Chiang Kai-shek

Names

At the time of his birth, Chiang's grandfather chose for him a milk name, Chiang Jui-yuan (Chinese: 蔣瑞元; pinyin: Jiǎng Ruìyuán; lit. 'auspicious beginning'), containing the generation name rui (Chinese: 瑞; lit. 'auspicious'). His clan name was Chiang Chou-t'ai (蔣周泰; Jiǎng Zhōutài), meaning lit. 'completely peaceful' or lit. 'boundlessly great'.

In August 1903, Chiang, then 15 years old, chose a school name, Chih-ching (志清; Zhìqīng; 'striving to be honest'), to reflect his ambitions of passing the imperial examinations. In March 1912, by then already a revolutionary, he took on the name Chieh-shih (介石; Jièshí; 'firm as a rock')—a combination of the characters jie and shi from the ancient classic I Ching—and used it as a pen name. According to biographer Alexander Pantsov, when rendered in Cantonese, the name "sounds like Chiang Kai-shek, and that is how Jiang began to be called by that name from early 1918". It was also by the Cantonese pronunciation of this name that Sun Yat-sen knew him.

In 1917, Chiang assumed another name, Chiang Chung-cheng (蔣中正; Jiǎng Zhōngzhèng; 'central and correct'), which he took from the second line of the sixteenth hexagram of the I Ching: 不終日貞吉以中正也; Bù zhōngrì zhēnjí yǐ zhōngzhèng yě; '[He sees a thing] without waiting till it has come to pass', 'with his firm correctness

there will be good fortune: this is shown by the central and correct position

[of the line]'.

Chiang's best known titles include Commandant (Chinese: 校長; pinyin: Xiào Zhǎng; lit. 'principal', 'schoolmaster'), used among the alumni of the Whampoa Military Academy; "the Generalissimo" (Chinese: 蒋委員長; pinyin: Jiǎnɡ Wěi Yuán Zhǎng; lit. 'Chairman Chiang of the (Military Affairs) Commission') or "Gissimo" (Chinese: 委座; pinyin: Wěi Zuò; lit. 'Chairman'), used after 1926 when he became the commander in chief of the Nationalist armies.

Early life, 1887–1906

Chiang was born on 31 October 1887 to a distinguished family of merchants in Xikou, then a small village about 48.2 kilometers (30.0 mi) south of the port city of Ningbo. His father, Chiang Chao-tsung (also known as Chiang Shu-an), was a salt-seller who ran the family business, the Yutai Salt Store, and was known for his honesty as a broker of village disputes. His mother, Wang Tsai-yu, was a seamstress, a devout Buddhist, and the daughter of a Buddhist monk. She was Chao-tsung's third wife; at the time of their marriage in 1886, Chao-tsung had a daughter, Chiang Ruichun, and a son, Chiang Ruisheng, from previous marriages. They were a wealthy family descended from the Duke of Zhou who possessed more than thirty mu of rice fields, bamboo groves, and tea bushes. Although salt and wine were state monopolies, Chao-tsung sold both, having obtained a license by means of guanxi. They moved out from the salt store into a new seven-room sanheyuan when Chiang was an infant. Chiang's sister Ruilian was born there in 1890, followed by another sister, Ruiju, in 1892 and a brother, Ruiqing, in 1894.

During his childhood, Chiang was described as "sprightly and prankish from disposition, but sickly in body," with a unique capacity for chasing, then escaping, difficult situations. At age three, he survived choking on a pair of chopsticks; in 1892, at age five, he narrowly avoided drowning in a man-sized water jar after climbing in. As a boy, he developed a fitness for swimming and hill-climbing and had a penchant for war games, in which he preferred to be the commander. At the behest of a relative, Chiang's mother committed him to a family tutor when he turned five, but he initially made slow progress in learning the Chinese classics taught to him.

When Chiang was seven years old, his paternal grandfather, Yu-piao, died of pneumonia. Months later, on 24 August 1895, Chiang's father died suddenly, at the age of 54. A property dispute left most of the family's estate with Chiang's half-brother Ruisheng, leaving a small parcel of land with Wang, who supported Chiang by weaving linen. Chiang later wrote in a diary in 1917: "After father died and my elder brother refused to take care of the family, everyone cheated us, and my mother quietly suffered, enduring trials and tribulations." In one instance, tax collectors pursued Wang and detained Chiang as collateral. Qing officials brought the boy Chiang before a magistrate's court under threat of imprisonment. Ultimately the sum was paid, but Chiang later referred to the experience as "the first spark that kindled my revolutionary fire."

Military education, 1906–1910

Chiang chose to settle in Tokyo due to its reputation as the center of Japanese military science and for the opportunity to fraternize with the city's exiled Chinese revolutionaries. A year earlier, in 1905, the Japanese government issued a proclamation forbidding Chinese students from studying in the country if they lacked an official recommendation, so Chiang enrolled in the Qinghua School in the Ushigome neighborhood of Tokyo; founded by Liang Qichao in 1899, it was the only school open to Chinese "from the street". While living among the city's Chinese community, he studied the Japanese language and paid for courses out-of-pocket. He formed a close friendship with Chen Qimei, a fellow student in Japan also from Zhejiang, and the two became inseparable blood brothers.

Through Chen, a member of Sun Yat-sen's underground Tongmenghui, Chiang learned of Sun's political philosophy, the Three Principles of the People. The Tongmenghui had been formed in Tokyo on 20 August 1905 with Sun as president, and espoused socialist and occasionally communist views, advocating for a democratic state with harmony among all social classes. When Sun returned to Tokyo at the end of 1906, 19-year-old Chiang went with Chen to meet him for the first time at the apartment of Tōten Miyazaki in either November or December. Although no records of the meeting survive, sources present indicated that Chiang kept silent but made a positive impression on Sun, who valued obeisance and thoughtfulness. Sun told Chen after the meeting, "That man [Chiang] will be the hero of our Revolution: we need just such a man in our revolutionary movement."

On 25 January 1907, Chiang's sister Ruilian was married, and Chiang sailed home to attend the ceremony, ending his first stay in Japan. Next month, he went to Hangzhou, intending to sit the entrance examinations for the Baoding Military Academy, one of best educational institutions in China at the time. The academy reserved only fourteen spaces for new cadets from Zhejiang, with approximately 70 prospective applicants for each space; although ill on the day of the exam, Chiang won a competitive space and enrolled in a six-month accelerated program there in the summer of 1907. He was one of a few successful applicants from the province, despite being disadvantaged for being Han Chinese (non-Manchu) and for having short hair.

At Baoding, Chiang was a diligent student, but sometimes chafed against the academy's officers, most of whom were Japanese. During a lecture on hygiene, he confronted a Japanese officer who used an analogy comparing the Chinese population to microbes on a clod of earth he held, after which Chiang struck the piece down and used the same analogy to describe the population of Japan as microbes on the resulting fragments. Afterwards, the officer reported Chiang for disorderly conduct—an expellable offense—to the academy's superiors, but he ultimately escaped with only a reprimand, as the chancellor of the academy was sympathetic to his nationalism.In the beginning of 1908, the academy held an exam to select a group of cadets to further their education in Japan. Because Chiang was not enrolled in a Japanese-language course, he did not initially qualify and had to petition the head of the academy, who granted Chiang's request that he be considered for having prior studied the language. Chiang, one of the 40 chosen after graduation, received a letter of recommendation to attend Tokyo Shinbu Gakko, a preparatory military school in Tokyo co-founded by the Chinese government to service Chinese cadets. He enrolled there in March 1908, as a member of its 11th class. The curriculum emphasized history, geography, natural sciences, and drawing, with particularly intense courses in Japanese and mathematics. Among his classmates were He Yingqin and Zhang Qun, whom Chiang later named as ministers of military administration and foreign affairs, respectively. He graduated 55th in his class of 62 in November 1910.

Revolutionary years, 1908–1916

Recommended by Chen Qimei and endorsed by two other revolutionary friends, Chiang was inducted into the Tongmenghui in a secret ceremony while in Japan and swore an oath of allegiance to the Three Principles of the People in 1908. In the next two years, revolutionaries under Sun Yat-sen launched at least seven armed rebellions with the goal of igniting a revolution to overthrow the Manchu government—all of which proved unsuccessful. Chiang made repeated efforts to join the cause but was turned away to focus on his education, recalling that "great hopes were placed upon me as a future warrior, therefore my comrades did not allow me [for now] to take part in military operations." During his student years in Japan, Chiang occupied himself with revolutionary literature and discussed them with Zhang Qun and a new confidant, Dai Jitao, a Chinese student who earned a place at a Japanese university and whose precociousness made a deep impression on him. Chiang was greatly influenced by the anti-Manchu pamphlet The Revolutionary Army, written by Zou Rong, which called for a violent revolution in China and the establishment of a parliament and a constitution. He also read the newspaper of choice among Chinese exiles, Min Kuo Jih Pao (then edited by Wang Jingwei and Hu Hanmin), which exposed him to Western thinkers such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau and John Stuart Mill. The newspaper advocated for the violent overthrow of the Manchu-dominated Qing and the nationalization of property across the globe. Increasingly extreme left-wing views, such as those espoused in Min Pao and adopted by overseas Chinese such as Chiang, drew the ire of ruling Japanese oligarchs and contributed to the government's decision to expel Sun Yat-sen from the country in 1907.

After graduating from Tokyo Shinbu Gakko, Chiang was commissioned a second-class junior officer in a field artillery regiment, the 19th Field Artillery Regiment of the 13th IJA Division, stationed in Niigata Prefecture; to have active service in the army was a prerequisite for aspiring officers who wished to enter the Imperial Japanese Army Academy. Standing at 5 feet 7 inches and weighing just 130 pounds, Chiang was ill-suited to the regiment's forced marches and winter drills, but was known for his dedication as a soldier. Japanese officers in the regiment remembered him for his discipline and loyalty; a sergeant described Chiang as having an "impressive and forbidding expression." He rose to a first-class soldier on 1 June 1911 and was promoted artillery leader on 1 August that same year. His division commander, general Nagaoka Gaishi, wrote years later—in 1929—an article attributing Chiang's military successes in China to his dedication to "loyalty and gratitude" during his years in the Japanese army.

Xinhai Revolutionary

Sometime in October 1911, Chiang received a telegram from Chen Qimei notifying him of a finally successful anti-Qing uprising—the Wuchang Uprising—taking place in Wuchang, Hubei, where a mutiny of government soldiers transformed into an outright rebellion which brought control of the city under a friendly revolutionary group, the Society for Common Progress (Chinese: 共進會; pinyin: Gòngjìnhuì). On 11 October, Manchu control over Wuchang's neighboring cities, Hankou and Hanyang, was also overthrown, inspiring a wave of anti-Qing movements across Chins. The uprising, which is now commemorated on Double Ten Day, proved to give the decisive momentum for a national revolution—the Xinhai Revolution—marking the end of the Qing dynasty.

News of the Wuchang Uprising shocked Chiang, who immediately applied to leave military service in order to return to China. At Chen's request, Chiang, along with Zhang Qun and 118 other Chinese cadets, boarded a ship at Nagasaki bound for Shanghai on 13 October to join the revolutionary cause. Shortly before leaving they were honorably discharged from military service. In accordance with bushido custom, Chiang and Zhang drank glasses of water at their farewell in Japan, signifying their determination not to return alive. They arrived in Shanghai on 30 October, where Chiang immediately reported to Chen. Chen placed him in command of a "dare-to-die" unit composed largely of fishermen from Chiang's native Fenghua and members of Shanghai secret societies, and sent the force to join the uprising in Hangzhou. On 4 November, Chiang's unit participated in the seizure of the provincial capital, meeting little resistance from Qing forces.

Afterwards, Chiang returned to Shanghai, where Chen had become military governor and placed him in charge of troops drawn partly from secret-society members and the urban poor. After Sun Yat-sen established the provisional government of the Republic of China in Nanjing, Chiang and Chen opposed Sun's willingness to compromise with Yuan Shikai, commander of the powerful Beiyang Army. In January 1912, Chen's political rival Tao Chengzhang was assassinated while hiding in a Shanghai hospital. Chiang was the assassin; in the early morning of 14 January, he went with a group of confidants to the hospital and personally shot Tao in the head, killing him. Contemporary newspapers and provincial records, however, did not implicate Chiang in the killing.

Following Sun's resignation and Yuan's accession to the provisional presidency, Chiang returned to Japan in March 1912. There he studied German in Tokyo in preparation for possible study in Germany and founded the military journal Voice of the Army, in which he published five articles on political topics. He returned to China in 1913 as relations between the Kuomintang (KMT) and Yuan deteriorated following the assassination of KMT leader Song Jiaoren. During the ensuing Second Revolution, Chiang helped plan an attack on the Shanghai arsenal and led unsuccessful assaults on it in July. After Yuan's forces suppressed the rebellion and outlawed the KMT, Chiang and other revolutionary leaders again fled to Japan.

Kuomintang reorganization and Whampoa, 1918–1924

In March 1918, Chiang joined Chen Jiongming's Guangdong Army as head of its field operations department, and in September was given command of a roughly 1,000-man detachment. On 30 September 1920, Sun Yat-sen appointed him chief of staff of the Second Guangdong Army, then the highest position Chiang had held. Sun and Chen increasingly disagreed over strategy, with Sun favoring a strong central government and an early campaign against the northern warlords, while Chen advocated developing Guangdong as a model province within a federal China. In 1922, Chiang urged Sun to attack Chen's forces before proceeding with the Northern Expedition.

In June 1922, Chen's forces attacked Sun's headquarters in Guangzhou, forcing Sun to take refuge aboard the gunboat Yongfeng. Chiang came to Sun's aid and remained with him aboard the vessel until their position became untenable and the two ultimately withdrew through Hong Kong to Shanghai. The episode helped establish Chiang as a loyal right-hand man for Sun, who would later contribute a preface to Chiang's published account of the crisis.

In February 1923, Sun appointed Chiang to the Kuomintang Military Council and made him chief of staff of his personal headquarters. That August, Chiang left for the Soviet Union at the head of a Kuomintang mission charged with discussing Soviet assistance and a proposed military campaign against the Beijing government. He arrived in Moscow on 2 September and remained in the Soviet Union until late November, studying its political and military organizations. Soviet military officials opposed immediate military action, while Leon Trotsky told Chiang that the Soviet Union would provide weapons, advisers, and economic assistance but would not send troops. Chiang criticized aspects of the Soviet political system but was impressed by the Red Army's political commissars, a system he later incorporated into the Kuomintang military.

Under the guidance of Soviet adviser Mikhail Borodin, the Kuomintang reorganized itself along Leninist lines at its First National Congress in Guangzhou in January 1924. On 24 January, Chiang was appointed chairman of the preparatory committee for a new military academy at Whampoa, but, following disagreements with Soviet advisers over its curriculum and management, he resigned on 21 February and returned to Zhejiang. After receiving assurances over finances and appointments, he returned to Guangzhou and on 3 May became commandant of the academy and chief of staff of the Guangdong Army. The academy was intended to provide the Kuomintang with a trained force that would reduce its dependence on mercenary armies, and most of the funding used to establish it came from the Soviet Union. It formally opened on 16 June. Soviet military advisers, including Vasily Blyukher, were among its supervisors. Chiang personally selected the academy's early classes, whose graduates later formed an important body of officers associated with him.

Rise to power, 1925–1928

Struggle for Sun Yat-sen's succession

Sun Yat-sen died in Beijing on 12 March 1925. His death precipitated a struggle for power among factions of the Kuomintang, in which Hu Hanmin, Wang Jingwei, Liao Zhongkai, Soviet adviser Mikhail Borodin, Xu Chongzhi, and Chiang were among the principal figures in Guangzhou. At the time of Sun's death, Chiang was campaigning with troops from the Whampoa Military Academy in the Eastern Expedition against Chen Jiongming. By the end of March, the forces to which the Whampoa units belonged had defeated Chen's army and established control over eastern Guangdong. In early June, Chiang's party army and other forces loyal to the KMT leadership defeated the Yunnanese and Guangxi troops then based in Guangzhou.The Nationalist government was formally established in Guangzhou on 1 July 1925 with Wang Jingwei as its chairman, while Chiang joined its Military Council two days later. On 20 August, Liao Zhongkai was assassinated, and a special committee consisting of Wang, Xu, and Chiang was created to investigate the killing. On 20 September, Chiang surrounded Xu's residence with troops and compelled him to leave Guangzhou, after which the Political Council approved Xu's departure for Shanghai. Hu Hanmin was also removed from the immediate political contest and sent to Moscow as the KMT's representative to the Communist International. Following these changes, authority over the KMT rested chiefly with Wang as the principal civilian leader and Chiang as its leading military figure. At the KMT's Second National Congress in January 1926, Chiang was elected to the Central Executive Committee for the first time.

Canton Coup and consolidation of power

Tensions between Chiang, Wang, the Chinese Communists, and the Soviet advisers culminated in the Zhongshan Incident of March 1926. On 20 March, Chiang arrested Li Zhilong, the Communist acting head of the National Revolutionary Army's Naval Bureau, placed Guangzhou under martial law, and disarmed guards at the residences of the Soviet advisers and the offices of the Guangzhou–Hong Kong Strike Committee. No conclusive evidence has established either that the Soviet advisers or Chinese Communists were plotting against Chiang or that Chiang himself engineered the movements of the gunboat Zhongshan that precipitated the incident. Chiang and the Soviet representatives nevertheless reached a settlement that preserved their cooperation while providing for the departure of Soviet military adviser Nikolai Kuibyshev, restrictions on Communists holding senior KMT posts, and disclosure of Communist members within the KMT. Wang announced his resignation on 7 April and subsequently went abroad, while Chiang was appointed head of the KMT's Military Affairs Commission.

On 15 May, Chiang chaired a meeting of the Central Executive Committee that adopted new restrictions on Communist activity and office-holding within the KMT. In the ensuing weeks he accumulated additional offices, becoming head of the Military Council and the KMT department responsible for military cadres as well as commander-in-chief of the National Revolutionary Army (NRA). By early July, Chiang had also become chairman of the Central Executive Committee's Political Council. He became the dominant military and political figure in Guangzhou, with an organized army that Sun himself had never possessed.

Northern Expedition

On 5 June 1926, Chiang was formally appointed commander-in-chief of the planned Northern Expedition. The expedition formally began on 9 July, when NRA troops participated in an oath-taking ceremony in Guangzhou and Chiang publicly accepted his appointment as commander-in-chief. Although the NRA numbered approximately 100,000 men at the beginning of the campaign, it remained a loose coalition of regionally based military forces rather than a unified army under a single chain of command. Chiang's initial strategy was to advance through Hunan, capture Wuhan, join with Feng Yuxiang's forces, and then proceed toward Beijing. By the end of October, the NRA had defeated the principal warlord forces in Hubei and occupied Wuhan, while forces under He Yingqin had captured Fujian and advanced into Zhejiang.

The expedition's successes increased Chiang's military prestige but also intensified political divisions within the KMT. KMT leftists and Communists increasingly concentrated their political organization at Wuhan, where the Central Executive Committee sought to limit Chiang's personal authority. On 1 March 1927, the Wuhan leadership placed Chiang under a newly organized military council, transferred several of his party offices to Wang Jingwei, and issued a secret order for his arrest. On 11 March, while headquartered at Nanchang, Chiang met Japanese politician Yamamoto Jōtarō and argued that lasting friendship between China and Japan required Korea and Taiwan to be freed from Japanese colonial rule. Bai Chongxi's forces entered Shanghai on 22 March, and Chiang reached Nanjing two days later.

Split with the Communists and completion of the Northern Expedition

After Wang returned from abroad in early April, Chiang and other KMT leaders in Shanghai urged him to assume leadership of a reunified party and restrain the Communists, but Wang instead returned to Wuhan. On 6 April, the KMT Supervisory Committee in Shanghai established a committee to remove Communists from the party and coordinated with members of Shanghai's Green Gang. In the early hours of 12 April, troops of Bai Chongxi's Seventh Corps seized offices of the Communist-aligned Shanghai Federation of Labor while armed Green Gang groups attacked workers' organizations elsewhere in the city, killing resisters and arresting many others. Further killings and arrests followed in Shanghai, and similar anti-Communist purges took place in other KMT-controlled cities. On 18 April, Chiang proclaimed a rival Nationalist government at Nanjing under the chairmanship of Hu Hanmin. The Wuhan Central Executive Committee responded by expelling Chiang from his posts and offering rewards for his capture or death.

Chiang's position among anti-Communist military leaders strengthened after the Shanghai purge, and his Nanjing government controlled Shanghai, Nanjing, Zhejiang, Fujian, and portions of Jiangsu and Anhui. The political alignment at Wuhan soon disintegrated as Wang Jingwei moved against the Communists and expelled them from the city, after which the Soviet advisers withdrew. Wang nevertheless refused political reconciliation with Chiang unless Chiang stepped down, and on 12 August 1927 Chiang resigned his posts while calling on the KMT factions to reunite and complete the Northern Expedition.

KMT military officers and political leaders later called for Chiang's return, and the Central Executive Committee unanimously agreed that he should resume his former positions. Chiang returned to Nanjing and resumed his duties as chairman of the Military Council and commander-in-chief of the Northern Expedition, while Wang again departed for France. At the KMT Central Executive Committee's Fourth Plenum in February 1928, Chiang was confirmed as commander-in-chief of the NRA, elected to the Standing Committee, and made chairman of the Organization Committee. In early April he announced the resumption of the Northern Expedition, with the NRA divided into four army groups commanded respectively by Chiang, Feng Yuxiang, Yan Xishan, and Li Zongren.

As the Nationalist armies advanced toward Beijing in May, the Manchurian warlord Zhang Zuolin ordered his forces to withdraw toward Manchuria. Zhang was mortally wounded on 4 June 1928 when Japanese officers of the Kwantung Army bombed his train near Mukden. By early July, Nationalist forces had taken Beijing, and on 6 July Chiang and his principal military allies gathered before Sun Yat-sen's coffin at the Temple of Azure Clouds to proclaim their loyalty to Sun and to China. With Beijing under Nationalist control, the KMT now controlled all major political centers from northern China to Guangzhou, completing the Northern Expedition.

Rule

Having gained control of China, Chiang's party remained surrounded by defeated warlords who remained relatively autonomous within their own regions. On 10 October 1928, Chiang was named director of the State Council, the equivalent to President of the country, in addition to his other titles. As with his predecessor Sun Yat-sen, Western media outlets dubbed him "Generalissimo".

According to Sun Yat-sen's plans, the KMT was to rebuild China in three steps: military rule, political tutelage, and constitutional rule. The ultimate goal of the KMT revolution was democracy, which was not considered to be feasible in China's fragmented state. Since the KMT had completed the first step of revolution through seizure of power in 1928, Chiang's rule thus began a period of what his party considered to be "political tutelage" in Sun Yat-sen's name. During this Republican Era, many features of a modern, functional Chinese state emerged and developed.Communist revolution is fundamentally unsuited to China. Any revolution animated by hatred cannot accord with the moral character of the Chinese people. For once hatred becomes the motivating force, action inevitably descends into cruelty and moral debasement, seeking advantage through the injury of others. Such conduct stands in direct opposition to the ethical foundations of Chinese civilization.

For several millennia, China's moral tradition has been oriented toward altruism rather than self-interest. The inherent disposition of the Chinese people has been one of peacefulness, magnanimity, and moral luminosity. They do not wish to endure cruelty inflicted by others, nor do they wish to impose cruelty upon others. They neither accept ignoble means applied to themselves, nor do they consent to employ ignoble means against others. Accordingly, methods characterized by cruelty and moral baseness cannot take root in China; at the very least, they will never command the approval of the great majority of the people.

Moreover, revolutions prosecuted through cruel and ignoble means have never escaped failure. Since Communist revolution adopts precisely such methods, it is destined to encounter the opposition of the Chinese people as a whole—or, at minimum, of their overwhelming majority. Any revolutionary action that fails to secure the moral sympathy of the majority can never be legitimately undertaken. This constitutes the first and fundamental reason why the Soviet-style Communist revolution is incompatible with China.—Chiang, "The Differences Between Our Party's National Revolution and the Soviet Communist Revolution," 25 April 1929.

First phase of Chinese Civil War

During April 1931, Chiang Kai-shek attended a national leadership conference in Nanjing with Zhang Xueliang and General Ma Fuxiang during which Chiang and Zhang dauntlessly upheld that Manchuria was part of China in the face of the Japanese invasion. After the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931, Chiang resigned as Chairman of the National Government. He returned shortly afterward.

Chiang adopted the slogan "first internal pacification, then external resistance," contending that warlords and the CCP had to be eliminated before the invading Japanese could be opposed. This policy of avoiding a frontal war against Japan and prioritizing anti-communist suppression was widely unpopular and provoked nationwide protests. The CCP called for an end to civil war and a united front against the Japanese. Chiang's policy of non-resistance to Japan contributed to a decrease in support for the Nationalists and an increase in support for the CCP. In 1932, while Chiang was seeking first to defeat the CCP, Japan launched an advance on Shanghai and bombarded Nanjing. That disrupted Chiang's offensives against the CCP for a time, but it was the northern factions of Hu Hanmin's Guangdong government (notably the 19th Route Army) that primarily led the offensive against the Japanese during the skirmish. Brought into the NRA immediately after the battle, the 19th Route Army's career under Chiang would be cut short by being disbanded for demonstrating socialist tendencies.

In December 1936, Chiang flew to Xi'an to co-ordinate a major assault on the Red Army and the CCP, which had retreated into Yan'an. However, Chiang's allied commander Zhang Xueliang, whose forces were used in his attack and whose homeland of Manchuria had been recently invaded by the Japanese, did not support the attack on the Communists. On 12 December, Zhang and several other Nationalist generals, headed by Yang Hucheng of Shaanxi, kidnapped Chiang for two weeks in what is known as the Xi'an Incident. They forced Chiang into making a "Second United Front" with the Communists against Japan. After releasing Chiang and returning to Nanjing with him, Zhang was placed under house arrest, and the generals who had assisted him were executed. The Second United Front had a commitment by Chiang that was nominal at best and was all but dissolved in 1941.

Second Sino-Japanese War

The Second Sino-Japanese War broke out in July 1937, and in August, Chiang sent 600,000 of his best-trained and equipped soldiers to defend Shanghai. With over 200,000 Chinese casualties, Chiang lost the political cream of his Whampoa-trained officers. Although Chiang lost militarily, the battle dispelled Japan's claims that it could conquer China in three months and also demonstrated to the Western powers that the Chinese would continue the fight. By December, the capital city of Nanjing had fallen to the Japanese resulting in the Nanjing Massacre. Chiang moved the government inland first to Wuhan and later to Chongqing.

Having lost most of China's economic and industrial centers, Chiang withdrew into the hinterlands, stretched the Japanese supply lines, and bogged down Japanese soldiers in the vast Chinese interior. As part of a policy of protracted resistance, Chiang authorized the use of scorched-earth tactics, which resulted in many civilian deaths. During the Nationalists' retreat from Zhengzhou, the dams around the city were deliberately destroyed by the National Revolutionary Army to delay the Japanese advance, and the subsequent 1938 Yellow River flood killed 800,000 to one million people. Four million Chinese were left homeless. Chiang and the KMT were slow to provide disaster relief.

After heavy fighting, the Japanese occupied Wuhan in the fall of 1938, and the Nationalists retreated farther inland to Chongqing. En route to Chongqing, the Nationalist Army intentionally started the Changsha Fire as a part of its scorched-earth policy. The fire destroyed much of the city, killed 20,000 civilians, and left hundreds of thousands of people homeless. An organizational error (it was claimed) caused the fire to be started without any warning to the residents of the city. The Nationalists eventually blamed three local commanders for the fire and executed them. Newspapers across China blamed the fire on (non-KMT) arsonists, but the blaze contributed to a nationwide loss of support for the KMT.

In 1939, the Muslim leaders Isa Yusuf Alptekin and Ma Fuliang were sent by Chiang to several Middle Eastern countries, including Egypt, Turkey, and Syria, to gain support for the war against Japan and to express his support for Muslims.

The Japanese, controlling the puppet state of Manchukuo and much of China's eastern seaboard, appointed Wang Jingwei as a puppet ruler of the occupied Chinese territories around Nanjing. Wang named himself President of the Executive Yuan and chairman, and he led a surprisingly large minority of anti-Chiang and anti-Communist Chinese against his old comrades. He died in 1944, a year before the end of World War II.

French Indochina

President Roosevelt, through General Stilwell, privately made it clear that he preferred for the French not to reacquire French Indochina (now Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos) after the war was over. Roosevelt offered Chiang control of all of Indochina. It was said that Chiang replied in English, "Under no circumstances!"

After the war, 200,000 Chinese troops under General Lu Han were sent by Chiang to northern Indochina (north of the 16th parallel) to accept the surrender of Japanese occupying forces there, and the Chinese forces remained in Indochina until 1946, when the French returned. The Chinese used the VNQDD, the Vietnamese branch of the Kuomintang, to increase their influence in Indochina and to put pressure on their opponents. Chiang threatened the French with war in response to maneuvering by the French and Ho Chi Minh's forces against each other and forced them to come to a peace agreement. In February 1946, he also forced the French to surrender all of their concessions in China and to renounce their extraterritorial privileges in exchange for the Chinese withdrawing from northern Indochina and allowing French troops to reoccupy the region. After France's agreement to those demands, 20,000 French soldiers landed in Haiphong, North Vietnam, on 6 March 1946, under the leadership of general Philippe Leclerc de Hauteclocque, followed by the withdrawal of Chinese troops which began in March 1946.

Ryukyus

According to Republic of China's notes of a dinner meeting during the Cairo Conference in 1943, Roosevelt asked Chiang whether China desired the Ryukyu Islands as territories restored from Japan. Chiang said he would be agreeable to joint occupation and administration by China and the United States.

Second phase of Chinese Civil War

Because of Chiang's focus on his communist opponents, he allowed some Japanese forces and forces from the Japanese puppet regimes to remain on duty in occupied areas in an effort to prevent the communists from accepting their surrender.

American troops and weapons soon bolstered the Nationalist forces, which allowed them to reclaim the cities. The countryside, however, remained largely under Communist control. Chiang implemented his war-time phrase "repay evil with good" and made a huge effort to protect elements of the Japanese invading army. In 1949, a Nationalist court acquitted General Okamura Yasuji, the chief commander of Japanese forces in China, of alleged war crimes, retaining him as an advisor. Nationalist China repeatedly intervened to protect Okamura from repeated American requests to testify at the Tokyo war crimes trial.

Many top Nationalist generals, including Chiang, had studied and trained in Japan before the Nationalists had returned to the mainland in the 1920s and maintained close personal friendships with top Japanese officers. The Japanese general in charge of all forces in China, General Okamura, had personally trained officers who later became generals in Chiang's staff. Reportedly, Chiang seriously considered accepting this offer but declined only because he knew that the United States would certainly be outraged by the gesture. Even so, armed Japanese troops remained in China well into 1947, with some non-commissioned officers finding their way into the Nationalist officer corps. The Japanese in China came to regard Chiang as a magnanimous figure to whom many of them owed their lives and livelihoods; that fact was attested by both Nationalist and Communist sources.

Chiang did not de-mobilize his troops after the defeat of the Japanese, instead remaining on a war footing to prepare for the resumption of civil war against the Communists. This further strained the economy of Nationalist-era China, worsening deficits. A significant body of evidence suggests that much of the Nationalist military budget in this period was wasted. One factor in military budget waste included that troop counts were inflated above actual head counts and that officers embezzled the salaries of the non-existent soldiers. Another was the power of military commanders over local branches of the Bank of China, which they could require to provide currency outside of the normal budget process.

In Taiwan

Chiang moved the government to Taipei, Taiwan, where he resumed his duties as president on 1 March 1950. Chiang was re-elected by the National Assembly to be the President of the Republic of China on 20 May 1954, and again in 1960, 1966, and 1972. He continued to claim sovereignty over all of China, including the territories held by his government and the People's Republic, as well as territory the latter ceded to foreign governments, such as Tuva and Outer Mongolia. In the context of the Cold War, most of the Western world recognized that position, and the ROC represented China in the United Nations and other international organizations until the 1970s.

During his presidency on Taiwan, Chiang continued making preparations to take back mainland China. He developed the JROTC army to prepare for an invasion of the mainland and to defend Taiwan in case of an attack by the Communist forces. He also financed armed groups in mainland China, such as Muslim soldiers of the ROC Army who had been left in Yunnan under Li Mi and continued to fight. It was not until the 1980s that those troops were finally airlifted to Taiwan. He promoted the Uyghur Yulbars Khan to governor during the Islamic insurgency on the mainland for resisting the Communists even though the government had already evacuated to Taiwan. He planned an invasion of the mainland in 1962. In the 1950s, Chiang's airplanes dropped supplies to Kuomintang Muslim insurgents in Qinghai, in the traditional Tibetan area of Amdo.

The democratic provisions of the constitution were suspended before the retreat in 1948 by the "Temporary Provisions Effective During the Period of Communist Rebellion". They gave the state emergency powers to fight the civil war. When the ROC relocated to Taiwan, the Temporary Provisions became permanent. Martial law was instituted to continue the war against the People's Republic of China and used to suppress political opposition to the KMT. This allowed Chiang to govern with a one-party state consisting almost completely of refugees from the mainland (waishengren). Elections were suspended on the pretext that legitimate results required the participation of constituencies in PRC-controlled mainland China; members of the government elected in 1947–1948 held their posts indefinitely in what became known as the "Eternal Parliament". The Temporary Provisions also allowed Chiang to circumvent the presidential two-term limit; he was reelected as president by the National Assembly to consecutive terms in 1954, 1960, 1966, and 1972.

Chiang's domestic policy promoted Chinese nationalism; local Taiwanese culture (benshengren) was ignored or suppressed, including restricting the use of local languages in mass media and schools. The marginalization of benshengren led to the February 28 incident, an anti-government uprising that the ROC violently suppressed; up to 30,000 Taiwanese intellectuals, activists, and suspected KMT opponents were killed or disappeared. The state's program of anti-Communist repression, the "White Terror", imprisoned about 140,000 Taiwanese for real or perceived opposition to the KMT; most were prosecuted as Chinese Communist Party (CCP) agents ("Communist bandit and spies" (匪諜)) or supporters of "Taiwanese Separatists" (台獨分子).

Death

In 1975, 26 years after Chiang had come to Taiwan, he died in Taipei at the age of 87. His wife and his eldest son, Premier Chiang Ching‐kuo, were at his bedside. He had suffered a heart attack and pneumonia in the foregoing months, and died from kidney failure aggravated by advanced heart failure on 5 April. Chiang's funeral was held on 16 April.

A month of mourning was declared. The response by Japanese media was swift and shaped by a respect for Chiang, who had been trained in Japanese military schools and shared a particular fondness for the Japanese Empire. The Chinese music composer Hwang Yau-tai wrote the "Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Song". In mainland China, however, Chiang's death was met with little apparent mourning, and Communist state-run newspapers gave the brief headline "Chiang Kai-shek Has Died". Chiang's body was put in a copper coffin and temporarily interred at his favorite residence in Cihu, Daxi, Taoyuan. His funeral was attended by dignitaries from many nations, including US Vice President Nelson Rockefeller, South Korean Prime Minister Kim Jong-pil, and two former Japanese prime ministers: Nobusuke Kishi and Eisaku Sato. Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Day was established on 5 April. The memorial day was disestablished in 2007.

When his son, Chiang Ching-kuo, died in 1988, he was entombed in a separate mausoleum in nearby Touliao. The hope was to have both of them buried at their birthplace in Fenghua when that would be possible. In 2004, Chiang Fang-liang, the widow of Chiang Ching-kuo, asked for both father and son to be buried at Wuzhi Mountain Military Cemetery in Xizhi, Taipei County (now New Taipei City). Chiang's ultimate funeral ceremony became a political battle between the wishes of the state and those of his family.

Chiang was succeeded as president by Vice President Yen Chia-kan and as Kuomintang party ruler by his son Chiang Ching-kuo, who retired Chiang Kai-shek's title of Director-General and instead assumed the position of chairman. Yen's presidency was interim; Chiang Ching-kuo, who was the Premier, became president after the end of Yen's term three years later.

Cult of personality

Chiang's portrait hung over Tiananmen Square until 1949, when it was displaced with Mao's portrait. His portrait is still displayed in Tiananmen Square, SE of the Monument to the People's Heroes. Portraits of Chiang were common in private homes and in public on the streets. After his death, the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Song was written in 1988 to commemorate Chiang Kai-shek. In Cihu, there are several statues of Chiang Kai-shek.

Chiang was popular among many people and dressed in plain, simple clothes, unlike contemporary Chinese warlords who dressed extravagantly.

Quotes from the Quran and hadith were used by Muslims in the Kuomintang-controlled Muslim publication, the Yuehua, to justify Chiang Kai-shek's rule over China. When the Muslim general and warlord Ma Lin was interviewed, he was described as having "high admiration for and unwavering loyalty to Chiang Kai-shek".

Philosophy

The Kuomintang used traditional Chinese religious ceremonies, and promulgated martyrdom. Kuomintang ideology subserved and promulgated the view that the souls of Party martyrs who died fighting for the Kuomintang, the revolution, and the party founder Sun Yat-sen were sent to heaven. Chiang Kai-shek believed that these martyrs witnessed events on Earth from heaven after their deaths.

Unlike Sun's original Tridemist ideology that was heavily influenced by Western enlightenment theorists such as Henry George, Abraham Lincoln, Bertrand Russell, and John Stuart Mill, the traditional Chinese Confucian influence on Chiang's ideology is much stronger. Chiang rejected the Western progressive ideologies of individualism, liberalism, and the cultural aspects of Marxism. Therefore, Chiang is generally more culturally and socially conservative than Sun Yat-sen. Jay Taylor has described Chiang Kai-shek as a revolutionary nationalist and a "left-leaning Confucian-Jacobinist".

When the Northern Expedition was complete, Kuomintang Generals led by Chiang Kai-shek paid tribute to Sun's soul in heaven with a sacrificial ceremony at the Xiangshan Temple in Beijing in July 1928. Among the Kuomintang Generals present were the Muslim Generals Bai Chongxi and Ma Fuxiang.

Chiang Kai-shek considered both Han Chinese and all ethnic minorities of China, the Five Races Under One Union, as descendants of the Yellow Emperor, the mythical founder of the Chinese nation, and belonging to the Chinese Nation Zhonghua Minzu. He introduced this into Kuomintang ideology which was propagated into the educational system of the Republic of China.

Chiang, as a Chinese nationalist and a Confucian, was against the iconoclasm of the May Fourth Movement. Motivated by his sense of nationalism, he viewed some Western ideas as foreign and believed that the great introduction of Western ideas and literature, which the May Fourth Movement promoted, was not beneficial to China. He and Sun criticized the May Fourth intellectuals as corrupting the morals of China's youth.

Chiang Kai-shek once said:

If when I die, I am still a dictator, I will certainly go down into the oblivion of all dictators. If, on the other hand, I succeed in establishing a truly stable foundation for a democratic government, I will live forever in every home in China.

Historical perception

For some, Chiang's legacy was a national hero who achieved unification as leader of the Northern Expedition and as the leader against Japan's invasion, and for enduring without major aid, as Chiang called on his countrymen to fight to the "bitter end" until their ultimate victory against Japan in 1945. He was also champion of anti-communism during the formative years of the World Anti-Communist League. During the subsequent Cold War, he was seen as the leader who led Free China and the bulwark against a possible communist invasion.

Others see him in a darker light. Chiang was often perceived as "the man who lost China", criticized for his poor military skills, such as issuing unrealistic orders and persistently attempting to fight unwinnable battles, leading to the loss of his best troops. The historian Rudolph Rummel documented that Chiang's decisions led to millions of excess deaths from calamities such as persecution against actual or perceived communists and its conscription of soldiers, confiscation of food, and flooding of downstream regions of the Yellow River during the Second Sino-Japanese War. Within his lifetime, Chiang was derisively nicknamed "General Cash-My-Check" by American officials on account of his persistent requests for financial aid to fund his military efforts. His government was also accused of being corrupt and allying with known criminals such as Du Yuesheng for political and financial gains, and his critics often accuse him of fascism. In Taiwan, he ruled throughout a period of martial law. Some opponents charge that Chiang's efforts in developing the island were mostly to turn it into a strong base from which to recover mainland China and that he had little regard for the Taiwanese people.

Unlike Chiang's son Chiang Ching-kuo, who is respected across the political spectrum, Chiang Kai-shek's image is perceived rather negatively in Taiwan. He was rated the lowest in two opinion polls about the perception of former presidents. His popularity in Taiwan is divided along political lines, enjoying better support in the Kuomintang (KMT) while being widely unpopular among Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) voters and those who blame him for the thousands killed during the February 28 Incident and criticise his dictatorial rule. The DPP has actively pursued transitional justice regarding Chiang Kai-shek's authoritarian rule through landmark legislation such as the 2017 Act on Promoting Transitional Justice, which legally mandates the removal of symbols of authoritarianism that prompted the takedown of hundreds of Chiang Kai-shek statues and the rebranding of institutions across the island. The move sparked condemnation from the KMT, who argued that the move was a partisan act aimed at demonising Chiang Kai-shek and the KMT as well as pushing de-sinicization that erased Chiang's nuanced legacy and pushing a broader agenda of severing cultural and historical ties with mainland China as groundwork for eventual independence.

Family

Wives

In 1901, in an arranged marriage at age 14, Chiang was married to Mao Fumei, an illiterate villager five years his senior. Chiang and Mao had one son, Ching-kuo. While married to Mao, Chiang adopted either one or two concubines (concubinage was still a common practice for well-to-do, non-Christian males in China): he took Yao Yecheng (姚冶誠, 1887–1966) as concubine in late 1912 and married Chen Jieru (1906–1971) in December 1921. While he was still living in Shanghai, Chiang and Yao adopted a son, Wei-kuo. Chen adopted a daughter in 1924, named Yaoguang, who later took her mother's surname. Chen's autobiography rejected the idea that she had been a concubine. Chen said that, by the time she married Chiang, he had already divorced Yao, and that Chen was therefore his wife.

According to the memoirs of Chen Jieru, Chiang's second wife, she contracted gonorrhea from Chiang soon after their marriage. He told her that he acquired this disease after separating from his first wife and living with his concubine Yao Yecheng, as well as with many other women he consorted with. His doctor explained to her that Chiang had sex with her before completing his treatment for the disease. As a result, both Chiang and Chen Jieru believed that they had become sterile; however, a purported miscarriage by Soong Mei-ling in August 1928 would, if it actually occurred, cast serious doubt on whether this was true.

Honours

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

Foreign honours

Dominican Republic:

Order of Merit of Duarte, Sánchez and Mella (January 1940)

Order of Christopher Columbus (July 1948)

Grand Cross of the Order of Christopher Columbus (October 1971)

Philippines:

Chief Commander of the Philippine Legion of Honor (1949)

Grand Collar of the Ancient Order of Sikatuna (2 May 1960)

United States:

Chief Commander of the Legion of Merit (9 July 1943)

Distinguished Service Medal (U.S. Army) (March 1946)

South Korea:

Order of Merit for National Foundation (27 November 1953)

Selected writings

Chiang, May-ling Soong; Chiang, Kai- (1937). General Chiang Kai-shek; the Account of the Fortnight in Sian When the Fate of China Hung in the Balance. Garden City, New York: Doubleday, Doran. Includes foreword, by J. Leighton Stuart.—What China has faced, by Mme. Chiang Kai-shek.—Sian: a coup d'e´tat, by Mme. Chiang Kai-shek.—A fortnight in Sian: extracts from a diary, by Chiang Kai-shek.—The Generalissimo's admonition to Chiang Hsueh-liang (sic: i.e. Zhang Xueliang) and Yang Hu-chen (sic: i.e. Yang Hucheng) prior to his departure from Sian.—Names of Chinese persons and places mentioned in the story and diary.

———— (1947). China's Destiny. Translated by Wang Chung-hui. New York: The Macmillan Company. Authorized translation of 中国之命运 (Zhongguo zhi mingyun) (1943). . Introduction by Lin Yutang.

———— (1947). Chiang Kai-Shek: China's Destiny and Chinese Economic Theory. New York: Roy.. Unauthorized translation of 中国之命运 (Zhongguo zhi mingyun) (1943) by Philip Jaffe, with his notes and extensive critical commentary.

The Collected Wartime Messages Of Generalissimo Chiang Kai Shek at Netarchive

——— (1957). Soviet Russia in China; a Summing-up at Seventy. New York: Farrar, Straus and Cudahy.

—, Works at Internet Archive HERE