Exercise 2: Why Beijing-Based Recognition Worsened Warlord Fragmentation — Possible Solution ================================================================================================================== This exercise asks you to explain a causal mechanism - how foreign recognition practices actively made fragmentation worse, not just that they reflected an already-fragmented country. WHAT THE RECOGNITION RULE ACTUALLY REWARDED Foreign powers recognized whichever faction physically controlled Beijing as China's own legitimate government, regardless of how much of the country's actual territory or population that faction genuinely governed. This meant international legitimacy - and the real practical and financial benefits that came with it - could be won simply by seizing and holding one city, not by building genuine, broad-based national authority. WHY THIS CREATED A PERVERSE INCENTIVE If real national governance had been the actual prize on offer, rival factions would have had a genuine incentive to build lasting institutions, alliances, or popular support across the country. Instead, the recognition rule made capturing Beijing itself the real prize - directly incentivizing factions to spend their own resources and military strength fighting each other for control of one city, rather than on any broader project of national reconstruction. WHY THIS ACTIVELY WORSENED FRAGMENTATION RATHER THAN JUST REFLECTING IT Without this recognition structure, factions might still have fought over territory and resources, but there would have been no artificial extra prize specifically attached to Beijing itself. By making Beijing control the deciding factor for international legitimacy, foreign powers gave every ambitious clique a direct, concrete reason to keep contesting the capital by force rather than negotiating a genuine settlement - actively prolonging the very fragmentation their own recognition practice was supposedly just responding to. ANSWER: Basing recognition on physical control of Beijing turned the capital into an artificial, disproportionate prize disconnected from real national governance, giving rival cliques a direct incentive to keep fighting specifically over that one city rather than pursuing genuine national reconstruction - making the recognition practice an active cause of continued fragmentation, not merely a neutral response to a fragmentation that already existed. WHY THIS WORKS AS AN ANSWER ------------------------------ It identifies the specific incentive the recognition rule created, rather than treating foreign recognition as a passive bystander to Chinese fragmentation, and explains the causal direction the question actually asks for.