What is the life story of Chiang Kai-shek?

Chiang Kai-shek, the son of a wine merchant, was born in Fenghua, China, on 31st October 1887. His father died when he was a child leaving the family in extreme poverty. He was sent to live with relatives but he ran away and joined the provincial army.

Chiang was a good soldier and he was eventually sent to the military academy in Paoting. In 1907 he attended the Military State College in Tokyo. During this period he became a supporter of Sun Yat-sen, the leader of the Kuomintang. During the

1911 revolution Chiang led a regiment that captured Shanghai. After the counter-revolution that followed, Chiang returned to Japan.

With the help of advisers from the Soviet Union, the Kuomintang gradually increased its power in China. In 1924 Chiang became head of the Whampoa Military Academy. After a struggle with Wang Ching-Wei, Chiang eventually emerged as the leader of the Kuomintang.

In 1926 Chiang commanded the army which aimed to unify China. He defeated the communist army and forced the survivors to make the famous Long March to Shensi in North West China. Chiang eventually established a government in Nanjing. Major financial reforms were carried out and the education system and the road transport were both improved. Chiang also established the New Life Movement in 1934 which reasserted traditional Confucian values to combat communist ideas.

When the Japanese Army invaded the heartland of China in 1937, Chiang was forced to move his capital from Nanking to Chungking and collaborate with Mao Zedong and his communist army.

What is the freedom that Chiang Kai-shek claimed?

Reactionaries, including Chiang Kai-shek, often claim that they are for freedom of thought. The people are suffering oppression and exploitation. Only the small handful of reactionary landlords and bureaucrat-capitalists are free - free to exploit, oppress and slaughter the people. In the bourgeois-democratic countries, only the bourgeoisie have freedom of thought, which is denied to the workers and peasants.

The breaking-up of the first cooperation between Communists and Nationalists.

Chiang's military and underworld connections played a crucial role in winning the leadership of the Kuomintang on Sun Yatsen's death in 1925. With the support of a number of allied warlords, the Northern Expedition successfully reunited China under Kuomintang rule, and Chiang established a new national government in first Wuhan and then Nanjing in 1927. Once in power, Chiang abandoned the United Front with the Communists which had been forced on both parties by their mutual backers, the Soviet Union.

Chiang Kai-shek’s marriage.

In December, 1927, Chiang's married? Soong Meiling, the younger sister of Sun Yatsen's widow, Soong Qingling. As another sister was married to the wealthy and influential financier H. H. Kung, the marriage combined Chiang's formal leadership with the informal connections that remained an important element of political leadership in nationalist China.

What is a “fake leader”?

In reality, Chiang's dominance was more apparent than real. The dependence on allied warlords that brought him power also made effective national government virtually impossible. With the exception of the area surrounding Nanjing, the Kuomindang had to exercise power through warlords and landlords. These leaders blocked attempts to alter the existing feudal basis of economics and society, and frequently developed their own economic and fiscal policies at odds with policy in Nanjing. Chiang also faced military threats throughout the Nanjing decade from disillusioned warlords, from the rival Kuomintang leader Wang Jingwei, and from Japanese expansion in the north.

Chiang’s leadership of Kuomintang in the mainland.

Chiang's leadership credentials were somewhat questionable. His "New Life" ideology was a strange mixture of Confucianism, Christianity, and Fascism which failed to address the problems facing the Chinese population in the countryside. Furthermore, economic policy was dominated by corruption, and was apparently designed to benefit the nationalist élites rather than facilitate national regeneration. While Chiang may have felt that he could not withstand the might of the Japanese, his suppression of anti-Japanese student movements lost considerable popular support at a time when the Communists were emphasizing their own nationalist credentials.

Chiang seemed obsessed with eliminating the Communists, and only changed his policy when the northern warlord, Zhang Xueliang, kidnapped him in Xian in December 1936, forcing Chiang to accept a new united front of nationalists, Communists, and warlords against the Japanese.

What is Chiang’s contribution to the development of Taiwan?

Chiang's rule on Taiwan also benefited from the centralization of power over a relatively small population and territory. Local opposition to Taiwanese rule had been brutally oppressed in 1947, removing the power of local landlords and leaders that had obstructed his rule on the mainland. With the collapse of the Kuomintang armies on the mainland, Chiang was also freed from much of the internal factionalism of the past. Chiang, consolidating power under martial rule and by linking closely with the American and later the emerging Japanese economies,

facilitated the economic modernization that had eluded the Kuomintang in Nanjing. Nevertheless, he will be first and foremost remembered as "the man who lost China".

Chiang did not give up. He set up a KMT government in Taipei, Taiwan, where he claimed to be the president of China. He still promised the reconquest of the mainland and even sent Nationalist guerillas to the Chinese coast. For the rest of his life Chiang lived as President of the Republic of China in Taiwan and established a strong government which suppressed dissent and instituted a stable one-party rule. This government foundation, elimination of much of the corruption, and the sound infrastructure developed by the Japanese all contributed to economic success and are the reasons why Taiwan is such a successful and wealthy democratic government to this day. During the time of the Cold War, the United States recognized Taiwan as the only government of China, although China never recognized Taiwan as her government or any sort of governmental affiliation with Taiwan. Taiwan also held China’s seat at the UN until Chiang died in 1975.