晚清國家財政、軍事和行政權力的下移和私人化趨勢,延續至民國初年,導致國內政治的嚴重分裂,并在1916年袁世凱去世后演化為各個軍閥派系的混戰。長期以來,海內外史家對北京政府時期軍閥現象的解讀,也因此多強調派系傾軋和戰事頻仍對中國近代政治和經濟發展的負面作用。從地緣政治和財政構造的角度分析各個軍閥派系的興衰過程,各派軍閥能否在競爭中取勝,端看其內部政權建設水平,尤其是動員和利用各項資源、打造其財政和軍事實力的能力。那些擁有固定地盤、地理位置優越,且通過集中化的行政體系和財政制度,有效抽取經濟資源,從而最具軍事實力的地方勢力,終將戰勝那些缺乏固定地盤和資源分散的對手。因此,現代中國的國家形成,是集中化的政權建設通過各自地方勢力之間的角逐,由區域走向全國的自下而上的過程。北京政府時期伴隨軍閥勢力消長的,除了政治紛爭和社會動蕩之外,還有國家建設在區域層面的突破,其軌跡與世界史上現代國家形成過程中的后起國相仿,即由強大的區域政權在建立統一、集中的全國政權的過程中起主導作用。

The trend of localization and privatization of the national financial,military and administrative power in late Qing last in the early Republican period and led to the serious split in domestic politics,which finally resulted in the battles among warlords after Yuan Shikai’s death in 1916.For a long time,historians have emphasized more on the negative political and economic consequences of this warlord period.However,by analyzing rise and fall of the various warlord regimes from the perspectives of their geo-politics and financial structures,we can see that whether or not a warlord regime could succeed depended on the quality of its internal governance,especially its ability to mobilize and utilize all kinds of resources and enhance its financial and military powers.The local powers that had stable territories in prime geographic locations and were capable of effectively exploiting economic resources by centralized administrative and financial institutions would eventually defeat their rivals that lacked stable territories and had only scattered resources.Therefore,the modern Chinese state building was a bottom-up process in which local regimes were centralized to compete with each other and the winners among them developed from regional states to the national state.The Beijing government period thus underwent the state building process at the local level despite the political conflicts and social unrests.The trajectory of the Chinese state building,namely the powerful regional regimes playing a leading role in the process of building a united and centralized national regime,is similar to the history of state building in other backward countries.