Sichuan clique

The Sichuan clique was a military clique commanded by its military governor Liu Xiang in the Sichuan province. Its capital was the mountainous metropolis of Chongqing.

Great profit was reaped from the province's many trade routes in the early 1920s, but the extent of the territory also permitted the proliferation of many competing warlords without the ability to make a definitive coup.

Constant rivalries against Liu’s cousins and other minor warlords split Sichuan into hundreds of localized fiefdoms. Since Sichuan was valuable as the agricultural breadbasket of China, Sun appointed Liu to the Executive Committee for the sole purpose of bringing the unified province back into the Republic.