Central Plains War

Belligerents

National Government of the Republic of China
Material support:

Japan Warlord coalitions of Yan Xishan, Feng Yuxiang and Li Zongren
Minor factions:
Zhang Fakui's army
Tang Shengzhi's armyCommanders and leadersChiang Kai-shek
Han Fuju
Liu Zhi
Hu Zongnan
Chen Cheng
Tang Enbo
Ma Hongkui
Ma Bufang
Max Bauer
Zhang Xueliang (from September 1930)Yan Xishan
Feng Yuxiang
Li Zongren
Bai Chongxi
Fu Zuoyi
Zhang Fakui
Tang Shengzhi
Wang JingweiUnits involved

National Revolutionary Army

Chiang loyalist armies
- "Basic Army"
Allied warlord armies
- Yunnan armies
- Guangdong armies
- Guizhou armies
- Northeastern Army (from 1930)

Warlord coalitions

Guominjun
New Guangxi clique
- "Protect the Party, Save the Country Army"
Shanxi Army
"Ironsides"

StrengthChiang:
240,000+ (1929)
295,000 (1930)
Allied warlords:
Hundreds of thousands
Northeastern Army:
409,000 (1930)c. 650,000 (1929)
c. 700,000 (1930)Casualties and losses 30,000 killed, 60,000 wounded (Nationalist gov. claim)
150,000 (modern estimate) 150,000 (Nationalist claim) High civilian casualties

The Central Plains War (traditional Chinese: 中原大戰; simplified Chinese: 中原大战; pinyin: Zhōngyúan Dàzhàn) was a series of military campaigns in 1929 and 1930 that constituted a Chinese civil war between the Nationalist Kuomintang government in Nanjing led by Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek and several regional military commanders and warlords who were former allies of Chiang.

After the ended in 1928, Yan Xishan, Feng Yuxiang, Li Zongren and Zhang Fakui broke off relations with Chiang shortly after a demilitarization conference in 1929, and together they formed an anti-Chiang coalition to openly challenge the legitimacy of the Nanjing government. The war was the largest conflict in the Warlord Era, fought across Henan, Shandong, Anhui and other areas of the Central Plains in China, involving 300,000 soldiers from Nanjing and 700,000 soldiers from the coalition.