China's first ever elections were held in January 1913 and won by the Kuomintang led by the 30 year old Song Jiaoren. In March, Song was assassinated at a train station in Shanghai by a gunmen almost certainly hired by Provisional President Yuan Shikai who then used it as a pretext to create a dictatorship. When he died in 1916, China devolved into the "warlord period" until the nation was reunited by Chiang Kai Shek, but soon the country was embroiled in a civil war from the communists and then by invasion from Japan. So what if the shot missed? Does anything change or does China just start its warlord period 3 years early?