Jiang Jieshi
From Conservapedia
Jiang Jieshi or Chiang Kai-shek (Traditional Chinese: 蔣介石; Simplified Chinese: 蒋介石; Hanyu Pinyin: Jiǎng Jièshí; Jyutping: Zoeng2 Gaai3 Sek6) was the leader of the Guomindang from 1925 following the death of Sun Yixian (Sun Yat-sen), and from 1928 until his death in 1975 was the paramount leader and (with brief interruptions) President of the Republic of China. Jiang ostensibly converted to Christianity (specifically, to Methodism) on his marriage to Song Meiling and was an ardent opponent of Communism.
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Early life
Jiang was born in the port city of Ningbo (Wade-Giles: Ningpo) in Zhejiang province in 1887, and like many educated and patriotically-minded youths in the dying days of the Qing dynasty chose to follow a military career. He studied at a military academy in Japan between 1908 and 1910, where Jiang joined the Tongmenghui (United League) - which was shortly to merge with other revolutionary groups to become the Guomindang or Nationalist Party. At the time of the 1911 revolution Jiang was based in Shanghai and at that time became involved with the local secret societies and gangs who were to aid him later in his career. During the 'Second Revolution' of 1913 (against the reactionary rule of Yuan Shikai) Jiang led an attack on the Jiangnan Arsenal in Shanghai but the bungled operation was a disastrous failure and Jiang was forced to flee. He attached himself to the entourage of the Guomindang leader Sun Yat-sen and to the ramshackle Guomindang government which Sun set up in the southern metropolis of Guangzhou (Canton). When Sun concluded an alliance with the Comintern in 1923, brokered by the Soviet agent Adolph Joffe (the 'Sun-Joffe Agreement'), Jiang Jieshi was appointed commandant of the Whampoa Military Academy at Guangzhou, established with Soviet aid and with Soviet and other foreign communist advisers. The purpose of the Academy was to train a Nationalist army capable of uniting China under Guomindang rule.
Northern Expedition
As commandant of the Whampoa Military Academy, Jiang had to work closely with Soviet advisors and Chinese Communist Party officials (the Guomindang and the CCP had formed a 'united front' as a result of the Sun-Joffe Agreement, the CCP existing as 'bloc within' the Guomindang). Zhou Enlai (Wade-Giles: Chou En-lai) was a senior political commissar at the academy. However, Jiang was very suspicious of his Communist allies. Following the death of Sun Yat-sen in 1925, Jiang became the most powerful individual Guomindang leader, and on March 11 1926 launched a limited purge of communists in Guangzhou (the so-called 'Canton Coup'), as a result of which all his Soviet advisors were expelled. However, he did not dissolve the united front, and the CCP, under orders from Moscow, also continued to maintain the status quo.
On July 1, 1926, Jiang launched the Northern Expedition. Guomindang armies marched north from Guangzhou in a bid to free China from the warring warlord factions which had been the sole fluctuating authority in the country since the death of Yuan Shikai in 1916, and to unify the country under Guomindang rule. However, Jiang was aided by the 'Guangxi Clique' of nationally-minded warlords; and the northern progress of the expedition was aided by carefully-timed popular uprisings planned by the CCP against local warlords. By September 1926 the Guomindang had captured Wuhan on the middle Yangtse, and a Guomindang government was established there. Instead of continuing to press north, Jiang turned east and in March 1927 occupied Nanjing, which was to become the Nationalist's capital city, and Shanghai.
On April 12, 1927 Jiang again turned on the communists in the 'Shanghai Coup'. Aided by the police of the International Settlement and the French Concession in the city, and by gunmen of the influential 'Green Gang' criminal network, Jiang's troops and police rounded up and executed hundred of communists and trade unionists; in the weeks to come thousands more communists and other left-wingers were killed. The Guomindang government at Wuhan, led by Sun Yat-sen's widow Song Qingling and by Wang Jingwei initially protested at Jiang's actions but by the autumn of 1927 they, too, dissolved the united front. Jiang was now the undisputed leader of the Guomindang and the most powerful man in China. In 1928 two northern warlords, Yan Xishan and Feng Yuxiang, pledged their loyalty to him, and Yan's troops drove the last major warlord opponent, Zhang Zuolin, out of Beijing. The Northern Expedition was over, and Jiang was master of China.
President of the Republic of China
The period of the 'Nanjing Republic' (1928-37) was too short and too troubled to enable a full assessment of what established Guomindang rule might have brought China. Jiang was faced by a series of serious internal and external problems:
- Although President of China, his direct rule only extended to the lower Yangtse provinces; the rest of China continued to be ruled by warlords expressing greater or lesser degrees of loyalty to Jiang. In 1929-30 his erstwhile allies Feng Yuxiang and Yan Xishan rebelled against him and his rule was saved by the intervention of Zhang Xueliang.
- The communists, defeated in April 1927 and in a number of ill-planned urban uprisings later that year, had regrouped in the countryside and established a number of 'base areas' (most notably that of Mao Zedong in southern Jiangxi province). These bases were expanding, and efforts to eliminate the Jiangxi Soviet in a series of 'encirclement campaigns' in the early 1930s had failed. The fifth encirclement campaign of 1933-34 succeeded in destroying the Jiangxi base, and the communist Red Army went into retreat on the Long March.
- When the Japanese invaded Manchuria in 1931, Jiang gave precedence to defeating the internal threat posed by the Chinese communists over resisting the Japanese invasion. Jiang expressed the view that 'communism was a disease of the internal organs, the Japanese a disease of the skin', and that to build a strong China it was necessary to defeat communism first, to an increasing number of Chinese his attitude appeared capitulationist and unpatriotic.
- Jiang married into the wealthy Song (Soong) family, his wife, Song Meiling (1897-2003), was the sister of Sun Yat-sen's leftist widow, Song Qingling (1892-1981)). One brother in law, T.V. Soong, was his Finance Minister.
The Xi'an Incident and the Second United Front
In December 1936, Zhang Xueliang and Yang Hucheng, two KMT generals, kidnapped Chiang Kai-shek in Xi’an. This has since been referred to as the Xi’an Incident.
At the beginning of the incident, the leaders of the CCP wanted to kill Chiang Kai-shek, At that time, the CCP had a very weak base in northern Shaanxi province, and had been in danger of being completely eliminated in a single battle. The CCP instigated Zhang and Yang to revolt.
In order to pin down the Japanese and prevent them from attacking the Soviet Union, [1] Stalin personally wrote to the Central Committee of the CCP, asking them not to kill Chiang Kai-shek, but to cooperate with him for a second time. Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai realized that they could not destroy the KMT with the limited strength of the CCP; if they killed Chiang Kai-shek, they would be defeated and even eliminated by the avenging KMT army. The CCP changed its tone. The CCP forced Chiang Kai-shek to accept cooperation a second time in the name of joint resistance against the Japanese.
The CCP used the opportunity to latch onto the KMT government for the second time. The Red Army was soon turned into the Eighth Route Army and grew bigger and more powerful than before.
More and more documents have revealed that many CCP spies had already gathered around Yang Hucheng and Zhang Xueliang before the Xi’an Incident. Liu Ding, an underground CCP member was introduced to Zhang Xueliang by Song Qingling, wife of Sun Yat-sen, a sister of Madame Chiang and a CCP member. After the Xi’an Incident, Mao Zedong praised that, “Liu Ding performed meritorious service in Xi’an Incident.” Among those working at Yang Hucheng’s side, his own wife Xie Baozhen was a CCP member and worked in Yang’s Political Department of the Army. Xie married Yang Hucheng in January of 1928 with the approval of the CCP. In addition, CCP member Wang Bingnan was an honored guest in Yang’s home at the time. Wang later became a vice minister for the CCP Ministry of Foreign Affairs. It was these CCP members around Yang and Zhang who directly instigated the coup.
The Sino-Japanese War
Conclusion of the Chineses Civil War
When the Japanese surrendered, the Chinese Nationalist army far outnumbered the Red revolutionary army. Then appeared Stalin's army of 1,250,000 men armed with American guns, planes, tanks and munitions and other supplies and the balance began to alter. And the Maoists had immense quantities of munitions laid down by the Japanese in the Manchuria.
General George C. Marshall was sent by President Truman as his personal representative to China, arriving on December 20, 1945. His specific instructions from Secretary of State James Byrnes were to insist on a coalition government as a condition for continued aid to the Nationalists. [2] CCP leader Mao Zedong had already said publicly in April 1945 that a coalition government with the Chinese Nationalists would result in the defeat of "reactionary American imperialism." [3] In the summer of 1946, Truman told Chiang to be more willing to compromise. Chiang replied that first the Communists must abandon "their policy to seize political power through the use of armed force, to overthrow the government and to install a totalitarian regime such as those with which Eastern Europe is now being engulfed." [4]
American policy in China was largely being shaped by the so-called "China Hands" in the U.S. State Department: John Stewart Service, John Paton Davies, John Carter Vincent, and others. Because they knew the Chinese language and had been in China for years, their recommendations carried much weight, and they played a major part in the fall of China.
The U.S. War Department however, had more realistic and clearer view of the situation. In July 1945, a memorandum entitled, The Chinese Communist Movement, gave a depiction of the true nature of the Communist movement. The report stated the Maoists were more rigidly controlled than the KMT, allowed no opposition groups to exist in their areas (in contrast to the KMT), and were part of the international Communist movement. [5]
Without committing U.S. combat troops and without supporting a coalition government, the Truman Doctrine saved Greece from Communism. Greece received weapons and financial support and, most importantly, operational advisers at the battalion level, who ensured that American aid was used effectively. Marshall himself testified that such aid might have worked in China, but General David Barr's military mission to China was specifically instructed not to supply this kind of assistance. [6] General Albert C. Wedemeyer recommended this approach in his report on his 1947 fact-finding mission, but Marshall personally suppressed the report. [7] Chiang believed that the Truman Doctrine to contain the spread of International Communism directed from Moscow would be extended to China, and ordered an offensive as soon as word of the new policy reached him. [8] Truman however, made no effort to save China from Communism.
Jiang was forced from the Chinese mainland to the island of Taiwan in 1949, where he resumed his position as president, albeit of a massively reduced territory.
Poetry
Jiang was also known for his poetry. He wrote a poem expressing exultation after his victory over the Communist Party, in 1928:
The yellow crane has long since gone away,
All that here remains is Yellow Crane Tower.
The yellow crane once gone does not return,
White clouds drift slowly for a thousand years.
References
- ↑ On the Beginnings of the Chinese Communist Party, The Epoch Times, Dec 13, 2004.
- ↑ Forrest C. Pogue, George C. Marshall, Statesman, 1945-1959, New York 1987, pg. 61.
- ↑ "On Coalition Government," address to the April 1945 Seventh National Convention of the Chinese Communist Party, quoted in Anthony Kubek, How the Far East Was Lost, Chicago 1963, pg. 238.
- ↑ Tang Tsou, America's Failure in China, 1941-1945, Chicago 1964, pg. 429.
- ↑ Anne W. Carroll, Who Lost China, 1996. Retrieved from www.ewtn com/library/ August 16, 2007.
- ↑ Military Situation in the Far East, Hearings before the Committee on Armed Services and the Committee on Foreign Relations, U.S. Senate, 82nd Congress (Washington, 1951), p. 558.
- ↑ Tang Tsou, America's Failure in China, 1941-1945, Chicago 1964, pg. 457.
- ↑ Richard C. Thornton, China: A Political History, 1917-1980, Boulder CO 1982, pg. 208.
