Ch'in Te-ch'un (1893-7 September 1963), military leader associated with Feng Yü-hsiang before 1930, served under Sung Che-yuan, becoming governor of Chahar, mayor of Peking, and deputy commander of the Twenty-ninth Army. He led his army in the first military action of the Sino-Japanese war. He held senior military posts in the National Government in China and in Taiwan.
 
Yishui, Shantung, was the birthplace of Ch'in Te-ch'un. He studied at the Shantung military elementary school and then enrolled at Paoting Military Academy. He was graduated from the infantry course with the second class in 1916. He was assigned to the Shantung 5th Division for field training, after which he held command and staff posts in the Shensi army. He entered Peking Staff College in 1920 and was graduated with the sixth class of that institution in 1922. Ch'in then was sent to Honan, where Feng Yü-hsiang (q. v.) served briefly as military governor, and was assigned as chief of staff of the eastern Honan defense headquarters.
 
Ch'in Te-ch'un thus became associated with the Feng Yü-hsiang military organization in north China. The deterioration of relations between Feng Yü-hsiang and Wu P'ei-fu (q.v. ), who was then the leading military figure of the Chihli clique, led to conflict in 1924. In the autumn of that year, when the second Chihli-Fengtien war broke out, Feng, who was assigned to the Jehol front, suddenly led his men back to Peking and occupied the capital. Immediately after that coup and the downfall of Wu P'ei-fu, Feng Yü-hsiang assumed the post of commander in chief of the Kuominchün, or National Army. Ch'in Te-ch'un was assigned as chief of staff of the 24th Division under Feng. In 1925 he was promoted to command the 47th Infantry Brigade of that division. In 1926 he became commander of the 27th Division and, soon thereafter, commander of the 14th Division. However, Feng Yii-hsiang's Kuominchün was forced out of north China, and he himself left China on a trip to the Soviet Union, only to return in September 1926 and announce his support for the Nationalist forces then advancing from south China.
 
Feng Yü-hsiang then began to reorganize his scattered troops into a force which could cooperate effectively with the National Revolutionary Army under Chiang Kai-shek. In the spring of 1927, when Feng's forces moved from Shensi into Honan to seize effective control of that province, Ch'in Te-ch'un became commander of the 1st Division of Feng's army and participated in the Honan fighting. He later was made commander of the 23rd Division of Feng's Northwest Army and deputy commander of the Second Area Army. During 1927 Feng's political maneuvers tipped the scale in the struggle between Chiang Kai-shek and the Wuhan government, and his forces nominally became part of the reorganized Nationalist military establishment. With the resumption in 1928 of the second stage of the Northern Expedition, aimed at Chang Tso-lin (q.v.), who held power at Peking, Ch'in Te-ch'un commanded the Fourteenth Army of Feng Yü-hsiang's Second Croup Army. When the National Government was established at Nanking in October of that year, Feng Yü-hsiang and his lieutenant Lu Chung-lin (q.v. ) became, respectively, minister and vice minister of war. The future seemed bright for Kuominchün officers, since Feng retained regional power through his control of Honan, Shensi, Kansu, and part of Shantung.
 
The tension between National Government authorities at Nanking and Feng Yü-hsiang, soon became evident. In 1930 Feng Yü-hsiang lost the power struggle with Nanking, and the units of the Kuominchün were reorganized into the National Government forces. Ch'in Te-ch'un, like most of Feng's senior commanders, was relieved of his posts. He went into temporary retirement. The 1930 conflict between Nanking and the northern coalition in effect had been decided through the inaction of Chang Hsueh-liang (q.v. ), the Young Marshal of Manchuria, who finally sided with the central government. Ch'in Te-ch'un allied himself with Chang Hsueh-liang, who was then based at Peiping, and became a military counselor in his headquarters. The Japanese invasion of Manchuria beginning in September 1931, however, led to a swift decline in the Young Marshal's power. Ch'in Te-ch'un participated in battles against the Japanese on the Great Wall front at the beginning of 1933. However, Chang Hsueh-liang was forced to turnover control ofhis armed forces to Chiang Kai-shek in March of that year. Chiang's military lieutenant Ho Ying-ch'in (q. v.), was then given full authority in north China. Ch'in Te-ch'un then became commander in chief of the Third Army Corps and a member of the Peiping branch military council headed by Ho Ying-ch'in. Later in 1933 he was also made deputy commander of the Twenty-ninth Army under Sung Che-yuan (q.v. ) and a member of the provincial government of Chahar province, which was then under Sung's direct jurisdiction.
 
In mid-1935, when Sung Che-yuan was moved to Peiping with his Twenty-ninth Army to attempt to hold north China in the face of the Japanese political advance, Ch'in Te-ch'un succeeded him as governor of Chahar, also taking the post of commissioner for civil affairs in that province. Later that year Ch'in was moved to Peiping to become mayor and a member of the Hopei-Chahar political council, which was headed by Sung. He was also elected to membership on the Central Supervisory Committee of the Kuomintang at its Fifth Congress in November 1935.
 
The Japanese situation in north China became increasingly tense after the implications of the commitments made by Chiang Kai-shek at Sian in December 1936 became clear. In 1937 Ch'in Te-ch' un was given the post of deputy commander of the Twenty-ninth Army of Sung Che-yuan. Caught between pressure from the Japanese and a corresponding resistance from Nanking to any political concessions, Sung Che-yuan retired to his native Shantung, leaving Ch'in Te-ch' un in charge of the north China situation. When the Japanese on 7 July 1937 demanded entry into the small town of Wanp'ing near Peiping to search for a soldier who allegedly had disappeared, it was Ch'in 's order that led to resistance by the Chinese regiment of the Twenty-ninth Army.  Thus, the Sino-Japanese war began.
 
Both the Twenty-ninth Arm y and Sun g Che-yuan's organization were destroyed during the
early stage of the conflict. Having lost his troops, Ch'in Te-ch'un was assigned to staff positions throughout the war. He became deputy director general of courts martial in 1940 and vice minister of military conscription in 1941, holding that post until 1945.
 
After the Japanese surrender and the resumption of civil war against the Communists in 1946, Ch'in Te-ch'un was named vice minister of national defense in the National Government, with the rank of lieutenant general. Although his erstwhile chief Feng Yü-hsiang moved into a position of open opposition to Chiang Kai-shek in the late l 940's, Ch'in remained with the National Government at Nanking; he was reappointed vice minister of national defense in May 1948 after the election of Chiang Kai-shek as President. In 1948 Ch'in was named governor of his native Shantung province and mayor of Tsingtao, but both the province and the city were occupied by the Communists in 1949. Ch'in Te-ch'un then moved to Taiwan, where he was rewarded with the appropriate sinecure posts conventionally allotted to retired Nationalist generals. He died in Taipei of lung cancer in September 1963.