Feng Kuo-chang (7 January 1859-28 December 1919), one of the most powerful officers of Yuan Shih-k'ai's Feiyang military clique, was military governor of Chihh (1912-13) and Kiangsu (1913-17). After Yuan died, he became vice president (1916-17) and acting president (191718) of the Peking government. He was the leader of the Chihli clique, which opposed the Anhwei faction of Tuan Ch'i-jui.

A native of Chihli (Hopei), Feng Kuo-chang was the youngest of four sons in a family of farmers in Hochien. Feng and his brothers received training in the Chinese classics, and, in their spare time, they fenced and rode. However, the family fell on hard times, and by the time Feng was ready to attend school all of the family property had been sold to provide his elder brothers with an education. Feng was obliged to earn his own living; reportedly, at one time he played an erh-hu in a local theater to earn money. Feng went with an elder brother to Paoting and enrolled in the Liench'ih Academy, but he was obliged to leave the school soon afterward because he lacked funds.

At the age of 27, Feng went to Taku, where one of his great-uncles was working in the office of a battalion of the Anhwei army. Feng obtained a position as an orderly to the battalion commander. When Li Hung-chang (ECCP, I, 464-71) established the Peiyang Military Academy at Tientsin in 1885, Feng's battalion commander recommended him to Li as a promising student. At the academy, Feng did well in his courses. In 1888 he took a leave of absence from the academy and passed the examinations for the sheng-yuan degree. After failing the chü-jen examinations later that year, he returned to the Peiyang Military Academy, from which he graduated in 1890. He remained at the academy as an instructor until 1891, when he was assigned to serve under Nieh Shih-ch'eng (d. 1900; T. Kung-t'ing) at Port Arthur. As part of his duties, Feng made extensive journeys into Manchuria, and his familiarity with that area was very useful to Nieh and his army during the Sino-Japanese war of 1894-95.

In 1895 Feng Kuo-chang was recommended by Nieh Shih-ch'eng to serve as military attache to Yü-keng (d. 1905; T. Lang-hsi), the newly appointed Chinese minister to Japan. Feng became acquainted with several Japanese army officers including Fukushima Yasumasa, who later headed the Shikan Gakko [military academy], and Aoki Nobuzumi, who became a military adviser to Yuan Shih-k'ai during Yuan's presidency. For several months, Feng studied various aspects of Japan's military modernization and recorded his observations in a number of notebooks which he presented to Nieh Shih-ch'eng on his return to China. Nieh forwarded them to Yuan Shih-k'ai, who at that time was building up the Hsin-chien lu-chün [newly created army] at Hsiaochan. Feng's observations on Japanese training methods impressed Yuan, and he made Feng head of the training section of his newly organized staff office.

When Yuan Shih-k'ai was appointed governor of Shantung late in 1899, Feng accompanied him and took part in military operations against the Boxers in that province. At the height of the Boxer Uprising, Feng was stationed at Techou, close to the border of Chihli province, with orders to seal off the area from Boxer incursions. After the suppression of the Boxers by the Eight-Power Allied Army, Yuan became governor-general of Chihli province in 1901 and began to organize a new military training center at Paoting. He established a new staff office, the provincial department of military administration. Feng Kuo-chang, by then one of Yuan's chief military assistants, became head of the department's instruction and training section. Feng was in charge of implementing Yuan's military training program, and in the next two years, he established a number of military schools at Paoting and founded military primary schools in Chihli. During the last decade of the Ch'ing dynasty, Feng played a prominent role in the efforts of the central government to reform and reorganize China's military establishment. In December 1903 the Manchu government established a commission for army reorganization, and Feng became head of its military education department. He was responsible for centralizing the administration of military establishments throughout China, standardizing the military training programs in the provinces, and organizing training programs in provinces that did not have them. In the autumn of 1905, he made a brief trip to Japan to observe units of the Japanese Army practice large-scale maneuvers for the first time since the Russo-Japanese war. After his return to China, he reportedly assisted in planning the Peiyang Army maneuvers held in north China in the following years. After the establishment in 1906 of the lu-chün kuei-chou hsueh-t'ang [military school for princes and nobles] to train the sons of Manchu princes and clansmen, Feng was named director of the school (under a Manchu supervisor) with the rank of deputy lieutenant general. In 1907 he also was assigned to the newly created ministry of war as chief of the chancery of the general staff" council, a position he retained when the council was reorganized in 1909 as the general staff office.

Little is known of Feng's political attitudes in the years previous to the 1911 revolution. Beginning about 1906, and especially after 1908, the Ch'ing government sought to centralize control of the military forces by adopting a policy of placing Manchus, rather than Chinese, in the top military posts. Yuan Shih-k'ai, Feng's patron and superior officer, was stripped of his command of the Peiyang Army and dismissed in 1909. Feng was said to be unhappy about the way his Manchu superiors in the ministry of war treated him, and he still looked to Yuan Shih-k'ai for leadership. Thus, even before the revolution of 1911, Feng reportedly was ready to follow the orders of his former chief. After the outbreak of the revolt at Wuchang in October 1911, the Manchu government dispatched two imperial armies to suppress the revolutionists in the Wuhan cities. Yin-ch'ang, the minster of war, was commander in chief and head of the First Army, and Feng Kuochang was commander of the Second Army. As his troops were moving southward along the Peking-Hankow railway, Feng stopped to consult Yuan Shih-k'ai at Changte (Anyang) in northern Honan. At Yuan's suggestion, Feng delayed the advance of his troops for several days, allowing the revolutionary movement to spread and thereby increasing the pressure on the desperate Manchu regime to come to terms with Yuan. On 27 October 1911 Yuan took command of Yin-ch'ang's forces as commander in chief of the imperial armies in Hupeh, and Feng became commander of the First Army. The same day. Yuan sent secret orders for an assault on Hankow, which was retaken by imperial forces a few days later. After about two weeks of negotiation between the revolutionary and imperial forces at Wuhan, fighting again broke out. Yuan Shih-k'ai, who was then in Peking, ordered Feng to attack Hanyang. After a week of heavy fighting, the imperial forces under Feng's command retook the city on 27 November. The following day, as a reward for his victory, the Manchu court made Feng a baron of the second class. Yuan, who believed that he was in a good position to bargain with the revolutionaries, ordered Feng not to attack Wuchang and to commence negotiations with Li Yuan-hung (q.v.), the leader of the revolutionary forces. At the end of 1911, after a temporary truce had been negotiated in Wuhan, Feng was ordered to turn over his command to Tuan Ch'i-jui (q.v.) and return to Peking.

Yuan Shih-k'ai moved rapidly to oust the Manchus from important positions in the administration and the army. He forced the Manchu prince Tsai-t'ao to resign as commandant of the chin-wei-chün [guards army], the last remaining stronghold of Manchu military power. Because Feng Kuo-chang, as the former director of the lu-chün kuei-chou hsueht'ang, was on good terms with many of the Manchu military officers, he was made the new commandant of the chin-wei-chün. He was instrumental in persuading the younger Manchu officers to accept the terms of the Manchu emperor's abdication. At the same time, Feng appears to have won the goodwill of his officers by expressing personal regret at the emperor's abdication and by supporting his officers' demands that assurances of good treatment for the imperial house be included in the terms of abdication. For several years thereafter, Feng retained command of the chin-wei-chün, which was to constitute the nucleus of his personal military power.

Feng also was made military lieutenant governor of Chahar in December 1911. After Yuan Shih-k'ai became provisional president, Feng was appointed chief of the military council in the presidential office. In September 1913 he was promoted to the rank of full general and was appointed tutuh [military governor] of Chihli (Hopei) province, acting concurrently as civil governor. Several months later, during the so-called second revolution of 1913, Feng headed one of the two Peiyang armies that Yuan Shih-k'ai had mobilized to crush Kuomintang resistance in the provinces of the lower Yangtze. As pacification commissioner of Kiang-Hwai, in overall command of the Second Peiyang Army, Feng moved down along the Tientsin-Pukow railway to attack the Kuomintang stronghold at Nanking. After a 50-day siege, the city was taken on 1 September 1913 by the troops of Feng's nominal subordinate Chang Hsün (q.v.), and Chang was made military governor of Kiangsu province. Three months later, in December 1913, Feng was appointed to succeed Chang Hsün.

By the end of 1913, Feng Kuo-chang had become one of the most powerful of Yuan Shih-k'ai's subordinates. Feng's rise to prominence had depended upon Yuan's patronage, and, in turn, the assurance of Feng's military backing had been an important factor in Yuan's successful political maneuvering against the Manchu dynasty in 1911-12 and against the National Assembly in Peking during 1913. However, Feng's appointment as military governor of Kiangsu, with military control over a large and wealthy region out of the immediate reach of Yuan's authority, permitted him a certain degree of independence. After 1913, as Yuan sought to tighten his personal control over the provinces, Feng and other Peiyang military governors, while professing their continued loyalty to Yuan, covertly resisted all his attempts to curtail their powers. This opposition of interests became a source of hidden but persistent friction.

Relations between Feng Kuo-chang and Yuan Shih-k'ai were strained further during the summer of 1915 because of the monarchical movement. Earlier in the year, Feng had become acquainted with Liang Ch'i-ch'ao (q.v.). After hearing from Liang of a scheme to make Yuan monarch, he hurriedly left Nanking for Peking at the end of June to see if such a plan existed. Yuan assured Feng that rumors of his imperial ambitions were groundless. However, soon after Feng returned to Nanking, the monarchist Ch'ou-an-hui [society for national security] was formally established. Because he believed that Yuan had deceived him and that his own future would be seriously jeopardized if Yuan became monarch, Feng refused to take part in the monarchical movement. Yuan sought to win him over to the cause of monarchy by making him a duke in the new order of nobility; he also tried to remove Feng from his base of power in Nanking by ordering him to Peking to be chief of general staff (18 December 1915). Feng countered by indicating that he would assume the new appointment only if he were permitted to remain at Nanking. To support Feng's stand, the military governors of Kiangsi and Hupeh and several prominent citizens of Kiangsu province petitioned Yuan to retain Feng as governor in Nanking. Yuan, for the time being, was obliged to yield.

Late in December 1915 Ts'ai O (q.v.) and other military leaders in Yunnan revolted against Yuan. During the ensuing conflict between Yuan Shih-k'ai and the southern military leaders, Feng withheld his support from Yuan. Early in 1916, when Yuan ordered |i him to Peking to serve as his chief of general staff and as commander in chief of the anti-Yunnan forces, Feng demurred on the pretext of illness. Moreover, in March, Feng tried to unite the other Peiyang military leaders in opposition to the monarchy and to Yuan himself. Before Feng's activities came to Yuan's attention, he had succeeded in obtaining considerable support from the governors of the Yangtze provinces. In the meantime, Feng also had established contact with the southern military leaders, including Lu Jung-t'ing (q.v.), the military governor of Kwangsi, who on 15 March 1916 joined the revolt against Yuan by declaring his province independent of the central government. Thereafter, as other provinces broke away, Feng became more open in his opposition. On 16 April, he sent Yuan a telegram urging that he bring the war with the south to an end and suggesting that he retire from the presidency. To keep his position ambiguous, he issued a telegram the next day stating that Yuan should be allowed to complete his four-year term as president. In the spring of 1916, Feng began a series of political maneuvers designed to secure his own succession to Yuan's position of power as president of the republic and leader of the Peiyang clique. Feng attempted to play the southern military leaders against Yuan's subordinates and, at the same time, to create a new center of political and military influence to support his future candidacy. Early in IVlay, Feng called for a conference of provincial representatives to be held at Nanking to discuss Yuan's resignation and the formation of a new National Assembly. On 18 May, the conference was opened, with Feng as chairman. In spite of strong opposition from Ni Ssu-ch'ung and Chang Hsün, both of whom supported Yuan, Feng secured a recommendation from the conference that Yuan relinquish the presidency. But Feng's proposals for selecting a new president betrayed his ambition to replace Yuan and aroused antagonism among his Peiyang colleagues and the southern military leaders. Feng's hopes were dashed when, after Yuan's death in June, Tuan Ch'i-jui established himself as the de facto head of the central government and installed the vice president, Li Yuan-hung, in Yuan's place as president. Although thwarted in his political ambitions, Feng Kuo-chang wielded considerable power as military governor at Nanking and as one of the most influential leaders of the Peiyang military clique. In seeking to exploit this position, Feng continued to play one political group against another without committing himself. Utilizing Feng's own strategy, certain members of the National Assembly in Peking, hoping to use Feng as a check on Tuan Ch'ijui's power, nominated him to succeed Li Yuan-hung as vice president. On 30 October 1916, at a joint session of the National Assembly, Feng was elected vice president. Because this position involved little more than prestige, Feng retained his post as military governor of Kiangsu and remained at his headquarters in Nanking. Feng was invited to Peking by Tuan Ch'i-jui in February 1917 to discuss Tuan's proposal that China severs diplomatic relations with Germany. On the German question, as on many others, Tuan was at odds with Li Yuan-hung. By early March, relations between them had become so strained that Tuan threatened to resign and left for Tientsin. Feng assumed the role of mediator between Tuan Ch'i-jui and Li Yuan-hung, and he succeeded in bringing about a truce between the premier and the president. With regard to the German question, Feng remained characteristically noncommittal: though personally opposed to a break with Germany, he gave Tuan the impression that he approved of the latter's policy of breaking with Germany and entering the war on the side of the Allies; but after his return to Nanking (11 March), Feng notified the Peking government of his opposition to China's participation in the war as an enemy of Germany.

In the spring of 1917, the political disagreement between Tuan Ch'i-jui and Li Yuan-hung culminated in a situation from which Feng Kuo-chang emerged as acting president of the republic. After the dismissal of Tuan as premier in May and the dissolution of the National Assembly in June, Chang Hsün attempted to restore the Manchu monarchy. Chang's efforts to involve Feng in this venture were immediately rebuffed by Feng himself; on 2 July, Feng issued a telegram from Nanking denouncing Chang Hsün and denying any connection with Chang's restoration attempt. Shortly afterward, under pressure from the military, Li Yuan-hung announced his intention to retire from the presidency. A telegram, purportedly from Li, requested Feng Kuo-chang, as vice president, to assume the duties of president. On 7 July, when Peking was still in the hands of the monarchists, Feng announced that he would comply with Li's request and called for the organization of a government in Nanking. However, after Tuan Ch'i-jui and his supporters defeated Chang Hsün and regained control of Peking in mid-July, Feng agreed to assume office in the national capital.

Feng Kuo-chang and Tuan Ch'i-jui, as the senior members of the military organization founded by Yuan Shih-k'ai, had vied with one another for leadership of the Peiyang military faction after Yuan's death. Partly as a result of this rivalry, the Peiyang faction itself tended to separate into two major groups, which were subsequently referred to as the Chihli clique (Feng was a native of Chihli province) and the Anhwei clique (Tuan was a native of Anhwei).

In 1917 Feng's political and military power was centered in the Yangtze provinces of Kiangsu, Kiangsi, and Hupeh. Before leaving Nanking to assume the presidency, Feng had secured his position there by arranging to have one of his supporters succeed him as military governor of Kiangsu. Feng's chief supporters were officers who had been under his command in the First Army late in 1911 at Hanyang: Li Ch'un, the governor of Kiangsi, who was Feng's choice to succeed him in Nanking; Ch'en Kuang-yuan, who succeeded Li Ch'un as governor in Kiangsi; and Wang Chan-yuan, the governor of Hupeh. Feng retained command of his personal military force, including the former chin-Wei-chun, which he had expanded into two divisions. The 16th Division remained at Nanking, and the 15th Division accompanied him to Peking as the presidential guards.

Feng went to Peking on 1 August 1917 to take up his duties as acting president. Almost immediately after assuming office, he came into conflict with Tuan Ch'i-jui, who again was serving as premier. The most important point of disagreement between them was the central government's policy toward the southern military government at Canton. Tuan wanted to suppress this government and subjugate the southern provinces by military force; Feng urged a conciliatory policy toward the southern leaders. After the Peiyang military failures in Hunan and Szechwan in October and November 1917, Tuan resigned as premier, and Feng was able to enforce his policy of peaceful unification for a brief period. However, Tuan soon rallied his supporters behind him; by early February 1918, he was able to exert sufficient pressure on Feng to cause him to abandon his policy of conciliation toward the south. In March, strengthened by the military support of Chang Tso-lin (q.v.), Tuan was in a position to insist that he" immediately be reappointed premier. Because of the superior strength of the Tuan faction, Feng agreed to an arrangement by which he would step aside for a new president when his term of office ended in October 1918. As a face-saving concession, Tuan agreed to resign as premier at the same time. However, although Feng's retirement involved a complete abdication from power, Tuan's resignation in no way impaired his control of the central government. Feng still had sufficient prestige and military support to ensure his freedom from harassment by political enemies in Peking. On 10 October 1918, at the first ceremony of its kind in the history of the young republic, Feng Kuo-chang turned over the office of president to his elected successor, Hsü Shih-ch'ang (q.v.). After his retirement from political life, Feng lived quietly in Peking. On 28 December 1919, he died of pneumonia.

Feng married twice. Nothing is known of his first wife. His second wife, Chou Chih (T. Tao-ju), was a native of Ihsing, Kiangsu. For several years before her marriage to Feng in 1914, she had been the governess of Yuan Shih-k'ai's daughters. Feng was the father of five sons and four daughters. The eldest daughter married Ch'en Chih-chi (T. Shuliang), a native of Fengjun, Chihli and a member of the T'ung-meng-hui. During the so-called second revolution of 1913, Ch'en, as commander of the 8th Division, was the ranking officer at Nanking for a short time. Feng's eldest son, Chia-sui, served as a member of the National Assembly from Chihli province.