Li Zongren

Li Zongren (13 August 1890 – 30 January 1969), also referred to as Li Tsung-jen and by his courtesy name Delin, was a Chinese warlord, military leader, and political figure. Under the 1947 Constitution of the Republic of China, he served as vice-president and later as acting president.

Born into a Han family in Xixiang Village near Guilin, Guangxi, Li was the second of five boys and three girls. His father, Li Peiying, taught at a village school. After an inconsistent education, Li entered a provincial military school. In 1910 he joined Sun Yat-sen’s revolutionary Tongmenghui, though at the time he had little grasp of Sun’s broader reform and unification aims.

Trained under Cai E, Li finished at the Guilin Military Cadre Training School and in 1916 became a platoon commander in the army of Guangxi warlord Lu Rongting, serving directly under Lin Hu. Lu, a former bandit and governor of Guangxi, sought to expand into neighboring provinces, especially Guangdong. For several years, the warlords of Guangxi and Guangdong fought destructive battles, each periodically occupying parts of the other’s territory. Lu and his inner circle were known as the Old Guangxi Clique. In 1918, during a clash with a rival warlord in Hunan, Li’s courage earned him promotion to battalion commander.

In 1921, Li accompanied Lin Hu and Lu Rongting in Lu’s second invasion of Guangdong, attacking forces led by Chen Jiongming. When Lu’s campaign ended in a disastrous defeat, Li commanded the rear guard during the Old Guangxi Clique’s retreat. Most of Lin Hu’s officers were former bandits and militia recruited from Zhuang areas of Guangdong; many defected to the Guangdong side during the campaign, taking their units with them. Facing defeat, Li’s battalion shrank to around 1,000 men and “sank into the grasses” to evade capture.

After Lu’s defeat, his army broke into independent bands of soldiers, many turning to banditry to survive. Foreign missionaries and aid workers in Guangxi at the time reported severe banditry, with bandits looting undefended villages, killing, and even practicing public cannibalism to extort ransoms. Determined to rise above banditry, Li built a professional personal military force that matched any group of bandits or Zhuang irregulars Lu later used in his attempt to reclaim power. Li joined Sun Yat-sen’s Kuomintang after Sun established a base in Guangdong.

As chaos spread across Guangxi, Li became the independent commander of a multi-county area on the Guangdong border, joined by his old friend Huang Shaoxiong. Their administration kept the region relatively free of the banditry and petty conflicts plaguing the rest of Guangxi. In 1924, while Lu was besieged by rebels in Guilin, Li and his allies peacefully occupied the provincial capital, Nanning. Lu fled to French Indochina. The following month, Sun Yat-sen recognized Li, Huang Shaoxiong, and Bai Chongxi as the rulers of Guangxi. They became known as the New Guangxi Clique.

Li reorganized his forces as the “Guangxi Pacification Army,” with himself as Commander in Chief, Huang Shaohong as deputy, and Bai Chongxi as Chief of Staff. By August they had driven all other rivals from the province. Li served as military governor of Guangxi from 1924 to 1925, and Guangxi remained under his influence until 1949.

In 1926, Li allowed his soldiers to join Kuomintang armies but retained personal control over his troops. A Soviet adviser was sent to Guangxi, and Li’s forces were renamed the Seventh Army Corps. He became a commanding general in the Northern Expedition, leading the 4th Army Group, which included the Guangxi Army and other provincial forces totaling 16 corps and six independent divisions. Li’s first victories as a Nationalist general came in Hunan, where he defeated rival warlord Wu Peifu in two successive battles and captured the provincial capital, Wuhan, in 1926. These victories made Li famous and popular within the Kuomintang; his army was called the “Flying Army” and the “Army of Steel.” When Wang Jingwei set up a left-leaning Kuomintang faction in Wuhan, Borodin tried to recruit Li to the Communists, but Li remained loyal to Chiang Kai-shek and refused. Ignoring his Soviet advisors’ advice, Li then marched north of the Yangtze to attack warlord Sun Chuanfang, leader of the “League of Five Provinces” (Zhejiang, Fujian, Jiangsu, Anhui, and Jiangxi), who had halted Chiang’s advance in Jiangxi. Li defeated Sun in three successive battles, securing those territories for the Kuomintang.

By the time Li defeated Sun Chuanfang, he was known for his strong opposition to communism and his deep suspicion of the Comintern in China. His army was one of the few Kuomintang units largely free of Communist influence. After confirming Li’s support, Chiang redeployed Li’s units to the new capital, Nanjing, and used Li’s Guangxi armies to purge his own First Division of Communists. In the resulting White Terror, thousands of suspected Communists were summarily executed. Li’s close subordinate, Bai Chongxi, was involved in carrying out the purge.