Chiang Kai-shek 蒋介石
Whampoa Military Academy graduates followed Chiang Kai-shek into the Northern Expedition. The academy opened during the alliance between the Kuomintang and the Communists, but in 1927 Chiang broke that alliance and unleashed a wave of repression against his former allies in Shanghai. That same year he married Soong Mei-ling. Her sister, the widow of Sun Yat-sen, became one of his political opponents. In The Soong Sisters, Mabel Cheung uses the history of this family to show Chiang beyond the headquarters too, among the people bound to him by both kinship and politics.
Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石, in Mandarin Jiang Jieshi, also known as Jiang Zhongzheng) was born in 1887 in Fenghua County, Zhejiang Province. He received his military education in China and Japan. While studying in Tokyo he joined the revolutionary United League, and in 1911 he returned home and joined the revolution against the Qing dynasty. From 1917 to 1972 he kept a diary in which he recorded his reflections on military and political decisions and details of his private life. These records are described in the archival catalogue of Chiang Kai-shek's diaries.
In May 1924, Sun Yat-sen appointed him commandant of the Whampoa Military Academy in Guangzhou. It was established with Soviet assistance, during the period of Kuomintang-Communist cooperation, and trained officers for the future National Revolutionary Army. The cadets soon took part in fighting Chen Jiongming's forces for control of Guangdong Province. The first campaign against Chen began while Sun Yat-sen was still alive. After his death in March 1925, several groups vied for leadership of the party, and Chiang, backed by the academy and the combat units, gradually gained influence. In March 1926, after the Zhongshan gunboat incident, he curtailed the influence of the Communists in the army. Historians still debate what exactly prompted him to take this step.
In July 1926, Chiang led the National Revolutionary Army north against the regional warlords. As it advanced toward the Yangtze, the struggle for power within the Kuomintang itself intensified. On 12 April 1927 in Shanghai, Chiang's forces and those of his allies began arresting and killing Communists and labour activists. A few days later Chiang's supporters established a government in Nanjing, while a rival Kuomintang government was still operating in Wuhan. In the summer Chiang stepped down from command for several months. He returned to it in early 1928, and by the end of the year the Nanjing government had achieved the formal unification of the country. One of the last to recognize its authority was Zhang Xueliang, who retained command of the troops in the northeast.
It was Zhang Xueliang and General Yang Hucheng who seized Chiang in Xi'an in December 1936. Chiang had come to demand that the troops continue their offensive against the Communists, but the generals wanted to end the civil war and turn their forces against Japan. Chiang was released on 25 December. The negotiations continued, and a new Kuomintang alliance with the Communists took shape in 1937, when the clash at the Marco Polo Bridge escalated into full-scale war with Japan. After the fall of Nanjing the government moved to Chongqing and directed the resistance from there. Soong Mei-ling spoke in the United States in support of China, and in 1943 Chiang met Roosevelt and Churchill at the Cairo Conference. By the time of the victory over Japan in 1945, the country was ravaged by war and Chiang's army was exhausted.
After the war with Japan the civil war resumed, and by the beginning of 1949 the Kuomintang was suffering defeat after defeat. In January Chiang gave up the presidency but retained leadership of the party. In December the government of the Republic of China moved to Taiwan, and in March 1950 Chiang again took the presidential post and remained in it until his death on 5 April 1975. Under him the island carried out land reform and began to develop industry. Martial law, introduced in May 1949 and lifted in 1987, was in force on the island. During the years of the "White Terror," people were imprisoned and executed on charges of subversive activity, including in cases tried without due judicial process.
In mainland cinema, Chiang was often shown at moments when his power was under threat. In The Xian Incident (1981), Sun Fei-Hu plays the commander-in-chief seized by his own generals, while in Decisive Engagement II: The Wei Hai Campaign (1991), Zhao Heng-Duo portrays the Kuomintang leader during one of the decisive campaigns of the civil war. Wu Hsing-Guo played Chiang twice. In the Hong Kong-produced The Soong Sisters (1997), Chiang appears in the family saga as May-ling's husband, and in Who Rules Over The Destiny Of China (2009), Wu Hsing-Guo plays him again, now in the period of the Kuomintang's defeat. The young Chiang can be seen in Beginning of the Great Revival (2011), where he was played by Chang Chen. That film ends with the founding of the Communist Party in 1921, when three more years remained before Chiang's appointment as commandant of the Whampoa Military Academy.
