Most of Lin Hu's officers were former bandits and militia recruited earlier by Lin from the Zhuang areas of Guangdong.
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In 1921 Li Zongren accompanied Lin Hu and Lu Rongting in Lu's second invasion of Guangdong, attacking forces under the command of Chen Jiongming.
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Lu, the governor of Guangxi, was a former bandit who had ambitions to expand into neighboring provinces, especially Guangdong.
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Li was an admirer of the British historian Edward Gibbon (1737–94) and his monumental historical work, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
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When Wang Jingwei installed a left-leaning KMT faction in Wuhan, Borodin attempted to recruit Li to join the Communists, but Li was loyal to Chiang Kai-shek, and refused.
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When the Communists captured the Nationalist capital of Nanjing in April 1949, Li refused to accompany the central government as it fled to Guangdong, instead expressing his dissatisfaction with Chiang by retiring to Guangxi.