Chiang Kai-shek

Generalissimo  Chiang Kai-shek 蔣中正 / 蔣介石
1st, 3rd Chairman of the Nationalist Government of China
Premier	Tan Yankai Soong Tse-ven
Preceded by	Gu Weijun (Acting)
Succeeded by	Lin Sen
Incumbent
Assumed office  August 1, 1943 – May 20, 1948 Acting until October 10, 1943
Premier	Soong Tse-ven
Preceded by	Lin Sen
Succeeded by	Himself (as President of the Republic of China)
1st-5th term President of the Republic of China
Incumbent
Assumed office  May 20, 1948 – April 5, 1975
Vice President	Li Zongren Chen Cheng Yen Chia-kan
Preceded by	Himself (as Chairman of the National Government of China)
Succeeded by	Yen Chia-kan
3rd, 7th, 9th, 11th Premier of the Republic of China
Incumbent
Assumed office  December 4, 1930 – December 15, 1931
Preceded by	Soong Tse-ven
Succeeded by	Chen Mingshu
Incumbent
Assumed office  December 7, 1935 – January 1, 1938
President	Lin Sen
Preceded by	Wang Jingwei
Succeeded by	Hsiang-hsi Kung
Incumbent
Assumed office  November 20, 1939 – May 31, 1945
President	Lin Sen
Preceded by	Hsiang-hsi Kung
Succeeded by	Soong Tse-ven
Incumbent
Assumed office  March 1, 1947 – April 18, 1947
Preceded by	Soong Tse-ven
Succeeded by	Chang Chun
1st, 3rd Director-General of the Kuomintang
Incumbent
Assumed office  March 29, 1938 – April 5, 1975
Preceded by	Hu Hanmin
Succeeded by	Chiang Ching-kuo (as Chairman of the Kuomintang)
Born	October 31, 1887(1887-10-31) Fenghua, Zhejiang, Qing Dynasty
Died	April 5, 1975 (aged 87) Taipei, Republic of China (Taiwan)
Nationality	Chinese
Political party	Kuomintang
Spouse(s)	Mao Fumei Yao Yecheng (concubine) Chen Jieru Soong May-ling
Children	Chiang Ching-kuo Chiang Wei-kuo (adopted)
Alma mater	Baoding Military Academy, Imperial Japanese Army Academy
Occupation	Soldier (General officer)
Religion	Methodist
Military service
Nickname(s)	"Red General", or "Generalissimo"
Allegiance	Republic of China
Rank	General Special Class
Battles/wars	Chinese Civil War

Chiang Kai-shek (31 October 1887 – 5 April 1975), also known as Jiang Zhongzheng and Jiang Jieshi, was a leader of the Kuomintang, head of the Kuomintang government in China from 1928 to 1949, and later head of the government in Taiwan. In 1937, Chiang Kai-Shek and his wife were named "Man of the Year" by Time magazine.

Life

He was an influential member of the Kuomintang (KMT) and Sun Yat-sen's close ally. He became the commandant of Kuomintang's Whampoa Military Academy and took Sun's place in the party when the latter died in 1925. In 1928, Chiang led the Northern Expedition (1926–1927) to unify the country, becoming China's overall leader. He served as chairman of the National Military Council of the Nationalist Government of the Republic of China (ROC) from 1928 to 1948. Chiang led China in the Second Sino-Japanese War, during which the Nationalist Government's power severely weakened, but his prominence grew.

Chiang's Nationalists engaged in a long standing civil war with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). After the Japanese surrender in 1945, he attempted to eradicate the CCP. Ultimately, bolstered by support from Soviet Russia, the CCP defeated Chiang, forcing the Nationalist government to retreat to Taiwan. Chiang ruled the island as the President of the Republic of China and Director-General of the Kuomintang until his death in 1975.

Chinese-German cooperation (1911–1941)

In 1927, as part of the Chinese-German cooperation (1911–1941), Chiang Kai-shek hired German military advisers, including general advisor Max Bauer and his deputy Hermann Kriebel. In 1928, he conquered Beijing and was elected President. After Colonel Bauer's sudden death on 6 May 1929, Kriebel became his successor as general advisor until 23 May 1930. After his arrival, Georg Wetzell took over this position, aided by Alfred Streccius. During Wetzell's roughly four-year term in office, the number of advisors reached its peak: 77 former German military officers worked in the restructuring of the Kuomintang armed forces or taught at military academies. Hans von Seeckt came to China in October 1933 and became, at the latest, chief adviser on Chinese overseas economics and military development in relation to Germany in Shanghai in May 1934. Among his young German officers was Klaus-Henning von Schmeling-Diringshofen. Von Seeckt's successor was Alexander von Falkenhausen.

Chiang Wei-Kuo

In March 1938, a Chinese officer of the Wehrmacht named Chiang Wei-Kuo participated in the annexation of Austria with Germany. Chiang Wei-Kuo was the son of China’s nationalist leader Chiang Kai Shek. He was group commandant Panzer leader and managed his Panzers to control the occupied population.

Encyclopedia Britannica

Chiang Kai-shek, Wade-Giles romanization Chiang Chieh-shih, official name Chiang Chung-cheng, (born October 31, 1887, Fenghua, Zhejiang province, China—died April 5, 1975, Taipei, Taiwan), soldier and statesman, head of the Nationalist government in China from 1928 to 1949 and subsequently head of the Chinese Nationalist government in exile on Taiwan. Chiang was born into a moderately prosperous merchant and farmer family in the coastal province of Zhejiang. He prepared for a military career first (1906) at the Baoding Military Academy in North China and subsequently (1907–11) in Japan. From 1909 to 1911 he served in the Japanese army, whose Spartan ideals he admired and adopted. More influential were the youthful compatriots he met in Tokyo; plotting to rid China of the Qing (Manchu) dynasty, they converted Chiang to republicanism and made him a revolutionary. In 1911, upon hearing of revolutionary outbreaks in China, Chiang returned home and helped in the sporadic fighting that led to the overthrow of the Manchus. He then participated in the struggles of China’s republican and other revolutionaries in 1913–16 against China’s new president and would-be emperor, Yuan Shikai. After these excursions into public life, Chiang lapsed into obscurity. For two years (1916–17) he lived in Shanghai, where he apparently belonged to the Green Gang (Qing Bang), a secret society involved in financial manipulations. In 1918 he reentered public life by joining Sun Yat-sen, the leader of the Nationalist Party, or Kuomintang.

Thus began the close association with Sun on which Chiang was to build his power. Sun’s chief concern was to reunify China, which the downfall of Yuan had left divided among warring military satraps. Having wrested power from the Qing, the revolutionists had lost it to indigenous warlords; unless they could defeat these warlords, they would have struggled for nothing. Shortly after Sun Yat-sen had begun to reorganize the Nationalist Party along Soviet lines, Chiang visited the Soviet Union in 1923 to study Soviet institutions, especially the Red Army. Back in China after four months, he became commandant of a military academy, established on the Soviet model, at Whampoa, near Guangzhou. Soviet advisers poured into Guangzhou, and at this time the Chinese communists were admitted into the Nationalist Party. The Chinese communists quickly gained strength, especially after Sun’s death in 1925, and tensions developed between them and the more conservative elements among the Nationalists. Chiang, who, with the Whampoa army behind him, was the strongest of Sun’s heirs, met this threat with consummate shrewdness. By alternate shows of force and of leniency, he attempted to stem the communists’ growing influence without losing Soviet support. Moscow supported him until 1927, when, in a bloody coup of his own, he finally broke with the communists, expelling them from the Nationalist Party and suppressing the labour unions they had organized.

Meanwhile, Chiang had gone far toward reunifying the country. Commander in chief of the revolutionary army since 1925, he had launched a massive Nationalist campaign against the northern warlords in the following year. This drive ended only in 1928, when his forces entered Beijing, the capital. A new central government under the Nationalists, with Chiang at its head, was then established at Nanjing, farther south. In October 1930 Chiang became Christian, apparently at the instance of the powerful Westernized Soong family, whose youngest daughter, Mei-ling, had become his second wife. As head of the new Nationalist government, Chiang stood committed to a program of social reform, but most of it remained on paper, partly because his control of the country remained precarious. In the first place, the provincial warlords, whom he had neutralized rather than crushed, still disputed his authority. The communists posed another threat, having withdrawn to rural strongholds and formed their own army and government. In addition, Chiang faced certain war with Japan, which, after seizing Manchuria (Northeast Provinces) in 1931, showed designs upon China proper. Chiang decided not to resist the coming Japanese invasion until after he had crushed the communists—a decision that aroused many protests, especially since a complete victory over the communists continued to elude him. To give the nation more moral cohesion, Chiang revived the state cult of Confucius and in 1934 launched a campaign, the so-called New Life Movement, to inculcate Confucian morals.

In December 1936 Chiang was seized by one of his generals who believed that Chinese forces should concentrate on fighting the Japanese instead of the communists. Chiang was held captive for some two weeks, and the Sian (Xian) Incident, as it became known, ended after he agreed to form an alliance with the communists against the Japanese invaders. In 1937 the mounting conflict between the two countries erupted into war (see Sino-Japanese War). For more than four years China fought alone until it was joined by the Allies, who with the exception of the Soviet Union declared war on Japan in 1941. China’s reward was an honoured place among the victors as one of the Big Four. But internally Chiang’s government showed signs of decay, which multiplied as it resumed the struggle against the communists after the Japanese surrendered to the United States in 1945. Civil war recommenced in 1946; by 1949 Chiang had lost continental China to the communists, and the People’s Republic of China was established.

Chiang moved to Taiwan with the remnants of his Nationalist forces, established a relatively benign dictatorship over the island with other Nationalist leaders, and attempted to harass the communists across the Formosa Strait. The chastened Chiang reformed the ranks of the once-corrupt Nationalist Party, and with the help of generous American aid he succeeded in the next two decades in setting Taiwan on the road to modern economic development. In 1955 the United States signed an agreement with Chiang’s Nationalist government on Taiwan guaranteeing its defense. Beginning in 1972, however, the value of this agreement and the future of Chiang’s government were seriously called in question by the growing rapprochement between the United States and the People’s Republic of China. Chiang did not live to see the United States finally break diplomatic relations with Taiwan in 1979 in order to establish full relations with the People’s Republic of China. After his death in 1975 he was succeeded temporarily by Yen Chia-kan (C.K. Yen), who was in 1978 replaced by Chiang’s son Chiang Ching-kuo.

Among the reasons for Chiang’s overthrow by the communists, one frequently cited is the corruption that he countenanced in his government; another was his loss of flexibility in dealing with changing conditions. Growing more rigid in his leadership over the years, he became less responsive to popular sentiment and to new ideas. He came to prize loyalty more than competence and to rely more on personal ties than on ties of organization. His dependence on a trusted clique also showed in his army, in which he favoured narrow traditionalists over many abler officers. Chiang initially maintained his position as republican China’s paramount leader by shrewdly playing off provincial warlords and possible Nationalist rivals against each other and later by his adroit cultivation of American military, diplomatic, and financial support for his regime. His overthrow by the communists can perhaps be traced to his strategy during World War II; he generally refused to use his U.S.-equipped armies to actively resist China’s Japanese occupiers and counted instead on the United States to eventually defeat Japan on its own. He chose rather to preserve his military machine until the time came to unleash it on the communists at the war’s end and then crush them once and for all. But by that point Chiang’s strategy had backfired; his passive stance against the Japanese had lost him the prestige and support among the Chinese populace that the communists ultimately gained by their fierce anti-Japanese resistance.

The morale and effectiveness of his armies had decayed during their enforced passivity in southwestern China, while the communists had built up large, battle-hardened armies on the strength of their appeal to Chinese nationalist sentiment. Finally, it can be said that Chiang “lost China” because he had no higher vision or coherent plan for making the deep social and economic changes needed to bring Chinese society into the 20th century. From his purge of the Nationalists’ communist partners in 1927 and his subsequent alliance with the landowning and mercantile classes, Chiang inexorably followed an increasingly conservative path that virtually ignored the plight of China’s oppressed and impoverished peasantry. The peasants formed almost 90 percent of China’s population, though, and it was their support, as demonstrated by the communist victory, which proved crucial in once more establishing a strong central government that could achieve the modern unification of China.

Awards and decorations (excerpt)

Republic of China national honours

• Order of National Glory
• Order of Blue Sky and White Sun
• Order of the Sacred Tripod
• Order of Brilliant Jade
• Order of Propitious Clouds
• Order of the Cloud and Banner
• Order of Brilliant Star
• Honour Sabre of the Awakened Lion

Works

• Works at Internet Archive HERE

External links

Encyclopedias

• Encyclopedia Britannica: Chiang Kai-shek
• Encyclopedia.com: Chiang Kai-shek