Duan Qirui

Duan Qirui (born March 6, 1865, Hefei, Anhui province, China—died Nov. 2, 1936, Shanghai) was a warlord who dominated China intermittently between 1916 and 1926.

A student of military science in Germany, Duan became President Yuan Shikai’s minister of war following the Chinese Revolution of 1911. Shortly before Yuan’s death in 1916, Duan became premier, and he kept the post in the new government. He restored the provisional constitution of 1912, which had been dissolved by Yuan in 1913. In May 1917, when Duan tried to force the National Assembly to enter World War I on the side of the Allies, he was dismissed by President Li Yuanhong. Immediately afterward, he suppressed an attempt to restore the emperor and resumed control of the government.

Duan declared war on Germany on Aug. 14, 1917, and received financial and military aid from the Japanese, who helped him and his warlord allies build a military establishment called the Anfu Clique. Japanese aid created popular anxiety that Duan was letting the country be dominated by imperialist powers, and these feelings were aggravated by Chinese complicity in the transfer of German rights in China to Japan after the war. On May 4, 1919, a wave of protests and demonstrations swept the country. As Duan’s popularity declined, other warlords formed a coalition against him; in July 1920 his troops were defeated, and he was forced to retire from politics. In the fall of 1924 two rival warlords, Zhang Zuolin and Feng Yuxiang, jointly occupied Beijing. They called Duan out of retirement to run the new government and mediate between them. In April 1926 Zhang defeated Feng, and Duan was no longer needed. He devoted the rest of his life to the study of Buddhism and to philanthropic works.