Chiang Kai-shek

Chiang Kai-shek (31 October 1887 – 5 April 1975) was a Chinese military leader, revolutionary, and politician who served as President of the Republic of China from 1948 until his death in 1975, and headed the Nationalist government from 1925 to 1948. As the Republic of China's effective ruler, he led the country during World War II and moved its government to Taiwan after losing the Chinese Civil War.

Born in Zhejiang province, Chiang studied military tactics in China and Japan. He joined Sun Yat-sen's Tongmenghui in 1908 and fought in the National Protection War after the 1911 Revolution. In 1923, Sun appointed him chief of staff of the Army and Navy Marshal stronghold, and from 1924 to 1930, he served as commandant of the Whampoa Military Academy. Following Sun's death, Chiang seized control of the party and army from Wang Jingwei during the Canton Coup. Between 1926 and 1928, he led the Northern Expedition, largely unifying China under a Nationalist government based in Nanjing. He broke the First United Front by purging Chinese Communist Party members in the Shanghai Massacre, igniting the Chinese Civil War.

During the Nanjing decade, Chiang focused on modernizing China while prioritizing anti-Communist efforts over confronting Japan after its invasion of Manchuria. The 1936 Xi'an Incident forced him into a Second United Front with the Communists against Japan. From 1937 to 1945, he directed China's war effort in the Second Sino-Japanese War, mostly from the wartime capital Chongqing, leading to a National Revolutionary Army victory. In 1943, he attended the Cairo Conference to negotiate Japan's surrender terms, including Taiwan's return, and later suppressed the February 28 incident.

After World War II, the Chinese Civil War resumed. In 1949, Chiang's Kuomintang was defeated by Mao Zedong's Communists and retreated to Taiwan. He imposed martial law and White Terror on the island, lasting until 1987 and 1992 respectively. Starting in 1948, he was re-elected five times by the same Eternal Parliament to six-year terms as President of the ROC, heading a de facto one-party state for 25 years until his death. Chiang oversaw land reform, economic growth, and two Taiwan Strait crises in 1954–1955 and 1958. Taiwan also pursued an unsuccessful nuclear weapons program. The United Nations recognized Chiang as China's legitimate leader until 1971, when the ROC's Security Council seat was transferred to the People's Republic of China.

Chiang remains controversial. Supporters credit him with unifying the nation, ending the century of humiliation, leading resistance against Japan, fostering economic development, and preserving Chinese culture against Mao's Cultural Revolution. He is also praised for safeguarding the Forbidden City's treasures during the wars, many now housed at the Taipei Palace Museum. Critics fault his early appeasement of Japan, deliberate flooding of the Yellow River, cronyism and corruption linked to the Four Big Families, and authoritarian rule on both the mainland and Taiwan.

**Names**

At birth, his grandfather gave him the milk name Chiang Jui-yuan, with the generation name rui. His clan name was Chiang Chou-t'ai, meaning "or." In August 1903, at age 15, he chose the school name Chih-ching to reflect his imperial examination ambitions. In March 1912, as a revolutionary, he adopted the pen name Chieh-shih from the I Ching. When pronounced in Cantonese, this sounded like "Chiang Kai-shek," and Sun Yat-sen knew him by that name from early 1918. In 1917, he took the name Chiang Chung-cheng from the I Ching's sixteenth hexagram. His best-known titles include Commandant, used by Whampoa Military Academy alumni, and "the Generalissimo" or "Gissimo," used after 1926 when he became commander in chief of the Nationalist armies.

**Early Life**

Chiang was born on 31 October 1887 to a distinguished merchant family in Xikou, a small village south of Ningbo. His father, Chiang Chao-tsung (also known as Chiang Shu-an), sold salt and ran the family's Yutai Salt Store, known for honesty in settling village disputes. His mother, a seamstress and devout Buddhist, was the daughter of a Buddhist monk. She was Chao-tsung's third wife; when they married in 1886, he already had a daughter, Chiang Ruichun, and a son, Chiang Ruisheng, from previous marriages. The family, descended from the Duke of Zhou, was wealthy, owning over thirty mu of rice fields, bamboo groves, and tea bushes. Though salt and wine were state monopolies, Chao-tsung sold both using a license obtained through guanxi. When Chiang was an infant, they moved from the salt store into a new seven-room sanheyuan. His sister Ruilian was born there in 1890, followed by Ruiju in 1892 and a brother, Ruiqing, in 1894.

As a child, Chiang was described as "sprightly and prankish from disposition, but sickly in body," with a knack for getting into and out of trouble. At age three, he survived choking on chopsticks; at five, he nearly drowned after climbing into a man-sized water jar. He became skilled at swimming and hill-climbing and enjoyed war games, always preferring to be the commander. At a relative's urging, Chiang's...