The Huanggutun incident (Chinese: 皇姑屯事件; pinyin: Huánggū Tún Shìjiàn), also known as the Zhang Zuolin Explosion Death Incident (Japanese: 張作霖爆殺事件, Hepburn: Chōsakurin bakusatsu jiken), was the assassination of the Fengtian warlord and Generalissimo of the Military Government of China Zhang Zuolin near Shenyang on 4 June 1928.

Following the Xinhai Revolution of 1911, China dissolved in spontaneous devolution, with local officials and military leaders assuming power independent of control by the weak central government.

Zhang Zuolin, the leader of the Fengtian clique, was one of the most powerful warlords and managed to seize control of Manchuria, then consisting of nine provinces.

The Imperial Japanese Army assisted Zhang in the First and Second Zhili-Fengtian Wars, including the suppression of the anti-Fengtian uprising by General Guo Songling, a senior Fengtian clique leader.

The Nationalists, the Communists and other elements in the Northern Expedition were then supported by the Soviet Union, which had already installed puppet governments in nearby Mongolia and Tannu Tuva.

Japan needed a context to establish its effective control over Manchuria without combat or foreign intervention, and it believed splitting up the Fengtian clique by the replacement of Zhang with a more co-operative leader would do so.

Colonel Daisaku Kōmoto, a junior officer in the Kwantung Army, believed that the assassination of Zhang would be the most expeditious way of installing a new leader more amenable to Japanese demands and planned an operation without direct orders from Tokyo.

At the time of the assassination, the Kwantung Army was already in the process of grooming Yang Yuting, a senior general in the Fengtian clique, to be Zhang's successor.