Fang Zhenwu

Fang Zhenwu
Fang Zhenwu
Born	1885; Shou County, Anhui, China
Died	1941 (aged 55–56); Zhongshan, Guangdong, China
Allegiance	National Revolutionary Army
Years of service	1910-1945
Rank	General
Commands held	Chahar People's Anti-Japanese Army
Battles/wars	Second Sino-Japanese War

Last updated March 31, 2019

Fang Zhenwu (Chinese :方振武; pinyin :Fāng Zhènwǔ) (1885 – December 1941) was a Chinese military officer in the early 20th century.

Chinese is a group of related, but in many cases not mutually intelligible, language varieties, forming the Sinitic branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family. Chinese is spoken by the Han majority and many minority ethnic groups in China. About 1.2 billion people speak some form of Chinese as their first language.

Hanyu Pinyin, often abbreviated to pinyin, is the official romanization system for Standard Chinese in mainland China and to some extent in Taiwan. It is often used to teach Standard Mandarin Chinese, which is normally written using Chinese characters. The system includes four diacritics denoting tones. Pinyin without tone marks is used to spell Chinese names and words in languages written with the Latin alphabet, and also in certain computer input methods to enter Chinese characters.

Biography

Early life

Fang was born in 1885 in Shou County, Lu'an, Anhui province, in the Empire of China.

Shou County or Shouxian is a county in the north-central part of Anhui Province, China, and is located on the southern (right) bank of the Huai River. It is the southernmost county-level division of the prefecture-level city of Huainan. Its population is 1,280,000 and its area is 2,986 km² (1,153 sq mi). It is a National Cultural and Historical City. the jurisdiction of Shou County was transfer from Lu'an to Huainan.

Lu'an, is a prefecture-level city in western Anhui province, People's Republic of China, bordering Henan to the northwest and Hubei to the southwest. At the 2010 census, it had a total population of 5,612,590, whom 1,644,344 resided in the built-up area made of 2 urban districts. Neighbouring prefecture-level cities are the provincial capital of Hefei to the east, Anqing to the south, Huanggang (Hubei) and Xinyang (Henan) to the west, and Huainan and Fuyang to the north. Although the character "六" is normally pronounced "Liù", in this case it changes to "Lù" on account of the historical literary reading.

Anhui is a province of the People's Republic of China located in the eastern region of the country. The province is located across the basins of the Yangtze River and the Huai River, bordering Jiangsu to the east, Zhejiang to the southeast, Jiangxi to the south, Hubei to the southwest, Henan to the northwest, and Shandong for a short section in the north.

Military career

Fang took part in the Xinhai Revolution of 1911 and joined the revolutionary New Army in Shanghai. However, after the defeat of Sun Yat-sen in his revolt against Yuan Shikai, Fang went into exile in Japan, becoming a member of the Chinese Revolutionary Party. In 1918, he returned to China per Sun's orders as commander of a battalion in Sun's rival government in Guangdong and, in 1921, relocated to Shanghai as a member of the inner circle of the new Kuomintang government. However, the new Chinese government was soon rent with factionalism, and Fang sided with the northern Beiyang Government and eventually served in the Fengtian clique army under Zhang Zongchang until 1925, when he went over to the Nationalist army of General Feng Yuxiang. He rose to be commander of the 3rd Army, and later of the 4th Army Group, as well as commander of Jinan garrison before receiving the post of chairman of the government of Anhui province in 1929.

The Xinhai Revolution, also known as the Chinese Revolution or the Revolution of 1911, was a revolution that overthrew China's last imperial dynasty and established the Republic of China (ROC). The revolution was named Xinhai (Hsin-hai) because it occurred in 1911, the year of the Xinhai stem-branch in the sexagenary cycle of the Chinese calendar.

The New Armies, more fully called the Newly Created Army, was the modernized army corps formed under the Qing dynasty in December 1895, following its defeat in the First Sino-Japanese War. It was envisioned as militia fully trained and equipped according to Western standards.

Shanghai is one of the four municipalities under the direct administration of the central government of the People's Republic of China, the largest city in China by population, and the second most populous city proper in the world, with a population of 24.18 million as of 2017. It is a global financial centre and transport hub, with the world's busiest container port. Located in the Yangtze River Delta, it sits on the south edge of the estuary of the Yangtze in the middle portion of the East China coast. The municipality borders the provinces of Jiangsu and Zhejiang to the north, south and west, and is bounded to the east by the East China Sea.

Due to his dissatisfaction with Chiang Kai-shek, he was detained and removed from office in October 1929. Following the Japanese invasion of Jehol in February 1933, Fang joined the Anti-Japanese National Salvation Movement. He organized the Movement's forces in China and led them north to confront the Japanese. On May 26, Fang united with Feng Yuxiang at Zhangjiakou and organized the Chahar People's Anti-Japanese Army Alliance, being its commander of the North Route, fighting against Japanese in the east of Chahar province. The army had some success, capturing Duolun for a time from the Japanese and their collaborators.

Chiang Kai-shek, also known as Generalissimo Chiang or Chiang Chungcheng and romanized as Chiang Chieh-shih or Jiang Jieshi, was a Chinese politician and military leader who served as the leader of the Republic of China between 1928 and 1975, first in mainland China until 1949 and then in Taiwan until his death. He was recognized by much of the world as the head of the legitimate government of China until 1971, during which the United Nations passed Resolution 2758.

The Battle of Rehe was the second part of Operation Nekka, a campaign by which the Empire of Japan successfully captured the Inner Mongolian province of Rehe from the Chinese warlord Zhang Xueliang and annexed it to the new state of Manchukuo. The battle was fought from February 21 to March 1, 1933.

Feng Yuxiang was a warlord and leader in Republican China from Chaohu, Anhui. He served as Vice Premier of the Republic of China from 1928-30. He was also known as the Christian General for his zeal to convert his troops and the Betrayal General for his penchant to break with the establishment. In 1911 he was an officer in the ranks of Yuan Shikai's Beiyang Army but joined forces with revolutionaries against the Qing Dynasty. He rose to high rank within Wu Peifu's Zhili warlord faction but launched the Beijing coup in 1924 that knocked Zhili out of power and brought Sun Yat-sen to Beijing. He joined the Nationalist Party (KMT), supported the Northern Expedition and became blood brothers with Chiang Kai-shek, but resisted Chiang's consolidation of power in the Central Plains War and broke with him again in resisting Japanese incursions in 1933. He spent his later years supporting the Revolutionary Committee of the Kuomintang.

However, the Chahar People’s Anti-Japanese Army was eventually beaten back by the Imperial Japanese Army and dispersed by the forces of Chiang Kai-shek, who still wished to reach an agreement with Japan and make war on the Communist Party and its Red Army.

The Imperial Japanese Army was the official ground-based armed force of the Empire of Japan from 1868 to 1945. It was controlled by the Imperial Japanese Army General Staff Office and the Ministry of the Army, both of which were nominally subordinate to the Emperor of Japan as supreme commander of the army and the navy. Later an Inspectorate General of Aviation became the third agency with oversight of the army. During wartime or national emergencies, the nominal command functions of the emperor would be centralized in an Imperial General Headquarters (IGHQ), an ad-hoc body consisting of the chief and vice chief of the Army General Staff, the Minister of the Army, the chief and vice chief of the Naval General Staff, the Inspector General of Aviation, and the Inspector General of Military Training.

Communist Party of China Political party of the Peoples Republic of China

The Communist Party of China (CPC), also referred to as the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), is the founding and ruling political party of the People's Republic of China. The Communist Party is the sole governing party within mainland China, permitting only eight other, subordinated parties to co-exist, those making up the United Front. It was founded in 1921, chiefly by Chen Duxiu and Li Dazhao. The party grew quickly, and by 1949 it had driven the nationalist Kuomintang (KMT) government from mainland China after the Chinese Civil War, leading to the establishment of the People's Republic of China. It also controls the world's largest armed forces, the People's Liberation Army.

The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army, frequently shortened to Red Army was the army and the air force of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, and, after 1922, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The army was established immediately after the 1917 October Revolution. The Bolsheviks raised an army to oppose the military confederations of their adversaries during the Russian Civil War. Beginning in February 1946, the Red Army, along with the Soviet Navy, embodied the main component of the Soviet Armed Forces; taking the official name of "Soviet Army", until its dissolution in December 1991.

Assassination

Living in Guilin for a time, Fang had to move to Hong Kong in 1939 under threat by the Kuomintang. He left when the Japanese occupied Hong Kong in 1941 but was assassinated by Kuomintang agents on his way back to Guangdong with crowds of refugees in December 1941, near Zhongshan, in Guangdong province, China.

Guilin, formerly romanized as Kweilin, is a prefecture-level city in the northeast of China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. It is situated on the west bank of the Li River and borders Hunan to the north. Its name means "Forest of Sweet Osmanthus", owing to the large number of fragrant sweet osmanthus trees located in the region. The city has long been renowned for its scenery of karst topography and is one of China's most popular tourist destinations.

Hong Kong, officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China and commonly abbreviated as HK, is a special administrative region on the eastern side of the Pearl River estuary in southern China. With over 7.4 million people of various nationalities in a 1,104-square-kilometre (426 sq mi) territory, Hong Kong is the world's fourth most densely populated region.

The Kuomintang of China is a major political party in the Republic of China on Taiwan, based in Taipei and is currently an opposition political party in the Legislative Yuan.

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References

"Fang Zhenwu". Rulers. Retrieved 25 October 2013.
"Fang Zhenwu". Generals.dk. Retrieved 25 October 2013.

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