Chiang Kai-Shek Overview

In 1887, Chiang Kai-Shek was born into a merchant family from Zhejiang province. Disillusioned with the Qing dynasty, Chiang symbolically cut off his hair braid in 1905 as a sign of rebellion. He then decided to forge a military career and received training in Japan. It was here that he encountered groupings of Chinese revolutionaries including Sun Yat-sen who sought to overthrow the Manchus and the Qing Dynasty.

In 1911, Chiang received a telegram informing him that revolution had broken out, prompting his return to China. Back home, Chiang joined the newly founded Nationalist Party. His first task was to combat Yuan Shikai, the President of China’s Beiyang government who betrayed the trust of Sun Yat-sen in attempting to re-establish the monarchy, proclaiming himself emperor.  In 1916, Yuan passed away and China came to be ruled by several competing warlord factions. Chiang accompanied Sun to Guangzhou where the Nationalist Party had gained political control. Sun Yat-sen had negotiated with Moscow to allow Communist Party members to enter into alliance with the Nationalists in return for aid. As such, Chiang was tasked with travelling to Moscow for further discussions in 1922. It was here that Chiang began to develop a distrust of Communism, since Moscow refused to fund a proposed military expedition to the north of China which aimed at eliminating warlords and reunifying the country. Notwithstanding, in 1924, the Whampoa Military Academy was established in Guangzhou with Soviet aid in order to train up a competent army. Sun appointed Chiang as the commandant and can be seen here attending the academy’s inauguration in full military attire (Source 1).

A year later, in 1925, the founder of the Nationalist party Sun Yat-sen passed away and Chiang was in a strong position to assume leadership. Chiang hoped to fulfil Sun’s dream of a united China in what would become known as the Northern Expedition.  In 1927, the Nationalists, against all odds, reached Shanghai, China’s largest city.  Chiang collaborated with police in the international settlement, who feared a Communist attack on their commercial interests, and Shanghai’s mafia, who feared a crackdown on their illicit activities, The result was a brutal massacre of Communists in the city. This ended the First United Front between the Nationalists and Communists. It was also in Shanghai that Chiang met his future wife, Soong Meiling, daughter of printing and banking magnet Charlie Soong (Source 2). Meiling had studied abroad in the United States and spoke excellent English. Chiang exiled his first wife to the US in order to marry Meiling and converted to his new wife’s religion of Christianity. The Northern Expedition continued, and Chiang was able to convince many provincial leaders to relinquish their autonomy and join the Nationalist Party. In 1927, Chiang declared Nanjing the national capital and in 1928 at Sun Yat-sen’s mausoleum in Beijing, he annonced that China had been reunified.

Chiang’s government enjoyed a fledgling stability from 1928, enough to instigate substantial economic development in urban areas. Moreover, Chiang was able to negotiate a reduction in the number of foreign concessions and unequal treaties with imperial powers. However, many rural areas remained impoverished with exploitative landlords left unchecked as they were sometimes key Nationalist Party supporters and donors. Nevertheless, it was unrelenting Japanese aggression that left its mark most profoundly on China during the early 1930s, and Chiang was often criticized for being unable to deal with the growing threat.

In 1931, the Japanese bombed their own railway line in Manchuria and blamed the Chinese as a pretext for invasion. Chiang appealed to the League of Nations, which offered kind words, but no military assistance. Chiang decided not to fight the Japanese as they colonised Manchuria and instead continued to focus on the annihilation of his domestic foe: The Communist Party. Manchuria was the province of former warlord Zhang Xueliang who became loyal to Chiang Kai-shek, joining the Nationalist Party after the Japanese assassinated his father. However, Zhang became increasingly frustrated with Chiang’s stance of non-aggression towards Japan and arranged for his kidnapping in what would become known as the Xi’an incident where Chiang’s hand was forced into a second united front with the Communists (Source 3).

In 1937, Chiang declared that the ‘limits of tolerance’ had been reached and China was once again readied for combat for the Second Sino-Japanese War. Nationalist troops bore the brunt of Japanese aggression whilst the Communists built up their capacity in the north of China. The early part of the war was characterised by a string of Japanese victories. In many Chinese Communist Party accounts, Chiang has been characterised as a weak general simply running away from protracted battles. This is something parodied by Source 4 (illustrated in 1962) where he is seen fleeing Shanghai, and then Wuhan, before finding shelter in Chongqing.

Chiang’s most controversial action during the Second Sino-Japanese War was his order to break the dams of the Yellow River to halt the Japanese advance on Wuhan in 1938. This resulted in the catastrophic loss of hundreds of thousands of innocent Chinese. From this point on, Chiang gradually began to lose the hearts and minds of the Chinese people.

In 1941, the United States entered the Second Sino-Japanese War after the debacle of Pearl Harbour. China naturally became their core ally in the Pacific and Chiang’s wife Soong Meiling appealed to the US for further aid to combat the Japanese as depicted by this video (Source 5) Ultimately, the Second Sino-Japanese War was abruptly ended by the US atom bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This left the stronghold of Mao Zedong and the Communists in the north of China and Chiang and the Nationalists in the South.

Despite some initial peace talks mediated by the US, both sides secretly prepared for war. At this juncture, the Chinese population was battle-weary and Nationalist troops began to mistreat the civilian population, refusing to pay for food. Chiang also resorted to the conscription of peasants. Indeed, source 6 depicts Communist propaganda from the Civil War which inserts Chiang into a lineage of Chinese traitors including Yuan Shikai and Wang Jingwei (the head of the Japanese puppet government). Chiang committed many military errors during the civil war, including the premature invasion of Manchuria where the Communists had many loyal soldiers at their disposition. Instead of surrender, Chiang decided to cut his losses and planned a strategic retreat with his remaining army of 2 million and loyal followers to Taiwan.

After Mao Zedong proclaimed the founding of the People’s Republic of China, Chiang declared martial law in Taiwan in order to suppress any potential Communist or independence activities. Strict controls on freedom of expression were enacted whilst plans were drawn up to retake the mainland. Mao reciprocated by stating that China would never be truly unified until Taiwan was liberated and began his own plans for invasion.

Between 1954-1955 Communist China and Nationalist Taiwan entered into conflict over the sovereignty of islands in the Taiwan strait, an event which has become known as the First Taiwan Strait Crisis. After the stalemate of the Korean War, the Americans lent their support for Chiang to invade China and, in turn, source 7 depicts Chiang as an instrument of American Imperialism. The Americans threatened the use of nuclear weapons against China, and the conflict dissipated. In turn, Mao used this dramatic turn of events as an opportunity to persuade party cadres to support research into nuclear weapons.

Despite the restrictions of martial law, which lasted throughout Chiang’s reign, supporters note the period of economic prosperity Taiwan enjoyed under Chiang’s rule, rivalling other strong Asian economic powerhouses such as Hong Kong, South Korea and Singapore. Taiwan also received generous amounts of aid from the United States and also initiated Land Reform without the struggle meetings and bloodshed instigated by the Communists on the mainland.  In 1975, 26 years after his arrival in Taiwan, Chiang passed away at the age of 87.

Much like Mao Zedong, the historical legacy of Chiang Kai-shek continues to elicit a multitude of conflicting opinions and substantial controversy. For certain biographers, Chiang has been dubbed as the ‘man who lost China’ whereas others refer to him by his military title of ‘generalissimo.’ Jonathan Fenby aptly summarises many historical assessments of Chiang (2004:428) : ‘Either he was a faithful friend of the West who had been undone by Communist cunning, Western irresolution and treachery in the State Department; or he was a reactionary, cruel, incompetent dictator who was no better than the warlords, who betrayed the true interests of his nation by failing to stand up to the Japanese in time, and who perverted the sacred teachings of Sun Yat-sen.’ Fenby brings together these diametrically opposed perspectives. He believes Chiang’s failures hinged upon a lack of administrative and economic competence compounded by dubious military strategy. Further to this, Fenby notes Chiang was not meritocratic in his appointment of staff but favoured loyalty to the extent that he would turn a blind eye to corruption.

However, Fenby redeems Chiang to a certain extent by noting that he managed to establish institutions that now comprise the bedrock of a modern state. Indeed, Chiang was the first to unite China as a nation after the fall of Qing. Moreover, Fenby states that Chiang engaged with many countries on the international stage, abolishing many foreign concessions. Although censorship existed, many cultural works critical of his own government were tolerated, sowing the seeds of democratic society, although this would never be fully realised under Chiang's rule. Fenby draws an interesting conclusion which hints that China simply wasn’t ready for Chiang, viewing his time in power as a ‘precursor to the post-Mao era’ where a certain amount of criticism was tolerated along with economic progress, modernisation and openness to the outside world. Fenby believes Chiang was hampered by ‘missed opportunities under a regime and a ruler who lacked the resources and strength to carry their mission to a conclusion’ (Fenby 2004:432:433).  Ultimately, the rapport between external circumstances and one’s own liability are difficult entities to balance in assessing the case of Chiang. However, it is clear that his vision for a modern China was cut short by the designs of Japanese imperialism.

In Jay Taylor’s (2011) The Generalissimo: Chiang Kai-Shek and the Struggle for Modern China, a resoundingly positive account of Chiang is presented. One of Taylor’s most astute contributions is his re-assessment of Chiang’s role in the Second Sino-Japanese war. Although Chiang delayed military engagement with the Japanese during the Nanjing decade, it was Nationalist and not Communist forces that were predominantly sacrificed in the midst of the conflict itself. Taylor affirms that by January 1940, the Chinese army suffered 1.3 million casualties with only 3% of this total belonging to Communist Party troops (2011: 169). Notwithstanding, Taylor attributes Chiang’s defeat in the Civil War to poor military strategy and ‘vast and incomprehensible optimism’ (2011: 364) whilst critiquing corruption within the Nationalist Party. Taylor condemns Chiang most of all for ‘the killings he ordered or permitted in 1947 in Taiwan and the extensive executions during the first few years after arrival on the island’ which aimed at suppressing Communism and cementing his dictatorial rule. Taylor concludes however that In Taiwan ‘Chiang had his chance at nation-building, and in terms of social and economic indices he laid the groundwork for Taiwan’s leap into modernity’ whilst asserting, like Fenby, that modern China has been shaped more by Chiang than by Mao, the  Maoist notion of ‘class struggle’ now replaced with teaching traditional culture and Confucius.

Conversely, there are historians who have labelled Chiang a fascist and brutal dictator. Lloyd Eastman (1974:67) argued that Chiang’s ‘New Life Movement’ , a programme of social reform including curbing drinking, gambling smoking and even spitting, constituted a veiled attempt to ‘implant the fascist spirit amongst the Chinese people’ due to its association with the Blue Shirt Society who were modelled on principles of Italian fascist groups. Eastman notes that the idea of the ‘preservation of the nation’ and the ‘national interest’ (1972:3) were the Blue Shirt’s primary goals. Eastman cites one of Chiang’s secret speeches to the Blue Shirt Society, whose members had pledged allegiance to Chiang as a dictator where he commented: ‘fascism is a stimulant for a declining stagnant society.’ Eastman also notes a key principle of the Blue Shirts was a lack of individualism and the willingness to sacrifice oneself for the collective nation. 

In this vein, Frederick Wakeman has dubbed Chiang a ‘Confucian fascist.’ Wakeman notes that whilst Chiang’s form of fascism was not the same as the scourge prevalent in Europe, he nevertheless supported a movement which combined ‘popular anti-foreignism and ethnic revivalism that characterised many modern movements in China, including the Red Guards.’ (1997:432) In short, Wakeman is suggesting that Chiang’s New Life Movement could have been a precursor to the Cultural Revolution. Wakeman also notes the secret nature of this society rather than the mass movements fascism incited in Germany and Italy. Indeed, the blue shirts were never openly characterised as fascist. In a European context, Fascism intended to indoctrinate the masses whilst perhaps Chiang simply wished to strengthen his grip on power and cement national unity after warlordism.

In the same way as Mao, the memory of Chiang is a turbulent one, both on the Chinese mainland and in Taiwan. In 2007, a pro-independence party in Taiwan removed over ‘two hundred busts and statues of the generalissimo that had been put up around the island over the years after his death’ (Taylor:2011:592). This is probably due to Chiang’s commitment to a united China and his suppression of Taiwanese independence movements during his rule. In mainland China, Chiang has now been praised for his commitment to a united China faced with supporters of Taiwanese independence. In many mainland films, he is portrayed as a righteous man who succumbed to the will of bad foreign advisors. The economic powerhouse of Shanghai is also lauded on the mainland and traced back to Chiang’s economic development during the Nanjing decade, something that skirts around political differences between the Nationalists and Communists. Immediately after his death, in Taipei, work began on a memorial hall to commemorate his life which took four years to build (Source 8).

Bibliography

Eastman, L. E. (1972) 'Fascism in Kuomintang China: The Blue Shirts'. The China Quarterly (49), 1-31.

Eastman, L. E. (1974) The Abortive Revolution: China Under Nationalist Rule, 1927-1937. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

Fenby, J. (2005) Chiang Kai Shek: China's Generalissimo and the Nation He Lost. New York: Carroll & Graf.

Taylor, J. (2011) The Generalissimo: Chiang Kai-Shek and the Struggle for Modern China. Harvard: University Press.

Wakeman, F. (1997) 'A Revisionist View of the Nanjing Decade: Confucian Fascism'. The China Quarterly (150), 395-432.