Chiang Kai-shek

• Born: 31 October 1887
• Birthplace: Rural Zhejiang, China
• Died: 5 April 1975
• Best Known As: Leader of The Republic of China (Taiwan), 1949-75

Chiang Kai-shek was one of the most important political leaders in 20th century Chinese history, sandwiched between Sun Yat-sen and Mao Zedong. Early in the 20th century Chiang Kai-shek fought for Sun Yat-sen's United Revolutionary League and the Kuomintang party to overthrow China's imperial dynasty. The Republic of China was established in 1912, but by the end of the 1920s the Kuomintang split with the Communists (led by Mao Zedong) . After the death of Sun Yat-sen, Chiang became the leader of the Kuomintang army and seized control of the government. Still engaged in a civil war with the Communists, Generalissimo Chiang also led the army against Japanese invaders in Manchuria (1937). During World War II Chiang had the support of the Allied powers and was the supreme commander of the China theater for the length of the war, the acknowledged leader of a war-torn and impoverished China. After World War II ended, the Kuomintang and the Communists re-ignited the civil war, and Chiang was eventually driven off the mainland to the island of Taiwan (1949), where the Kuomintang set up a government-in-exile. Until his death in 1975, Chiang ruled Taiwan under martial law and modernized the economy, receiving support from the West for his anti-communism. His international position waned after the 1971 United Nations decision to recognize the Communists as the official government of China.

Chiang's son, Chiang Ching-kuo, ruled Taiwan until his death in 1988... The Kuomintang was in an official state of war with China until 1991... Chiang's wife, Madame Chiang, was an international celebrity in her own right and lived to be 106 years old.

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(b. Ningbo, Zhejiang Province, 31 Oct. 1887; d. 5 Apr. 1975) Chinese; Head of Kuomintang government in Nanjing 1927 – 37, Head of government in exile in Chongqing 1937 – 45, President of the Republic of China on Taiwan 1949 – 75 Despite many years as leader of the Kuomintang, Chiang was primarily a military man. Initially sent to Japan to study military affairs, Chiang joined, Sun Yatsen's Revolutionary Alliance. Returning to China in 1910, Chiang spent a number of years on the fringes of the Shanghai underworld, before reviving his military/political career in Canton in the early 1920s. Chiang gained Sun's patronage, and was sent for military training in the Soviet Union in 1923, returning to lead the important Whampoa military academy.

Chiang's military and underworld connections played a crucial role in winning the leadership of the Kuomintang on Sun Yatsen's death in 1925. But this victory was achieved at the expense of considerable damage to party unity which dogged his leadership until 1949. Nevertheless, 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. The purge of Communist elements was followed in December by Chiang's marriage to 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.

In reality, Chiang's dominance was more apparent than real. The dependence on allied warlords that gained 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.

Under these circumstances, it would have been very difficult to implement an effective modernization programme. However, 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 to bring about 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.

The Nanjing rule of the Kuomintang collapsed in 1937 under an extreme and brutal Japanese onslaught. Chiang moved the capital to Chongqing, where the nationalists sat out the war in relative comfort. There was considerable scepticism amongst American advisers in Chongqing regarding Chiang's beliefs and loyalties, and a wide held belief that Chiang diverted American aid for his own use, and stored up weapons for use in the coming civil war with the Communists. Nevertheless, the Americans and indeed the Soviets remained committed to restoring Chiang to power throughout the war years.

Despite an American attempt to broker a peace settlement at the end of the Pacific War, the civil war between the Kuomintang and Communists soon resumed. Chiang's forces were vastly superior in manpower and supplies and soon made inroads into Communist held areas in northern China. However, the bitter internal rivalry, corruption, appalling treatment of conscript soldiers, and trench warfare strategies of the Kuomintang armies compared badly with the unity, cohesion, and guerrilla tactics of the Communists. The Communists had also built a sound popular support base through social and economic reforms through much of northern China, and, crucially, were the first troops into the cities of north-east China after the Japanese surrender. Initial victories gave way to a series of military defeats and defections from 1947 through to 1949, forcing the Kuomintang ever southwards and eventually into a quasi-internal exile on the island of Taiwan.

Despite the proclamation of the new People's Republic in Beijing, Chiang refused to relinquish his claim to be the legitimate ruler of all China. To this end, he was supported by the Americans, who installed the Taiwan regime in the Chinese seat at the United Nations (prompting a Soviet walk-out which enabled the Americans to pass a resolution sending UN troops to Korea) which they held until 1972. Despite some initial reluctance, the Americans also placed Taiwan within their strategic defence parameter, and provided a total of US$5.6 billion of economic and military aid (compared to $6.89 billion for the whole of Africa) between 1945 and 1979.

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 so 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 Kai-Shek (correctly Jiang Jieshi) (1887-1975), commander of Nationalist China's armed forces and, from 1949, president of the Republic of China on Taiwan. He received most of his military training in Japan from 1906-11, and became an adherent of the revolutionary Sun Yat-sen. He returned to China to take part in the revolution of 1911, serving under Chen Qimei, which established a short-lived provisional government in Nanking. After the revolution's defeat he fled to Japan and played a low-key role during the period of WW I. In 1923, he was recalled by Sun to join the Kuomintang (KMT) or Nationalist party and given the rank of major general. In the same year he headed a military embassy to the USSR and returned to establish the KMT's Whampoa Military Academy, near Guangzhou. With Soviet help he consolidated KMT control over southern China and led the Northern Campaign (1926-7). This involved the defeat of Chinese communists and hence a break with the USSR. Making himself effective head of the KMT in 1928, he captured Beijing. There followed the extensive military operations known as the five Bandit Suppression Campaigns (December 1930-September 1934), directed against the communists in southern China. Only the last of these was reasonably successful, driving Mao Tse-tung on the Long March. The threat of Japanese invasion, which became actual in July 1937, forced him to ally with the communists. Chiang was unable to hold the Japanese advances until after the USA entered the war in 1941. Even then, he did not co-operate well with the American commander ‘Vinegar Joe’ Stilwell, and his power was so weakened that the communists were able to withstand him after 1945. Following a series of failed campaigns, he was driven into exile on Taiwan on 7 December 1949.

— John M. Bourne

Chinese general and political leader, President of China from 1928 to 1931 and from 1943 to 1949, and of Taiwan from 1950 to 1975, born in Fenghua, Zhejiang Province. As the Second Sino-Japanese War merged with World War II, Chiang rose in international prestige, becoming the supreme commander of the Allied forces in the China theater in 1942 and attending the Cairo Conference in 1943. By 1950 the Communists had forced Chiang and the Nationalist government to retreat to the island of Taiwan (Formosa). With U.S. military and economic assistance, Chiang reorganized his military forces and instituted limited democratic political reforms, promising the reconquest of the Chinese mainland. He contributed to Taiwan's economic development, political stability, and land reform. In 1971 the United Nations expelled his regime and accepted the Communist government of China.

See the Introduction, Abbreviations and Pronunciation for further details.

Chiang Kai-shek (1887-1975) was a Chinese nationalist leader. For 2 decades he was head of state on the Chinese mainland, and after 1950 he served as president of the Republic of China on Taiwan.

Chiang Kai-shek was born in Ch'i-k'ou, Chekiang, on Oct. 30, 1887. His father, a salt merchant, died in 1896, leaving his third wife with the burden of Chiang's upbringing. In 1905 Chiang went to Ningpo to study and decided on a military career. In 1906 he went to Tokyo but failed to qualify for military training. Returning to China, he studied at the Paoting Military Academy, continuing his military education in Tokyo at the Shikan Gakko Military Academy.

Protégé of Ch'en Ch'i-mei

In Tokyo, fellow Chekiangese Ch'en Ch'i-mei sponsored Chiang's entry into Sun Yat-sen's revolutionary party, the T'ung-meng hui. When the revolution broke out in Wuhan on Oct. 10, 1911, Chiang returned to Shanghai to fight under Ch'en. A series of triumphs by Ch'en and other revolutionists in the lower Yangtze Valley set the stage for the installation in Nanking of Sun Yat-sen as provisional president of the Chinese Republic.

Ch'en Ch'i-mei and Chiang also fought in the 1913 abortive "second revolution," but by the end of the year both were back in Japan. In 1914 Chiang traveled to Shanghai and Harbin to undertake missions for Sun Yat-sen. In mid-1915 Ch'en and Chiang returned to Shanghai, but on May 18, 1916, Ch'en was assassinated.

Rootless Revolutionary

In the fall of 1917 Sun Yat-sen moved to Canton, where he tried to establish a military base via an alliance with a local warlord, Ch'en Chiung-ming. Chiang was assigned to Ch'en's staff, but as a Chekiangese, Chiang was not readily accepted among Ch'en's Cantonese followers.

Between 1918 and 1920 little is known of Chiang's career. He and other followers of Sun engaged in financial speculation, and it was also at this time that Chiang established cordial relations with the "Green Gang," a secret society that wielded great power in the Shanghai underworld.

Military Organizer

By early 1922 differences in policy between Sun and Ch'en had reached the breaking point and Sun and Chiang had to seek refuge on a gunboat. But before long, fortune turned once again in Sun's favor, and by February 1923 he was back in Canton. On April 20 Chiang assumed duties as Sun's chief of staff. Sun by now had turned for support to the revolutionary regime in Moscow, and Chiang headed a delegation to seek military assistance in the former U.S.S.R. Returning in December 1923, he soon was given an opportunity to put his newfound knowledge to use. When Sun's Kuomintang (KMT), reorganized along Leninist lines, held its first party congress in January 1924, Chiang was appointed to the Military Council.

On May 3 Chiang became commandant of the Whampoa Military Academy. There, with Soviet advisers and arms, Chiang organized a military elite, the Whampoa Clique, bound to Chiang by ties of personal loyalty. There too, by virtue of the KMT's united front with the fledgling Chinese Communist party (CCP), Chou En-lai and other future Communist luminaries gained experience as political commissars.

After Sun Yat-sen died on March 12, 1925, Chiang won out in the ensuing power struggle. With support from the chief Soviet adviser, Borodin, Chiang made the most of these circumstances and established himself on a par with Wang Ching-wei, the leader of the KMT's "left" wing. That Chiang's commitment to his radical allies was a matter of power rather than principle became apparent in the Chungshan gunboat incident of March 1926, when Chiang jailed alleged Soviet and Chinese Communist conspirators and forced Wang Ching-wei to retire. He also purged high party posts of leading Communists, including the acting head of the propaganda department, Mao Tse-tung.

Having consolidated his political position, Chiang prepared to carry out Sun Yat-sen's dream of national reunification. On July, 9, 1926, he became supreme commander of the Northern Expeditionary Forces. Chiang's troops struck northward through Hunan and Hupei, captured key Wuhan cities, and moved eastward through Kiangsi and Fukien toward the rich provinces of the lower Yangtze. Shanghai was occupied on March 22, 1927, Nanking on March 24. In less than a year Chiang had brought the wealthy and populous provinces of southern, central, and eastern China under Nationalist control.

However, success was complicated by new problems. A widening split had developed within the ranks of the expeditionary armies. On April 12, 1927, Chiang moved, swiftly and brutally, against Communists and Communist suspects in Shanghai, especially in the labor movement. This initiated a "party purification" movement that swiftly spread through other provinces controlled by Chiang or antipathetic to the Communists. On April 18 Chiang proclaimed a national government at Nanking in rivalry with the "left KMT" regime allied with Borodin and the CCP at Wuhan. Two months later Chiang precipitated the collapse of the Wuhan coalition with the cooperation of the powerful warlord Feng Yü-hsiang.

However, Chiang was unable to untangle the remaining political and military rivalries. He thereupon resigned his command and on Sept. 29, 1927, sailed for Japan to arrange his marriage to Soong Mei-ling. Chiang's bride was a member of a leading Christian family of Shanghai, and one of her sisters, Soong Ch'ing-ling, was the widow of Sun Yatsen. As a condition of the marriage, Chiang agreed to study Christianity; he eventually became a devout Methodist.

Chiang's brief retirement proved politically useful, for his participation had become absolutely essential to the new regime. Having resumed command, Chiang launched the second stage of the Northern Expedition. Peking fell in June 1928, but since Chiang's power still rested in the lower Yangtze Valley, Nanking became the national capital while Peking ("Northern Capital") was renamed Peiping ("Northern Peace").

"Peacetime" Leader

The decade from 1928 to 1937 was peaceful only in comparison to what preceded it and what followed. Not a year passed without bloodletting among militarists, Nationalists, Communists, and Japanese invaders. For the Nationalist government these were, nonetheless, years of promise and accomplishment, and Chiang built up a formidable political and military machine. German advisers and arsenals helped build a modern army, which finally ousted the Communists from their principal base in Kiangsi and forced their decimated legions to flee to the distant northwestern periphery of China's heartland.

These were also years of promising developments in the urban sector of the country, especially in the lower Yangtze Valley and, until Sept. 18, 1931, Manchuria. With their emphasis on modern, urban development, the Nationalists secured the cooperation of many talented, foreign-educated intellectuals, and higher education flourished. At the same time Chiang initiated a "New Life Movement," seeking to infuse China's millions with enthusiasm for Confucian values revitalized with the spirit of puritanical Protestantism and military discipline. However, neither this nor the ideology of Sun Yat-sen provided an attractive alternative to Marxism. Moreover, two unresolved problems, the deterioration of rural China and the thrust of Japanese aggression, provided opportunities for the Communists.

Chiang, nonetheless, emerged from his first decade in power as the strong man of China. His good luck held when he needed it most. The Japanese, preoccupied with their conquests in Manchuria and adjacent areas of North China, slowed down the pace of aggression and appeared willing to come to an understanding. Chiang therefore concentrated on fighting the Communists and very often was able to capitalize upon the miscalculations of his rivals. Kidnapped at Sian on Dec. 12, 1936, by the Manchurian warlord Chang Hsüeh-liang, Chiang was forced to accede to Chang's demands that he join the Communists in a united front against Japan. But a fortnight later Chiang returned to Nanking a national hero.

Wartime Commander

During the first year of the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945) Chiang's popularity soared. From August to December 1937 his German-trained armies fought a magnificent holding action around Shanghai and Nanking, allowing the government to withdraw briefly to Wuhan and, by the end of 1938, to Chungking. Proud and stubborn, Chiang symbolized China's dogged resistance against the Japanese juggernaut. His supremacy was confirmed in March 1938, when he assumed the title of Tsung-tsai (Party Leader) - successor to the Tsung-li (Party Director), Sun Yatsen.

By 1941, however, the wartime élan was beginning to crumble. Inflation was sapping the country's economic and moral reserves, and the break with the CCP was almost complete. By the time the United States entered the war in December, war-weary Chinese were becoming disillusioned and cynical. The American alliance proved disappointing. Through the good offices of Roosevelt, Chiang was able to join the Great Powers in world diplomatic councils, but he received little respect from Churchill and Stalin. Chiang welcomed the efforts of Maj. Gen. Claire Chennault, whose Flying Tigers (the 14th Air Force) operated from Chinese bases, but Lt. Gen. Joseph Stilwell, the acerbic American chief of staff for the China-Burma-India theater, was a thorn in his side. When Chiang secured Stilwell's dismissal in October 1944, he could take but bleak satisfaction, for the last Japanese offensive of the war was cutting China in two and, in fact, validating Stilwell's criticisms. Even China's Destiny, Chiang's wartime political-historical treatise, was coldly received by Americans for its rejection of Western-style liberalism and democracy and its harsh condemnation of the unequal treaties.

Defeat in Victory

By V-J Day, unresolved prewar problems exacerbated by wartime conditions had weakened Chiang's government and allowed Mao Tse-tung to expand control over a population of some 100 million Chinese. The Marshall mission, sent by President Truman on Oct. 27, 1945, to mediate between the two sides, failed to prevent the outbreak of civil war. Overconfident at the outset, Chiang committed serious blunders on the battlefield.

Chiang was also under pressure from political rivals at home and American critics abroad, who urged him to democratize his government. On Jan. 1, 1947, a new constitution was promulgated. An elected National Assembly chose Chiang as president, though the Kwangsi general Li Tsungjen won the vice presidency over candidates more to Chiang's liking. But the pomp and ceremony in Nanking occurred against a backdrop of disaster, because by 1948 the tide of battle had turned against the Nationalists. Mukden fell on Nov. 1, 1948, followed 2 months later by Peiping. On Jan. 21, 1949, Chiang retired from the presidency, leaving Li Tsung-jen with the thankless job of trying to salvage something from a situation beyond repair. Unable to build a bastion of resistance in southern or southwestern China, Chiang retired to Taiwan on Dec. 10, 1949.

Island Exile

Many of the goals that eluded Chiang on the vast mainland came within reach on the island of Taiwan (Formosa). There he gained unchallenged and virtually unlimited power. The National Assembly, under emergency law, reelected him to the presidency. His elder son, Chiang Ching-kuo, was groomed as his successor. Dissenters were jailed under martial law. The rugged central mountain range was free of rebel bands, and alliance with the United States protected the island from invasion. After 1954 the island enjoyed a spectacular economic boom, making its standard of living second only to Japan's among the nations of Asia.

Although, Taiwan, the largest of all islands which comprise the Republic of China, had many perquisites of independent nationhood, Chiang Kai-shek was not a man to surrender his youthful dreams. His diplomats tenaciously held on to the "China" seats in the United Nations, because Chiang saw Taiwan not as a nation but as a model province, where the teachings of Sun Yat-sen were being tested in preparation for the recapture of the mainland. But in 1972 representatives of Communist China replaced those of Nationalist China at the United Nations, the same year Taiwan's National Assembly elected Chiang Kai-Shek to a fifth six-year presidential term.

The year 1972 also proved to be pivotal for Chiang Kaishek and Taiwan because United States President Richard Nixon visited the People's Republic of China. President Nixon also agreed that Taiwan was a part of China. These diplomatic setbacks, mixed with a long bout of pneumonia, had many questioning Chiang Kai-shek's ability to lead the country. His son, Chiang Ching-kuo, who was appointed premier in May, assumed most of Chiang Kai-shek's duties. For the last three years of his life, Chiang Kai-shek was the ceremonial leader of the Republic of China, but his son was the practical leader. Chiang Kai-shek suffered a fatal heart attack and died on April 5, 1975.

Further Reading

Chiang's two major books are available in English translation. China's Destiny (1943) was published in both authorized and unauthorized translations in 1947. The latter, edited with notes and commentary by Philip Jaffe, also includes Chiang's essay "Chinese Economic Theory." In Soviet Russia in China: A Summing Up at Seventy (1957; rev. abr. ed. 1965) Chiang interprets his country's experience with communism from 1924 to 1949 and discusses problems of anti-Communist strategy. Also useful are Mayling Soong Chiang, Sian: A Coup d'Etat (1937), in which Chiang and his wife present their account of the Sian incident, and The Collected Wartime Messages of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, 1937-1945 (2 vols., 1946).

Biographies of Chiang Kai-Shek include Brian Crozier The Man Who Lost China: The First Full Biography of Chiang Kai-shek, Scribner, 1976; and Owen Lattimore, China Memoirs, Columbia University Press, 1991. His second wife also wrote of his life, Chen Chieh-ju, Chiang Kai-shek's Secret Past: The Memoir of His Second Wife, Chen Chieh-ju, Westview Press, 1993.

Among the books that treat Chiang in his historical setting are Paul M. A. Linebarger, The China of Chiang K'ai-shek: A Political Study (1941), which is sympathetic to Chiang, and Theodore H. White and Annalee Jacoby, Thunder Out of China (1946), which is not. Ch'ien Tuan-sheng, The Government and Politics of China (1950), provides a good description of political institutions under Chiang's leadership. Tang Tsou, America's Failure in China, 1941-1950 (1963), perceptively analyzes Chiang's relationship with his principal ally during the period of war and civil war.

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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.

For more information on Chiang Kai-shek, visit Britannica.com.

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).

A Chinese general and political leader of the twentieth century. He was president of China until he was overthrown in 1949 by Chinese communist forces under Mao Zedong, who established the People's Republic of China. Chiang fled to Taiwan, where he established the government of the Republic of China, or Nationalist China, recognized by the United States until 1979 as the only legitimate government of China.

Quotes:

"We write our own destiny; we become what we do."

"Of all the inventions that have helped to unify China perhaps the airplane is the most outstanding. Its ability to annihilate distance has been in direct proportion to its achievements in assisting to annihilate suspicion and misunderstanding among provincial officials far removed from one another or from the officials at the seat of government."

"There is no shadow of protection to be had by sheltering behind the slender stockades of visionary speculation, or by hiding behind the wagon-wheels of pacific theories."

"Every clique is a refuge for incompetence. It fosters corruption and disloyalty, it begets cowardice, and consequently is a burden upon and a drawback to the progress of the country. Its instincts and actions are those of the pack."

"We live in the present, we dream of the future and we learn eternal truths from the past."