During the Nanjing decade of the Republic of China, Han Fuju, a military commander from the warlord era who had aligned himself with the Kuomintang, was rewarded with the military governorship of Shandong, after fighting against the rebel troops of Yen Hsi-shan and his former commander Feng Yu-hsiang in the Central Plains War in 1930.Frank Dorn, The Sino-Japanese War, 1937–41: From Marco Polo Bridge to Pearl Harbor (New York: Macmillan, 1974), pg. 81–82 He established his base in Jinan and is credited with curtailing banditry and drug trading, thereby bringing a measure of peace and prosperity to the city.Dorn, pg. 81–82 However, from 1935 onwards Han was under heavy pressure from the Japanese consul in Jinan to declare Shandong an "independent state" allied with Japan.
