Chiang Kai-shek

Chiang Kai-shek in 1943.

Chiang Kai-shek (31 October 1887 – 5 April 1975) was a reactionary Chinese military leader and dictator who was eventually overthrown on the Chinese mainland by the Chinese Revolution in 1949. He fled with the remnant of his army to the island Taiwan where he ruled as despot until his death.

Chiang was an associate of Sun Yat-sen, the founder of the Kuomintang, and assumed control of the KMT after Sun’s death in 1925. Chiang had been the commandant of the KMT’s Whampoa Military Academy, and had become the top GMD military leader. In 1928 he led the Northern Expedition (with considerable support from the Soviet Union and members of the Communist Party of China) which succeeded in displacing a number of warlords and in more or less unifying the country.

Chiang turned on the CPC which had been supporting him within the KMT, and massacred thousands of its members and sympathizers. Chiang led a inadequate nationalist resistance to Japan’s invasion of China during the 1930s. This gave an opening for the CPC, under Mao Zedong’s leadership, to wage a more determined fight against Japanese imperialism. Even during World War II, Chiang spent considerable effort fighting the Communists (rather than Japan); but after the Japanese surrender he turned his full attention toward trying to wipe out the Communists in a major civil war. However, despite enormous material help from the United States (and only very limited help to the Communists from the Soviets) Chiang was defeated and fled to Taiwan.

On Taiwan he established martial law and ruled in a dictatorial manner. The KMT, at first with Chiang’s son in charge, continued to rule Taiwan for many years after his death, until bourgeois democracy was finally introduced there.

See also

• Blue Shirt society