Chiang Kai-shek was a Chinese politician, revolutionary, and general who led the Republic of China (ROC) from 1928 until his death in 1975. His government was based in mainland China until it was defeated in the Chinese Civil War by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 1949, after which he continued to lead the Republic of China on the island of Taiwan. Chiang served as the de facto leader of the Nationalist Kuomintang (KMT) party and the commander-in-chief of the National Revolutionary Army (NRA) from 1926 until his death, during which he was known as Generalissimo.
Mao Zedong, also known as Chairman Mao, was a Chinese politician, revolutionary, and political theorist who founded the People's Republic of China (PRC) and led the country from its establishment in 1949 until his death in 1976. Mao served as the chairman of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) from 1943 until his death, and as the party's de facto leader from 1935. His theories, which he advocated as a Chinese adaptation of Marxism–Leninism, are known as Maoism.
Zhang Xueliang was a Chinese general who in 1928 succeeded his father Zhang Zuolin as the commander of the Northeastern Army. He is best known for his role in the Xi'an Incident in 1936, in which he arrested Chiang Kai-shek and forced him to form a Second United Front with the Chinese Communist Party against the Japanese.
The Chinese Civil War was fought between the Kuomintang-led government of the Republic of China and the forces of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), with armed conflict continuing intermittently from 1 August 1927 until Communist victory resulted in their total control over mainland China on 7 December 1949.
The Xi'an Incident was a major Chinese political crisis from 12 to 26 December 1936. Chiang Kai-shek, leader of the Nationalist government of China, was placed under house arrest in the city of Xi'an by a Nationalist army he was there to review. Chiang's captors hoped to end the Chinese Civil War and confront Japanese imperial expansion into Chinese territory. After two weeks of intense negotiations between Chiang, his captors, representatives of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and significant external pressure from Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, the two parties agreed to pursue a strategy of cooperation against future Japanese aggression.
Zhu De was a Chinese general, military strategist, politician and revolutionary in the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
Edgar Parks Snow was an American journalist known for his books and articles on communism in China and the Chinese Communist Revolution. He was the first Western journalist to give an account of the history of the Chinese Communist Party following the Long March, and he was also the first Western journalist to interview many of its leaders, including Mao Zedong. He is best known for his book, Red Star Over China (1937), an account of the Chinese Communist movement from its foundation until the late 1930s.
Patrick Jay Hurley was an American attorney, Republican Party politician, military officer, and diplomat. He was the 51st United States Secretary of War from 1929 to 1933 in the cabinet of Herbert Hoover and a key American diplomat during World War II. As ambassador to China in 1944 and 1945, Hurley is remembered for his instrumental role in the recall of General Joseph Stilwell in favor of Albert Coady Wedemeyer, his advocacy for a rollback strategy in China, and his public criticism of State Department policy at the onset of the Second Red Scare. He was the first Oklahoman to serve in a presidential cabinet.
Agnes Smedley was an American journalist, writer and activist who supported the Indian Independence Movement and the Chinese Communist Revolution. Raised in a poverty-stricken miner's family in Missouri and Colorado, she dramatized the formation of her feminist and socialist consciousness in the autobiographical novel Daughter of Earth (1929).
The Reorganized National Government of the Republic of China, commonly described as the Wang Jingwei regime, was a puppet state of the Empire of Japan in eastern China. It existed coterminous with the Nationalist government of the Republic of China under Chiang Kai-shek, which was fighting Japan alongside the other Allies of World War II. The country functioned as a dictatorship under Wang Jingwei, formerly a high-ranking official of the Nationalist Kuomintang (KMT). The region it administered was initially seized by Japan during the late 1930s at the beginning of the Second Sino-Japanese War.
Red Star Over China is a 1937 book by Edgar Snow. It is an account of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) that was written when it was a guerrilla army and still obscure to Westerners. Along with Pearl S. Buck's The Good Earth (1931), it was the most influential book on Western understanding of China as well as the most influential book on Western sympathy for Red China in the 1930s.
Stilwell and the American Experience in China, 1911–45 is a work of history written by Barbara W. Tuchman and published in 1971 by Macmillan Publishers. It won the 1972 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction. The book was republished in 2001 by Grove Press It was also published under the title Sand Against the Wind: Stilwell and the American Experience in China, 1911–45 by Macmillan Publishers in 1970.
Kang Keqing was a politician of the People's Republic of China, and the wife of Zhu De until his death in 1976.
China's Red Army Marches (1934) is a book of reportage by American radical journalist Agnes Smedley on the Soviet Zone, later the Chinese Soviet Republic in Jiangxi from 1928 to 1931, It describes a stage in the Chinese Communist Revolution after the break-up of the First United Front with the Chinese Nationalist Party and before the Long March of 1934–1935, a stage in which the party followed a radical land and class policy. The book deals with events up to 1931 and cannot anticipate the destruction of the Jiangxi Soviet and the subsequent Long March. It does have detailed accounts of the words and actions of Zhu De, Peng Dehuai and Mao Zedong, whose name is transcribed as 'Mau Tse-tung'. It includes a full speech by Mao and some shorter remarks, perhaps the first time his words had appeared in English.
The Chinese Communist Revolution was a political revolution in China that culminated with the proclamation of the People's Republic of China (PRC) in 1949. The revolution was led by intellectuals who were members of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which afterwards became the ruling party of China's party-state. The revolution resulted in major social changes within China at high human cost. It drew inspiration from the Soviet Union and from Marxism-Leninism.
The Committee for a Democratic Far Eastern Policy (CDFEP) was an organization that was active in 1945–52 in opposing US support for the Kuomintang government in China.
Hu Lanqi, also spelled Hu Lanxi, was a Chinese writer and military leader. She joined the National Revolutionary Army in 1927 and the Chinese branch of the Communist Party of Germany in 1930. She was imprisoned by Nazi Germany in 1933 and wrote an influential memoir of her experience, for which she was invited by Maxim Gorky to meet him in Moscow. After the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937, she organized a team of women soldiers to resist the Japanese invasion, and became the first woman to be awarded the rank of Major General by the Republic of China. She supported the Communists during the Chinese Civil War, but was persecuted in Mao Zedong's political campaigns following the Communist victory in mainland China. She survived the Cultural Revolution to see her political rehabilitation, and published a detailed memoir of her life in the 1980s.
The Great Road: The Life and Times of Chu Teh, by Agnes Smedley, is an unfinished biography of Chinese Communist leader Zhu De.
Following their defeat in the Chinese Civil War, on December 7, 1949, the remnants of the Nationalist government of the Republic of China (ROC), alongside many refugees, retreated to the island of Taiwan (Formosa). The exodus is sometimes called the Great Retreat in Taiwan. The Nationalist Kuomintang party (KMT), its officers, and approximately 2 million ROC troops took part in the retreat, in addition to many civilians and refugees, fleeing the advance of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The CCP, who now effectively controlled most of mainland China, spent the subsequent years purging any remnant Nationalist agents in western and southern China, solidifying the rule of the newly established People's Republic of China (PRC).
Millet plus rifles, also known as "Millet and rifles" or "a rifle with bags of millet", was a phrase used by Mao Zedong to describe the materials and supplies of the People's Liberation Army (PLA). The first recorded instance of Mao using this phrase is in a speech he gave at a party meeting in Yan'an. He was recalling a conversation with David D. Barrett, an American military officer sent to observe the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) forces fighting in WWII. When warned that the Americans would support Chiang Kai-Shek against the CCP if they refused to enter into a coalition government, Mao had responded:
