Sorry, but I have no clue to what you are talking about, except PRC, which is current politics rather than history. Never heard of this before, but I suppose that just proofs your point.
My knowledge of this period is limited so hopefully someone who knows more like MalayanGamer can correct me and fill in the gaps. But as far as I understand the long story short of it is:
At the end of the 19th century China was in a really bad place The largest and most populous nation on earth was repeatedly beaten, humiliated and generally ruined by an alliance of western powers to the point where the imperial government and indeed the very institution of empire lost all legitimacy. Part of that was not one but two wars lead for the explicit purpose of forcing China to import western drugs into the country. Predictably this lead to a period of revolutionary activity which, in 1911 finally managed to throw the empire out and replace it with a republic. Only things are newer that simple.
You see, the way the late empire worked, and the reason why the wars went so badly in the first place is because the emperors thought it would be a really good idea to not have a standing army and instead just have each regional governor raise his own armies in prime feudalism style. I am sure it was more complicated than that but that's basically how I understand it. Now that's great for stability because an insecure ruler who wants to can play these subject warlords off against one another. It's really bad for literally everything else. Like say fighting an alliance of western powers with superior weaponry. In fact, as far as I understand the reason why the revolution succeeded in the first place was basically because they managed to get a number of these guys on their side by promising them more power.
This included one guy that was in control of Beijing who demanded they make him the president before he would join them. They did, he did his thing for a couple years and than decided to declare him self Emperor which literally nobody, his men included supported so everyone just told him to sit down and shut up so he abdicated and kept on doing his thing as a rich guy with no power until he was old. I think he later went into politics or something later in the post exile ROC. Not sure. Anyway.
Predictably what followed was basically a period of "republic" where these warlords essentially ruled their own territories like despots only nominally paying homage to the central government. Except when they didn't because like all of North and East China was its own thing and the republic under that one guy I mentioned and Chang had to fight wars to subjugate those regions to get them to do even that. Oh, and the Japanese just walked in and took all of Manchuria almost without a fight some time during that period. Because sure, why not. Anyway it was basically a mess. And it was a mess that lasted up until the 1920's when they added a communist movement and an anti communist civil war to the mix because they saw the world was doing it and thought they had to keep up I guess.
And this sort of feudalistic warlord system pretty much continued up until the Japanese invasion in the 1930's when Chang finally managed to convince everyone to at least stand together against the Japanese. Only it didn't because obviously they were still shooting at each other (especially Chang vs Mao) but only like less and only when they weren't also shooting at the Japanese. So that's a bonus I guess. And it worked well enough that the Japanese were stopped dead and held there for almost a decade until the real world powers came along and told them to sit down and shut up.And than the war ended, the Soviets invaded Japanese held Manchuria and drove them off the continent. Than they wheeled around and gave all their equipment, training and friendship to Mao and told him "go get them tiger'. So he did. Chang fled to an island off the coast where he set up his little republic and spent the rest of his life balancing between trying to convince america to fund an invasion of China in his name and not being so pushy that they get annoyed and let the communists invade. And the rest is history.
