Chiang Kai-shek was a Chinese politician, revolutionary, and military commander who was the leader of the Nationalist Kuomintang (KMT) party and commander-in-chief and Generalissimo of the National Revolutionary Army (NRA) from 1926, and leader of the Republic of China (ROC) in mainland China from 1928. After Chiang was defeated in the Chinese Civil War by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 1949, he continued to lead the Republic of China on the island of Taiwan until his death in 1975. He was considered the legitimate head of China by the United Nations until 1971.
Chiang Ching-kuo was a politician of the Republic of China. The eldest and only biological son of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, he held numerous posts in the government of the Republic of China and ended martial law in 1987. He served as the 3rd premier of the Republic of China between 1972 and 1978 and was president of the Republic of China from 1978 until his death in 1988.
Claire Lee Chennault was an American military aviator best known for his leadership of the "Flying Tigers" and the Chinese Nationalist Air Force in World War II.
Joseph Warren "Vinegar Joe" Stilwell was a United States Army general who served in the China Burma India Theater during World War II. Stilwell was made the Chief of Staff of the Chinese Nationalist Leader, Chiang Kai-shek. He spent the majority of his tenure striving for a 90-division army trained by American troops, using American lend-lease equipment, and fighting to reclaim Burma from the Japanese. His efforts led to friction with Chiang, who viewed troops not under his immediate control as a threat, and who saw the Chinese communists as a greater rival than Japan. An early American popular hero of the war for leading a column walking out of Burma pursued by the victorious Imperial Japanese Armed Forces, Stilwell's implacable demands for units debilitated by disease to be sent into heavy combat resulted in Merrill's Marauders becoming disenchanted with him. The U.S. government was infuriated by the 1944 fall of Changsha to a Japanese offensive. Stilwell delivered a message to the Chinese Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek from President Roosevelt that threatened that lend-lease aid to China would be cut off. The resulting friction atop an already tense relationship made Ambassador Patrick J. Hurley advocate that Stilwell had to be replaced. Chiang had been intent on keeping Lend-Lease supplies to fight the Chinese Communist Party, but Stilwell had been obeying his instructions to get the Communists and the Nationalists to co-operate against Japan.
The Northern Expedition was a military campaign launched by the National Revolutionary Army (NRA) of the Kuomintang (KMT) against the Beiyang government and other regional warlords in 1926. The purpose of the campaign was to reunify China, which had become fragmented in the aftermath of the 1911 Revolution. The expedition was led by Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, and was divided into two phases. The first phase ended in a 1927 political split between two factions of the KMT: the right-leaning Nanjing faction, led by Chiang, and the left-leaning faction in Wuhan, led by Wang Jingwei. The split was partially motivated by Chiang's Shanghai Massacre of Communists within the KMT, which marked the end of the First United Front. In an effort to mend this schism, Chiang Kai-shek stepped down as the commander of the NRA in August 1927, and went into exile in Japan.
Patrick Jay Hurley was an American politician and diplomat. He was the United States Secretary of War from 1929 to 1933, but is best remembered for being Ambassador to China in 1945, during which he was instrumental in getting Joseph Stilwell recalled from China and replaced with the more diplomatic General Albert Coady Wedemeyer. A man of humble origins, Hurley's lack of what was considered to be a proper ambassadorial demeanor and mode of social interaction made professional diplomats scornful of him. He came to share pre-eminent army strategist Wedemeyer's view that the Chinese Communists could be defeated and America ought to commit to doing so even if it meant backing the Kuomintang and Chiang Kai-shek to the hilt. Frustrated, Hurley resigned as Ambassador to the Republic of China in 1945, publicised his concerns about high-ranking members of the State Department, and alleged they believed that the Chinese Communists were not totalitarians and that America's priority was to avoid allying with a losing side in the civil war.
The Tanggu Truce, sometimes called the Tangku Truce, was a ceasefire and unequal treaty that was signed between the Republic of China and the Empire of Japan in Tanggu, Tianjin, on May 31, 1933. It formally ended the Japanese invasion of Manchuria, which had begun in September 1931.
The term China Hand originally referred to 19th-century merchants in the treaty ports of China, but came to be used for anyone with expert knowledge of the language, culture, and people of China. In 1940s America, the term China Hands came to refer to a group of American diplomats, journalists, and soldiers who were known for their knowledge of China and influence on U.S. policy before, during, and after World War II. During and after the Cold War, the term China watcher became popularized: and, with some overlap, the term sinologist also describes a China expert in English, particularly in academic contexts or in reference to the expert's academic background.
Hu Zongnan, courtesy name Shoushan (壽山), was a Chinese general in the National Revolutionary Army and then the Republic of China Army. Together with Chen Cheng and Tang Enbo, Hu, a native of Zhenhai, Ningbo, formed the triumvirate of Chiang Kai-shek's most trusted generals during the Second Sino-Japanese War. After the retreat of the Nationalists to Taiwan in 1949, he also served as the President's military strategy advisor until his death in 1962.
The wartime perception of the Chinese Communists in the United States and other Western nations before and during World War II varied widely in both the public and government circles. The Soviet Union, whose support had been crucial to the Chinese Communist Party from its founding, also supported the Chinese Nationalist government to defeat Japan and to protect Soviet territory.
Yao Yecheng, along with Chen Jieru was among the two concubines of Nationalist Chinese leader Chiang Kai-shek during the time when Chiang was also in an arranged marriage to Mao Fumei. In 1921, Chiang married Jennie. In 1927, Chiang divorced Mao Fumei and exiled Jennie—denying any association with the latter. In the busy year of 1927, Chiang also dropped Yao and married Soong Mei-ling.
Hermann Kriebel was a lieutenant colonel and former Bavarian staff officer.
The Demilitarized Zone Peace Preservation Corps was a police force created by the 1933 Tanggu Truce between China and Japan in the aftermath of the Japanese invasion of Manchuria. Its role was to patrol and maintain order in the demilitarized zone extending from south of the Great Wall, to a line north east of the Bai River in Hebei province in northern China. At the end of 1935, with the proclamation of the Autonomous Government of Eastern Hebei, the Peace Preservation Corps was disbanded, and its forces were absorbed into the new East Hebei Army.
William Henry Donald was an Australian journalist who worked in China from 1903 until World War II. He had considerable direct and indirect influence on events in China, as expressed in a biography.
The Kuomintang (KMT) is a Chinese political party that ruled mainland China from 1927 to 1949 prior to its relocation to Taiwan as a result of the Chinese Civil War. The name of the party translates as "China's National People's Party" and was historically referred to as the Chinese Nationalists. The party was initially founded on 23 August 1912, by Sun Yat-sen but dissolved in November 1913. It reformed on October 10, 1919, again led by Sun Yat-sen, and became the ruling party in China. After Sun's death, the party was dominated from 1927 to 1975 by Chiang Kai-shek. After the KMT lost the civil war with the Chinese Communist Party in 1949, the party retreated to Taiwan and remains a major political party of the Republic of China based in Taiwan.
The historical Kuomintang socialist ideology is a form of socialist thought developed in mainland China during the early Republic of China. The Tongmenghui revolutionary organization led by Sun Yat-sen was the first to promote socialism in China.
The Canton Merchants' Corps Uprising or Canton Merchants' Corps Incident was an armed conflict between the Canton Merchants' Volunteer Corps and the Nationalist army in Guangzhou, China, in late 1924. It ended in a decisive government victory.
Ye Ju (1881–1934), formerly romanized as Yeh Chü, was a Chinese Nationalist general and governor of Guangdong Province.
The General: Charles de Gaulle and the France He Saved is a non-fiction book authored by the British historian and journalist Jonathan Fenby. Published in 2010 by Simon & Schuster, the biography details the life and times of the iconic French statesman Charles de Gaulle, with the 20th-century history of the senior general and politician's nation also receiving focus.
Chiangism, also known as the Political Philosophy of Chiang Kai-shek, or Chiang Kai-shek Thought, is the political philosophy of President Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, who used it during his rule in China under the Kuomintang on both the mainland and Taiwan. It is a right-wing authoritarian nationalist ideology based on mostly Tridemist principles mixed with Confucianism. It was primarily practiced as part of the New Life Movement, as well as the Chinese Cultural Renaissance movement. It is influenced by other political ideologies, including socialism, fascism, party-state capitalism, paternalistic conservatism, as well as Chiang's Methodist Christian beliefs.
