Chiang Kai-shek (31 October 1887-), head of state of the National Government in China and in Taiwan and party leader of the Kuomintang.

A native of the Fenghua district, Ningpo prefecture, of Chekiang, Chiang Kai-shek was born in Ch'ik'ou, a town to the west of the Wuling mountain range. The family had been farmers for generations until Chiang's paternal grandfather, Chiang Ssu-ch'ien (T. Yu-piao), who died in 1894 at the age of 81 sui, became a salt merchant and began to improve the family's financial and social position. Chiang Kai-shek's father, Chiang Ch'ao-ts'ung (T. Su-an), also was a salt merchant. He died in 1896 at the age of 54 sui, leaving his family in financial straits. It was only through perseverance and personal sacrifice that Chiang Kai-shek's mother (1863-1921), the third wife of Chiang Ch'ao-ts'ung, was able to support and guide her children. Chiang Kai-shek was a devoted son, both as a child and as a man. He had one brother, Jui-ch'ing ; two sisters, Jui-lien and Jui-chun; a half-brother, Hsi-hou, and a half-sister, Jui-ch'un.

In 1905 Chiang went to Ningpo to study under Ku Ch'ing-lien at the Chien-chiu School. There he studied Chinese philosophy and became acquainted with the ancient Chinese military text Sun-tzu ping-fa [on the art of war]. The idea of becoming a military man already appealed to him. In the autumn of 1906, at the age of 20 sui, Chiang transferred to the Lungchin Middle School at Fenghua. He remained there for only three months, for he had made up his mind to study military science abroad. Like many other patriotic youths of that period, Chiang was distressed by the inability of the Ch'ing court to protect China's interests in the face of growing foreign penetration of the country. The defeat of Russia by Japan in 1904-5 in a war that was fought largely in Chinese territory in Manchuria posed new threats and made the position of the Chinese empire even more precarious. To convince his mother of his determination to go to Japan, Chiang cut off his queue and sent it to her. At that time, the financial situation of the Chiang family was threatened by the actions of local bureaucrats in Chekiang, but Chiang's mother reluctantly gave him her blessing and what funds she could spare.

Chiang arrived in Tokyo in 1906, only to discover that because he was not a governmentsponsored student he could not enter military training programs in Japan. He soon returned to China, and in 1907 he was admitted to the Lu-chün su-ch'eng hsueh-hsiao, a military school at Paoting, Chihli (Hopei), which was under the supervision of the Board of Military Affairs. Because he had cut off his queue, Chiang Kai-shek was obliged to behave with circumspection, for the Ch'ing authorities were suspicious of potential radicalism among the cadets. Except for one altercation with a Japanese instructor, for which he received a reprimand, Chiang spent an uneventful year at Paoting and thereby secured the privilege of becoming a government-sponsored student in Japan. The Paoting school was a predecessor of the Paoting Military Academy; and his later association with the Paoting group of military officers in republican China stemmed from his attendance there in 1907-8.

From 1908 to 1910, Chiang Kai-shek attended the Shimbu Gakko, a military school in Tokyo which had been established to prepare Chinese students for study at the Shikan Gakko [military academy]. Chiang became acquainted with Chang Ch'ün (q.v.), a Szechwanese who also had studied at Paoting; almost of an age, the two became close friends and political associates. Another of his associates was Ch'en Ch'i-mei (q.v.), whom he had met in Japan in 1906, and, under Ch'en's sponsorship, he joined the T'ung-meng-hui in 1908. A fellow provincial from Chekiang who was some 11 years Chiang's senior, Ch'en Ch'i-mei, became the political mentor of the young cadet. Ch'en introduced Chiang to Sun Yat-sen when Sun returned briefly to Japan from Honolulu in 1910.

In 1910, Chiang was graduated from the Shimbu Gakko and became a candidate for admission to the Shikan Gakko. Together with Chang Ch'un, he was assigned for field training to the 13th Field Artillery (Takada) Regiment of the Japanese Army. Although Chiang responded well to the rigorous training and to the long hours of duty, he apparently made no strong impression on the Japanese officers of the regiment.

When news of the Wuchang revolt of October 1911 reached Japan, Chiang Kai-shek, Chang Ch'un, and other young Chinese cadets immediately sailed from Nagasaki on a Japanese ship. They arrived at Shanghai on 30 October. Ch'en Ch'i-mei, with the help of secret societies in Shanghai, was engaged in an attempt to capture the Kiangnan arsenal; during the first week of November, he succeeded in winning over Shanghai to the cause of the republican revolutionaries. Encouraged by this success, Ch'en Ch'i-mei began organizing forces to consolidate control of the seaboard provinces of Kiangsu and Chekiang and to capture Nanking. While the Shanghai campaign was underway, Chiang Kai-shek participated in these actions, and, in recognition of his loyalty and his services, Ch'en Ch'i-mei, who had become military governor of Shanghai, gave him a promotion to regimental commander. The early victories of the revolutionary armies at Shanghai and Nanking during the late weeks of 1911 helped to make possible the establishment of a new provisional government at Nanking and the election of Sun Yat-sen as provisional president.

The revolutionary activity directed by Ch'en Ch'i-mei at Shanghai in 1911-12 had long-term as well as immediate effects, because it led to the establishment of personal relationships which were important to Chiang Kai-shek's later political career. Chiang formed a sworn brotherhood with Chang Ch'un and with Huang Fu (q.v.), then chief of staff and divisional commander under Ch'en Ch'i-mei. The three made pledges to rely on each other in crisis or in peace and to share each other's fortunes and setbacks. Other associates of this period who were to play important roles in the Kuomintang after Chiang Kai-shek gained power included Ch'en Kuo-fu, Shao Yuan-ch'ung, and Wu Chung-hsin (qq.v.) During this time, Chiang also became friendly with Chang Jen-chieh (q.v.), who later secured Chiang's entry into the personal service of Sun Yat-sen.

The early years after the inauguration of the Chinese republic in 1912 were marked by a struggle for authority between the supporters of Sun Yat-sen and those of Yuan Shih-k'ai. Chiang served under Ch'en Ch'i-mei, but he did not gain national prominence. When Yuan Shih-k'ai consolidated power, Ch'en Ch'i-mei relinquished his military and civil posts at Shanghai in 1912. Ch'en then returned to Japan, and Chiang accompanied him. In Japan Chiang studied German in preparation for a projected trip to Europe and published a short-lived magazine, the Chün-sheng tsa-chih [army voice magazine]. Opposition to Yuan Shih-k'ai continued, and, during the period of the so-called second revolution, Ch'en Ch'i-mei and Chiang Kai-shek returned to Shanghai. Ch'en attempted to reactivate his forces in the Shanghai- Woosung area, and Chiang led a military action in the Chinese sector of Shanghai in July. Chiang's small forces soon were disarmed by the British police in the International Settlement, and he left for Nanking with Chang Jen-chieh.

Ch'en Ch'i-mei's isolated position forced him to flee from Shanghai in November 1913. He went to Japan to join Sun Yat-sen. About this time, Chiang Kai-shek also went to Japan. In 1914 Sun reorganized the outlawed Kuomintang as the Chung-hua Ko-ming-tang, a closed organization that required its members to pledge personal allegiance to Sun. Some of Sun's adherents refused to take the oath of personal loyalty and withdrew their support of Sun, but Chiang and Ch'en remained loyal to his cause. In 1914, on orders from Sun, Chiang Kai-shek made trips to Shanghai and later to Harbin to instigate actions against Yuan Shih-k'ai. Both attempts failed. Except for undertaking these missions, Chiang remained in Japan during 1914-15, reading works by Wang Yang-ming, Tseng Kuo-fan, and Hu Lin-i and studying military strategy.

The political outlook for the republican revolutionaries remained bleak throughout 1915. In May, Yuan Shih-k'ai acceded to Japan's Twenty-one Demands; in August, he launched his campaign to become monarch. Renewing his attempt to dislodge Yuan's forces from Shanghai, Ch'en Ch'i-mei, accompanied by Chiang Kai-shek and other associates, returned to China in mid-1915. In November and December, Ch'en's group created incidents at Shanghai which, though unsuccessful, gave impetus to the anti-Yuan movement in other areas of China. On 18 May 1916 Yuan had Ch'en Ch'i-mei assassinated. Ch'en's untimely death at the age of only 41 sui marked the end of a significant personal relationship for Chiang Kai-shek. Several members of Ch'en Ch'i-mei's entourage of the 1911-12 period at Shanghai became trusted lieutenants of Chiang Kai-shek; and Ch'en's two nephews, Ch'en Kuo-fu and Ch'en Li-fu (q.v.), played leading roles in the central apparatus of the post- 1924 Kuomintang.

The May Fourth Movement in China and the initial dissemination of Marxist literature and ideas in China had no immediate effect on Chiang Kai-shek's political career. However, he became interested in the pattern of the Russian Revolution, and his high regard for the idea of a party-army-government amalgam to bolster political control had an effect on his later career. After Ch'en Ch'i-mei's assassination in mid1916, Chiang, though committed to Sun Yat-sen's nationalist cause, lingered in Shanghai. He did not accompany Sun Yat-sen to Canton when Sun moved there in the autumn of 1917 to attempt to establish a military base in south China, but he did submit informal military estimates and personal recommendations to Sun later that year. In March 1918 Sun summoned Chiang to Canton to discuss his possible participation in the newly established regime there. That was Chiang Kai-shek's first trip to Canton, and it probably was arranged by Chang Jen-chieh, who was a personal friend and a liberal financial supporter of Sun Yat-sen.

The nucleus of Sun's military power was the Kwangtung Army, commanded by Ch'en Chiung-ming (q.v.). On 15 March 1918 Chiang was named operations officer on Ch'en's staff. Chiang made several field trips with Teng K'eng (q.v.), then chief of staff under Ch'en Chiung-ming. Chiang apparently earned Ch'en's confidence, but other Kwangtung officers were hostile to him because he was a Chekiang man. Chiang resigned from Ch'en's staff at the end of July. A few weeks later, after a series of victories had led to the capture of Changchou, Fukien, he received command of the second column of the Kwangtung Army, with headquarters at Ch'angt'ai, Fukien. From 1918 to 1920, while Sun Yat-sen was living in retirement in Shanghai, Chiang Kai-shek shuttled between Shanghai and his army post in southern Fukien, where Ch'en Chiung-ming's Cantonese military forces constituted Sun's only hope of regaining power in the south. Chiang's peripatetic existence reflected the fact that he was often on the verge of resigning his military post. Toward the end of October 1919, he visited Japan briefly, reportedly to renew friendships there.

The secrecy surrounding Chiang Kai-shek's activities during this period gave rise to reports that he made money through financial speculation. Sun Yat-sen, to raise funds for his political cause, ordered the establishment of a commodity exchange at Shanghai in 1919. Participants in the venture, in addition to Ch'en Kuo-fu, presumably were Chang Jen-chieh, Chiang Kai-shek, and Tai Chi-t'ao (q.v.). During this period, Chiang developed close relations with the Ch'ing-pang (Green Gang), a Chinese secret society that had wide influence both in Shanghai and in areas along the Yangtze valley. The Green Gang had recognized social functions, and it also controlled much of the Shanghai underworld. In 1920 Chiang returned to active military duty at the behest of Sun Yat-sen. In October, Chiang arrived at Swatow to join Ch'en Chiung-ming's forces, which were beginning the successful advance on Canton that enabled Sun Yat-sen to resume power there. Chiang Kai-shek returned to Shanghai in November 1920 and evaded the repeated efforts of Sun and his close political associates, including Hu Han-min, Wang Ching-wei, and Liao Chung-k'ai (qq.v.) , to secure his return to Canton to help strengthen Sun's position. Chiang's refusal to remain at Canton was based on his opposition to working with Ch'en Chiung-ming in the south. In February 1 92 1 Chiang did go to Canton to confer with Sun Yat-sen, but by May of that year, when Sun assumed the office of extraordinary president of the new regime at Canton, Chiang had returned to his native village in Chekiang because of the serious illness of his mother.

His mother died on 1 4 June 1 92 1 , and Chiang remained at Fenghua to observe the traditional period of mourning. Sun Yat-sen sent Ch'en Kuo-fu to the funeral as his personal representative, and Chu Cheng (q.v.) and Tai Chi-t'ao also attended the services. The degree of official representation indicates that by mid- 1921 Chiang Kai-shek had begun to enjoy the personal patronage of Sun Yat-sen. In October 1921 Chiang returned to Canton. By that time Ch'en Chiung-ming had won a series of victories in Kwangsi, bringing the province under the military control of the Canton government. Encouraged by this success, Sun Yat-sen decided to carry the campaigns northward into Hunan and Hupeh as the next step toward the unification of China under his regime. Chiang Kai-shek was assigned to draft plans for the proposed northern expedition.

The conflict between Sun Yat-sen's national objectives and Ch'en Chiung-ming's ambition to hold Kwangtung under his own leadership became intense in the early months of 1922. In March, Teng K'eng (q.v.), the chief of staff of the Kwangtung Army and a staunch supporter of Sun Yat-sen, was assassinated at Canton; despite his vigorous denials, Ch'en Chiung-ming was thought to be responsible for the slaying. In June 1922 Chiang Kai-shek was at his family home in Chekiang, observing the conventional ritual of mourning on the first anniversary of his mother's death, when Ch'en Chiung-ming's associates decided that the time had come for an open break with Sun Yat-sen. Some of Ch'en's military forces then prepared for an attack on Sun. Sun was warned of the impending coup and escaped to the gunboat Yung-feng in the Pearl River.

Two days later, Chiang Kai-shek learned of the crisis from Wang Ching-wei, then in Shanghai. Wang's message was followed by an urgent telegram from Sun himself: "Emergency. Hope you come quickly." Chiang Kai-shek entrusted his family affairs to Chang Jen-chieh and left immediately for the south. He arrived at Canton on 29 June 1922 and joined Sun aboard the Yung-feng. They finally left for Hong Kong on 9 August on a British ship and reached Shanghai on 14 August 1922. Chiang later wrote about the Yung-feng interlude in a short memoir entitled Sun ta-tsung-fung Kuang-chou meng-nan chi [president Sun's harassment at Canton].

Chiang Kai-shek's political career was significantly advanced as a result of this episode. From 1912 to 1922 his role in the Kuomintang had been relatively unimportant, though Sun Yat-sen had respected the abilities of his young subordinate. The days spent together on the Yung-feng served to strengthen their relationship and to prepare the way for Chiang's rise to power.

Whampoa and the Northern Expedition

On 20 October 1922 Sun Yat-sen appointed Chiang Kai-shek chief of staff in Fukien, under Hsu Ch'ung-chih (q.v.). Hsu, a senior general of the Kwangtung Army who had remained loyal to Sun, had launched an attack on Fukien from Kwangtung and Kiangsi and had captured Foochow on 12 October. In January 1923 these Kwangtung forces, acting in support of Yunnan and Kwangsi armies, moved toward Canton and caused Ch'en Chiung-ming to withdraw to his stronghold in the East River area. Sun went to Canton in February to reestablish the military government of 1917. Chiang Kai-shek, after a trip to Chekiang, arrived in Canton on 20 April 1923 to serve as chief of staff in Sun's headquarters.

In working out the alliance with Adolf Joffe for cooperation between the Kuomintang and the Russians, Sun Yat-sen sent a special mission to Moscow to study questions of military organization and to obtain arms. He named Chiang Kai-shek to head the group, which also included Wang Teng-yun, a member of the Kuomintang; Chang T'ai-lei (q.v.), a Communist; and Shen Ting-i, who was a member of both parties. Chiang and his group left Shanghai on 16 August 1923 and arrived in Moscow on 2 September. During his stay in the Soviet Union, Chiang studied party, military, and political organization and inspected military and naval training schools. Leon Trotsky, the principal architect of the Soviet Red Army, and his colleagues met with Chiang. He was received by G. V. Chicherin, People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs, and by G. Zinoviev, as well as by such Comintern officials as Maring, Joffe, and G. H. Voitinsky. Chiang and his party left Moscow on 29 November 1923 and arrived in Shanghai on 15 December. Chiang immediately returned to his home at Fenghua to observe the sixtieth anniversary of the birth of his mother, on 16 December.

Chiang reached Canton on 16 January 1924 and submitted a report on his Russian trip to Sun Yat-sen and the senior Kuomintang leaders, who then were intent on completing plans for the party's reorganization. The report was not made public, but Chiang apparently had returned from the Soviet Union with a shrewd appreciation of the methods and potential strengths of the single-party state dictatorship. Chiang Kai-shek arrived in Canton just before the opening of the major Kuomintang reorganization meeting, but Sun did not appoint him a delegate to that congress.

At the First National Congress of the reorganized Kuomintang, held at Canton from 20 to 30 January 1924, Chiang was appointed to membership on the Military Council of the Kuomintang and was made head of a seven-man committee to establish a military academy at Whampoa, a small island some ten miles downriver from Canton. However, Chiang resigned from the committee and left Canton on 21 February 1924; the major responsibility for establishing the new academy fell to Liao Chung-k'ai. Only after repeated requests from Sun Yat-sen, Liao Chung-k'ai, Hu Han-min, and others did Chiang return to south China. After arriving at Canton on 21 April, he was appointed commandant of the Whampoa Military Academy on 3 May 1924.

The first class of cadets, some 500 students in all, arrived in May, and the opening ceremonies were held on 16 June 1924. Sun Yat-sen presided over the ceremonies and made a stirring speech in which he stressed the key role that was to be played by the Whampoa cadets in the national unification of China. Sun then presented the seal of the academy, the symbol of authority and leadership, to Chiang Kai-shek. The presence of many Kuomintang officials at the ceremony demonstrated the importance of the academy to the Nationalists.

Chiang personally supervised the military training of the 2,000 men in the first three classes of Whampoa cadets (entering in May 1924, August 1924, and January 1925). From this group came many of the Nationalist officers later known as members of the Whampoa clique and a number of officers who later served in the Chinese Communist forces. Many of the military instructors at Whampoa—Ch'ien Tachun, Ho Ying-ch'in, Liu Chih, Ku Chu-t'ung (qq.v.) , and others—later were close associates of Chiang Kai-shek as Nationalist generals.

In addition to military training, Sun Yat-sen felt that great emphasis should be placed on the indoctrination of the Kuomintang's principles of national revolution. He therefore made Liao Chung-k'ai the senior political officer at the academy and appointed as instructors Hu Hanmin, Tai Chi-t'ao, Wang Ching-wei, and others. Liao Chung-k'ai had full responsibility for supervising political training and indoctrination and helped to lay the foundations for the political commissar system used by the National Revolutionary Army on the Northern Expedition and by both the Nationalist and Communist armies in China after 1928. In connection with the pro-Russian orientation of the reorganized Kuomintang, Chiang Kai-shek worked closely with the Russian advisers at Canton, including Borodin and Bluecher (known as Galen), and with a number of Chinese Communists, notably Chou En-lai (q.v.), who became political instructors at Whampoa.

Although plans for building up Kuomintang strength with Soviet military aid were being implemented, the newly reorganized regime at Canton was not safe from danger. In eastern Kwangtung, Ch'en Chiung-ming remained a figure of considerable military power. In Canton, the Kuomintang's position was threatened in the autumn of 1924 by the armed defiance of the Canton Merchants Corps, a volunteer militia organization maintained by local Chinese businessmen. Sun Yat-sen had moved his headquarters to Shaokuan, and Hu Han-min was then the senior Kuomintang figure at Canton. Acting on orders from Sun, Hu summoned all the armed forces available at Canton and placed them under the command of Chiang Kai-shek. By mid- October, the Merchants Corps had been crushed and disarmed after a battle during which parts of Canton's most populous quarter had been set afire and looted by the government forces.

Late in 1924 Sun Yat-sen, who hoped to arrive at a rapprochement with the principal military figures of north China, was invited to visit Peking for discussions of major national issues. Before leaving for the north in mid- November, he paid an inspection visit to the Whampoa Academy, an occasion which marked the last meeting between Sun and Chiang Kai-shek. Sun was at Peking in January 1925 when Ch'en Chiung-ming launched a renewed offensive against Canton. In response, the Kuomintang regime there organized a so-called eastern expedition under the command of Hsü Ch'ung-chih. The right flank forces, composed of Whampoa cadets under the command of Chiang Kai-shek, defeated Ch'en's forces in a series of engagements. By the end of March, Ch'en's armies had been routed, and Chiang's force had occupied Haifeng, Swatow, and most of eastern Kwangtung.

The death of Sun Yat-sen in March 1925 resulted in new problems for the Kuomintang government at Canton, where Hu Han-min held authority. The most pressing threat was that of revolt by the Yunnan and Kwangsi mercenary armies in and around Canton. Hu Han-min handled this crisis with the same firmness that he had shown in dealing with the Canton Merchants Corps the previous autumn. After consultation with Hsu Ch'ung-chih and Chiang Kai-shek, Hu determined to use force against the unruly troops, and in June 1925 he suppressed the insurrection in two weeks.

From the summer of 1925 onward, Chiang Kai-shek's key military position at Canton was undisputed ; he was commandant of the Whampoa Academy and garrison commander of the city. After the establishment of a Kuomintang-controlled National Government at Canton in July 1925, Chiang was elected to its Military Council. Shortly thereafter, when the Kuomintang armed forces in Kwangtung were reorganized into the National Revolutionary Army, Chiang became commander of the First Army. His prestige was enhanced by his success in the second eastern expedition against Ch'en Chiung-ming, who had made a final attempt to dislodge the Kuomintang from Canton. In October, during the siege of Ch'en's stronghold of Waichow, Chiang was surrounded by enemy troops. He reportedly was rescued from his predicament by Ch'en Keng (q.v.), a young Communist officer who had been a member of the first class at Whampoa. By early November 1925, Chiang Kai-shek had finally defeated the last remnants of Ch'en Chiung-ming's forces in eastern Kwangtung.

During 1925 the party leaders also confronted the thorny succession problem. At the time of Sun Yat-sen's death, the major aspirants were generally assumed to be Hu Han-min, Wang Ching-wei, and Liao Chung-k'ai. All were T'ung-meng-hui veterans who had been friends of Sun and had enjoyed his confidence. Although Chiang Kai-shek had emerged as a new favorite of Sun during the early 1920's, his position in the Kuomintang hierarchy was not yet stabilized. In 1925 he was not a member of the Central Executive Committee. His speeches of this period indicate that Chiang believed that his primary mission was to serve the Kuomintang as a military officer. Nonetheless, in the months preceding the Northern Expedition a number of circumstances worked to Chiang's advantage and brought him to the forefront of political affairs.

The assassination of Liao Chung-k'ai in August 1925, the banishment of Hu Han-min, and the dismissal of Hsu Ch'ung-chih left Chiang and Wang Ching-wei as the leaders in the Kuomintang. Chiang's position was buttressed by the crucial fact that at the time he supported the alliance with the Soviet Union and, in turn, had the support of Borodin. By the beginning of 1926, in preparation for the Northern Expedition, Chiang and Wang were carrying out the policies of collaboration with the Communists and alliance with the Soviet Union and were arranging the entente with T'ang Sheng-chih (q.v.) that made possible the later military thrust northward through Hunan. In January 1926, when the Second National Congress of the Kuomintang met at Canton, Chiang and Wang, supported by Borodin and in cooperation with the Chinese Communist delegates, dominated the meeting in opposition to the conservative Western Hills faction of the party. At that congress, Chiang Kai-shek was elected to the Central Executive Committee of the Kuomintang.

On 20 March 1926, in connection with an alleged plot involving the gunboat Chungshan, Chiang moved suddenly against the Communists. He imposed martial law, detained the gunboat commander, and arrested many Soviet advisers and Chinese Communist cadres in military units under his command. The March 1926 incident resulted in the retirement of Wang Ching-wei from the political scene and in the assumption by Chiang Kai-shek of a dominant position in the power structure at Canton.

At the second plenum of the Second Central Executive Committee, held on 15 May 1926, Chiang moved forward. He proposed a series of actions to curtail Communist influence in the Kuomintang. They were accepted, and Chiang became truly powerful in the party in his own right. Chang Jen-chieh, Chiang's former patron and intimate associate in Shanghai, was elevated to the post of chairman of the standing committee of the Central Executive Committee, and Communists then serving as department heads in the central apparatus of the Kuomintang were ousted. Chiang Kai-shek himself succeeded the Communist T'an P'ing-shan as head of the organization department, while Ku Meng-yu succeeded Mao Tse-tung, who had been acting head of the central propaganda department. Chiang soon named Ch'en Kuo-fu to head the organization department, and from that time Ch'en Kuo-fu and his brother Ch'en Li-fu continued to hold dominant positions in that key organ of the Kuomintang for more than 20 years.

By mid- 1926 Chiang Kai-shek had consolidated a base in Kwangtung, and plans had been completed for the launching of the Northern Expedition. On 5 June, Chiang was named commander in chief of the National Revolutionary Army. On 9 July, he assumed office as supreme commander. The induction ceremony was impressive, with an estimated 50,000 people present when T'an Yen-k'ai, in his capacity as chairman of the National Government at Canton, presented Chiang with the official seal. Wu Chih-hui (q.v.) presented the army flag, and Sun Yat-sen's son, Sun Fo (q.v.), held a portrait of his father to symbolize the fact that the campaign was designed to carry out Sun's unrealized ambition of unifying China. Under Chiang Kai-shek's over-all command, Teng Yen-ta (q.v.) headed the general political department, with Kuo Mo-jo (q.v.) as his deputy. The forces during the first stage (1926-27) of the Northern Expedition were composed of eight armies: three from Hunan, two from Kwangtung, one from Kwangsi, one from Yunnan, and one commanded by Chiang's close associate Ho Ying-ch'in, a Kweichow officer who had served as dean of instruction at Whampoa. The Nationalist war plan called for a drive northward through Hunan to strike at Wu P'ei-fu (q.v.) in Hupeh.

The initial speed and success of the Northern Expedition forces was impressive. Changsha, the provincial capital of Hunan, was captured quickly; and Chiang, who arrived from Canton on 12 August, was greeted by the local populace as a conquering hero. By the end of August, Nationalist forces had secured the areas south of Tung-t'ing Lake in Hunan and had captured Ting-ssu-ch'iao and Ho-sheng-ch'iao, two key points on the railway leading to Wuchang. In these battles Chang Fa-k'uei (q.v.), then a division commander in the Fourth Army, gained national reputation as a military leader. Assault on the three Wuhan cities of Wuchang, Hanyang, and Hankow began at once. Hankow and Hanyang fell in early September, and Wuchang was captured on 10 October 1926, the fifteenth anniversary of the republican revolution.

After the defeat of Wu P'ei-fu's forces in the central Yangtze valley, Chiang turned his attention to Kiangsi, then controlled by Sun Ch'uan-fang (q.v.). Three Nationalist armies were deployed in that province: the First, the Third, and the Sixth. Nanchang, the provincial capital, fell in November 1926, and Chiang Kai-shek established his headquarters there. Ho Ying-ch'in's forces then moved into Fukien and captured Foochow, the provincial capital, in December. At the beginning of 1927 the Nationalists launched a two-pronged attack on Chiang's native province of Chekiang, with Ho Ying-ch'in advancing from Fukien and the Kwangsi general Pai Ch'ung-hsi (q.v.), from eastern Kiangsi. Hangchow, the provincial capital of Chekiang, fell on 19 January 1927, opening the way for a drive on Shanghai. As Pai Ch'ung-hsi advanced, there was heavy fighting along the rail line between Hangchow and Shanghai, notably against White Russian mercenary troops commanded by Chang Tsungch'ang (q.v.), the Shantung warlord who then was cooperating with Sun Ch'uan-fang. Pai Ch'ung-hsi's forces entered Shanghai on 22 March 1927. Aided by the defection of Ch'en T'iao-yuan, Chiang Kai-shek, directing Li Tsung-jen on the north bank of the Yangtze and Ch'eng Ch'ien on the south, gained control of Anhwei and captured Nanking on 24 March. The capture of Shanghai and Nanking ended the first stage of the Northern Expedition.

However, an international crisis developed at Nanking. Anti-foreign activities by units of Ch'eng Ch'ien's army, in which the Communist Lin Po-ch'ü (q.v.) served as party representative, provoked retaliation by British and American gunboats stationed on the Yangtze patrol. Chiang Kai-shek, as commander in chief of the Nationalist forces, took a cautious position, stating that the Nationalist forces were not basically anti-foreign. After a brief visit to the newly captured city, Chiang went to Shanghai and did not return to Nanking until early April.

Although military successes had been impressive, the uneasy alliance with the Communists continued to pose serious problems for the Kuomintang and threatened for a time to disrupt the unity essential to Nationalist success. When Chiang Kai-shek left Canton in the summer of 1926 to direct military operations in the field, party and government affairs at Canton were under the direction of Chang Jenchieh and T'an Yen-k'ai, respectively. Chiang Kai-shek, against the wishes of the Communists, advocated moving the party and government organs northward from Canton. After he had gained a victory at Nanchang in November 1926, Chiang wished to make that city the principal Nationalist base so that he could keep both military and political power under his supervision. In December, senior Kuomintang leaders, including T'an Yen-k'ai, moved from Canton to Nanchang. In January 1927 another political regime, composed of both Kuomintang and Communist figures, began to function at Wuhan. Because of political and personal differences, the problem of the basic geographical locus of Kuomintang political authority remained unsettled for several months. In April, Chiang Kai-shek and his associates began a drive against the Communists and other groups considered radical. Large numbers of people in the labor unions and other Communist-infiltrated organizations in and around Shanghai were arrested and executed.

On 18 April 1927 Chiang and other opponents of the Wuhan group organized a new national government at Nanking, headed by a five-man standing committee which included Hu Han-min and other prominent figures who were opposed to the alliance with the Communists. The Nanking authorities sponsored a party purification drive to crush Communist influence and activity in areas under their effective control. In June 1927 Chiang Kai-shek held a meeting at Hsuchow with Feng Yü-hsiang, who then held a key position between the two contending factions of the Kuomintang. As a result of that conference, Feng Yü-hsiang decided to give his military support to Chiang Kai-shek. In July, Feng began to purge Communist political cadres in areas under his control. Wang Ching-wei, the senior Kuomintang leader at Wuhan, also broke with the Communists and began a vigorous suppression campaign in the central Yangtze area.

As a result of these moves, the various Kuomintang factions began discussions that eventually led to the merging of the rival Wuhan and Nanking regimes. Chiang Kai-shek, despite his growing national prestige, still had less political seniority within the Kuomintang than either Hu Han-min or Wang Ching-wei. His military reputation was tarnished by an ill-planned northward thrust in July 1927; he lost the strategically important city of Hsuchow to the joint forces of Sun Ch'uan-fang and Chang Tsung-ch'ang. In August, pressed by the need for party unity and faced with the opposition of the Kwangsi generals (notably Li Tsung-jen and Pai Ch'ung-hsi), Chiang announced his retirement. He left Nanking and returned to his home at Fenghua. On 27 September, Chiang sailed from Shanghai for Japan.

In part, Chiang's trip to Japan in late 1927 was motivated by personal considerations: to work out the details of a proposal of marriage to Soong Mei-ling (q.v.), the younger sister of T. V. Soong and Soong Ch'ing-ling (qq.v.). Although Soong Ch'ing-ling strongly opposed the marriage, her mother, the widow of Charles Jones Soong, finally gave consent on the condition that Chiang investigate Christianity. Chiang agreed and returned to Shanghai on 10 November.

The wedding, an event of political as well as social significance, was celebrated at two impressive ceremonies in Shanghai on 1 December 1927. The first was a Christian service held in the Soong home, at which David Yui (Yu Jihchang, q.v.), general secretary of the national committee of the YMCA in China, officiated. The Chinese ceremony was held in the grand ballroom of the Majestic Hotel, with Ts'ai Yuan-p'ei, the former chancellor of National Peking University and elder statesman of the Kuomintang, presiding. The union made Chiang a member by marriage of the family group that included T. V. Soong and H. H. K'ung (q.v.), the husband of Mei-ling's eldest sister, Ai-ling. Because his first wife was still living and had not been divorced from him and because the December 1927 union was a matter of national importance, Chiang Kai-shek's second marriage was the subject of much controversy and adverse comment. Criticism subsided somewhat when, on 23 October 1930, Chiang Kai-shek was baptized by Z. T. Kaung (Chiang Ch'ang-ch'uan, q.v.) at Allen Memorial Church in Shanghai.

At the beginning of 1928 Chiang resumed his position as the leader of the Nationalist military forces, serving as chairman of the National Military Council and commander in chief of the second stage of the Northern Expedition. For the offensive against the generals holding power in north China, four group armies were formed. Chiang Kai-shek himself commanded the First Group Army, with Ho Ying-ch'in as his chief of staff. Feng Yü-hsiang (q.v.) commanded the Second Group Army; Yen Hsi-shan (q.v.), the Third; and, somewhat later, Li Tsung-jen, the Fourth, with Pai Ch'ung-hsi as front line commander. Since the forces of Wu P'ei-fu and Sun Ch'uan-fang south of the Yangtze had been destroyed, the principal enemy remaining in the north was Chang Tso-lin (q.v.), who then dominated the Peking government. As the Nationalist forces moved northward, the Japanese, who had extensive interests on the mainland, became alarmed at the prospect of a unified China and took action in Shantung, ostensibly to protect Japanese nationals in that province. The result was a clash on 3 May 1928 at Tsinan (see Ho Yao-tsu). Chiang wished to avoid a serious confrontation with the Japanese. He therefore ordered the Nationalist forces to withdraw southward to Hsuchow and to detour along the Lunghai rail line before turning northward again. Chiang himself, after a series of meetings with such prominent commanders as Feng Yü-hsiang and Yen Hsi-shan, returned to Nanking at the beginning ofJune 1928. The Nationalist forces in north China finally captured Peking in June. After its capture, the commanders of the four army groups which had participated in the second stage of the Northern Expedition—Chiang Kai-shek, Feng Yü-hsiang, Yen Hsi-shan, and Li Tsung-jen—met at the temple in the Western Hills which then housed the remains of Sun Yat-sen for preliminary discussions of the problem of military reorganization.

The Nationalist Decade

The year 1928 marked another crucial turning point in Chiang Kai-shek's career, for the Northern Expedition had broken the power of the northern generals. At the same time, Chiang moved to consolidate his political position. Although he had been elected chairman of the Central Political Council in March 1928, he still had no political machine within the party. Ch'en Kuo-fu and Ch'en Li-fu suggested the establishment of a political center at Nanking for training Kuomintang cadres. Through the Central Political Institute and the organization department of the central headquarters of the Kuomintang, the Ch'en brothers took control of the party structure. Chiang himself became Chairman of the National Government established at Nanking on 10 October 1928, inaugurating the five-yuan system of government stipulated by Sun Yat-sen. The Northern Expedition had achieved its military goals, and, by the end of the year, the Nationalist flag had been raised over all of China, including Manchuria. Throughout the world, Chiang Kai-shek was considered the single leader of a unified China. He was so regarded for more than 20 years.

The unity of China was somewhat illusory. Chiang Kai-shek's control was accepted formally, but rarely in practice, by a large number of relatively autonomous leaders and groups with regional bases of power. The major failure of the Kuomintang under Chiang Kai-shek was that it was unable to create an organization sufficiently broad and disciplined to implement Nanking's political and social goals on a national basis. The National Government did manage to make some significant reconstruction during the years before the Sino-Japanese war, particularly in the period from 1932 to 1935, when Wang Ching-wei headed the Executive Yuan. In general, however, the National Government was unable to extend its rule throughout China, and its authority was contested by the Chinese Communists and threatened by Japanese aggression on the mainland.

The most serious external threat to China during the Nationalist decade was Japan. The incident at Tsinan in May 1928 had demonstrated Japan's concern about the potential Nationalist threat to their interests and investments. Japanese aggression was evidenced by the incident at Mukden in September 1931 and by the fighting at Shanghai in January 1932. Even after the establishment of the Japanesesponsored state of Manchoukuo and the continued Japanese military pressure in north China and Inner Mongolia, Chiang Kai-shek adhered to policies toward Japan that his political enemies called appeasement. Chiang argued that China, to sustain its national defense, to avenge long humiliation, and to avoid future encroachments, had to deal with its domestic problems before declaring war on Japan.

Chiang Kai-shek's domestic opponents were Chinese Communists and a number of Kuomintang members or independent generals who opposed Chiang and his associates at Nanking. Non-Communist challenges to Chiang's authority came initially from the Kwangsi generals, notably Li Tsung-jen and Pai Ch'ung-hsi, who, although allied with Chiang on the Northern Expedition, were reluctant to obey him. Their 1929 split with Chiang resulted in repeated clashes. In 1930 Feng Yü-hsiang and Yen Hsishan, who had substantial military power in north China, began a brief but destructive civil war with Nanking. Wang Ching-wei joined them in an attempt to establish a rival regime at Peiping, a move that failed because Chiang Kai-shek gained the passive cooperation of Chang Hsueh-liang, who controlled Manchuria. Another crisis arose in February 1931, when Chiang Kai-shek came into conflict at Nanking with the veteran Kuomintang leader Hu Hanmin. Chiang placed Hu Han-min under house arrest. In April, four senior members of the Central Supervisory Committee of the Kuomintang issued a statement calling for the impeachment of Chiang Kai-shek for unconstitutional action; and in May 1931 a group of important southern Kuomintang leaders gathered together at Canton in a conference that led to the formation there of a new opposition government which repudiated the authority of Nanking. The situation was saved for Chiang Kai-shek by the national emergency precipitated by the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in September 1931. This led to peace talks between Nanking and Canton, the release of Hu Han-min, and a measure of reconciliation obtained at the price of Chiang Kai-shek's temporary retirement that winter. In November 1933 Ch'en Ming-shu (q.v.), a prominent figure of the Kwangtung faction in the Kuomintang, led a revolt in Fukien against Nanking. The Fukien rebels violently denounced the authority of Chiang Kai-shek and adopted a platform calling for resistance to Japanese aggression and for democratic government in China. The Fukien regime failed to attract support, however, and Chiang Kai-shek was able to suppress it by January 1934.

The growing military power of the Chinese Communists was a threat to Nanking's authority. Because the unification of China was Chiang's major objective, beginning in the winter of 1930 he launched five successive campaigns to annihilate the Communist military forces in the rural areas of south central China. Chiang continued to concentrate on fighting the Communists and destroying their base areas rather than on facing the Japanese military forces. In 1932 he established his personal headquarters at Wuhan to direct campaigns against the Communist bases in Honan, Hupeh, and Anhwei. Chiang then moved his field command post to Nanchang, Kiangsi, to launch encircling campaigns in 1933-34 directed at the central soviet base.

A few years earlier, Chiang had begun to make extensive use of German military officers in training his troops. Colonel Max Bauer, General Hermann Kriebel, and Lieutenant General Georg von Wetzell served successively as his chief military advisers, and Captain Walter Stennes trained his personal bodyguard. Colonel-General Hans von Seeckt, one of the leading professional officers of the modern German army and chief of staff of the Reichswehr after the First World War, headed the German military mission in China during 1934— 35. Chiang also tried to enforce his programs through the New Life Movement. On 19 February 1934 he made a speech at Nanchang in which he called for a "movement to achieve a new life" for China. In March, he further clarified his ideas and set forth his program in a series of four speeches. The New Life Movement's program of moral reform was based on traditional Chinese virtues and on similar Christian virtues such as frugality and simplicity. Its avowed purpose was to curb the spread of Communism by revitalizing the spirit of the Chinese people, thus enabling China to achieve true national unity. Although in 1934 the movement made some progress toward achieving its aims, it lost momentum thereafter.

Chiang Kai-shek finally succeeded in surrounding the principal Communist base in Kiangsi in late 1934 and in forcing the main body of the Communists to evacuate to northwest China. However, the increase in Japanese troop movements and political pressures in north China during 1935 not only diverted public attention from the Communists but also created a wave of sentiment in China opposing the prolongation of the Kuomintang-Communist civil war. The Chinese Communist command, alert to public opinion and to Moscow's strategy changes, in late 1935 pressed for an anti- Japanese united front to mobilize national resistance against Japan.

In December 1935 Chiang was chosen president of the Executive Yuan, succeeding Wang Ching-wei. As the civilian head of the National Government while it was pursuing a generally unpopular policy of temporizing with Japan, Wang had been unable to profit politically from the rising opposition. Rather, he lost popularity while shielding Chiang from anti-appeasement criticism. By this time, Chiang Kai-shek had consolidated his control at Nanking. His personal domination of the Kuomintang party apparatus had been clearly demonstrated at the Fifth National Congress, held at Nanking in November 1935. The Communists had been exiled to the remote reaches of northern Shensi by late 1935 and appeared to constitute no major threat to the National Government, and the 1936 rebellion of Ch'en Chi-t'ang in Kwangtung was quelled after Ch'en's air force and several of his senior officers defected.

When Chiang Kai-shek reached the age of 50 sui in October 1936, he was presented with 50 aircraft to bolster China's nascent air force. Two months later the Sian Incident precipitated a new national crisis. On 12 December 1936, while on an inspection trip to Sian in northwest China to confer with the Nationalist commanders entrusted with the task of suppressing the Communists, Chiang was seized and detained by Chang Hsueh-liang and others, whose major demands were that the civil war against the Communists be terminated in favor of a national united front against the Japanese and that the National Government at Nanking be reorganized.

The negotiations assumed a new form with the arrival at Sian on 15 December of a Chinese Communist delegation, headed by Chou En-lai, which had been informed that the Soviet Union favored the preservation of Chiang Kai-shek as the national leader of China. Chiang's adviser W. H. Donald flew to Sian on 14 December. T. V. Soong arrived on 20 December, and Madame Chiang Kai-shek arrived two days later. Although he did not put his acceptance of the rebel demands in writing, Chiang presumably accepted them; he was released on 25 December 1936. Paradoxically, Chiang Kai-shek, through the Sian Incident, became the popular symbol of what he had opposed for years: a genuine united front against Japan.

Chiang Kai-shek and the Conflict With Japan

After the Sian Incident of December 1936, the national leadership of Chiang Kai-shek was accepted by his critics and adversaries. Presumably to make return for the Communists' part in securing his release, he was obliged to cooperate with them in a united front against the Japanese. The Sino-Japanese war broke out in the summer of 1937, and in September the Kuomintang and the Communists set forth the terms of their collaboration in a political agreement. Chiang's position as a national political figure was not basically affected by the agreement, however, and he retained full powers as commander in chief of China's war effort.

The Japanese attacked at Lukouchiao near Peiping on 7 July 1937. Japanese units occupied Peiping and Tientsin and took control of major rail lines. In August 1937 they attacked Shanghai. In spite of the sharp resistance of Chinese units during the autumn, the city fell on 12 November. The same month, the National Government at Nanking decided to move to Chungking. Chiang Kai-shek left Nanking for Kiangsi and Wuhan only a few days before the Japanese took the city on 13 December 1937. The Japanese acted with violence against the Chinese in the "rape of Nanking," earning international rebuke. A second phase of the Japanese military invasion saw deeper penetration of the Yangtze valley during the summer of 1938, with simultaneous campaigns to consolidate control of the rail system in north China and to seal off Canton in the south. In October 1938 the Japanese occupied the Wuhan cities and Canton. By the end of 1938, after the needless burning of Changsha, the capital of Hunan province, by the Chinese themselves (see Chang Chih-chung), Chiang Kai-shek himself had withdrawn to Chungking.

Although the Japanese began air raids on Chungking in May 1939, Chiang's refugee government was secure there because the city was geographically remote from the main body of the Japanese ground forces in China. The Sino-Japanese conflict became a holding operation as the Japanese attempted to consolidate control in the rich and populous areas that they had already occupied.

During this period, Chiang Kai-shek also had to contend with changes in his family affairs. His elder brother, Chiang Hsi-hou, died at Fenghua on 27 December 1936, almost immediately after the Sian Incident. In April 1937 Chiang Ching-kuo, after spending some 12 years in the Soviet Union, returned to China. Chiang Kai-shek, who went to Fenghua that month to attend the burial of his elder brother, met Chiang Ching-kuo at Hangchow and took him to the family home at Ch'ik'ou. Mao, Chiang's first wife, still lived there, and she was happy to be reunited with her son and to see her grandchildren. During the Sian Incident, she reportedly had offered to give up her life to win Chiang Kai-shek's release. Although that story may have been apocryphal, it was thought by many Chinese to be of symbolic significance. She reportedly was killed in a Japanese air raid on Fenghua on 25 December 1937, exactly one year after Chiang's release.

Chiang Kai-shek continued to operate on the assumption that the Kuomintang was the party destined to rule China. In the early stages of the Sino-Japanese conflict he assigned a significant number of troops to contain the new Communist territorial base in northwest China. He agreed to nominal incorporation of the Communist forces into the national military establishment, but those units never came under his control and the alliance was an uneasy one. It was later ruptured by the New Fourth Army incident of January 1941 (see Yeh T'ing). Chiang also consolidated his position as the leader of the Kuomintang. In March 1938, when the Kuomintang convened the Extraordinary Congress at Hankow, the party constitution was modified to permit the election of Chiang Kai-shek as tsung-ts'ai [party leader], a rank equivalent to that of tsung-li, which was reserved for Sun Yat-sen alone. Chiang now had veto power over all party decisions. In recognition of his seniority in the party, Wang Ching-wei was elected deputy tsung-ts'ai. At the March 1938 meeting, the Kuomintang adopted the Program of National Resistance to serve as the formal framework of government policy during the Japanese invasion. It also took action to create the People's Political Council, designed to give representation to all of the active political groups in China, including the Chinese Communist party.

Within the Kuomintang, the major development of the early wartime period was the defection of Wang Ching-wei. During the first year of the Japanese invasion, Wang had become increasingly dubious of China's ability to sustain a protracted war against Japan. In December 1938 he left west China for Hanoi in French Indo-China, where he issued a public declaration requesting Chiang Kai-shek to halt armed resistance and to negotiate a peaceful settlement with the Japanese. Chiang refused and at the beginning of 1939 had Wang Ching-wei expelled from the Kuomintang. Wang lingered at Hanoi during the first few weeks of that year, and Chiang remained uncertain of his intentions. Then, in March 1939, several armed men broke into Wang's residence at Hanoi. Wang himself was uninjured, but his long-time protege and confidant, Tseng Chung-ming (q.v.), was fatally wounded. Wang Ching-wei believed that Chiang Kai-shek was responsible for the murder of Tseng. He immediately severed all relations with Chungking and began to work in collaboration with Japanese representatives. The Japanese-sponsored Nanking government was inaugurated on 30 March 1940, with Wang Ching-wei as its top-ranking official, and was given formal diplomatic recognition by Japan in November.

Although Chiang Kai-shek did not hold the office of chief of state at Chungking, he dominated the National Government through the Kuomintang and through his position as chairman of the Military Affairs Commission. In February 1939 he became chairman of the Supreme National Defense Council. As the wartime replacement of the Central Political Council, the Supreme National Defense Council was the highest political organ in Chungking.

In the early days of the Sino-Japanese war, although Chungking's prospects for victory were dim, the only country to come to Chiang Kair shek's assistance was the Soviet Union. Under the terms of the August 1937 Sino-Soviet treaty fo non-aggression, the Russians, for strategic reasons of their own, supported the National Government against their common enemy. The Russians shipped war materiel to west China and sent pilots and aircraft to assist in the air war against Japan. However, the outbreak of war in Europe in September 1939 served to increase the political isolation of Chiang Kai-shek's government. Acceding to a Japanese demand, the British in July 1940 closed the Burma Road to Chinese traffic for three months, thereby cutting China's major overland link with Rangoon and with the outside world. The United States, though intermittently denouncing Japanese aggression, continued to permit the shipping of strategic and critical materials to Japan, while granting Chiang Kai-shek only modest assistance. In December 1938 and March 1940 Washington extended commercial credits to China after negotiations with the prominent banker K. P. Ch'en (Ch'en Kuang-fu, q.v.). But it was not until November 1940 that the United States granted Chiang a credit of US$100 million, half to be used for general purposes, half for currency stabilization in China. Because of Chiang Kai-shek's desire for German military advice, the Germans, despite the fact that they were formal allies ofJapan under the Anti-Comintern Pact of November 1936, continued to aid China during the early wartime period. After the return of Colonel-General von Seeckt to Berlin in March 1935, Chiang had requested further German military assistance, and Hitler had complied by sending General Alexander von Falkenhausen to replace him. At the end of 1937, the German ambassador in China, Oskar Trautmann, attempted unsuccessfully to mediate between China and Japan to restore peace. General von Falkenhausen continued to serve Chiang Kai-shek until 1938, when he was recalled because ofJapanese pressure on the German government. But it was not until 1 July 1941 that Chiang Kai-shek broke diplomatic relations with Berlin and Rome after those Axis governments had extended recognition to the Japanese-sponsored regime at Nanking.

The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 caused the entry of the United States into the global conflict. In the China theater, the Japanese continued to maintain their positions and worked to extend their control into Southeast Asia so that they could utilize its natural resources. Although the National Government at Chungking was recognized as the legitimate government of China by both the Western powers and the Soviet Union, Chiang Kai-shek's effective control in China was confined largely to the inland provinces. The Japanese-occupied areas, a group of semiautonomous regions stretching from the Amur river in northern Manchuria to the Gulf of Tonkin in the south, comprised well over half of the area, population, and resources of China. The Communist-controlled areas, also a group of semi-autonomous areas in north, east, and central China, were loyal to the Communist insurgent government at Yenan. The best policy for the Nationalists, Chiang believed, was to contain the Communist areas and to strengthen the political position of the National Government by all means at his disposal.

China declared war on Japan, Germany, and Italy on 9 December 1941 and pledged full support to the Allied cause. A military conference held in late December at Chungking, attended by Chiang Kai-shek, Major General George H. Brett of the United States, and General Sir Archibald P. Wavell of Great Britain, paved the way for the creation of a Chinese theater of operations as part of the Allied war effort. In July 1942, Chiang Kai-shek was designated supreme commander of this war theater, which also included Indo-China and Thailand. President Franklin D. Roosevelt then appointed Lieutenant General Joseph W. Stilwell of the United States Army to assume command of American armed forces in the China- Burma-India theater and to serve concurrently as chief of staff under Chiang Kai-shek. The American Volunteer Group (AVG) of pilots, organized in August 1941 by retired Lieutenant Colonel Claire C. Chennault, who had come to China in 1938, and better known as the Flying Tigers, was converted into the United States Fourteenth Air Force. In addition to these initial measures, the United States granted a major loan of US$500 million to China in February 1942; it was followed in July by a British loan of £50 million.

The fall of Hong Kong on 25 December 1941 and of Singapore on 15 February 1942 was indicative of the rapid progress of the Japanese military thrust in the Far East. Because of the serious deterioration of the Allied military position in the Far East, in 1942 Chiang Kai-shek took the initiative in international politics for the first time. If India were to succumb to Japanese political and military pressures, the Allies' strategic situation in Asia might become extremely difficult. Chiang said that if he could meet with Gandhi he might be able to convince the Indian leader to give firm support to the Allied cause. Otherwise, Chiang thought, because relations between the Indian Nationalist leaders and Whitehall were strained, India might be swayed by Japan's pan-Asian, anti- Western propaganda. The British were critical of Chiang's plan, but President Roosevelt endorsed it. In February 1942 Chiang and his wife made a two-week trip to India. They talked with Gandhi at Calcutta about the common anti-imperialist interests of the two most populous countries of Asia, and with the British Viceroy at New Dehli. However, the mission was not notably successful.

The 1942 anniversary celebrations of the Wuchang revolt of 10 October 1911 marked a memorable point in Chiang Kai-shek's career as a national political leader. The governments of the United States and Great Britain simultaneously informed the Chinese National Government at Chungking of their intention to relinquish extraterritoriality and other special rights in China and to negotiate new treaties based on equality and reciprocity. Three months later, on 10 January 1943, new Sino- American and Sino-British treaties were signed. Although executed under the pressure of wartime exigencies at a time when a substantial part of China was under Japanese military control, the new treaties with the principal Western powers were widely represented in China as the final realization of one of the major aims of modern Chinese nationalism (and of the Kuomintang) and as a personal triumph for Chiang Kai-shek. In a message to the Chinese nation entitled "New Treaties, New Responsibilities," Chiang declared triumphantly: "After fifty years of bloody revolution and five and a half years of a war of resistance during which great sacrifices have been made, we have at last transformed the painful record of one hundred years of the unequal treaties into the glorious record of their abolition .... with our past humiliations wiped out and our independence and freedom regained, we can have the chance to make our country strong."

Chiang Kai-shek's view of the postwar world and of China's place in it was set forth explicitly in his Chung-kuo chih ming-yun (China's Destiny), his only extended political treatise. It was published at Chungking in March 1943 to mark the eighteenth anniversary of the death of Sun Yat-sen, and copies of it were distributed throughout China. Many Chinese observers regarded Chinas Destiny as Chiang Kai-shek's response to Mao Tse-tung's On New Democracy, which had appeared in January 1940. Chinese and many Japanese as well—noted that, though China's Destiny appeared almost simultaneously with the repudiation of extraterratoriality by Western powers, the book was essentially an extended diatribe against the evils of Western "imperialism."

After the sudden death of Lin Sen (q.v.) on 1 August 1943, Chiang succeeded Lin as chief of state. On 10 October 1943 he was inaugurated Chairman of the National Government of the Republic of China. In the Moscow Declaration of October, China was recognized, chiefly on the insistence of the United States, as one of the four "great powers" that would mold the postwar world. Chiang Kai-shek's international prestige as the leader of China was enhanced when he was invited by President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill to attend the Cairo Conference. Chiang flew to Cairo accompanied by Madame Chiang Kai-shek, Wang Ch'ung-hui (q.v.), and a staff of personal advisers. After meeting in conference, the three allied leaders, in the Cairo Declaration of 1 December 1943, announced their joint intention to bring Japan to submission. In the event of victory over Japan, China was promised the return of Manchuria, Taiwan, and the Pescadores. Chiang also won a specific war commitment for a joint Allied action, Operation Buccaneer, in the Burma theater. However, President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill then met with Stalin at the Teheran Conference, which reduced the importance of China in the over-all war picture and brought greater emphasis to Operation Overlord, the Normandy landing scheduled for the following spring. Operation Buccaneer was cancelled. Chiang was angry. He asked President Roosevelt for a billion-dollar loan, double the number of planes previously agreed on, and an increase in the airlift of supplies into China. Perhaps the most significant result of Chiang's request was a diminishing of Roosevelt's flexibility and friendliness in dealing with China.

Both Chiang Kai-shek at Chungking and the Japanese government at Tokyo were aware of the expansion and potential explosiveness of Chinese Communist power. Although they were declared enemies on national grounds, they nevertheless shared a measure of concern about the long-term threat of Chinese Communist power allied with Soviet power in Asia. Although the Chinese Communists had maintained a small liaison mission at Chungking, after 1941 they had begun to devote most of their energies to expanding their organizational network in the rural areas of north and east China and to developing a solid base of peasant support in areas behind the Japanese lines. During 1943, after Shigemitsu Mamoru, who had been Japanese ambassador to Wang Ching-wei 's government at Nanking, returned to Tokyo to become Japanese foreign minister, a so-called new China policy was gradually evolved in Japan. Aimed essentially at arranging a mutually advantageous political settlement with Chiang Kai-shek, this policy provided for Japan to modify her earlier ambitions for domination of East Asia, while at the same time blocking the return of the Western powers to their former positions of political, economic, and military influence. In a new and more liberal treaty of alliance between Tokyo and Nanking concluded in October 1943 and in covert peace overtures to Chungking, Tokyo pressed the line that Chiang Kai-shek's long-range interests actually lay in severing relations with the United States and Great Britain and in collaborating with likeminded Asian leaders to exterminate the Chinese Communist movement. Although Chiang Kai-shek did not respond openly to the Japanese gestures, some observers felt that he believed the Chinese Communists to be a greater long-term threat to his interests than the Japanese.

Because the major weight of Allied military power remained committed in the European theater, the year 1 944 brought a series of hardships and frustrations to Chiang Kai-shek. One major objective of Japanese military policy was to open a direct rail route through China from Manchoukuo to Canton and thence to Indo- China. In the spring of 1944, therefore, the Japanese increased their pressure on Honan and Hunan, and in May, Changsha, the capital of Hunan, fell into Japanese hands. Hengyang was overrun in August, and the Japanese then had no difficulty in thrusting from Hunan into Kwangsi. After that breakthrough, the Japanese soon seized Kweilin, Liuchow, and Nanning in October and advanced along the rail line toward Kweichow. In December 1944 the capture of Tushan by an advance Japanese column created panic at Chungking, but it proved to be the terminal point of the Japanese offensive.

During the period from 1941 to 1944, the American ambassador at Chungking was Clarence E. Gauss, the last career diplomat to serve as ambassador on the mainland. During 1944 Gauss and other American diplomats in China became increasingly pessimistic about the political-military situation there. They were concerned by the virtual collapse of Chinese resistance on the east China front and the Japanese capture of the important Kweilin air base in November 1944. They believed that, in areas under Chiang Kai-shek's control, Chinese morale and the Chinese war effort were hampered by political negativism and official apathy. Another source of concern to the Americans was the growing gulf between Chiang Kai-shek and the Chinese Communists.

While Gauss was serving as ambassador, Washington dispatched a series of special envoys to increase cooperation with Chiang Kai-shek and to bolster the morale of the Chinese. Among the envoys were Wendell Willkie (October 1942) and Vice President Henry A. Wallace (June 1944). Donald M. Nelson, chairman of the War Production Board, and Major General Patrick J. Hurley headed a mission that arrived in China in September 1944.

In October, Washington recalled General Stilwell, ending his long-standing feud with Chiang Kai-shek. Gauss resigned on 1 November, and General Hurley replaced him as ambassador. Hurley held that post for less than a year, during which he made unsuccessful attempts to bridge the gap between Chiang Kai-shek and the Communists.

Despite all problems, throughout the war years Chiang Kai-shek remained the recognized national leader of China. He continued to be the dominant figure in the military and in the Kuomintang. In May 1945, the Sixth National Congress of the Kuomintang, meeting at Chungking, reelected Chiang Kai-shek to the position of tsung-ts'ai and elected a new and greatly enlarged Central Executive Committee designed to link non-Communist political figures and peripheral power centers to Chiang's cause. The status of China among the major world powers was confirmed when, in the spring of 1945 at San Francisco, China was made a permanent member of the Security Council of the United Nations.

On the occasion of the V-J (Victory in Japan) celebrations, observed in China by a three-day holiday beginning on 3 September 1945, Chiang Kai-shek was hailed as the man whose "unswerving and sagacious leadership" had brought the nation safely through the difficult war years. Chiang named his veteran military associate Ho Ying-ch'in, the commander of the Nationalist ground forces, to accept the surrender of the Japanese forces in China. General Okamura, the Japanese commanding general, formally surrendered to Ho Ying-ch'in at Nanking on 9 September 1945. Then Chinese Nationalist forces entered the Japanese-held coastal cities of China.

Contest for the Mainland

Chiang Kai-shek's power in China had diminished during the wartime years. With Japan defeated, he and the Communists turned to confront each other. With reference to the Communists, Chiang took an uncompromising stand in his V-J Day message to the Chinese nation. Mao Tse-tung, in orders issued at Yenan following the announcement of Japan's willingness to surrender, instructed the Communist forces to "step up the war effort," to accept the surrender of Japanese and Japanese-sponsored troops, and to take over their arms and equipment. General Hurley, accompanied by Chang Chih-chung, flew to Yenan and convinced Mao Tse-tung to come to Chungking and discuss the major issues dividing the two factions. Mao arrived at Chungking on 28 August 1945, and Chiang Kai-shek entertained him at a formal dinner on 29 August.

During the next six weeks, negotiations were conducted between Chang Ch'ün, Wang Shihchieh, and Shao Li-tzu, representing the National Government, and Chou En-lai and Wang Jo-fei, representing the Communists. Although the talks reached a stalemate on the central military and political issues, Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Tse-tung reached a preliminary agreement, promising to work for the peaceful reconstruction of China and to convene a political consultative conference at which the major factions would be represented. Having laid some basis for further discussion, Chiang entertained Mao at a performance of classical Chinese theater on 10 October 1945, the eve of Mao's departure for Yenan.

On 27 November President Harry S. Truman accepted General Hurley's resignation and appointed General George C. Marshall, wartime Chief of Staff of the United States Army, his special representative to China, with the personal rank of ambassador. General Marshall's mission was to take up the task of mediation where Hurley had left off and to arrange a truce. In January 1946 a cease-fire agreement was reached by the so-called Committee of Three General Marshall, Chang Ch'ün, and Chou En-lai. To enforce the truce, an executive headquarters was established at Peiping and tripartite truce teams were dispatched to the field to curb hostilities. However, the bitter mutual suspicion that divided the Kuomintang and the Communists soon undermined the American mediation effort.

Further, although the main American objective was mediation, the United States became increasingly committed to Chiang Kai-shek's side, providing machinery, motor vehicles, flour, and other supplies to the Nationalists. In January 1947, after leaving for the United States to become Secretary of State, General Marshall issued a full and frank statement on the failure of his mission.

In late 1946 Chiang Kai-shek recognized the long-standing criticism of the Kuomintang's 20-year monopoly of political power in the National Government. On 15 November 1946 the Kuomintang unilaterally convened a constituent National Assembly at Nanking, which, however, was boycotted by the Communists and by the China Democratic League. The assembly framed a new constitution, which was adopted on 25 December 1946 and promulgated by the National Government on 1 January 1947. The constitution embodied the essential political concepts of Sun Yat-sen. A new National Government was inaugurated at Nanking on 18 April 1947, with Chang Ch'ün as president of the Executive Yuan, or premier. Elections of delegates to a National Assembly were held in the Nationalist-controlled areas of China in November 1947, and the Kuomintang received a majority of the votes.

The new National Assembly was formally convened at Nanking on 28 March 1948, and it assumed responsibility for the election of top officials to head the new constitutional government. Chiang Kai-shek said that he was about to devote his full energies to military tasks and suggested that Hu Shih (q.v.) would be an appropriate choice for the presidency. Voting in the National Assembly in April, however, produced an overwhelming victory for Chiang Kai-shek, who was elected President with 2,430 votes against 269 for Chü Cheng. Competition for the vice presidency, however, resulted in an unexpectedly sharp race between Li Tsung-jen and Sun Fo. Although the central officials of the Kuomintang solidly supported Sun Fo, Li Tsung-jen won by a small margin. In May 1948, Wong Wen-hao (q.v.) became the first president of the Executive Yuan to be chosen under the new 1947 constitution. The National Assembly adopted a resolution which gave the President the right, in view of the civil war, to bypass regular constitutional procedures in order to "take emergency measures to avert imminent danger to the security of the state or ofthe people or to cope with any serious financial or economic crisis." Thus, Chiang kept the power that he had exercised prior to the adoption of the constitution.

During this time, the struggle for control of China continued in the countryside. Throughout 1947 and 1948 Chiang Kai-shek traveled constantly to direct the military campaigns in Manchuria and in China proper. His initial attempt to establish Nationalist military power in Manchuria led to an overextension of forces along fragile lines of communication, and poor planning resulted in the gradual loss of his strategic advantage. The Nationalist camp was torn by the political and personal quarrels of its leading generals. Chiang faced a war of movement conducted by such battle-toughened Communist generals as Lin Piao, Ch'en Yi, and Liu Po-ch'eng, who maneuvered their forces with speed and decisiveness in areas where the Communists often had mobilized much of the rural population. Adopting and applying the classical rules ofground warfare, the Communists steadily defeated Chiang's Nationalist armies. Mukden, the major industrial city of southern Manchuria, fell to the Communists on 1 November 1948; and the Communist commanders moved to annihilate the Nationalist forces in the Tientsin- Peiping campaign and in the massive Hwai-Hai battle centered on Hsuchow, which put an end to Chiang's power north of the Yangtze.

Civilian officials of the Kuomintang did little better than the military in winning the support of the civilian population. The corruption that had accompanied the Nationalists' so-called takeover operations after the Japanese surrender had not gone unnoticed by the people of China; and ever-increasing inflation, which had begun during the Sino-Japanese war, brought many new hardships to the people. In a belated effort to restore social and economic order, Nanking undertook a reform which introduced a new gold yuan currency in August 1 948. All holdings of gold, silver, and foreign currency were to be converted into the new currency. The reform soon proved to be a fiasco: the gold yuan fell almost immediately, taking with it the savings of many thrifty Chinese. By the end of 1948, many of the areas of China that remained under National Government administration were but loosely controlled by a Kuomintang apparatus that was inefficient in performance and sometimes irrational in conduct.

In his 1949 New Year's address to the nation, Chiang Kai-shek offered, somewhat belatedly, to discuss a peace settlement with the Communists. The harsh conditions set forth in the Communist reply proved that a compromise settlement was out of reach, and, after the battles of Manchuria, north China, and Hsuchow had been lost, Chiang announced his retirement from the presidency on 21 January 1949. He left Nanking by special plane for his home in Fenghua, Chekiang. Li Tsung-jen then became acting President of China. Chiang Kai-shek retained his supreme office in the Kuomintang, and, irked by the assumption of power by his old Kwangsi antagonist, he consistently undercut Li Tsung-jen's efforts to preserve some measure of Nationalist control in south China. He exercised authority with the assistance of Chiang Ching-kuo, Ku Chu-t'ung (q.v.), chief of the general staff, and Ch'en Ch'eng (q.v.), who had been sent to Taiwan to prepare that island as a base for retreat. Often Li Tsung-jen was not informed of major decisions made by Chiang.

In July 1949 Chiang flew to the Philippines, where he conferred with President Elpidio Quirino at Baguio. That meeting led to a joint declaration against Communism. In August, Chiang went to Korea to confer with President Syngman Rhee; the two leaders confirmed their stand against international Communism. Later in August, Chiang and Chiang Ching-kuo flew to Szechwan, and Chiang Kai-shek visited Chengtu to pay his respects at the grave of Tai Chi-t'ao. Chiang made a trip to Kunming on 23 September to gain the support of Lu Han (q.v.), the Yunnan provincial governor. However, he was unsuccessful, and plans for a unified defense of southwest China proved to be useless.

Chiang Kai-shek and his son, who was his constant companion during 1949, returned to Canton at the end of September to confer with Li Tsung-jen. Plans for the defense of Kwangtung were abandoned, and in October 1949 the remnants of the National Government moved from Canton to Chungking. Li Tsung-jen became ill and left China in late November. Chiang Kai-shek left Chungking on the day that it fell to the Communists and flew to Chengtu. On the early afternoon of 10 December 1949, with Communist forces fast approaching Chengtu, he was driven to the airport. Chiang boarded a military aircraft, and, after seven hours of flying over Communist-controlled territory, he landed on the island of Taiwan.

The Taiwan Regime

The mainland refugees were not welcomed in Taiwan. Taiwanese resentment of the Nationalists stemmed from the 1945-47 administration of the island by Ch'en Yi (1883-1950; q.v.). Ch'en's government had been so corrupt and oppressive that on 28 February 1947 the Taiwanese had organized a huge demonstration in Taipei which had threatened to become an island-wide revolt. Ch'en Yi had retaliated by launching a brutal suppression campaign during which thousands of Taiwanese were massacred. In 1949, when the Nationalist refugees arrived, the economy of Taiwan had yet to recover from the effects of American wartime bombing, the forced repatriation ofJapanese technicians after 1949, and peasant discontent stemming from the land tenure situation.

In Taiwan, Chiang Kai-shek took steps to establish full control. He accepted responsibility for the mainland debacle, emphasizing that Nationalist failures had been the primary cause of disaster, and dedicated himself to the mission of recovering the mainland. Utilizing his command of loyal supporters as well as the national treasury, the armed forces, and the secret police, Chiang moved to consolidate and legitimize his political position. He appointed K. C. Wu (Wu Kuo-chen, q.v.), governor of Taiwan province. On 1 March 1950 Chiang resumed the presidency of the Government of the Republic of China.

Chiang confronted many grave political problems. The United States government, which had been Chiang's principal source of external support, had disassociated itself from what it regarded as a lost cause. On 5 January 1950 President Harry S. Truman, acting on the basis of American government staff studies, had stated that the United States would provide no military aid or advice to the Nationalist forces on Taiwan.

In one sense, Chiang Kai-shek was rescued from disaster by Joseph Stalin and by the Communist military action in Korea in June 1950. Since that crisis sharply altered United States assumptions regarding Taiwan and increased the importance of the island in American military planning in the Far East, it had the effect of markedly improving Chiang Kai-shek's prospects. On 27 June 1950 President Truman announced an abrupt shift in United States policy and stated that he had ordered the United States 7th Fleet into the Taiwan Strait. After the Chinese Communists began to intervene in the Korean conflict in October-November 1950, Washington initiated a new program of largescale military and economic assistance to the Chinese National Government. However, Chiang, always a proud and imperious man, was placed in the position of being overwhelmingly dependent on an external power, the United States.

Because Chiang believed that internal feuds had reduced his party to a loose coalition of factions and had caused many of the difficulties of the Kuomintang on the mainland, he began a major reorganization of the party in 1950. In June, he announced the dismissal of the large and unwieldy Central Executive and Central Supervisory committees that had served since 1945 and the appointment of a compact reform committee composed of only 16 men. The new group was assigned the task of drawing up plans to streamline the party's structure and to increase its efficiency. At the Seventh National Congress of the Kuomintang, held at Taipei in October 1952, Chiang was reelected tsung-ts'ai. He also was reelected to that post at the Eighth (October 1957) and Ninth (November 1963) National congresses of the Kuomintang.

In the National Government structure in Taiwan, Chiang continued to hold office as President of the Republic of China. Li Tsungjen, the vice president elected in 1948, was expelled in absentia from the Kuomintang in 1952 and recalled by the National Assembly on grounds of "violation of the nation's laws and dereliction of duty"; Li was then in the United States. In March 1954 the National Assembly, which had been seated at Nanking six years earlier, was convened in Taiwan by extraconstitutional means, with about half of its members absent. That body reelected Chiang Kai-shek to the presidency and elected Ch'en Ch'eng to succeed Li Tsung-jen in the vice presidency. Although constitutional provisions limited the President of the Republic of China to two six-year terms, such restrictions were waived during the period of "Communist rebellion." In March 1960 Chiang Kai-shek was reelected for a third six-year term. In March 1966, Chiang, then nearly 79, was elected President of the Republic of China without opposition. C. K. Yen (Yen Chia-k'an), who had been premier of the National Government, was elected vice president, succeeding Ch'en Ch'eng, who had died in March 1965.

Chiang Kai-shek also was commander in chief of the Chinese military establishment in Taiwan. After 1950, the Chinese Nationalist forces, with the assistance of American advisers in Taiwan, were well trained and well equipped. During the years of Dwight D. Eisenhower's presidency, United States policy emphasized the "unleashing of Chiang Kai-shek" and the doctrine enunciated by Secretary of State John Foster Dulles that Communism was only a "passing phase" on the mainland of China. This commitment to Chiang resulted in the signing of the Mutual Defense Treaty with the Government of the Republic of China in December 1954; the United States pledged to give direct assistance in the event of an attack on Taiwan or on the Pescadores Islands. In January 1955, a joint resolution of the United States Congress authorized President Eisenhower to use American troops at his discretion to implement the provisions of the new treaty. In spite of this treaty, Chiang Kai-shek was unsuccessful in engaging American support for his avowed long-range objective: recovery of the mainland of China.

After 1955 there was a marked improvement in the economic situation in Taiwan: both agricultural and industrial production rose steadily and significantly. The rate of economic growth was very high, and, with the help of the United States, the island attained a very high standard of living for an Asian area. However, long-term economic planning and growth were limited by the high proportion of resources allotted to the military forces and by the high rate of population expansion. Although the Government of the Republic of China in Taiwan called itself a constitutional democracy, in some respects it was an authoritarian regime in which Chiang Kai-shek exercised almost unlimited personal power. Chiang Kai-shek's dedication to the goal of recovering the mainland may have impeded long-range programs devoted to building the island of Taiwan into an autonomous political unit with a solid economic base and a government enjoying popular support.

Chiang Kai-shek, after assuming power in 1928, converted the Kuomintang from a party dominated largely by Kwangtung leaders to an organ that was responsive to him, with an emphasis on the men from his province of Chekiang. Chiang's political rule integrated many, seemingly contradictory elements. In sum, the most conspicuous characteristic of Chiang Kai-shek's career was that in spite of numerous difficulties and countless opponents, he preserved his personal and political identity. To the world, from 1928 to 1949 Chiang Kai-shek did not represent China, he was China. His stern and stubborn personality became the symbol of republican China. He was the principal figure in the rise of China to world estate before his career ended in eclipse. He was and will remain one of the major figures of twentiethcentury world history.

Primary Records of Chiang's Career

During the 1920's Chiang Kai-shek had some intellectual support in China, though that support was based on his role as a nationalist leader, not on his standing as an intellectual. By the time of the Second World War, however, many Chinese scholars had begun to regard his political practices as old-fashioned and his political philosophy as antediluvian. Chiang's basic philosophy of government was given expression in Chung-kuo chih ming-yun, published at Chungking in 1943. An official English-language summary was published at the time by the Chinese Ministry of Information. Portions of the book were translated by A. F. Lutley of West China Union University and were published in the West China Missionary News at Chengtu in 1943. A revised edition of Chung-kuo chih ming-yun was published at Chungking in January 1944. The first complete authorized English translation of the work, prepared by a group of Chinese working under the supervision of Wang Ch'ung-hui and assisted by Frank W. Price, an American Methodist missionary, was prepared from the 1944 revised Chinese text. That translation was published in the United States in 1947 under the title China's Destiny. A competing, unauthorized translation, with highly critical notes and commentary by Philip Jaffe, was published in New York the same year; the Jaffe volume appended a shorter essay by Chiang entitled "Chinese Economic Theory," not available elsewhere in translation. A useful collection of wartime speeches and papers is The Collected Wartime Messages of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, 19371945, published in 1946 in New York in two volumes.

A substantial number of Chiang Kai-shek's speeches after 1949 have been published in Taiwan. One statement of importance, Su-0 tsai Chung-kno [Soviet Russia in China], published in 1956, summarized Chiang's postwar views on Chinese and international political questions. That book, a review and analysis of the Kuomintang's struggle against Communism, emphasized the role of Soviet intrigue and propaganda in the Communist victory in China; it depicted the Chinese Communists as instruments of Moscow. An English version of the book, Soviet Russia in China : a Summing-up at Seventy, was published in the United States in 1957. An abridged edition appeared in 1965. The most complete Chinese edition of Chiang's speeches to date, Chiang tsung-V ung chi, was published in Taiwan in 1964.

An account of Chiang Kai-shek's early years is Mao Ssu-cWeng's Min-kuoshih-wu-nienchienchih Chiang Chieh-shih hsien-sheng [Chiang Kai-shek before 1926], published at Nanking in 1937 and reprinted at Hong Kong in 1965. Mao Ssuch'eng used Chiang's diaries, letters, official papers, and other sources in preparing the book. Ch'en Pu-lei (q.v.), a member of Chiang's personal staff from 1934 until 1948, wrote his impressions of the events and personalities of the 1920's and 1930's in his Hui-i-lu [reminiscences], published at Shanghai in 1939. An unflattering account of Chiang from 1927 to 1947 is that of his antagonist Feng Yu-hsiang in Wo sojen-shih te Chiang Chieh-shih [the Chiang Kai-shek I knew], published at Shanghai in 1949. A bitterly critical Communist attack on Chiang's policies and on China's Destiny is that of Ch'en Po-ta (q.v.) in Jen-min kung-ti Chiang Chieh-shih [the people's enemy, Chiang Kai-shek], published at Kalgan in 1948 and at Peking in 1949.

An official biography for Westerners was written by Hollington K. Tong (Tung Hsienkuang, q.v.) and published at Shanghai in 1937 as Chiang Kai-shek: Soldier and Statesman; it was issued in Chinese translation in 1941. A revised edition, entitled Chiang tsung-t'ung chuan [biography of President Chiang], was published at Taipei in 1953. Other biographies of Chiang written in English include H. H. Chang's Chiang Kai-shek: Asia's Man of Destiny (1944) and S. I. Hsiung's The Life of Chiang Kai-shek (1948).

Information about Chiang Kai-shek appears in virtually every substantive book and in most articles dealing with Chinese politics after 1927. Book-length efforts include Gustav Amann's Chiang Kai-shek und die Regierung der Kuomintang in China (1939), Robert Berkov's Strong Man of China (1938), Sven Hedin's Chiang Kai-shek: Marshal of China (1940), and Paul M. A. Linebarger's The China of Chiang Kai-shek (1943). Emily Hahn's Chiang Kai-shek : an Unauthorized Biography (1955) is primarily anecdotal. A critical Western estimate of Chiang was given by Theodore H. White and Annalee Jacoby in Thunder Out of China ( 1946) . White also edited the Stilwell Papers (1948), which includes Stilwell's version of the bitter feud between him and Chiang Kai-shek. A detailed study by Tang Tsou, America's Failure in China, 1941—50, published in 1963, gives information on Chiang Kai-shek's political position and policies during that critical decade. A doctoral dissertation completed at Harvard University in 1966 by Walter Gourlay, "The Kuomintang and the Rise of Chiang Kai-shek," deals with Chiang's initial move to political power in the 1920's.