(also Chiang Chieh-shih). Born Oct. 31, 1887, in Fenghua, Chekiang Province; died Apr. 5, 1975, in Taipei. Head of the Kuomintang regime; overthrown by the people’s revolution in China in 1949.
The son of a merchant, Chiang Kai-shek graduated from military academies in Paoting and Tokyo. Pretending to be a leftwing member of the Kuomintang, he supported Sun Yat-sen in the first half of the 1920’s. As commander in chief of the National Revolutionary Army he took part in the Northern Campaign of 1926–27. On Apr. 12, 1927, Chiang carried out a counterrevolutionary coup and established a reactionary dictatorship in China. For more than 20 years he wielded enormous power, holding the posts of chairman of the Central Executive Committee of the Kuomintang (from 1926), chairman of the Executive Yuan, president of the republic, and commander in chief of the armed forces; he assumed the title of generalissimo.
Between 1930 and 1934, Chiang undertook five punitive campaigns against the soviet regions (seeSOVIETS IN CHINA). After the Japanese attacked China on July 7,1937, he was forced to form a united anti-Japanese national front, which rested on the agreement of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and the Kuomintang to carry out combined operations. Chiang continued to use large forces, however, to blockade the region along the Shansi-Kansu-Ninghsia border, which was controlled by the CPC.
After Japan surrendered on Sept. 2, 1945, Chiang rejected the offer of the CPC to form a coalition government and in June 1946 began a new civil war. In late 1949 the People’s Liberation Army of China liberated virtually all mainland China from the Kuomintang. Chiang fled with his remaining troops to Taiwan, where he established himself with the military and financial support of the USA.
V. I. ELIZAROV