The Beiyang government or Peiyang Government(Chinese: 北洋政府; pinyin: běiyáng zhèngfǔ) or warlord government collectively refers to a series of military regimes that ruled from Beijing from 1912 to 1928 at Zhongnanhai. It was internationally recognized as the legitimate Government of the Republic of China. The name comes from the Beiyang Army which dominated its politics with the rise of Yuan Shikai who was a general of the Qing government. Though Yuan's death fractured the army into competing factions, the government was always under the control of Beiyang generals with a "constitutional" or civilian façade. Whichever faction that controlled Beijing had the aura of legitimacy, diplomatic recognition, access to the customs revenue, and easier application to foreign loans.
Domestically, its legitimacy was challenged by Sun Yat-sen's Guangzhou based Kuomintang (KMT) government in 1917. Sun's successor, Chiang Kai-shek, led the Northern Expedition in 1926-28, wiped out the Beiyang warlords in Beijing and other warlords in Southern and Northern China, after the unification, international recognition was given to the Nanjing based KMT regime.
Read more about Beiyang Government: Structure, Under Yuan, The Formation of Warlordism, Ascendancy of The Zhili Clique, Provisional Executive Government, Demise, Japanese Attempts At Revival
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“Democracy means government by the uneducated, while aristocracy means government by the badly educated.”
—Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936)