Chiang Kai-shek

Chiang Kai-shek (or Jiang Jieshi in the pinyin version) (Traditional Chinese: 蔣介石; Simplified Chinese: 蒋介石; Hanyu Pinyin: Jiǎng Jièshí; Jyutping: Zoeng² Gaai³ Sek⁶) was the leader of the Kuomintang from 1925 following the death of 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. Chiang converted to Christianity when he married Soong Meiling, a methodist; he became an ardent opponent of Communism.

Early life

Chiang was born in the port city of Ningpo 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 Chiang joined the Tongmenghui (United League) - which was shortly to merge with other revolutionary groups to become the Kuomintang, usually called the KMT or Nationalist Party. At the time of the 1911 revolution Chiang 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) Chiang led an attack on an arsenal in Shanghai but the bungled operation was a disastrous failure and Chiang was forced to flee. He attached himself to the entourage of the KMT leader Sun Yat-sen and to the ramshackle KMT government which Sun set up in the southern metropolis of Canton. When Sun concluded an alliance with the Comintern in 1923, brokered by the Soviet agent Adolph Joffe (the 'Sun-Joffe Agreement'), Chiang was appointed commandant of the Whampoa Military Academy at Canton, 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 KMT rule.

Northern Expedition

As commandant of the Whampoa Military Academy, Chiang had to work closely with Soviet advisors and Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials (the KMT and the CCP had formed a "united front" as a result of the Sun-Joffe Agreement). Communist leader Chou En-lai was a senior political commissar at the academy. However, Chiang was very suspicious of his Communist allies. Following the death of Sun Yat-sen in 1925, Chiang became the most powerful individual KMT leader, and on March 11 1926 launched a limited purge of communists in Canton (the "Canton Coup"), as a result of which all his Soviet advisors were expelled from China. However, he did not dissolve the united front, and the CCP, under orders from Moscow, also continued to maintain the status quo.

Northern Expedition, 1926-1927

On July 1, 1926, Chiang launched the Northern Expedition. His armies marched north from Canton 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 KMT rule. However, Chiang 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 his KMT armies had captured Wuhan on the middle Yangtse, and a KMT government was established there. Instead of continuing to press north, Chiang turned east and in March 1927 occupied Nanjing, which was to become the Nationalist's capital city, and Shanghai. "Gui clique" (Guangxi warlords) in 1929 depended mainly on his successful military strategy. Before the war broke out he sought to settle the dispute peacefully, insisting on striking only after the enemy had struck first, leaving the impression that he was forced to accept a challenge. This bought him time to prepare for military action and won the support of the people. Just before the outbreak of hostilities he took well-thought-out steps to deploy troops, strengthen discipline, win over friendly forces, and split the enemy forces. After the war broke out he applied flexible strategy and tactics, effectively containing Feng Yuxiang's intended attack on Wuhan and thereby safeguarding the security of the city. These steps created favorable conditions for the armies from Hunan and Canton to eventually occupy the Gui clique's base in Guangxi.

After destroying the Communists' main base of power in Shanghai in April 1927, Chiang was now the undisputed leader of the Kuomintang 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 Peking. The Northern Expedition was over, and Chiang 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 Kuomintang rule might have brought China. Chiang 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 Chiang. 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.

Chiang married into the wealthy Soong family, his wife, Soong Meiling (1897-2003), was American-educated Methodist sister of Sun Yat-sen's leftist widow, Soong Qingling (1892-1981)). One brother in law, T.V. Soong, was his Finance Minister and chief negotiator with the U.S.

Dealing with the Communists

On April 12, 1927 Chiang again turned on the communists in the 'Shanghai Coup'. Chiang's troops and police rounded up and executed hundreds, probably thousands of communists under Moscow's control.

Throughout the late 1920s and early 1930s the KMT was engaged in a Civil War with the Communist Party of China and its Red Army. Chiang Kai-shek used as system of repeated encirclement of the communists to try to eliminate them, only for the communists to out-maneuver and escape the snare each time.

The Communists, defeated in Shanghai April 1927 and in a number of ill-planned urban uprisings later that year, regrouped in the countryside and established a number of "base areas" (most notably that of Mao Zedong in southern Chiangxi province). These bases were expanding, and efforts to eliminate the Chiangxi Soviet in a series of "encirclement campaigns" in the early 1930s had failed. However Chiang's fifth encirclement campaign of 1933-34 succeeded in destroying the Chiangxi base, and the communist Red Army went into retreat on the "Long March"; only a fraction of the Communists survived. Mao Zedong now became the leader of the Communists.

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 Communist leaders planned to kill Chiang but Stalin intervened and forced the Communists to cooperate with him, in hopes a united China would tie down Japanese forces and thus reduce the threat to the Soviet Union. The Red Army was soon turned into the Eighth Route Army and grew bigger and more powerful than before.

When Japan seized Manchuria in 1931, Chiang gave precedence to defeating the internal threat posed by the Chinese communists over resisting the Japanese invasion. In any case he had no army or base that could challenge Japan, and appealed instead to the League of Nations, which was also powerless. Chiang argued 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.

In December 1936, Chiang was captured by General Chang Hsüeh-liang in what is now called the Xi'an Incident. The captors tried to force Chiang to stop fighting the Communists and to unite with them in fighting Japan. After lengthy negotiations, Chiang was released. The Second United Front between KMT and Communist leaders was formed soon afterward. This tentative truce between to the two parties was always uneasy and actual cooperation on a united military front was rare.

Rural policies

Chiang took an instrumentalist view of rural cooperatives. He saw these rural institutions as mechanisms of political control on the one hand, and as social engineering instruments for mitigating class conflict in rural society on the other. Rooted in these views, the rural cooperative movement promoted by Chiang and the KMT government, from 1927 onward was aimed at countering the influence of the land reform policies implemented by the Chinese Communists in the areas under their control.

Relations with Japan

After the "Mukden Incident" of September 18, 1931 and Japan's rapid seizure of Manchuria, Chiang realized that the vast disparity in national strength and military power between China and Japan put China at great risk. Therefore he rejected advice to fight back by people who called him an appeaser and did his best to avoid all-out war, using "peace" as a way to postpone war. On the other hand, he gathered allies widely, adjusted policies, maintained domestic order, built "national defense strongholds," organized a southwestern base area, and prepared to fight against Japan. However, the Japanese began negotiating with regional Chinese leaders and promoted a "north China autonomy movement" for the five northern provinces that weakened Nationalist control.

Full scale war — the Second Sino-Japanese War began at the Marco Polo bridge near Peking in July 1937.

1937-1948

Chiang was in full charge of the KMT after 1927, with the title of "generalissimo"; he thus ruled that part of China controlled by the KMT. With the Japanese gaining more Chinese territory, the policy of "trading space for time" (Chinese: 以空間換取時間) was adopted. Chiang moved, not only his government, but much of China's industrial production, several hundred miles west to the interior city of Chunking, in the remote mountains of Sichuan province.

The U.S. was eager to use China to defeat Japan. The idea was that millions of Chinese soldiers, equipped and trained by the U.S. Army and heavily funded by the U.S. Treasury, would eventually overrun the Japanese invaders. The strategy never came close to working.

In September 1943, Chiang Kai-shek formally became president of the central executive committee of the KMT, and was recognized as the head of state and head of government of free China. In November 1943 Chiang attended the Cairo Conference, where he, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Prime Minister Winston Churchill drafted the Cairo declaration proclaiming Allied war objectives for the Far East. China was assured a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council when it formed in 1945.

Chiang was elected tsung-tsai (director-general) of the Kuomintang on May 17, 1945. After 1927 he never had a serious contender who might threaten his control of the party.

Conclusion of the Chinese Civil War

General George C. Marshall was sent in late 1945 by President Truman to resolve the Chinese civil war, hopefully by creating a new shared power arrangement between the Communists and Chiang's Nationalists. 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. Communist 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." 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."

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.

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 similar 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. General Albert C. Wedemeyer recommended this approach in his report on his 1947 fact-finding mission, but Marshall personally suppressed the report. 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. Truman however, made no effort to save China from Communism.

Chiang 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

Chiang 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.

Bibliography

Biography

" Boorman, Howard L. "Chiang Kai-shek in Howard L. Boorman, ed. Biographical Dictionary of Republican China (1967) 1: 319-38; excellent starting place.

• Fenby, Jonathan. Chiang Kai Shek: China's Generalissimo and the Nation He Lost (2004), 592pp excerpt and text search
• Huang, Grace C. "Chiang Kai-shek's Uses of Shame: An Interpretive Study of Agency in Chinese Leadership." PhD dissertation U. of Chicago 2005. 282 pp. DAI 2005 66(6): 2370-A. DA3181356 Fulltext: [[ProQuest Dissertations & Theses ] ]
• Li, Laura Tyson. Madame Chiang Kai-shek: China's Eternal First Lady (2007) excerpt and text search
• Taylor, Jay. The Generalissimo's Son: Chiang Ching-kuo and the Revolutions in China and Taiwan. (2000). 496 pp.
• Weinberg, Gerhard L. Visions of Victory: The Hopes of Eight World War II Leaders. (2005), chapter on Chiang.

National studies

• Bergere, Marie-Claire. Sun Yat-Sen (1998), 480pp, the standard biography
• Boorman, Howard L., ed. Biographical Dictionary of Republican China. (Vol. I-IV and Index. 1967-1979). 600 short scholarly biographies excerpt and text search
• Botjer, George. A Short History of Nationalist China, 1919–1949 (1979). 312pp
• Chu, Shao-Kang. "On Chiang Kai-shek's Position on Resisting Japan: An Analysis of `Domestic Stability Takes Precedence over Resisting Foreign Invasion' Policy, 1928-1936." PhD dissertation U. of British Columbia [Canada] 2000. 234 pp. DAI 2000 61(5): 1989-A. DANQ48621 Fulltext: ProQuest Dissertations & Theses
• Coble, Parks. Facing Japan: Chinese Politics and Japanese Imperialism, 1931-1937. (1992) 475pp
• Dorn Frank. The Sino-Japanese War, 1937-41 (1971). 477pp
• Dreyer, Edward L. China at War, 1901-1949. (1995). 422 pp.
• Eastman, Lloyd. The Abortive Revolution: China under Nationalist Rule, 1927-1937 (1974); and Seeds of Destruction: Nationalist China in War and Revolution, 1937- 1945. (1984)
• Eastman Lloyd et al. The Nationalist Era in China, 1927-1949 (1991) excerpt and text search
• Fairbank, John K., ed. The Cambridge History of China, Vol. 12, Republican China 1912-1949. Part 1. (1983). 1001 pp. ; Fairbank, John K. and Feuerwerker, Albert, eds. The Cambridge History of China. Vol. 13: Republican China, 1912-1949, Part 2. (1986). 1092 pp.
• Ch'i, Hsi-sheng. Nationalist China at War: Military Defeats and Political Collapse, 1937–1945 (1982), 309pp
• Hsiung, James C. and Steven I. Levine, eds. China's Bitter Victory: The War with Japan, 1937-1945 (1992), essays by scholars; online from Questia; also excerpt and text search
• Hsü, Immanuel Chung-yueh. The Rise of Modern China, 6th ed. (1999), detailed coverage excerpt and text search
• Jordan Donald A. The Northern Expedition: China's National Revolution of 1926-1928. (1976).
• Liu F. F. A Military History of Modern China, 1924-1949. (1956).
• Morley, James William, ed. The China Quagmire: Japan's Expansion on the Asian Continent, 1933-1941. (1983).
• Rubinstein, Murray A., ed. Taiwan: A New History (2006), 560pp
• Shiroyama, Tomoko. China during the Great Depression: Market, State, and the World Economy, 1929-1937 (2008)
• Spence, Jonathan D. The Search for Modern China (1991), 876pp; well written survey from 1644 to 1980s excerpt and text search; complete edition online at Questia
• Sun, Youli. China and the Origins of the Pacific War, 1931-1941. (1993).
• Ven, Hans van de. War and Nationalism in China: 1925-1945 (2003), negative on Stilwell online edition
• Westad, Odd Arne. Decisive Encounters: The Chinese Civil War, 1946-1950. (2003). 413 pp. the standard history

Relations with U.S.

• Byrd Martha. Chennault: Giving Wings to the Tiger. (1987).
• Ch'i, Hsi-sheng. "Chiang Kai-shek and Franklin D Roosevelt," in C. A. van Minnen and J. F. Sears, eds. FDR and his contemporaries (1992)
• Levine, Steven I. "A New Look at American Mediation in the Chinese Civil War: the Marshall Mission and Manchuria." Diplomatic History 1979 3(4): 349-375. Issn: 0145-2096
• Liang, Chin-Tun. Gen. Stilwell in China, 1942-1944 (1972), a pro-Chiang view
• May, Ernest R. "1947-48: When Marshall Kept the U.S. out of War in China." Journal of Military History 2002 66(4): 1001-1010. Issn: 0899-3718 in Jstor
• Romanus, Charles F. and Riley Sunderland. Stilwell's Mission to China (1953), official U.S. Army history online edition
• Romanus, Charles F. and Riley Sunderland. Stilwell's Command Problems (1956) online edition
• Schaller Michael. The U.S. Crusade in China, 1938-1945. (1979). online edition
• Tsou, Tang America's Failure in China, 1941-50 (1963).
• Tuchman, Barbara. Stilwell and the American Experience in China, 1911-45, (1972), 624pp; Pulitzer prize (The British edition is titled Against the Wind: Stilwell and the American Experience in China 1911-45,) excerpt and text search
• Young, Arthur N. China and the Helping Hand, 1937-1945. (1963).
• Young, Arthur N. China's Wartime Finance and Inflation, 1937-1945. (1965).

Memory and historiography

• Gordon, David M. The China-Japan War, 1931–1945. The Journal of Military History v70#1 (2006) 137-182; major historiographical overview of all important books and interpretations; in Project Muse
• Jespersen, T. Christopher. American Images of China, 1931-1949. (1996).
• Lee, Lloyd, ed. World War II in Asia and the Pacific and the War's aftermath, with General Themes: A Handbook of Literature and Research. (1998) online edition
• Li, Laura Tyson. Madame Chiang Kai-shek: China's Eternal First Lady (2007) excerpt and text search
• Taylor, Jeremy E. "The Production of the Chiang Kai-shek Personality Cult, 1929-1975." China Quarterly 2006 (185): 96-110. Issn: 0305-7410
• Ven, Hans Van De. "Stilwell in the Stocks: the Chinese Nationalists and the Allied Powers in the Second World War." Asian Affairs 2003 34(3): 243-259. Issn: 0306-8374 Fulltext: Ebsco, revisionist argument that Stilwell was incompetent, had no command training or experience, and did not appreciate air power. Ven suggests that Roosevelt's needs in the presidential election of 1944, the strategic decision to defeat the Nazi menace in Europe before giving full attention to Japan, and the unwise yielding to the needs of the Soviet Union during World War II all led to the defeat of the Chinese Nationalists.

Primary Sources

• Chiang Kai-Shek. The Collected Wartime Messages of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek, 1937-1945, (1946) online edition
• Chiang Kai-Shek. All We Are and All We Have: Speeches and Messages since Pearl Harbor (1948) online edition
• Marshall, George Catlett. The Papers of George Catlett Marshall. Vol. 5: "The Finest Soldier," January 1, 1945-January 7, 1947. ed. by Larry I. Bland and Sharon Ritenour Stevens, (2003). 822 pp. online
• Stilwell, Joseph Warren. The Stilwell papers edited by Theodore H. White, (1958).
• United States Department of State. United States Relations with China: With Special Reference to the Period 1944-1949 (1949) online edition

Online resources

• Steven Phillips, "English-Language Sources on China at War, 1937-1945: Bibliography"
• "The Republican Era: 1911-1949", comprehensive bibliography