Ch'en Chiung-ming 陳炯明 Ch'en Chiung-ming (13 January 1878 - 22 September 1933) was an anti-Manchu revolutionary who became an early republican governor of Kwangtung. After Yuan Shih-k'ai deposed him in 1913, he participated in the anti-Yuan campaigns and then headed the forces of Sun Yatsen's constitution protection movement. In October 1920 he occupied Canton, and Sun made him governor of Kwangtung and commander in chief of the Kwangtung Army. He withdrew support from Sun, who relieved him of his posts in 1922. Ch'en occupied Canton, was driven out in 1923, and was finally defeated in 1925 by the first and second eastern expeditions. A native of Haifeng, a coastal hsien in eastern Kwangtung, Ch'en Chiung-ming came from an old gentry family. His father, who died when Ch'en was only three, was a sheng-yuan of 1878, and Ch'en, after receiving an education of the traditional type at a family school, became a sheng-yuan in 1898 at the age of 20. As a youth, Ch'en had been influenced by the ideas generated by the reform movement led by K'ang Yu-wei and Liang Ch'i-ch'ao (qq.v.), and after the Boxer Uprising of 1900, he and a number of schoolmates formed a group to study modern political and military science. After the government reorganization of the educational system in 1903, Ch'en entered the newly established short-term normal school in Haifeng and in 1906, at the age of 28, enrolled in the Kwangtung Fa-cheng hsueh-t'ang [college of law and government] in Canton, from which he was graduated in 1908.

In these years Ch'en Chiung-ming had developed a growing interest in national affairs, and by early 1908 he had organized a secret revolutionary group in Haifeng. In the same period he began to take an active part in the affairs of his native district. In April 1907 he led a successful campaign to impeach the prefect of Waichow (Hui-chou) for improper conduct in office. Shortly afterward he and his comrades in Haifeng formed a committee to sponsor local self-government and the suppression of opium smoking. Early in 1909 they also began to publish, under Ch'en's editorship, the Haifeng Tzu-chih-pao [self-government gazette], in which they stressed the need for social and political reforms in the area.

In 1909 the imperial government, preparing for the promulgation of a constitution, ordered the creation of tzu-i-chu [advisory councils] in each of the provinces. Ch'en Chiung-ming was elected a member of the advisory council of Kwangtung province. When the council met in September, Ch'en campaigned vigorously in the council for the eradication of several abuses in the provincial administration and particularly for the suppression of gambling, which he held to be the major vice of the local populace. At the end of 1909 he was chosen one of the three delegates from Kwangtung to a Shanghai conference of representatives from provincial advisory councils for the purpose of urging the imperial government to accelerate its constitutional government program. While in Shanghai, Ch'en made contact with several revolutionary leaders and formally joined the T'ung-meng-hui. Early in 1910 Ch'en returned to Canton, and, while continuing his efforts in the advisory council to suppress opium smoking and gambling in the province, he began to participate actively in the revolutionary movement. In March 1911, with the help of Tsou Lu and Chu Chih-hsin (qq.v.), he set up a newspaper, the K'o-pao, to promote his anti-gambling campaign as well as to spread revolutionary propaganda among the soldiers of Kwangtung. At the same time he worked with the T'ung-meng-hui leaders in preparing for a large-scale military uprising in Canton, scheduled for April 27 and led by Huang Hsing (q.v.). After taking part in that abortive venture, later to be known as the Huang-hua-kang revolt, he escaped to Hong Kong, where Huang Hsing and Hu Han-min (q.v.) had also taken refuge. One outcome of the uprising was a controversial report on the affair, dictated by the wounded Huang Hsing and written down by Hu Han-min. In the original report, Huang criticized several of the leading participants, including Ch'en Chiungming and Hu Han-min's cousin, Hu I-sheng, for bungling the military operations. However, in transmitting the report, Hu Han-min was said _to have made alterations which absolved his cousin and placed the onus on Ch'en Chiungming—an act which aroused Ch'en's resentment against Hu and which may have been a factor in Ch'en's subsequent estrangement from the revolutionary party.

Disheartened by their repeated failures at armed revolt, the revolutionaries turned in desperation to a strategy of assassination. During the summer of 1911, Ch'en, with the anarchist Liu Ssu-fu (q.v.) and others in Hong Kong, planned the assassination of several high Manchu officials in Peking and Canton. Before their plans matured, however, the revolt of 10 October 1911 broke out in Wuchang. Hastening back to his native district, Ch'en raised forces and advanced upon Waichow. After the surrender of the imperial troops and the occupation of the city by his forces early in November, Ch'en established himself at the head of a revolutionary army which was composed of units from several districts of the East River region. His success at Waichow directly influenced the military situation throughout the province. Canton quickly fell to the revolutionaries, who declared Kwangtung independent of the empire and chose Hu Han-min tutuh [military governor] of the province. On 18 November 1911, Ch'en was chosen deputy governor, and at the end of the month he led his men into Canton. In December, reportedly because of pressures from Ch'en and his followers, Hu Han-min resigned his post and left to join Sun Yat-sen at Nanking. Ch'en thereupon secured his own election by the provisional provincial assembly as acting governor of Kwangtung. Shortly afterward he was elected commander in chief of a local expeditionary force. As the chief political and military officer in the provincial government, Ch'en Chiung-ming sought to realize his ambition to suppress gambling and opium smoking. He also initiated a plan to rebuild Canton by ordering the demolition of the walls surrounding the old city. However, his tenure in office lasted only until the spring of 1912, when Sun Yat-sen, having turned the provisional presidency over to Yuan Shih-k'ai, left Nanking for Canton in the company of Hu Han-min. Uncertain of his reception by the revolutionary leaders, Ch'en withdrew to Hong Kong, leaving the governorship of the province to its previous incumbent. On receiving assurances that Hu Han-min bore him no ill will, Ch'en returned to Canton and accepted the new government's invitation to head the Kwangtung Sui-ching-ch'u [pacification bureau], which was in charge of suppressing banditry in the province. In the winter of 1912 Ch'en received an appointment from the president, Yuan Shih-k'ai, as hu-chun-shih [military commissioner] of Kwangtung, with Lung Chikuang (q.v.), formerly commander in chief of the imperial forces in Kwangsi province, as his deputy.

In this position Ch'en sought to augment his influence in Kwangtung affairs, frequently at the expense of Hu Han-min. Indeed, according to some sources, Ch'en's appointment as military commissioner had been made by Yuan with the express purpose of encouraging dissension between Ch'en and Hu—a part of Yuan's over-all strategy for undermining the strength of the Kuomintang. In March 1913, the assassination of Sung Chiao-jen (q.v.) marked the beginning of an open contest for power between Yuan and the Kuomintang, culminating in the so-called second revolution of the summer of 1913. On 14 June, Yuan appointed Ch'en Chiung-ming to succeed Hu Han-min as governor of Kwangtung. But, as Yuan began to move his troops southward to attack the Kuomintang in Anhwei and Kiangsi, Ch'en, after some hesitation, decided to throw in his lot with the Kuomintang and other anti-Yuan forces in south China ; he declared Kwangtung's independence of the Peking government on 18 July 1913. However, on Yuan's orders, Lung Chi-kuang advanced upon Canton with the military forces under his command, ousted Ch'en, and replaced him as governor of the province. After fleeing Canton on 4 August for Hong Kong, Ch'en soon departed with a few of his comrades for Singapore.

Except for a journey to Paris in 1914, Ch'en Chiung-ming remained in Malaya for more than two years. In Japan during this period, Sun Yat-sen reorganized the revolutionary party into the Chung-hua ko-ming-tang and demanded that all members of the new organization render him a written pledge of loyalty and obedience. Ch'en was among several older members of the party who refused to comply with Sun's demand, and who, ignoring the reorganization, continued to regard themselves as members of the Kuomintang. In the summer of 1915, when Yuan Shih-k'ai's supporters inaugurated the movement to make him monarch, Ch'en and a number of other dissident Kuomintang leaders then in Singapore, including Li Lieh-chun and Hsiung K'o-wu (q.v.), formed the Shui-li ts'u-ch'eng she [society for the promotion of water conservation], the secret purpose of which was to raise funds among the overseas Chinese to finance an anti-Yuan campaign in China.

At the end of 1915, the revolt in Yunnan led by Ts'ai O (q.v.) signalled the outbreak of a general rebellion against Yuan Shih-k'ai. After hurrying to Hong Kong, Ch'en Chiung-ming went secretly to the East River region and raised a military force to fight against Lung Chi-kuang, who had remained Yuan's chief military supporter in Kwangtung. In the spring of 1916 Ch'en's forces succeeded in occupying Poklo (Polo) on the East River, but failed in several attempts to capture Waichow. In June 1916 the anti-Yuan campaign was brought to an end by the death of Yuan and by orders from his successor in the presidency, Li Yuan-hung (q.v.), to suspend military operations. In Kwangtung, however, hostilities continued against Lung Chi-kuang until his defeat in October, at which time Ch'en turned the command of his troops over to the new governor, Chu Ch'ing-lan, and departed for Peking.

In the republican capital, Ch'en paid his respects to Li Yuan-hung. During the first part of 1917, Ch'en traveled extensively in north China, touring Shansi province and southern Manchuria. In the summer of that year, as he was on his way back to the south, the military governors of the Peiyang clique under the leadership of Tuan Ch'i-jui (q.v.) staged a revolt which brought about the dissolution of the National Assembly and the resignation of Li Yuan-hung, the president. Putting aside his differences with Sun Yat-sen, Ch'en joined the revolutionary leader in Shanghai and agreed to support a so-called constitution protection movement aimed at forcing Tuan Ch'i-jui's new regime in Peking to restore the provisional constitution of 1912 and the National Assembly. In July, Ch'en set sail for Canton with Sun Yat-sen and Admiral Ch'eng Pi-kuang on one of the latter's gunboats. In Canton Sun became commander in chief of a military government set up in opposition to Tuan's regime in Peking. At that time, however, the actual military power in Kwangtung was in the hands of the Kwangsi militarists—headed by Lu Jung-t'ing (q.v.), who had played a major part in the anti-Yuan campaign and in ousting Lung Chi-kuang from Canton in 1916. Although Lu Jung-t'ing had at first agreed to support the so-called constitution protection movement, after he had gained his own military objectives in Hunan, he showed little enthusiasm for continuing hostilities against the Peiyang militarists. Determined to carry on the struggle, Sun Yat-sen and his adherents succeeded in persuading the sympathetic civil governor, Chu Ch'ing-lan, to place the 20 battalions of his garrison troops under the command of Ch'en Chiung-ming. After repeated efforts by the Kwangsi militarists to obstruct the appointment, Ch'en finally took command of these troops. In January 1918, he set out at the head of these forces, reorganized as the Yuan- Min Yueh-chun [Kwangtung army to assist Fukien] to carry the so-called constitution protection campaign into the province of Fukien. Although it had been Sun's intention to extend the war into Fukien, Ch'en Chiung-ming apparently preferred to employ his forces in the establishment of a military base in eastern Kwangtung: on reaching Swatow late in January, he spent several months strengthening his position in that region. Meanwhile, after the reorganization of the military government in Canton under the auspices of the Kwangsi military clique, Sun decided to withdraw from active participation in the regime and left Canton for Shanghai. Stopping at Swatow late in May, he prodded the reluctant Ch'en to resume the offensive. In the following month the Kwangtung Army advanced into Fukien and by the end of August 1918 had occupied Changchow, where Ch'en set up his new military headquarters.

In the two years that he remained in Changchow, Ch'en Chiung-ming embarked upon a program of military consolidation and economic development in the regions under his control in southern Fukien and eastern Kwangtung. He was active as well in the field of education. He set up a number of new schools and arranged for several young students from the area, including the future Communist leader P'eng P'ai (q.v.) to go abroad and continue their studies at schools in Japan, Europe, and America. Ch'en's activities in this and other fields impressed a number of the younger generation of Chinese intellectuals who, stirred to a new sense of national feeling by the May Fourth Movement, "began to look upon Ch'en (and the Kwangtung Army) as one of the few progressive forces in China at that time. Ch'en also began to evince an interest in the new political ideas that were being introduced into China in the wake of the Bolshevik revolution in Russia. In the spring of 1919 he started a newspaper in Changchow, the Min-sheng-pao [voice of the people] , in which he expressed agreement with the aims of socialism. One issue of the paper published a message of congratulation to the Soviet Union on the anniversary of the October Revolution. These expressions of sympathetic interest attracted the attention of Russian agents in China, and in April 1920 a Soviet representative secretly visited Changchow with offers of financial assistance. In declining Soviet help, Ch'en addressed a letter to Lenin in which he expressed the view that, because conditions in China were not the same as in Russia, socialism in the two countries would of necessity follow different courses of development.

At Changchow, Ch'en was visited frequently by such members of the revolutionary party as Chu Chih-hsin, Liao Chung-k'ai, and Chiang Kai-shek, through whom he was kept in contact with Sun Yat-sen in Shanghai. After the failure of the so-called constitution protection movement and the deterioration of the military government in Canton, Sun had decided upon another course of action: to set up a newnatiohal government in Canton and to use Kwangtung as a military base for a campaign to unify the country. Early in 1920 he dispatched emissaries to Changchow. Through them, he urged Ch'en to return with the army to Kwangtung and wrest control of the province from the Kwangsi militarists. However, it was not until August that Ch'en, was persuaded to withdraw the army from Changchow and lead it back into Kwangtung. After a campaign of more than two months, the Kwangtung Army, with the help of local militia, defeated the Kwangsi armies and occupied Canton on 26 October 1920. On receiving news of the victory, Sun Yat-sen immediately designated Ch'en governor of Kwangtung and prepared for his own return to Canton.

Invested once again with the powers of provincial governor, Ch'en Chiung-ming dedicated himself to the economic and cultural rehabilitation of his native Kwangtung. Among his first steps were to establish Canton as a municipality, to organize a municipal council, and to appoint as its chairman Sun Fo (q.v.), the Americaneducated son of Sun Yat-sen. Other measures aimed at reform and reconstruction included the revival of his prohibition against gambling and opium smoking, popular elections of district
magistrates, the promotion of local self-government, and the planning of a provincial network of highways. Ch'en was also interested in modernizing the educational system of the province, and for this purpose he created a Kwangtung education committee. To gain this end he appointed as chairman Ch'en Tu-hsiu (q.v.), one of the intellectual leaders of the May Fourth Movement who but a short time previously had founded a Chinese Communist organization in Shanghai. Himself a professed admirer of socialist ideas at that time, Ch'en Chiung-ming gave Ch'en Tu-hsiu free rein in the field of education despite reports that the latter was using his position to establish the Communist movement in Canton. Ch'en Chiung-ming appointed his protege, P'eng P'ai, to superintend educational affairs in Haifeng and encouraged P'eng's early efforts at land reform and peasant organization in that district.

While Ch'en was thus engaged in administering provincial affairs, Sun Yat-sen had returned to Canton. Early in May 1921, on assuming office as president extraordinary, Sun declared his intention to unify all of China under the new regime. A few weeks later, he announced his plans for a northern expedition and ordered Ch'en Chiung-ming, as commander in chief of the Kwangtung Army, to lead the campaign against the militarists in Kwangsi province headed by Lu Jung-t'ing. Ch'en's forces advanced rapidly through western Kwangtung, captured Wuchow on the Kwangtung border on 26 June 1921, and thereafter won a succession ofvictories in Kwangsi. By the end of September Lu Jung-t'ing's armies had been completely scattered, and the entire province had been brought under the control of the Canton government. Encouraged by these military successes, Sun decided to carry the campaign northward into Hunan and Hupeh, then dominated by the powerful Chihli military clique under Wu P'ei-fu (q.v.), and to this end he allied himself with Wu's chief rivals in the north, Chang Tso-lin (q.v.) and Tuan Ch'i-jui. It was at this point, however, that Ch'en Chiung-ming's personal ambitions came into conflict with Sun's revolutionary aims. For several years a member of the Kuomintang and, in fact, chairman of the party's Kwangtung branch, Ch'en had become governor of Kwangtung in 1920 largely because of his connection with the revolutionary party. Nevertheless, he had never been a close adherent of Sun, nor had he consented to take the written pledge of loyalty and obedience that Sun had demanded from his followers. Moreover, Ch'en long had aspired to become the predominant figure in Kwangtung affairs, and after attaining the governorship he had grown increasingly reluctant to share his authority in the province with Sun and the new revolutionary government in Canton. In particular, he objected to Sun's plans for using Kwangtung as a base to support a military campaign to unify the rest of the country, and on this point he had considerable support from the war-weary people of the province. Although as governor he had demonstrated progressive inclinations, Ch'en had no desire to involve himself in a conflict with the powerful northern militarists, his chief concern being the development of his native province under his own leadership. In opposition to Sun's aim of creating a strong, centralized national government, Ch'en had come to favor a system then being advocated by Chao Heng-t'i (q.v.) of Hunan and other military leaders by which China would become a decentralized federation of provinces, each with an autonomous administration. Accordingly, when informed of Sun's plans to carry the war into Hunan, Ch'en indicated his unwillingness to take part in the campaign. Sun, however, was determined to continue the war at all costs, and he went to Kwangsi to discuss the matter with Ch'en. Finding that Ch'en was not to be won over, he proposed a practical compromise: he would supervise the Hunan campaign from Kwangsi, and Ch'en would return to Canton, where he would assume responsibility for raising funds to supply the northern expedition, but otherwise would have a free hand in directing the development of the province. Early in November, Ch'en returned to Canton, apparently in agreement with this proposal; but it soon became evident that in order to consolidate his control over the province of Kwangtung he was preparing to sever his ties with the Kuomintang and join the ranks of the militarists of the Chihli clique. During the winter of 1921-22 he withheld the promised supplies from Sun's expeditionary force, and he secretly arranged with Chao Heng-t'i, the governor of Hunan, and with Wu P'ei-fu to obstruct the progress of the northern expedition in Hunan. Moreover, in March 1922 Teng K'eng (q.v.), the Kwangtung Army chief of staff and one of Sun's staunchest supporters, was assassinated in Canton; and despite vigorous denials on his part, Ch'en was believed to have been responsible for the act.

By that time Sun Yat-sen was thoroughly convinced that Ch'en could be relied upon no longer, and after withdrawing the expeditionary forces from Hunan, he advanced quickly toward Canton. On arriving at Wuchow in mid-April, he ordered Ch'en to appear at his headquarters. While unwilling to heed the summons, Ch'en was equally unprepared to defy Sun openly at that time, since most of his own troops were still in Kwangsi. Thus, instead of proceeding to Wuchow, he submitted his resignation and left Canton for his base at Waichow. Angered by Ch'en's insubordination, Sun relieved him of his posts as governor of Kwangtung and as commander in chief of the Kwangtung Army. Confident that he would encounter no further trouble from Ch'en, he issued orders to resume the northern expedition on 4 May 1922. No sooner had Sun moved with his forces to Shaokuan in northern Kwangtung than Ch'en's troops, led by his subordinate Yeh Chü (b. 1882; T. Jo-ch'ing), returned from Kwangsi and occupied Canton. Disregarding orders from Sun to join the northern expedition in Kiangsi, Yeh demanded that Ch'en be restored to his former positions. Sun rejected this demand, but he sought to placate Ch'en by naming him to the newly created post of superintendent of military affairs for Kwangtung and Kwangsi. When Ch'en refused this appointment, Sun hurriedly returned from his headquarters at Shaokuan in an effort to resolve the mounting tension in Canton (1 June). However, his presence in the city served only to embolden Ch'en and his supporters, who believed that the time had come for an open break with the revolutionary leader. Acting in conjunction with the victorious Chihli militarists in the north, a group of Ch'en's officers, including Yeh Chti and Hung Chao-lin (1872-1925; T. Hsiang-ch'en), on 16 June demanded the resignations of both Sun Yat-sen and Hsu Shih-ch'ang (q.v.), presidents of the rival governments in Canton and Peking, as a step toward unifying the country under the former president, Li Yuan-hung. Later the same day Yeh Chü's troops gathered in the northern part of the city in preparation for an attack upon the presidential headquarters. Warned of the impending coup, Sun escaped to a gunboat in the Pearl River, from which he dispatched orders to the expeditionary armies in Kiangsi to turn back for an attack upon Canton. However, in the following months these troops were repulsed and driven off by Ch'en's forces. On 15 August, after Sun had departed for Shanghai, Ch'en returned from Waichow to Canton and resumed his post as commander in chief of the Kwangtung Army.

Ch'en Chiung-ming's triumph was to be shortlived, however. Units of the defeated northern expeditionary forces under Hsu Ch'ung-chih (q.v.) made their way along the Kwangtung border to Foochow where, on instructions from Sun in Shanghai, they prepared for a renewed attack upon Kwangtung from the east. Meanwhile, Sun had also secured the support of a Yunnanese army under Yang Hsi-min and a new Kwangsi army under Liu Chen-huan. At the end of 1922, these forces, joined by rebellious units of Ch'en's Kwangtung Army, converged upon Canton. Unable to hold the city against this combined assault, Ch'en announced his retirement from public office and on 15 January 1923, after returning briefly to his native Haifeng, proceeded to Hong Kong. In the following month, Sun returned to Canton, reestablished the military government of 1917, and took the title of generalissimo. Although driven from Canton, Ch'en Chiungming remained a figure of considerable military power in Kwangtung for more than two years. Early in 1923 his chief lieutenant, Yeh Chü, had retreated to Waichow with his forces basically intact; in May, troops under Hung Chao-lin and other officers regained control of Swatow and the adjacent areas in eastern Kwangtung. Returning from Hong Kong to Waichow, Ch'en regrouped these forces and in November directed an assault upon Canton which was beaten back by Sun's Yunnan and Kwangsi allies only after it had penetrated into the outskirts of the city. Throughout the next year Ch'en's armies in the East River region continued to pose a serious threat to Sun's newly reorganized Kuomintang regime in Canton, and in January 1925, after Sun had left on his final journey to Peking, Ch'en began another attack upon Canton. In response, the Kuomintang regime organized an eastern expedition under the command of Hsu Ch'ung-chih. In the following month, the expedition's right flank army, comprised of cadets of the new Whampoa Military Academy and led by its president, Chiang Kai-shek, defeated Ch'en's forces in a series of engagements and by the end of March had occupied Haifeng, Swatow, and most of eastern Kwangtung.

His armies routed, Ch'en departed for Shanghai, but in the summer of 1925, when dissensions broke out within the Kuomintang leadership at Canton, units of his scattered forces were able to regain control of most of the areas that had fallen to the eastern expedition. In September Ch'en returned to Hong Kong for another attempt to dislodge the Kuomintang from Canton, with the help of gunboats provided by Wu P'ei-fu, and in concert with rebellious Kuomintang troops under Hsiung K'o-wu (q.v.). However, early in October the Canton government organized a second eastern expedition, which was led by Chiang Kai-shek. On 15 October 1925 Ch'en's stronghold at Waichow fell to Chiang's troops, and by early November the eastern expedition had swept away the last remnants of Ch'en's forces in the province.

After losing his military power, Ch'en Chiung-ming made his home in Hong Kong, where he sought to continue his feud with the Kuomintang by political means. He was elected chairman of the Chung-kuo Chih-kung-tang, a society of overseas Chinese in America that had its origins in the secret Hung-men society of earlier years. He organized a Chih-kung Club in February 1926, and set up branches in Macao, Kwang-chou-wan, Amoy, and several centers in Malaya. The following year he issued a public statement to the nation outlining his suggestions for the unification of China, published in 1928 with a preface by Chang Ping-lin as Chung-kuo t'ung-i cKu-i [proposal for the unification of China], which included proposals for the abolition of the military regime in the north and of the party regime in the south. It also proposed a unification of the country based on the principle of a federal government. However, his views attracted little attention, for within a month of their publication Peking fell to the National Revolutionary Army, and the country was unified, in name at least, under the Kuomintang. In the winter of 1928, and again in the winter of 1931, Ch'en Chiung-ming visited north China to attend conferences with Tuan Ch'i-jui and other defeated militarists of the Peiyang clique who, in opposition to the Kuomintang, organized a kung-ho ta-t'ung-meng [league for the republic]. In October 1931 Ch'en organized a central headquarters in Hong Kong for the Chung-kuo Chih-kung-tang and drew up a platform which in vague and general terms set forth the party's socialist goals. Because he was no longer in control of a territorial military base, Ch'en was able to exert little influence upon the course of events in China, and his attempts after 1925 to organize political opposition to the Kuomintang attracted a few of his personal followers and a small number of sympathizers.

In August 1933, Ch'en was hospitalized with an inflammation of the intestine, and on 22 September, he died at the age of 55. In April 1935, his remains were taken from Hong Kong and were interred at Waichow, which had for many years been his chief military base in Kwangtung.

Ch'en was married in 1899 to a local girl of the Huang family. He had eight children, the three youngest of whom were sons, Ting-hsia (1917-), Ting-hung (1923-), and Ting-ping (1925-). In the modern history of China, Ch'en Chiung-ming is remembered chiefly for his revolt against Sun Yat-sen in 1922 and for his subsequent opposition to the Kuomintang. For these actions he has never been forgiven by Kuomintang historians, who in depicting him as a deserter of the revolutionary cause, have tended to slight his earlier contributions to the success of their party and the significance of his role as military leader and governor of Kwangtung. Before his defection, Ch'en Chiungming's achievements as head of the Kwangtung Army were a major factor in enabling the Kuomintang to regain Kwangtung as a revolutionary military base. Moreover, as governor in 1921-22, Ch'en introduced a number of administrative and educational reforms and, through his patronage of such politically progressive intellectuals as Ch'en Tu-hsiu and P'eng P'ai, provided an environment favorable to the growth of the Chinese Communist movement in the province.