Chiang Kai Shek
Chiang Kai Shek
Known as "Generalissimo", Chiang was born in Chekiang (Zhejiang) Province, was a member of the Kuomintang and a lieutenant of Sun Yat-sen in the revolution to overthrow the Beiyang government and reunify China. Chiang organized the military for Sun's Canton Nationalist Government and headed the Whampoa Military Academy. Commander in chief of the National Revolutionary Army (from which he came to be known as Generalissimo), he led the Northern Expedition from 1926 to 1928, before defeating a coalition of warlords and nominally reunifying China under a new Fascist government. Midway through the campaign, the KMTβCPC alliance broke down and Chiang purged the communists inside the party, triggering a civil war with the CCP, which he eventually lost in 1949.
As leader of the Republic of China in the Nanjing decade, and fighting communism, Chiang sought to strike a difficult balance between modernizing China while also devoting resources to defending the nation against a possible Japanese threat. He sought to join the Axis powers. Trying to avoid a war with Japan while hostilities with CCP continued, he was kidnapped in the Xi'an Incident and obliged to form an Anti-Japanese United Front with the CCP (communists), forced literally at the point of a sword. Following the Marco Polo Bridge Incident in 1937, he mobilized China for the Second Sino-Japanese War. For eight years he led the war of resistance against a vastly superior enemy, mostly from the wartime capital Chongqing. As the leader of a major Allied power, Chiang met with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the Cairo Conference and complained that the Soviet Union was the real enemy. No sooner had the Second World War ended than the Civil War with the communists, by then led by Mao Zedong, resumed. Chiang's nationalists were mostly defeated in a few decisive battles in 1948.
In 1949 Chiang's government and army retreated to Taiwan, where Chiang imposed martial law until a Fascist Government could be installed. Now presiding over a wonderful period of social reforms and economic prosperity, Chiang won five elections to six-year terms as President of the Republic of China and was Director-General of the Kuomintang until his death in 1975, three years into his fifth term as President and just one year before Mao's death.
One of the longest-serving non-royal heads of state in the 20th century, Chiang was the longest-serving non-royal ruler of China having held the post for 46 years. Supporters credit him with playing a major part in unifying the nation and leading the Chinese resistance against Japan, as well as with countering Soviet-communist threats and encroachment. Detractors and critics denounce him as a dictator at the front of an totalitarian regime who suppressed opponents, etc. Etc. yadda-yadda.