Chiang Kai-shek (1887 - 1975) was a Chinese military officer and politician who led the Kuomintang and the Republic of China for nearly half a century. [1] He unified much of China under a Nationalist government in 1928, commanded Chinese forces against Japan from 1937 to 1945, and after defeat in the civil war withdrew to Taiwan in 1949, where he ruled until his death. [2] His long tenure combined state building with sustained political repression.
Early life and rise
Chiang Kai-shek was born on 31 October 1887 at Xikou in Zhejiang province, into a family of salt merchants. [1] He trained at the Baoding Military Academy and then in Japan, where he served in the Imperial Japanese Army and joined Sun Yat-sen's Tongmenghui. He returned for the revolution of 1911 and spent the following decade in Sun's movement.
In 1923 Sun sent him to the Soviet Union to study military organisation, and on his return made him commandant of the Whampoa Military Academy, which trained the Nationalist officer corps and became his decisive power base. [3] After Sun's death in 1925 he emerged as the leading figure in the Kuomintang.
Unification and the Nanjing decade
From 1926 Chiang commanded the Northern Expedition against the regional warlords, and by 1928 a Nationalist government seated at Nanjing claimed authority over China. [1] In April 1927, midway through the campaign, he turned on his Communist allies in Shanghai, ordering a violent purge in which large numbers of Communists and labour organisers were killed. The break ended the First United Front and opened the Chinese Civil War.
The decade that followed brought currency reform, infrastructure building and a new legal code alongside authoritarian rule and repeated encirclement campaigns that drove the Red Army onto the Long March. [3] In December 1936 he was seized at Xi'an by his own commander Zhang Xueliang and released only after agreeing to a united front with the Communists against Japan.
The war against Japan
Full-scale war began in July 1937. Chiang directed the defence of Shanghai and Wuhan and moved the capital to Chongqing, sustaining resistance for eight years at enormous cost. In 1938 he ordered the Yellow River dikes at Huayuankou breached to slow the Japanese advance; the floods killed hundreds of thousands of Chinese civilians and displaced millions. [2] After Pearl Harbor China became a formal Allied power and Chiang met Roosevelt and Churchill at Cairo in 1943, but Nationalist administration in the interior was marked by inflation, conscription abuses and corruption.
Civil war and Taiwan
Fighting with the Communists resumed after the Japanese surrender, and despite advantages in numbers and equipment the Nationalists lost decisive campaigns in 1948 and 1949. Chiang withdrew to Taiwan with the remnants of his government, much of the gold reserve and the imperial art collections. [1]
There he retained the presidency of the Republic of China and the claim to be the legitimate authority for all China. Martial law, imposed in 1949, lasted for decades; the repression known as the White Terror, following the island-wide killings of February 1947, saw tens of thousands imprisoned and thousands executed. [2] The same period brought land reform, universal primary education and, with substantial American aid, the beginnings of Taiwan's industrial growth.
Death and assessment
Chiang died in Taipei on 5 April 1975, succeeded in effective power by his son Chiang Ching-kuo, under whom Taiwan later began to democratise. [3] Assessments remain sharply divided: he is credited with holding China together against Japan and with laying foundations for Taiwan's prosperity, and criticised for authoritarian rule, the scale of repression and the failures that lost the mainland. [1]
