Chiang Kai-shek

Chiang Kai-shek (jyäng kī-shĕk) (1887–1975) was the leader of the Republic of China, 1927-1975. He headerd the Kuomintang or Nationalist Party (KMT). His KMT controlled mainland China after he defeated regional warlords in the 1920s. The Japanese took over Manchuria in 1931, and invaded the rest of China in 1937, quickly controlling the major cities and seacoast. Chiang was the Supreme Commander of the China-Burma-India (CBI)Theater for the Allies in 1941-45, but was ineffective in driving back the Japanese. After the defeat of Japan in 1945 the KMT battled the Chines Communists under Mao Zedong, who won in 1948, forcing Chiang and his KMT to the offshore island of Taiwan, which Chiang ruled until his death. A modernizer who embraced Christianity and built a strong and lucrative alliance with the United States, Chiang could not overcome the corruption tolerated by the KMT. After relocating to Taiwan, he overcame the corruption and made the island a model of economic prosperity, capitalism.

Early Career

Born Chiang Chungcheng near Ningbo, in the coastal province of Zhejiang (Chekiang), October 31, 1887, his father was local manager of the government salt monopoly and a wine merchant, who died when Chiang was nine years old. Chiang was apprenticed to shop owners, but ran away and joined the provincial army. At the age of 18, he entered the prestigious Baoding Military Academy. Meanwhile, he had married a Miss Mao; they had one son.

After a year at Baoding, Chiang was sent to the even more prestigious Japanese Army Military State College at Tokyo. In Japan he joined with Sun Yat-sen, then in exile and organizing a revolution against the Manchu monarchy of China. After the revolutionary outbreak in 1911 he returned to China as commander of a brigade, fighting the Manchus in the Shanghai area. Following Sun Yat-sen's disillusioned withdrawal from the first republican government, Chiang followed him to Japan. He returned to Shanghai in 1915, was unsuccessful in banking, and moved to Canton to join Sun Yat-sen's separatist republican government. In 1923, after Dr. Sun had formed an entente with Chinese Communists and engaged Soviet advisers, Chiang went to Moscow for a year to study Soviet military methods and political institutions.

The establishment of the Huangpu Military Academy in 1924 gave birth to a new Nationalist army a modernizing role that shaply contrasted with the traditionalism of the old imperial armies. As the president of Huangpu Military Academy, Chiang played a key role in its establishment, organization, and ideology.

From an early age, Chiang was influenced by Confucianism, especially the Daxue, or Great Learning, one of the four Confucian classics. Another influence was Wang Yangming (1472-1529), the Neo-Confucian intellectual who expounded on the notion of "unity of knowledge and action." Chiang believed that Wang's ideas were comparable to those of the Japanese samurai code and fascism as practiced by Germany and Italy in the 1930's. All of these notions influenced how Chiang interpreted and practiced Sun Yat-sen's "Three Principles of the People."

1927-1941

Finance

In 1927, after the National Revolutionary Army entered Shanghai, China's main financial, industrial, and business, the business leaders were greatly shaken. Bankers from across the country rushed to make contact with the revolutionary forces. After the Northern Expeditionary Army occupied Nanjing and Shanghai, the latter city became Chiang's primary financial base. Through such organizations as the Shanghai Chamber of Commerce, the Jiangsu and Shanghai Finance Committee, and the Jianghai Customs 2.5% Surtax Treasury Bond Fund Custodial Committee, Chiang enlisted important industrial, business, and financial figures to take control of the finances in the lower Yangtze region and successfully raised enough money to maintain his army. Forming these relationships was also an important factor in Chiang's ability to establish himself in southeastern China and later unify the whole country. The Shanghai financial world supported Chiang because of his pro-business modernizing policies, his anti-Communism, his close relations with financial leaders from earlier years when was employed as a broker in Shanghai, and the fact that many financial leaders of Shanghai were from Jiangsu and Zhejiang.

Rural policies

Chiang took an instrumentalist view of rural cooperatives. He saw these rural institutions as mechanisms of political control on the one hand, and as social engineering instruments for mitigating class conflict in rural society on the other. Rooted in these views, the rural cooperative movement promoted by Chiang and the KMT government from 1927 onward was aimed at countering the influence of the land reform policies implemented by the Chinese Communists in the areas under their control.

1941-1948

Soviet Union

Joseph Stalin was sympathetic to China's plight during Japan's aggression in the late 1930s, but he resisted taking any action that would have caused Japan to declare war against the USSR; he wanted to avoid having to fight a two-front war, with Japan on his eastern flank and Germany attacking from the west. Nevertheless, Stalin provided military assistance to Chiang Kai-shek and his Nationalist government, but he was also sympathetic to the Communist Party of China and offered advice to its leaders, Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai. At the end of the war Stalin even advised Mao to establish friendly relations with Chiang, and he recommended that the Nationalist leader seek economic assistance from the United States, which, with its Open Door policy, was better able to help China financially than was the USSR.

1949-1975

The government promoted a personality cult focused on a heroic image of Chiangk. The cult reflected a political culture that originated in the Nanjing decade and the subsequent war years yet adapted to the realities of postwar exile in Taiwan. While the Chiang personality cult was promoted by the central government (and by Chiang himself and his wife and son), it was quasi-official organizations and individuals who were primarily responsible for the production of its written, visual, and monumental texts.

Chiang in 1949

Bibliography

see also China, history/Bibliography

Biography

• Fenby, Jonathan. Chiang Kai Shek: China's Generalissimo and the Nation He Lost (2004), 592pp excerpt and text search
• Huang, Grace C. "Chiang Kai-shek's Uses of Shame: An Interpretive Study of Agency in Chinese Leadership." PhD dissertation U. of Chicago 2005. 282 pp. DAI 2005 66(6): 2370-A. DA3181356 Fulltext: [[ProQuest Dissertations & Theses ] ]
• Li, Laura Tyson. Madame Chiang Kai-shek: China's Eternal First Lady (2007) excerpt and text search
• Weinberg, Gerhard L. Visions of Victory: The Hopes of Eight World War II Leaders. (2005), chapter on Chiang.

National studies

• Boorman, Howard L., ed. Biographical Dictionary of Republican China. ( Vol. I-IV and

Index. 1967-1979).

• Botjer, G. A Short History of Nationalist China, 1919–1949 (1979).
• Dreyer, Edward L. China at War, 1901-1949. (1995). 422 pp.
• Eastman Lloyd. Seeds of Destruction: Nationalist China in War and Revolution, 1937- 1945. (1984)
• Eastman Lloyd et al. The Nationalist Era in China, 1927-1949 (1991) excerpt and text search
• Fairbank, John K., ed. The Cambridge History of China, Vol. 12, Republican China 1912-1949. Part 1. (1983). 1001 pp. ; Fairbank, John K. and Feuerwerker, Albert, eds. The Cambridge History of China. Vol. 13: Republican China, 1912-1949, Part 2. (1986). 1092 pp.
• Hsi-sheng, Ch'i. Nationalist China at War: Military Defeats and Political Collapse, 1937–1945 (1982)
• Hsiung, James C. and Steven I. Levine, eds. China's Bitter Victory: The War with Japan, 1937-1945 (1992), essays by scholars; online from Questia; also excerpt and text search
• Hsü, Immanuel Chung-yueh. The Rise of Modern China, 6th ed. (1999), detailed coverage excerpt and text search
• Morley, James William, ed. The China Quagmire: Japan's Expansion on the Asian Continent,

1933-1941. (1983).

• Rubinstein, Murray A., ed. Taiwan: A New History (2006), 560pp
• Shiroyama, Tomoko. China during the Great Depression: Market, State, and the World Economy, 1929-1937 (2008)
• Spence, Jonathan D. The Search for Modern China (1991), 876pp; well written survey from 1644 to 1980s excerpt and text search; complete edition online at Questia
• Westad, Odd Arne. Decisive Encounters: The Chinese Civil War, 1946-1950. (2003). 413 pp. the standard history

Relations with U.S.

• Liang, Chin-Tun. Gen. Stilwell in China, 1942-1944 (1972), a pro-Chiang view
• Romanus, Charles F. and Riley Sunderland. Stilwell's Mission to China (1953), official U.S. Army history online edition
• Romanus, Charles F. and Riley Sunderland. Stilwell's Command Problems (1956) online edition
• Schaller Michael. The U.S. Crusade in China, 1938-1945. (1979). online edition
• Tuchman, Barbara. Stilwell and the American Experience in China, 1911-45, (1972), 624pp; Pulitzer prize (The British edition is ttiled Against the Wind: Stilwell and the American Experience in China 1911-45,) excerpt and text search
• Ven, Hans Van De. "Stilwell in the Stocks: the Chinese Nationalists and the Allied Powers in the Second World War." Asian Affairs 2003 34(3): 243-259. Issn: 0306-8374 Fulltext: Ebsco, revisionist argument that Stilwell was incompetent, had no command training or experience, and did not appreciate air power. Ven suggests that Roosevelt's needs in the presidential election of 1944, the strategic decision to defeat the Nazi menace in Europe before giving full attention to Japan, and the unwise yielding to the needs of the Soviet Union during World War II all led to the defeat of the Chinese Nationalists.
• Young, Arthur N. China and the Helping Hand, 1937-1945. (1963).
• Young, Arthur N. China's Wartime Finance and Inflation, 1937-1945. (1965).

Memory and historiography

• Jespersen, T. Christopher. American Images of China, 1931-1949. (1996).
• Li, Laura Tyson. Madame Chiang Kai-shek: China's Eternal First Lady (2007) excerpt and text search
• Taylor, Jeremy E. "The Production of the Chiang Kai-shek Personality Cult, 1929-1975." China Quarterly 2006 (185): 96-110. Issn: 0305-7410

Primary Sources

• Chiang Kai-Shek. The Collected Wartime Messages of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek, 1937-1945, (1946) online edition
• Chiang Kai-Shek. All We Are and All We Have: Speeches and Messages since Pearl Harbor (1948) online edition
• United States Department of State. United States Relations with China: With Special Reference to the Period 1944-1949 (1949) online edition

See also

• CBI
• China, history
• KMT
• Joseph Warren Stilwell

Online resources

• Steven Phillips, "English-Language Sources on China at War, 1937-1945: Bibliography"