Jiazi Coup, Feng Yuxiang was the
first to telegraph an invitation to Sun

00:19:29.17 --> 00:19:32.44
Yat-sen to come north and discuss the state
of the nation;

00:19:32.44 --> 00:19:37.37
once Duan Qirui took office, he joined Feng
and Zhang in a second joint invitation.

00:19:37.37 --> 00:19:42.90
Sun left Guangdong on November thirteenth,
nineteen twenty-four, travelling by way of

00:19:42.90 --> 00:19:46.25
Japan, and reached Beijing on December
thirty-first.

00:19:46.25 --> 00:19:51.78
The proposals he publicly put forward were
a national convention and the abolition of

00:19:51.78 --> 00:19:56.09
the unequal treaties. He was already
seriously ill when he boarded;

00:19:56.09 --> 00:20:01.63
on arrival he entered Peking Union Medical
College Hospital, and in February of the

00:20:01.63 --> 00:20:04.46
following year the diagnosis was liver
cancer.

00:20:04.46 --> 00:20:07.59
No one in the north took up those
proposals.

00:20:07.59 --> 00:20:13.69
In February nineteen twenty-five Duan Qirui
opened a separate Rehabilitation Conference

00:20:13.69 --> 00:20:16.53
and set the national convention aside.

00:20:16.53 --> 00:20:22.64
Feng Yuxiang, who had invited him, had by
then lost power and withdrawn to
Zhangjiakou.

00:20:22.64 --> 00:20:27.54
Zhang Zuolin talked to him about an
entirely different arrangement.

00:20:27.54 --> 00:20:29.67
Three men, three calculations;

00:20:29.67 --> 00:20:34.22
the courtesy of the telegrams dissolved at
the conference table.

00:20:34.22 --> 00:20:39.78
On March twelfth, nineteen twenty-five, Sun
Yat-sen died at his residence in Iron Lion

00:20:39.78 --> 00:20:41.91
Alley, Beijing, aged fifty-nine.

00:20:41.91 --> 00:20:47.47
His late disputes over the road ahead with
Zhang Taiyan, Song Jiaoren, Huang Xing and

00:20:47.47 --> 00:20:49.73
Chen Jiongming are not judged here.

00:20:49.73 --> 00:20:55.28
Only the facts are laid out: the proposals
were his, the conference was someone
else's,

00:20:55.28 --> 00:20:57.74
and he died of illness in the north.

00:20:57.74 --> 00:21:03.09
What follows is the Declaration on Going
North, also called the Declaration on the

00:21:03.09 --> 00:21:08.44
Situation, issued by Sun Yat-sen on
November tenth, nineteen twenty-four,
before he set

00:21:08.44 --> 00:21:12.36
out - his own public account of what he
intended by the journey.

00:21:12.36 --> 00:21:17.71
The phrase the eighteenth of September this
year refers to September eighteenth of the

00:21:17.71 --> 00:21:21.26
thirteenth year of the republic. In English
translation:

00:21:21.26 --> 00:21:26.54
On the eighteenth of September this year,
this party issued a declaration on the
purpose

00:21:26.54 --> 00:21:28.38
of the northern expedition.

00:21:28.38 --> 00:21:33.66
Its central meaning was that the aim of the
national revolution is to create an
independent

00:21:33.66 --> 00:21:38.82
and free country, so as to protect the
interests of the nation and the people.

00:21:38.82 --> 00:21:44.10
That aim is absolutely incompatible with
the imperialist desire to keep China a
colony

00:21:44.10 --> 00:21:44.66
forever.

00:21:44.66 --> 00:21:49.94
Thus in the revolution of nineteen eleven,
though we overthrew the Manchu government,

00:21:49.94 --> 00:21:55.22
in no time the imperialists had joined with
the warlords to oppose the national
revolution,

00:21:55.22 --> 00:21:58.23
and did all they could to obstruct its aim.

00:21:58.23 --> 00:22:03.51
In thirteen years the warlords themselves
have come and gone, but their nature and
their

00:22:03.51 --> 00:22:08.79
function, from Yuan Shikai down to Cao Kun
and Wu Peifu, have run in one and the same

00:22:08.79 --> 00:22:09.40
groove.

00:22:09.40 --> 00:22:14.69
Therefore the aim of the northern
expedition is not merely to destroy Cao and
Wu, but

00:22:14.69 --> 00:22:19.66
to ensure that after Cao and Wu are
destroyed no men of the same kind rise
again;

00:22:19.66 --> 00:22:24.94
in other words, it is not merely to
overthrow the warlords, but to overthrow
the

00:22:24.94 --> 00:22:27.03
imperialism on which the warlords live.

00:22:27.03 --> 00:22:32.31
Only so can the aim of the national
revolution, its obstacles cleared, advance
with

00:22:32.31 --> 00:22:36.73
vigour. The destiny of the people lies in
the people's self-determination.

00:22:36.73 --> 00:22:42.01
If this party can win the aid of the
people, then China's independence, freedom
and

00:22:42.01 --> 00:22:45.33
unity will certainly be fully achieved
through struggle.

00:22:45.33 --> 00:22:50.61
The aim of the national revolution is to
create an independent and free country, so
as

00:22:50.61 --> 00:22:53.99
to protect the interests of the nation and
the people;

00:22:53.99 --> 00:22:59.08
its content was set out in the declaration
of this party's first national congress.

00:22:59.08 --> 00:23:04.37
Taking the three principles of nationality,
civil rights and livelihood as its base,

00:23:04.37 --> 00:23:09.65
and listing, according to the times, the
remedies that are the minimum programme, in

00:23:09.65 --> 00:23:14.68
outline: in foreign policy, on one side,
cancel all unequal treaties and privileges;

00:23:14.68 --> 00:23:19.96
on the other, change the nature of foreign
debts so that the powers cannot use those

00:23:19.96 --> 00:23:23.10
debts to keep China in the position of a
sub-colony.

00:23:23.10 --> 00:23:28.38
In domestic policy, define the powers of
the centre and the provinces so that
national

00:23:28.38 --> 00:23:33.60
unity and provincial self-government may
each develop without obstructing the other;

00:23:33.60 --> 00:23:38.88
establish the county as the unit of
self-government to lay deep the foundation
of civil

00:23:38.88 --> 00:23:39.43
rights;

00:23:39.43 --> 00:23:44.71
and use all our strength to protect the
freedom of the people, to assist the growth
of

00:23:44.71 --> 00:23:49.99
agricultural, industrial and commercial
bodies, and to seek improvement in the
economy

00:23:49.99 --> 00:23:51.16
and in education.

00:23:51.16 --> 00:23:56.44
If the foreign policy is realised, the
influence of imperialism in China will
disappear

00:23:56.44 --> 00:24:00.13
and the country's independence and freedom
will be secure;

00:24:00.13 --> 00:24:05.41
if the domestic policy is realised, the
warlords cannot rise again from the ashes
and

00:24:05.41 --> 00:24:09.09
the foundation of government by the people
cannot be shaken.

00:24:09.09 --> 00:24:13.82
This, I dare believe, is a medicine suited
to the present condition of China.

00:24:13.82 --> 00:24:19.02
One line after the reading: the declaration
handed the answer to where China goes to

00:24:19.02 --> 00:24:21.20
the self-determination of the people.

00:24:21.20 --> 00:24:26.40
The sentence about where power lies is, the
destiny of the people lies in the people's

00:24:26.40 --> 00:24:27.61
self-determination;

00:24:27.61 --> 00:24:32.08
and the last line is, a medicine suited to
the present condition of China.

00:24:32.07 --> 00:24:34.15
The thread returns to the south.

00:24:34.15 --> 00:24:39.75
On July first, nineteen twenty-five, the
Nationalist Government was established at

00:24:39.75 --> 00:24:45.35
Guangzhou, and the young soldiers trained
at Whampoa got a proper name for the first
time:

00:24:45.35 --> 00:24:47.56
the National Revolutionary Army.

00:24:47.56 --> 00:24:52.80
Whampoa Military Academy had opened in June
nineteen twenty-four on Changzhou Island at

00:24:52.80 --> 00:24:55.72
Guangzhou, with Chiang Kai-shek as
commandant;

00:24:55.72 --> 00:25:00.96
Zhou Enlai, Ye Jianying and Nie Rongzhen
taught there in turn, and a Russian
adviser,

00:25:00.96 --> 00:25:06.01
General Galen, helped train the troops. The
first class was about five hundred men;

00:25:06.01 --> 00:25:11.25
they graduated that winter and went
straight into the Eastern Expeditions,
which drove

00:25:11.25 --> 00:25:13.26
Chen Jiongming out of Guangdong.

00:25:13.26 --> 00:25:17.34
Those men were the backbone of the new
National Revolutionary Army.

00:25:17.34 --> 00:25:20.84
From that day the south was no longer a
slogan.

00:25:20.84 --> 00:25:26.57
It had a real army - and that army's
general headquarters stood in Guangzhou.

00:25:26.57 --> 00:25:29.80
The story comes to July of nineteen
twenty-six.

00:25:29.80 --> 00:25:35.71
On July sixth the General Headquarters of
the National Revolutionary Army was set up

00:25:35.71 --> 00:25:38.81
and Chiang Kai-shek became
commander-in-chief.

00:25:38.81 --> 00:25:44.72
Three days later, on July ninth, the
banners covered the sky at the East Parade
Ground

00:25:44.72 --> 00:25:45.68
in Guangzhou.

00:25:45.68 --> 00:25:49.38
Three years since Cao Kun bought the chair
with silver.

00:25:49.38 --> 00:25:54.50
Two years since Feng Yuxiang changed the
board in Beijing in a single night.

00:25:54.50 --> 00:25:58.33
The old account in the north had turned to
its last page;

00:25:58.33 --> 00:26:01.63
the army in the south stood on its starting
line.

00:26:01.63 --> 00:26:06.05
What came after that day belongs to the
next episode.

00:26:06.05 --> 00:26:11.23
Here, remember only one date: July ninth,
nineteen twenty-six.

00:26:11.23 --> 00:26:13.09
Two threads, written as one.

00:26:13.09 --> 00:26:18.79
In those three years the north changed
hands: Cao Kun fell, Zhang Zuolin entered

00:26:18.79 --> 00:26:18.99
Beijing.

00:26:18.99 --> 00:26:24.69
The south found its strength: Guangxi was
squeezed into a fist, Guangzhou assembled
an

00:26:24.69 --> 00:26:25.09
army.

00:26:25.09 --> 00:26:30.79
In the very same year, nineteen
twenty-four, one side was changing its
government and

00:26:30.79 --> 00:26:32.91
the other side was building one.

00:26:32.91 --> 00:26:38.61
Old actors left, new actors came on, and
between them lay countless lives and
accounts

00:26:38.61 --> 00:26:40.47
that will never be settled.

00:26:40.47 --> 00:26:45.44
Which side was cleaner, which side muddier,
this narration will not decide.

00:26:45.44 --> 00:26:51.14
One thing can be said plainly: in the
Beiyang years the newspapers could curse
the

00:26:51.14 --> 00:26:54.25
president and the man would still go to the
opera;

00:26:54.25 --> 00:26:58.56
the universities made room for left and
right, new and old alike.

00:26:58.56 --> 00:27:02.34
That looseness was not seen again for many
years to come.

00:27:02.33 --> 00:27:05.80
We can still stand on the traces of that
history today.

00:27:05.80 --> 00:27:11.21
At Zhengyangmen in Beijing, the troops
entering and leaving the city in the
republican

00:27:11.21 --> 00:27:13.48
years passed under the arrow tower;

00:27:13.48 --> 00:27:18.89
at the Shenwumen gate of the Forbidden
City, Puyi was escorted out of the palace
in the

00:27:18.89 --> 00:27:21.04
thirteenth year of the republic.

00:27:21.04 --> 00:27:26.45
On Changzhou Island at Whampoa, the parade
ground and the two-storey walkways of the

00:27:26.45 --> 00:27:31.36
old academy still stand, now open to
visitors as a national key cultural relic.

00:27:31.36 --> 00:27:36.78
Around the East Parade Ground, in today's
Yuexiu district near the Martyrs' Park, you

00:27:36.78 --> 00:27:39.99
can still find the ground where the oath
was taken.

00:27:39.99 --> 00:27:45.40
In Guilin, the Jingjiang Princes' Palace
and Solitary Beauty Peak looked down on
Shen

00:27:45.40 --> 00:27:47.23
Hongying's siege of the city;

00:27:47.23 --> 00:27:52.65
outside Nanning, Kunlun Pass still holds
the terrain of that bloody fight in the
fourteenth

00:27:52.65 --> 00:27:54.35
year of the republic.

00:27:54.35 --> 00:27:58.69
These places say nothing, yet they are more
honest than any textbook.

00:27:58.69 --> 00:28:02.97
This history was not invented; it is solid
ground beneath your feet.

00:28:02.97 --> 00:28:08.38
In Beijing the rules lay broken: if a
president could be bought, did the law
still count?

00:28:08.38 --> 00:28:13.80
Yet the teahouses in the lanes stayed open
and the storytellers kept telling, and

00:28:13.80 --> 00:28:19.22
the old Beijing saying went, under the Son
of Heaven the rules are strict - only now

00:28:19.22 --> 00:28:24.25
the Son of Heaven had bought the job
himself, and the rules grew strangely
light.

00:28:24.25 --> 00:28:29.67
In Guangxi the mountains bred a hard
temper: a bowl of rice noodles, a jar of
pickled

00:28:29.67 --> 00:28:34.83
bamboo shoots, and people who kept their
word in a bargain and kept it in a fight.

00:28:34.83 --> 00:28:40.25
In Guangdong, morning tea talked over the
fate of the country, and remittances from

00:28:40.25 --> 00:28:45.67
overseas kept whole families alive; people
there had long since learned to look
outward.

00:28:45.67 --> 00:28:51.08
The true face of an age is often not in
telegrams and declarations, but in the
bowl,

00:28:51.08 --> 00:28:55.55
the teacup, the stage. Histories usually
leave that out. We put it back.

00:28:55.57 --> 00:29:01.34
The Beiyang government was broke: owing
more than a hundred million in military
arrears,

00:29:01.34 --> 00:29:04.97
its taxes long since scraped clean by the
warlords.

00:29:04.97 --> 00:29:09.60
Cao Kun's silver dollars were only robbing
one wall to patch another.

00:29:09.60 --> 00:29:13.03
The more notes it printed the less they
were worth;

00:29:13.03 --> 00:29:18.00
when the soldiers' pay did not arrive,
mutinies followed, again and again.

00:29:18.00 --> 00:29:23.77
At the other end, Guangxi's tin and rice,
Guangdong's silk and overseas remittances,

00:29:23.77 --> 00:29:25.18
came in as real money.

00:29:25.18 --> 00:29:30.96
Who could feed so many armies, so many
mouths? Not the chair in Beijing, but the
mines

00:29:30.96 --> 00:29:35.99
of the south, the rice in the fields, the
remittances from across the sea.

00:29:35.99 --> 00:29:41.70
The north fed its armies with a printing
press and grew hollower with every
campaign;

00:29:41.70 --> 00:29:47.48
the south made blood from industry and
remittances and grew stronger with every
fight.

00:29:47.48 --> 00:29:52.45
An army with an empty stomach, however well
it fights, does not march far.

00:29:52.43 --> 00:29:58.38
After his abdication Cao Kun lived in
Tianjin and died there in nineteen
thirty-eight,

00:29:58.38 --> 00:30:00.31
never touching power again.

00:30:00.31 --> 00:30:05.98
Wu Peifu fled south, never recovered, and
died in Beiping in nineteen thirty-nine.

00:30:05.98 --> 00:30:11.92
Tang Jiyao was forced from power by his own
subordinates in the sixteenth year of the

00:30:11.92 --> 00:30:15.66
republic and died a disappointed man in the
twentieth.

00:30:15.66 --> 00:30:20.98
Li Zongren and Bai Chongxi, the twin stars
of Guangxi, were only just rising;

00:30:20.98 --> 00:30:24.57
their story belongs to later episodes, not
this one.

00:30:24.57 --> 00:30:30.52
Three old marshals down on their luck - one
in retirement, one in ruin, one in
bitterness;

00:30:30.52 --> 00:30:34.39
two young men from Guangxi stepping onto
the stage.

00:30:34.39 --> 00:30:38.81
Who among them was a good man, who a bad
one, I will not answer.

00:30:38.81 --> 00:30:44.41
Cao Kun was greedy yet not without
kindness; Wu Peifu was proud yet had
backbone;

00:30:44.41 --> 00:30:47.79
Tang Jiyao failed, yet he had once had
ambitions.

00:30:47.79 --> 00:30:53.05
I only set them inside the board of their
own time. You decide what you see.

00:30:53.03 --> 00:30:59.35
One chair with a price tag collapsed.
Another chair still stands empty.

00:30:59.35 --> 00:31:04.74
The president who bought his office has
gone, the general who changed sides has
gone,

00:31:04.74 --> 00:31:10.07
the statesman who travelled north has gone,
and the oath at Guangzhou has been sworn.

00:31:10.07 --> 00:31:13.64
The old actors are leaving; the new ones
are at the door.

00:31:13.64 --> 00:31:16.28
The Beiyang curtain has fallen.

00:31:16.28 --> 00:31:23.58
But what follows - celebration, or a longer
and harder disorder? That is the story of

00:31:23.58 --> 00:31:25.03
our next episode.