Chiang Fang-chen (13 October 1882-4 October 1938), trained in military science in Japan and Germany, did much to revolutionize military training in republican China and was powerful as adviser to many military commanders, notably Wu P'ei-fu, Sun Ch'uan-fang, and Chiang Kai-shek. He also introduced to China knowledge of Western culture, constitutional ideas, and military practices.

A native of Haining, Chekiang, Chiang Fang-chen came from a family of scholars. His father, Chiang Hsueh-ken, was the son of the noted bibliophile Chiang Kuang-hsu (ECCP, I, 138-39) and a younger brother of Chiang Hsueh-p'u (1846-1890), a chü-jen of 1875 and at one time head of the famous Kuang-ya Academy in Canton. Originally well-to-do, the family suffered a decline in its fortunes during the Taiping Rebellion, and to support himself, Chiang Fang-chen's father took up the practice of medicine. As a boy Chiang Fang-chen received a thorough grounding in the Chinese classics and in traditional forms of literature. Aroused by China's defeat by Japan in 1895 i and by the reform propaganda of K'ang Yu-wei and Liang Ch'i-ch'ao (qq.v.), Chiang's interests shifted to political economy, military science, and other subjects relevant to the strengthening of China. In 1 898 he became a sheng-yuan, and after serving briefly as a family teacher, he gained the admiration of a local magistrate who in 1900 arranged for him to enroll in the wellknown Ch'iu-shih Academy at Hangchow. Although he quickly distinguished himself as a student, in his writings of that time he expressed views hostile to the imperial government; as a result he was dismissed from the academy. However, with financial support from the prefect of Hangchow, he was able to continue his studies in Japan.

Arriving in Japan in 1901, Chiang Fang-chen enrolled in the Seika Gakko, a preparatory school for Chinese students which offered courses in Japanese and in modern subjects. Upon graduation Chiang decided to take up a military career and gained admission to the Seijo Gakko, the Japanese army preparatory school. Through the influence of Liang Ch'i-ch'ao, who became his mentor, he was admitted in 1904 to the Shikan Gakko [military academy]. During this period there were two major political groups competing for followers among the Chinese students in Japan: the reform group, led by K'ang Yu-wei and Liang Ch'i-ch'ao; and the revolutionary party, which in 1905 organized the T'ung-meng-hui under the leadership of Sun Yat-sen. Although he was then a protege of Liang, Chiang's political inclinations drew him toward the revolutionaries, and he was reported to have submitted articles to the Min-pao [people's journal], the organ of the T'ungmeng-hui. He also joined the students of his native province in the Che-chiang t'unghsiang-hui [Chekiang provincial association] and managed the association's magazine, Che-chiang-ch , ao [Chekiang tide], which in its advocacy of Chinese nationalism tended to support the revolutionary party. Late in 1905 Chiang was graduated first in his class at the military academy and was awarded the coveted sword by the Japanese emperor. Embarrassed because a Chinese had won top academy honors, the Japanese administration of the academy henceforth placed Chinese students in a group separate from the Japanese cadets. Among the 92 Chinese students in Chiang's class (the third class) was his close friend Ts'ai O (q.v.), of Hunan province. Early in 1906 Chiang Fang-chen returned to China with the patriotic ambition of building up his country's military defenses. After remaining for a short while in Chekiang, he went to Manchuria, where the military governor, Chao Erh-sun (q.v.), placed him in charge of a military training bureau recently established to train army units in that region. However, because of the intense jealousy of such older officers as Chang Tso-lin (q.v.), Chao Erh-sun decided to send Chiang to Germany for further military training. There he served as company commander in training in the Seventh Army Corps under Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg. In 1910, after three years in Germany, Chiang returned to China by way of Siberia in the company of the Manchu Yin-ch'ang, the Chinese minister to Germany and a close friend of Yuan Shih-k'ai. In 191 1, at the request of his patron, Chao Erh-sun, then governor general of the three Manchurian provinces, Chiang was assigned to head the military training bureau in Mukden. There he again encountered the animosity of Chang Tso-lin and those other officers of the old school who fiercely resented the expanding new army divisions and their young, foreign-trained officers, among whom were several of Chiang's former schoolmates in Japan, including Chang Shao-tseng, Lan T'ienwei, and Wu Lu-chen. However, as he was surrounded by new army divisions in Mukden, Chiang's position was secure until the outbreak of the revolution in October 1911, when these divisions were transferred south, leaving Shenyang in the control of the "old" army units. To escape the wrath of Chang Tso-lin, Chiang fled Manchuria and retired to his native province of Chekiang.

In 1912 Chiang Fang-chen visited Peking. In December he was named by Yuan Shih-k'ai as director of the Military Academy at Paoting, an appointment Chiang viewed as an opportunity to further his ambition of strengthening China's military establishment. Although Paoting was then the foremost military school in the country, it had been operated during the past few years by inefficient and corrupt officers of the Peiyang Army. Upon assuming his duties, Chiang brought in a number of young, foreign-trained instructors and instituted a series of reforms. Soon, however, he encountered serious difficulties, for at Paoting, as at Mukden, he was confronted by the hostility of old-school army officers who resented the favored positions given to younger men. Many of these older officers were proteges of Tuan Ch'i-jui (q.v.), who, as minister of war under Yuan Shih-k'ai, was in a position to support them by ignoring Chiang's application to his ministry for academy funds. After months of frustration, Chiang, in June 1913, apologized before the assembled cadets for failing the academy and then, in a dramatic gesture, shot himself. The wound was not fatal, however, and on his recovery he was transferred to Peking as councillor first class in the President's headquarters. Although his tenure as head of the Paoting Academy was brief, he was able to establish lasting ties with many young cadets, such as Ch'en Ming-shu and T'ang Sheng-chih (qq.v.), who were later to become prominent military leaders.

In May 1914 Chiang Fang-chen was appointed one of the eight councillors to the Generalissimo's office, a body created by Yuan Shih-k'ai to strengthen his personal control over the country's military establishment. While in this office, Chiang and a collaborator prepared at Yuan's order a modern interpretation of the ancient classic on military tactics, Sun-tzu ping-fa [Sun-tzu on the art of war], which was published as the Sun-tzu hsin-shuo [a new interpretation of Sun-tzu]. Chiang's continuing interest in the problems of national defense brought him again into contact with his friend and former classmate, Ts'ai O, whom Yuan Shih-k'ai had transferred from Yunnan to Peking to serve in his regime. Both Chiang and Ts'ai were opposed to the movement to make Yuan monarch, and late in 1915 Ts'ai secretly left Peking to lead a revolt against Yuan from Yunnan province. Although Chiang was placed under close surveillance by Yuan, he managed to escape from Peking early in 1916. Traveling to Kwangtung, he served under Liang Ch'ich'ao in the military council set up at Chaoch'ing in opposition to Yuan Shih-k'ai. After Yuan's death in June 1916, Chiang left Kwangtung for Shanghai and proceeded upriver to Szechwan to join Ts'ai O, who had been appointed governor of the province. However, illness soon forced Ts'ai to resign his post. Chiang accompanied him to Shanghai and thence to Japan, where Ts'ai died of cancer in November 1916. After attending to the funeral arrangements for his old friend, Chiang returned to Peking, where he was appointed adviser to the President's office by Li Yuan-hung. While holding this sinecure position, Chiang was free to devote his time to study and writing. He wrote two popular volumes on military science and published the Chih-fen lun (1917), a translation of Duty, by the Scottish moralist Samuel Smiles.

With the Peking government firmly in the grip of the Peiyang militarists under Tuan Ch'i-jui, Chiang Fang-chen found little scope for realizing his early ideals of building up China's national defenses; and with his ambitions thus frustrated, his interest turned for the time being to the field of history and culture. At the end of 1918 he went with Carsun Chang, V. K. Ting (Ting Wen-chiang), Liang Ch'ich'ao, and other Chinese observers to attend the Paris Peace Conference. While in Europe, Liang and his companions took up the study of Western political and cultural affairs, in particular, the history of the European Renaissance. When the group returned to China in March 1920, Chiang engaged in a number of projects sponsored by Liang and his associates as part of a new culture movement. In addition to these activities, Chiang became editor of Kai-tsao [reconstruction], a scholarly magazine initiated in September 1920 by Liang Ch'i-ch'ao and his group. In accordance with the aim of these undertakings—to bring about a cultural renaissance in China—Chiang published his "History of the Renaissance in Europe" ("Ou-chou wen-i fu-hsing shih"), with a preface by Liang Ch'i-ch'ao. He also published his translation from the Japanese of Tomonaga Sanjuro's "Modern Conceptions of the 'Self " ("Chin-shih 'wo' chih tzu-chueh shih").

During the early 1920's, while involved in these cultural activities, Chiang Fang-chen retained a keen interest in the political and military affairs of the nation. In response to the civil conflict then raging between rival military factions, he published his "Plan for Disarmament" ("Ts'ai-ping chi-hua shu"), in which he urged a reduction in the nation's competing military forces. At that time, in opposition to Tuan Ch'i-jui's plans for unifying the country by force of arms, there had arisen a movement to make China a federation of autonomous provinces, and to this movement Chiang lent his active support. In 1920 he was invited to Hunan by the military governor, Chao Heng-t'i (q.v.), to supervise the drafting of a constitution for the province in accord with the principles of the federalist movement. Shortly afterward he was elected to the provincial assembly of Chekiang, and in 1921 he took part in drafting a constitution for his native province based upon similar principles.

As a graduate of the Shikan Gakko and a former head of the Paoting Academy, Chiang Fang-chen had a wide range of connections with military officers trained in these institutions, and his services as lecturer and adviser were sought by leaders of several military camps. Although he attempted to keep himself aloof from factional alignments, his longstanding antagonism to Chang Tso-lin inclined him toward Chang's rivals of the Chihli faction, then dominated by Wu P'ei-fu. Through his associations with Chao Heng-t'i and other Hunanese military leaders, Chiang met Wu P'ei-fu in 1923 at Yochow, and in September 1924, on the eve of the second Fengtien-Chihli war, he was consulted by Wu in Peking concerning the military situation in Hunan. After Wu's overthrow by the combined forces of Chang Tso-lin and Feng Yü-hsiang (q.v.), Chiang met secretly with the defeated leader and agreed to help him, as chief of staff, in regrouping the scattered Chihli forces for a new campaign against the Chang-Feng coalition. Proceeding to Shanghai, Chiang conferred with Sun Ch'uan-fang (q.v.), Wu's former subordinate, who then was expanding his power in Chekiang and neighboring provinces. During 1 925, Chiang was engaged in planning an alliance between Sun Ch'uan-fang and Wu P'ei-fu against Chang Tso-lin and in establishing contact with the Kuomintang government in Canton through one of his former students, Liu Wen-tao (q.v.). Through a former student in Hunan, T'ang Sheng-chih, Chiang hoped to bring most of the leaders of south China, including the Canton regime, into the coalition against Chang Tso-lin. However, Chiang's plans came to naught because Wu P'ei-fu refused to recognize T'ang Sheng-chih as governor of Hunan and decided, late in 1925, to align himself with Chang Tso-lin against Feng Yü-hsiang. These actions prompted Chiang to resign as Wu's chief of staff early in 1926. On returning to Shanghai from Hankow, Chiang was asked by Sun Ch'uan-fang to serve in a number of posts — as Sun's chief of staff, as governor of Chekiang, and as mayor of Shanghai. Chiang declined all of these positions, but agreed to serve in an informal capacity as Sun's adviser. During the summer of 1926, after the launching of the Kuomintang's Northern Expedition from Canton, Chiang was one of the intermediaries secretly working for an alliance between Sun Ch'uan-fang and the Kuomintang. However, when the Northern Expedition began to attack Sun's armies in Kiangsi, and when Sun joined forces with Chang Tso-lin against the Kuomintang, Chiang made his final break with the Peiyang faction.

Although most of Chiang's associations had been with the northern militarists, he was held in high regard by many of the military leaders in Canton, including Chiang Kai-shek, the commander in chief of the Kuomintang forces. At the beginning of the Northern Expedition, the Kuomintang leaders had attempted unsuccessfully to obtain Chiang's services as chief of staff. Early in 1927, as the Kuomintang forces were advancing on Shanghai and Nanking, Chiang Kai-shek called Chiang Fang-chen to a series of private conferences at which they discussed the Kuomintang government's relations with the foreign powers, particularly Japan. Following these talks it was decided that the Kuomintang would seek to ease the tensions between China and Japan that had arisen in the course of the Northern Expedition, and Chiang Fang-chen was sent to Japan to explain to Japanese political leaders the policies and aims of the new National Government. Although he made some progress in his mission, he was reluctant to become involved too deeply in the affairs of the Kuomintang. He soon returned to China, leaving his work in Japan to be carried on by such party stalwarts as Tai Chi-t'ao (q.v.).

In its first years, the Nanking government under Chiang Kai-shek was beset with revolts; several powerful military leaders were unwilling to accept Chiang's domination of the regime. During this period Chiang Fang-chen in Shanghai sought to keep on good terms with Nanking, but because of his close connections with his former student T'ang Sheng-chih, he soon came under suspicion. After his defeat by Nanking in 1927, T'ang had taken refuge in Japan, but early in 1929, through the mediation of Chiang Fang-chen and his associates, T'ang had been reinstated by Chiang Kai-shek, who hoped to use him in his own campaign against the dissident Kwangsi militarists. However, T'ang's defection to the Yen Hsi-shan-Feng Yu-hsiang coalition in December 1929 left Chiang Fang-chen, as T'ang's guarantor, in an awkward position. Early in 1930 he was taken into custody by the National Government authorities. However, through the intercession of several powerful friends among the military, including Ch'en Ming-shu, he was released after about a year of imprisonment in Nanking. He then returned to his home in Shanghai. In January 1932 Chiang was residing in Shanghai when the Japanese launched an attack upon the city. During the period of hostilities he was often consulted by Ch'en Ming-shu and other officers of the Nineteenth Route Army concerning the tactics to be followed by the Chinese forces defending the city. Chiang then turned once more to writing, and in a number of books and articles he set forth his ideas on such questions as national defense, foreign affairs, and the relation of militarism to politics. During the next few years he was in frequent contact with K. P. Ch'en, Mu Hsiangyueh, Hsu Hsin-liu, and other prominent figures in the Shanghai business world, and in 1934 he became one of the executive directors of the reorganized Agricultural and Commercial Bank (Nung-shang yin-hang) In 1935 Chiang Fang-chen returned to government service through the invitation of Chiang Kai-shek, who appointed him a senior adviser in the government's Military Council. That same year, in a private capacity, he made another visit to Japan to appraise the political and military situation there. Observing that a younger, more radical, group of military leaders had assumed control of the Japanese government, he returned to China convinced that war between the two countries was inevitable. In preparation for the coming conflict, he privately drew up a plan of national strategy in which Hunan figured as the center of China's defense. He gave this document to his friend V. K. Ting, then secretary general of Academia Sinica, who proceeded with plans to develop the resources of that province as quickly as possible before the outbreak of war.

In the winter of 1935 Chiang was sent on a mission to study the processes of national mobilization in Italy, Germany, and other countries of Europe. Chiang was deeply impressed by the importance which European 16] military planners attached to air power. In reports sent back to the National Government, and, subsequently, in articles published in the Tcr Kung Pao and other newspapers, he advocated having three separate military services army, navy, and air force—united under a supreme organ of national defense. In view of the urgency with which he believed China had to mobilize her defenses, he urged the nation's leaders to give top priority to building up an air force and accelerating the training of air force personnel.

After several months in Europe, Chiang returned to China by way of the United States, arriving in Shanghai on 1 December 1936. One week later he was summoned to Sian by Chiang Kai-shek, to whom he presented a report of his trip abroad. He was there at the time of the Sian Incident, and took part as a non-partisan intermediary in the negotiations with Chang Hsueh-liang (q.v.) which preceded the release of Chiang Kai-shek. He gained the confidence of Chiang Kai-shek, and he was frequently consulted by him on questions of national defense. While in Europe he had observed the close coordination of national economies with defense planning, and during the first part of 1937 he began to set down his ideas on this and related themes in a work entitled Kuo-fang lun [on national defense]. The first volume, dealing with the military aspects, was published by the Lushan Training Corps. Chiang spent the summer of the year with the training corps as a guest lecturer. He had just begun the second volume, dealing with the economic aspects, when the outbreak of the war with Japan interrupted his labors.

Following the Marco Polo Bridge Incident in July 1937, Chiang abandoned his home in Shanghai and went to Nanking, where he was named to the National Defense Council. In September he was dispatched to Italy and Germany as Chiang Kai-shek's personal representative, presumably to explore the possibilities of mediation by these governments in the Sino- Japanese dispute. However, conferences in Rome and Berlin with Ciano and Ribbentrop produced no concrete results, and Chiang, in a report to Chiang Kai-shek, advised that China seek the aid of Britain, France, and the United States. After spending some months in Paris and London, Chiang was summoned home to participate in the People's Political Council. After arriving in Hankow in May 1938, Chiang devoted much of his time to writing and lecturing in the service of the campaign of resistance to Japan. At the same time, he was often consulted by Chiang Kai-shek, who appointed him acting president of the Army Staff College, then located at T'aoyuan in northern Hunan. This was a special honor inasmuch as Chiang Kai-shek himself was at that time president of all military schools, each of which was ordinarily administered by a dean. When the National Government abandoned Hankow for Chungking later in the year, the Army Staff College was transferred to Tsunyi, in Kweichow province. During the exertions of the transfer, Chiang's health, which had never been robust, failed rapidly. In November 1938, on his way from Liuchow, Kwangsi, to Kweiyang, Kweichow, he suffered a heart attack and died. Chiang Fang-chen was survived by his second wife and four daughters. He had no sons. His first marriage, contracted by his parents, had been to a girl of his native locality. His second wife and almost constant companion was a Japanese woman, nee Sato, to whom Chiang gave the Chinese name Tso-mei. Trained as an obstetrical nurse at Tokyo Imperial University, she had been sent to Peking as a member of the Japanese Legation staff. In 1913, through a special arrangement made by Yuan Shih-k'ai, she had attended Chiang at Paoting during his convalescence from his attempted suicide. Following his recovery, Chiang courted and married her.