When Sun Yat-sen, leader of the Chinese Revolutionary Party, attempted to re-establish himself in Guangzhou in 1917, warlord Lu Rongting reluctantly supported him for a few years.

After Sun split from the Old Guangxi Clique over allocation of troops, he attempted to strip Cen Chunxuan (aka Tsen Chun-Hsuan or Sam Sun-Suen), one of Lu's most important allies in Guangdong, of some of his troops, in order to assign them to the more apparently loyal Chen Jiongming, a local Guangdong warlord who had sponsored Sun.

In 1921, Chen hoped to unite the region surrounding Guangdong behind Sun's regime at Guangzhou and pushed into Guangxi itself.

Lu sent two armies--one led by his wife's younger brother Tan Haoming, the other under Shen Hongying—against Chen's forces.

Armed bands of Guangxi loyalists continued to gather under local commanders, calling themselves the Self-Government Army.