Chiang Kai-shek

Chiang Kai-shek (jyäng kī-shĕk, jyäng), 1887–1975, Chinese Nationalist leader. He was also called Chiang Chung-cheng.

After completing military training with the Japanese Army, he returned to China in 1911 and took part in the revolution against the Manchus (see Ch'ing). Chiang was active (1913–16) in attempts to overthrow the government of Yüan Shih-kai. When Sun Yat-sen established (1917) the Guangzhou government, Chiang served as his military aide. In 1923 he was sent by Sun to the USSR to study military organization and to seek aid for the Guangzhou regime. On his return he was appointed commandant of the newly established (1924) Whampoa Military Academy; he grew more prominent in the Kuomintang after the death (1925) of Sun Yat-sen.

In 1926 Chiang launched the Northern Expedition, leading the victorious Nationalist army into Hankou, Shanghai, and Nanjing. Chiang followed Sun Yat-sen's policy of cooperation with the Chinese Communists and acceptance of Russian aid until 1927, when he dramatically reversed himself and initiated the long civil war between the Kuomintang and the Communists. By the end of 1927, Chiang controlled the Kuomintang, and in 1928 he became head of the Nationalist government at Nanjing and generalissimo of all Chinese Nationalist forces. Thereafter, under various titles and offices, he exercised virtually uninterrupted power as leader of the Nationalist government.

In 1936 Gen. Chang Hsüeh-liang seized him at Xi'an, to force him to terminate the civil war against the Communists in order to establish a united front against the encroaching Japanese. Despite the resultant truce, Chiang's release, and the 1937 outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War, the agreement between Nationalists and Communists soon broke down. By 1940 Chiang's best troops were being used against the Communists in the northwest. After the Japanese took Nanjing and Hankou, Chiang moved his capital to Chongqing.

As the Sino-Japanese War merged with World War II, Chiang's international prestige increased. He attended the Cairo Conference (1943) with Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Winston Churchill. He and his third wife, Soong Mei-ling (see Soong, family), were the international symbols of China at war, but Chiang was bitterly criticized by Allied officers, notably Joseph W. Stilwell, and argument raged over his internal policies and his conduct of the war.

After the war ended Chiang failed to achieve a settlement with the Communists, and civil war continued. In 1948 Chiang became the first president elected under a new, liberalized constitution. He soon resigned, however, and his moderate vice president, Gen. Li Tsung-jên, attempted to negotiate a truce with the Communists. The talks failed, and in 1949 Chiang resumed leadership of the Kuomintang to oppose the Communists, who were sweeping into S China in strong military force and reducing the territories held by the Nationalists.

By 1950 Chiang and the Nationalist government had been driven from the mainland to the island of Taiwan (Formosa) and U.S. aid had been cut off. On Taiwan, Chiang took firm command and established a virtual dictatorship. He reorganized his military forces (U.S. aid resumed with the start of the Korean war) and then instituted limited democratic political reforms. Chiang continued to promise reconquest of the Chinese mainland and at times landed Nationalist guerrillas on the China coast, often to the embarrassment of the United States. His international position was weakened considerably in 1971 when the United Nations expelled his regime and accepted the Communists as the sole legitimate government of China. He remained president until his death in 1975.

Bibliography

Chiang Kai-shek's writings have appeared in English as China's Destiny (1947) and Soviet Russia in China (1957). See also P. P. Y. Loh, The Early Chiang Kai-Shek (1971); and biographies by W. Morwood (1980) and S. Dolan (1988).

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Chiang Kai-shek

 or Chiang Chieh-shih or Jiang Jieshi

Chiang Kai-shek.

(credit: Camera Press)

(born Oct. 31, 1887, Zhejiang, China—died April 5, 1975, Taipei, Taiwan) Head of the Nationalist government in China (1928–49) and later in Taiwan (1949–75). After receiving military training in Tokyo, in 1918 he joined Sun Yat-sen, leader of the Nationalist Party, which was trying to consolidate control over a nation in chaos. In the 1920s Chiang became commander in chief of the revolutionary army, which he sent to crush warlords active in the north (see Northern Expedition). In the 1930s he and Wang Jingwei vied for control of a new central government with its capital at Nanjing. Faced with Japanese aggression in northeastern China (Manchuria) and communist opposition led by Mao Zedong in the hinterland, Chiang decided to crush the communists first. This proved to be a mistake, and Chiang was forced into a temporary alliance with the communists when war broke out with Japan in 1937. After the war China's civil war resumed, culminating in the Nationalists' flight to Taiwan in 1949, where Chiang ruled, supported by U.S. economic and military aid, until his death, when his son, Chiang Ching-kuo, took up the reins of government. His years ruling Taiwan, though dictatorial, oversaw the island's economic development and increasing prosperity even in the face of its precarious geopolitical position. His failure to keep control of mainland China has been attributed to poor morale among his troops, lack of responsiveness to popular sentiment, and lack of a coherent plan for making the deep social and economic changes China required.

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Chiang Kai-shek, Jiang Jie Shi

original name Chiang Chung-cheng, 1887--1975, Chinese general: president of China (1928--31; 1943--49) and of the Republic of China (Taiwan) (1950--75). As chairman of the Kuomintang, he allied with the Communists against the Japanese (1937--45), but in the Civil War that followed was forced to withdraw to Taiwan after his defeat by the Communists (1949)