Zhang Zuolin, known as the Mukden Tiger, rose from an illiterate stable hand nicknamed Pimple to become the supreme dictator of China in 1927. During the chaotic warlord era, he turned a mounted bandit protection racket into a legitimate military and economic empire in Manchuria, walking a deadly tightrope between Japanese and Soviet interests.

Hiring brilliant financier Wang Yongjiang, Zhang stabilized the currency on a silver standard, ran a budget surplus, and engineered agricultural and industrial booms. But relentless militarism drained the economy through hyperinflation, and after capturing Beijing his overextended position collapsed, ending in his spectacular 1928 assassination by Japanese officers.

• He called his bandit years his higher education at the University of the Green Forest.
• He hedged his political bets,  ...