History UsefulNotes / ChiangKaiShek

Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, also known as [[UsefulNotes/WhyMaoChangedHisName Jiang]] [[UsefulNotes/ChineseLanguage Jieshi]] or [[UsefulNotes/ChineseNames Jiang Zhongzheng]] [[note]]"Jieshi" is his "zi" (style name), while "Zhongzheng" is his "ming" (given name)[[/note]], was born in 1887 to a middle-class merchant family. While studying in Japan, he became an avid Chinese revolutionary-nationalist.

Hainan fell just a year later - the People's Liberation Army basically commandeered every boat in China south of Shanghai - but Taiwan held out, at least in part due to the US giving Chiang's regime its backing; this backing came when UsefulNotes/TheKoreanWar broke out[[note]]Two days after war broke out in Korea, the US 7th Fleet was dispatched to protect Taiwan, stopping the PLA's attack plans. Some of the mobilized PLA forces would later see action in Korea.[[/note]]. During his rule in Taiwan, Chiang, ruling as PresidentForLife, finally succeeded in creating a modernized and well-disciplined army, as well as centralizing his power by ruling over Taiwan with an iron fist, imprisoning or killing any opposition in a period known as the "[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Terror_(Taiwan) White Terror]]" in Taiwan. KMT corruption was also ended to an extent, and Chiang's government recognized limited civil liberties, although they refused to hold elections. Believing the Communist regime fragile, Chiang dreamed of leading a crusade to retake the mainland. After two decades of such preparations, failed attempts to put them into practice and attempts by the US to stop Chiang from wrecking their diplomatic relations with the PRC, he came to accept that this was a pipe dream, and he died in 1975. The KMT also became a centre-right political party after years of being centrist.

However, he is also credited for partial re-unification of China by subjugating and attempting to eradicate the Warlords and - most importantly - leading China through her War of Resistance against Japan, while Mao sat back for the most part. Interestingly, today's Mainland China is very much as Chiang seems to have wanted it -- an authoritarian, largely-capitalist economy, overseen by a strong central government with state-owned companies in key industries (although he would probably have been saddened by the increasing westernisation and decline of religion, and that it hadn't transitioned to a full democracy) -- and is ''almost nothing'' like what Mao wanted it to be, despite the mainland remaining [[InNameOnly officially]] Communist and revering Mao as the founder of the nation.

However, he is also credited for partial re-unification of China by subjugating and attempting to eradicate the Warlords and - most importantly - leading China through her War of Resistance against Japan, while Mao sat back for the most part. Interestingly, today's Mainland China is very much as Chiang seems to have wanted it (a largely-capitalist economy, but with a dictatorial government and state-owned companies in key industries) - and is ''almost nothing'' like what Mao wanted it to be, despite the mainland remaining [[InNameOnly officially]] Communist and revering Mao as the founder of the nation.

Hainan fell just a year later - the People's Liberation Army basically commandeered every boat in China south of Shanghai - but Taiwan held out, at least in part due to the US giving Chiang's regime its backing; this backing came when UsefulNotes/TheKoreanWar broke out[[note]]Two days after war broke out in Korea, the US 7th Fleet was dispatched to protect Taiwan, stopping the PLA's attack plans for Taiwan. Some of the mobilized forces would later see action in Korea.[[/note]]. During his rule in Taiwan, Chiang, ruling as PresidentForLife, finally succeeded in creating a modernized and well-disciplined army, as well as centralizing his power by ruling over Taiwan with an iron fist, imprisoning or killing any opposition in a period known as the "[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Terror_(Taiwan) White Terror]]" in Taiwan. KMT corruption was also ended to an extent, and Chiang's government recognized limited civil liberties, although they refused to hold elections. Believing the Communist regime fragile, Chiang dreamed of leading a crusade to retake the mainland. After two decades of such preparations, failed attempts to put them into practice and attempts by the US to stop Chiang from wrecking their diplomatic relations with the PRC, he came to accept that this was a pipe dream, and he died in 1975. The KMT also became a centre-right political party after years of being centrist.

Hainan fell just a year later - the People's Liberation Army basically commandeered every boat in China south of Shanghai - but Taiwan held out, at least in part due to the US giving Chiang's regime its backing. During his rule in Taiwan, Chiang, ruling as PresidentForLife, finally succeeded in creating a modernized and well-disciplined army, as well as centralizing his power by ruling over Taiwan with an iron fist, imprisoning or killing any opposition in a period known as the "[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Terror_(Taiwan) White Terror]]" in Taiwan. KMT corruption was also ended to an extent, and Chiang's government recognized limited civil liberties, although they refused to hold elections. Believing the Communist regime fragile, Chiang dreamed of leading a crusade to retake the mainland. After two decades of such preparations, failed attempts to put them into practice and attempts by the US to stop Chiang from wrecking their diplomatic relations with the PRC, he came to accept that this was a pipe dream, and he died in 1975. The KMT also became a centre-right political party after years of being centrist.

These problems were not solved when Japan brought the USA into the war, but US Loans did at least help stave off the Kuomintang's imminent implosion; however, the rest of the war was marked by an inexorable deterioration in the quality of the Kuomintang as a military force and as a regime. At least part of this was due to the inflation; though less money needed to be printed, the effective injection of so much extra money into a closed economy devoted almost entirely to producing things which did not further economic growth (bullets, shells, helmets, bandages) meant that the inflation got exponentially worse (because the economy shrank even as the amount of money in the economy became ever-greater). It was during the war that the Kuomintang, understandably, began to be associated with inefficiency and corruption.

The KMT went down hard, however, and the civil war took on an ever more brutal character as a year of regular battles were waged across north- and central-China. The Communists' organisational advantage eventually showed, and the NRA was driven back and eventually made an epic LastStand at the Yangzi. When the line was broken, the Kuomintang broke with it. Chiang took what remained of his loyal forces - [[UsefulNotes/TheOtherChineseArmy a couple hundred thousand NRA troops]] - and used them to ship the national bank's precious metal reserves, hundreds of national treasures and two million refugees to the islands of Hainan and UsefulNotes/{{Taiwan}}. The People's Republic of China was proclaimed just months later, on the First of October 1949.

After returning from his military-education in Japan, Chiang served as the first Commandant of the famous Whampoa Military Academy - which oversaw the training of the core of the Kuomintang's military forces for Sun's programme of centralisation through the use of armed force. The academy produced most of the famous Chinese generals of the age, and some other notables like the Academy's Socialist Ideology Teacher/Instructor [[UsefulNotes/TheVietnamWar Ho Chi Minh]]. Sun died after just a few years (in March 1925), and not long after his death Chiang claimed leadership of the Kuomintang from the left-leaning Wang Jingwei[[note]]At the time of Sun's death, although Chiang was Sun's brother-in-law, he was nowhere near the top of the pecking order within the KMT. Besides Wang Jingwei, the then important leaders are (among others) Liao Zhongkai and Hu Hanmin. As it turned out, Liao was assassinated in August 1925, and Hu was implicated in the case. With one incident, two important leaders within the KMT were removed. Liao's assassination was never conclusively solved. Both Liao's widow He Xiangning and Taiwanese writer Li Ao pointed to Chiang as the mastermind, as he was the one who benefited most from the aftermath of the incident.[[/note]] and launched the long-awaited Northern Expedition (in league with the Socialist parties, like the Communist Party of China).

In 1929 Zhang Xueliang, Warlord of Manchuria and son of the late Zhang Zuolin (Warlord of the same) overplayed his hand with the Soviets and basically started a Sino-Soviet War when the Red Army marched in to give him a dressing-down. Zhang had been pursuing a programme of flirtation with the Soviets to preserve his freedom of action with the Kuomintang, and vice versa, but his years spent as his father's protege had not taught him about the subtleties of politics and diplomacy - Xueliang had spent his time fighting his father's wars, not dealing with their fallout. Zhang pleaded with Chiang and the Kuomintang for help in repelling them, and aid was sent, but their forces were no match for the Red Army's superior logistics, organisation, and abundance of heavy weaponry. Zhang was forced to give economic concessions to the Soviets and, with his army weakened, was left both indebted to and dependent on Chiang.

A year later, at the height of a Kuomintang 'Communist Suppression Campaign' which Chiang was using to gain control over the various petty warlords of the upper Yangzi basin, units of the Imperial Japanese Army struck out on their own and attacked the forces of 'the Young Marshal' warlord Zhang Xueliang (son of the late warlord Zhang Zuolin, whom the Japanese had assassinated). They went on to soundly beat the Manchurian warlord's forces, driving him from his old powerbase and causing him to call on Jiang for aid. Chiang ignored him, though Zhang's appeals to Chinese nationalism seemed to strike a chord that Chiang realised it would be difficult to ignore in future. He knew China and the KMT were too weak to take on Japan and win; but he couldn't ''say'' that, not directly. Instead he famously quipped, "The Japanese are a disease of the skin. The Communists are a disease of the heart". Several generations of textbooks produced by the Board of Education of the People's Republic of China, and the textbooks of many highschool children throughout the Anglosphere, [[TwistingTheWords have used this quote to decisively prove that Chiang was both unpatriotic and unhinged]] (because of his apparent fixation upon Communism when the Japanese clearly presented a greater threat).

After returning from his military-education in Japan, Chiang served as the first Commandant of the famous Whampoa Military Academy - which oversaw the training of the core of the Kuomintang's military forces for Sun's programme of centralisation through the use of armed force. The academy produced most of the famous Chinese generals of the age, and some other notables like the Academy's Socialist Ideology Teacher/Instructor [[UsefulNotes/TheVietnamWar Ho Chi Minh]]. Sun died after just a few years (in March 1925), and not long after his death Chiang claimed leadership of the Kuomintang from the left-leaning Wang Jingwei[[note]]At the time of Sun's death, although Chiang was Sun's brother-in-law, he was nowhere near the top of the pecking order within the KMT. Besides Wang Jingwei, the then important leaders are (among others) Liao Zhongkai and Hu Hanmin. As it turned out, Liao was assassinated in August 1925, and Hu was implicated in the case. With one incident, two important leaders within the KMT were removed.[[/note]] and launched the long-awaited Northern Expedition (in league with the Socialist parties, like the Communist Party of China).

After returning from his military-education in Japan, Chiang served as the first Commandant of the famous Whampoa Military Academy - which oversaw the training of the core of the Kuomintang's military forces for Sun's programme of centralisation through the use of armed force. The academy produced most of the famous Chinese generals of the age, and some other notables like the Academy's Socialist Ideology Teacher/Instructor [[UsefulNotes/TheVietnamWar Ho Chi Minh]]. Sun died after just a few years, and not long after his death Chiang claimed leadership of the Kuomintang from the left-leaning Wang Jingwei and launched the long-awaited Northern Expedition (in league with the Socialist parties, like the Communist Party of China).

In 1920, Chiang met his "fourth" [[note]]Legally, he had two wives: Mao Fumei (married 1901, separated 1921, formally divorced 1927; Mao was also the biological mother of Chiang's son and heir Ching-Kuo.) and Soong (maried 1927), and many concubines as per the norm for men of his time. Two concubines were formally recognized: Yao Yecheng and Chen Jieru, but they too were set aside when Chiang and Soong married in 1927. This should come as no surprise, as Lady Soong was a Christian and scion of a powerful family.[[/note]] and most famous wife, Soong Mei-ling, the youngest of the famous Soong sisters. Educated in America, fluent in English (speaking with a Georgia accent) and belonging to one of the wealthiest families in China, 'Madame Chiang' was an effective diplomat, and instrumental in establishing foreign relations with Allied leaders later on. Soong Mei-ling stayed with Chiang for the rest of her life, and had no children with him. Interestingly, Chiang converted to Christianity by decree of Soong's mother, and prayed every morning alongside his morning meditations. [[note]]With his marriage to Soong, Chiang made powerful connections. His brothers-in-law included Sun Yat-sen (husband to Ching-ling, although he had passed away in 1925) and Kung Hsiang-hsi (husband to Ai-ling), one of China's richest men.[[/note]]

By the end of the Northern Expedition, Chiang was dubbed "The Red General" due to his close ties with Soviet leaders and alleged communist sympathies. However, halfway through the 1927 campaign, Chiang decided to eradicate the socialists within the KMT government and army, initiating the Shanghai Massacre which saw the purges of thousands of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) members. This soon escalated into a campaign of "White Terror" up the Yangzi to Wuhan, which the socialist members of the KMT had just taken - and which was in serious danger of becoming an independent power-base for them, from which they could easily backstab Chiang and take Nanjing-Shanghai if he continued to campaign northward without destroying them as a major political force. With the socialist elements gone, the KMT quickly swung from a democratic government to an authoritarian one under Chiang, who ruled China as a [[TheGeneralissimo military dictator]]. Following Sun's theory of 'the People's tutelage', where China would be put under one-party rule until the people were educated enough for actual democracy, all other political parties were expelled except the KMT. Although Sun had not encouraged it, Chiang also began eliminating any form of opposition to KMT rule, usually via bullets and the secret police.

After four years of warfare, by 1941 the Kuomintang was on the verge of collapse. Soviet aid had been ''invaluable'' to the Kuomintang's survival to-date, but no longer. The Kuomintang's had to scale-back the war effort now, as they didn't actually have enough ammunition to sustain an open war anymore - the 1938 Battle of Wuhan had seen a full ''quarter'' of the entire Kuomintang's ammunition used up, and that was when they still had Soviet assistance. The Kuomintang had turned to buying the petrol, machine tools, and military supplies they needed via French Indochina and British Burma. But compared to the days of Soviet Aid it was just a trickle, and Japan had since occupied French Indochina and thus cut the Kunming-Saigon railway in two. A single, narrow road - the 'Burma Road' - through the mountains was the Kuomintang's only remaining link to the outside world. And with the Kuomintang scraping the bottom of the fiscal barrel and most of the world's industrial 'slack' now occupied producing war material for powers that ''weren't'' as broke as them, the road was pretty much useless as they could barely afford to buy and ship anything over it.

Japan went on to occupy the very heartland of Kuomintang territory - the entire lower Yangtze delta all the way up to Wuhan, which fell the next year - with Kuomintang forces fighting, and dying, hard, yet successfully dragging Japan into a stalemate. For four years the Guomindang fought Japan alone, holding onto just one major agricultural area (the recently-subjugated upper Yangtze basin), a mountain range (Henan-Jiangxi), some mines, and a handful of factories disassembled in their entirety and hauled a thousand miles upriver (by ox-cart in many cases) to Chongqing, wartime capital of Kuomintang China and most-heavily-bombed city in history. Operation Zet - a generous delivery of Soviet aeroplanes, artillery, small-arms, petrol, machine-tools (so KMT factories could be re-tooled to produce ammunition) and technical assistance - and continued Soviet 'donations' delivered by truck through Mongolia made continuing to fight the war possible, and Soviet loans helped fill the massive holes in the Kuomintang's budget. All those supplies were essential, you see, as the Kuomintang were unable to produce any those goods (though they could make some ammunition for them) by themselves and the Japanese had made it virtually impossible to get those goods by sea. But both Soviet military supplies and credit dried up soon after the Soviets' resounding victory under General Zhukov at Nomonhan/Khalkhin Gol and the resultant Soviet-Japanese Non-Aggression Pact. By 1940, the Kuomintang was totally on their own, only saved by Japanese military incompetence and the fact that the KMT army was constantly mobilizing, despite their chronic supply problems.

Japan went on to occupy the very heartland of Kuomintang territory - the entire lower Yangtze delta all the way up to Wuhan, which fell the next year - with Kuomintang forces fighting, and dying, hard, yet successfully dragging Japan into a stalemate. For four years the Guomindang fought Japan alone, holding onto just one major agricultural area (the recently-subjugated upper Yangtze basin), a mountain range (Henan-Jiangxi), some mines and a handful of factories disassembled in their entirety and hauled a thousand miles upriver (by ox-cart in many cases) to Chongqing, wartime capital of Kuomintang China and most-heavily-bombed city in history. Operation Zet - a generous delivery of Soviet aeroplanes, artillery, small-arms, petrol, machine-tools (so KMT factories could be re-tooled to produce ammunition) and technical assistance - and continued Soviet 'donations' delivered by truck through Mongolia made continuing to fight the war possible, and Soviet loans helped fill the massive holes in the Kuomintang's budget. All those supplies were essential, you see, as the Kuomintang were unable to produce any those goods (though they could make some ammunition for them) by themselves and the Japanese had made it virtually impossible to get those goods by sea. But both Soviet military supplies and credit dried up soon after the Soviets' resounding victory under General Zhukov at Nomonhan/Khalkhin Gol and the resultant Soviet-Japanese Non-Aggression Pact. By 1940, the Kuomintang was totally on their own, only saved by Japanese military incompetence and the fact that the KMT army was constantly mobilizing, despite their chronic supply problems.

Although they possessed excellent infantry weapons, such as the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiang_Kai-Shek_rifle Type 24]] service rifle, the powerful [[CoolGuns/{{Handguns}} Mauser C96]] and the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZB_vz._26 ZB vz. 26]] light machine gun, Chiang's National Revolutionary Army on the whole was horribly underequipped, undertrained and badly lacking morale compared to the Japanese. Most divisions had no artillery at all, and with the Chinese air force busy dealing with Japanese planes, no air support. Throughout the war, most Chinese troops had to defend key points only armed with bolt-action rifles, machine guns and stick grenades, plus any mortars they had if they could get them. Meanwhile, their attackers were often backed up by artillery, tanks, poison gas and aircraft. Machine guns were effective in stopping banzai charges, but a platoon had one light machine gun on average, while entire battalions only got a single heavy machine gun. This meant that banzai charges often inflicted heavy casualties on Chinese defenders, even if they outnumbered the Japanese attackers. Equipment losses were also high enough that by the late stages of the war, a large amount of Chinese equipment in the field was captured from the Japanese, such as sword bayonets and combat webbing.

->''"For the peace that lies before us we pay grateful tribute, first to the millions of our soldiers and civilians who so bravely sacrificed their lives, to our Allies who fought by our side for freedom and right, and to the Father of our Republic, Dr. Sun Yat-sen, who labored all his lifetime to guide our National Revolution to success. But for him we would not be enjoying this day of victory. Above all, we join in thanksgiving to our righteous and merciful God. The people of China suffered and sacrificed more each year as our long war of defense went on. But the confidence that we would emerge victorious also grew from day today. Our fellow countrymen in the enemy-occupied areas had to endure a long night of devastation and disgrace. Today they are liberated and can see again the White Sun in the Blue Sky [China's Flag]. [...] We have always said that the violent militarism of Japan is our enemy, not the people of Japan. Although the armed forces of the enemy have been defeated and must be made to observe strictly all the terms of surrender, yet we should not for a moment think of revenge or heap abuses upon the innocent people of Japan. We can only pity them because they have been so sadly deceived and misled, and hope that they will break away from the wrong-doing and crimes of their nation. Let all our fellow citizens, soldiers and civilians remember this."''

Unlike his son and Dr. Sun-yat-Sen, Chiang remains a incredibly divisive figure today, both in mainland China and Taiwan. He is well-known for his personal incorruptibility, honesty, and frugality - in contrast to the incredible corruption of his government. Chiang is also credited for keeping the entire KMT and all its various wings united under him, a remarkable feat considering how utterly divided China was throughout the first half of the 20th century. He's also quite unfairly blamed for 'infighting' with 'fellow Nationalist leaders' that were to all intents and purposes the leaders of independent countries (particularly the New Guangxi Clique under Li Zongren) whom he only barely managed to bully into helping. Perhaps most of all, he is blamed for the Communists winning the civil war, although the question of "Who lost China?" remains unresolved. Detractors point to Chiang's authoritarian military dictatorship, his inability to improve the lives of China's peasants or end KMT corruption in China, demonstrating poor military skills when fighting the Japanese in the early years of the war, his boneheaded management of the civil war from 1946 onwards, and his violent treatment of the Taiwanese under his rule.

[[UsefulNotes/NoMoreEmperors When the former Qing general Yuan Shikai managed to seize control of Beijing]], declaring an end to the Manchu dynasty, the Empire was formally dissolved and replaced by a Republic under the presidency of the revolutionary Sun Yat-sen/[[UsefulNotes/WhyMaoChangedHisName Sun Zhongshan]]. Yuan Shikai soon used his control of the Zhili- (Beijing-)region's military forces to seize power and declare himself Emperor in a highly unpopular and little-supported move. Upon his death in 1916, the country fragmented completely and came under the control of various Warlord factions. Sun Yat-sen went on to re-found the Kuomintang, or Guomindang, as the 'Chinese Kuomintang' Party in Guangzhou, in league with friendly warlord allies. It should be noted that the KMT was more of a coalition with various wings, each having their own idea on how a Chinese republic should be run. These ranged from liberal to conservative, from authoritarian to democratic, but they all wanted to see China unified and not run by a monarchy. Due to Sun and Chiang taking regular advice both the left and right wings, the KMT was effectively centrist throughout most of the 20th century, allowing them to ally with Germany, the USSR and the USA at various points.

Four years into the ten-year plan to reform his forces, Chiang's troops were poised to launch a final suppression campaign against the forces of the Chinese Communist Party - 'final', as it had a very good chance of success. Chiang made the mistake, however, of entrusting command of the forces to the skilled but embittered Zhang Xueliang. When Chiang came to oversee the beginning of the campaign to crush the Yan'an Soviet, which was on Yan Xishan's proverbial doorstep, Zhang (with a measure of assistance from Yan) had his soldiers massacre Chiang's guards and hold him hostage, demanding that he agree to an Anti-Japanese Alliance with him and the Communists - or he'd kill him. Chiang called his bluff on the 'killing' thing, at least partly because Yan Xishan had quite carefully explained to Zhang just how likely it was the country would dissolve into chaos if Chiang died (i.e. almost certainly). But Chiang recognised the groundswell of popular opinion that supported Zhang's proposal, though not the way in which he'd put it forward, and he called off the campaign. He still had Zhang imprisoned, though - for the rest of his life.

Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, also known as [[UsefulNotes/WhyMaoChangedHisName Jiang]] [[UsefulNotes/ChineseLanguage Jieshi]], was born in 1887 to a middle-class merchant family. While studying in Japan, he became an avid Chinese revolutionary-nationalist.

In 1920, Chiang met his "fourth" [[note]]Legally, he had two wives: Mao Fumei (married 1901, separated 1921, formally divorced 1927; Mao was also the biological mother of Chiang's son and heir Ching-Kuo.) and Soong (maried 1927), and many concubines as per the norm for men of his time. Two concubines were formally recognized: Yao Yecheng and Chen Jieru, but they too were set aside when Chiang and Soong married in 1927. This should come as no surprise, as Lady Soong was a Christian and scion of a powerful family.[[/note]] and most famous wife, Soong Mei-ling, the youngest of the famous Soong sisters. Educated in America, fluent in English (speaking with a Georgia accent) and belonging to one of the wealthiest families in China, 'Madame Chiang' was an effective diplomat, and instrumental in establishing foreign relations with Allied leaders later on. Soong Mei-ling stayed with Chiang for the rest of her life, and had no children with him. Interestingly, Chiang converted to Christianity by decree of Soong's mother, and prayed every morning alongside his morning meditations. [[note]]With his marriage to Soong, Chiang made powerful connections. His brothers-in-law included Sun Yat-sen (husband to Ching-ling) and Kung Hsiang-hsi (husband to Ai-ling), one of China's richest men.[[/note]]

In 1920, Chiang met his "fourth" [[note]]Legally, he had two wives: Mao Fumei (married 1901, separated 1921, formally divorced 1927; Mao was also the biological mother of Chiang's son and heir Ching-Kuo.) and Soong (maried 1927), and many concubines as per the norm for men of his time. Two concubines were formally recognized: Yao Yecheng and Chen Jieru, but they too were set aside when Chiang and Soong married in 1927. This should come as no surprise, as Lady Soong was a Christian and scion of a powerful family.[[/note]] and most famous wife, Soong Mei-ling, the youngest of the famous Soong sisters. Educated in America, fluent in English (speaking with a Georgia accent) and belonging to one of the wealthiest families in China, 'Madame Chiang' was an effective diplomat, and instrumental in establishing foreign relations with Allied leaders later on. Soong Mei-ling stayed with Chiang for the rest of her life, and had no children with him. Interestingly, Chiang converted to Christianity by decree of Soong's mother, and prayed every morning alongside his morning meditations.

In 1920, Chiang met his fourth [[note]]Legally, he had two wives: Mao Fumei (married 1901, separated 1921, formally divorced 1927; Mao was also the biological mother of Chiang's son and heir Ching-Kuo.) and Soong (maried 1927), and many concubines as per the norm for men of his time. Two concubines were formally recognized: Yao Yecheng and Chen Jieru, but they too were set aside when Chiang and Soong married in 1927. This should come as no surprise, as Lady Soong was a Christian and scion of a powerful family.[[/note]] and most famous wife, Soong Mei-ling, the youngest of the famous Soong sisters. Educated in America, fluent in English (speaking with a Georgia accent) and belonging to one of the wealthiest families in China, 'Madame Chiang' was an effective diplomat, and instrumental in establishing foreign relations with Allied leaders later on. Soong Mei-ling stayed with Chiang for the rest of her life, and had no children with him. Interestingly, Chiang converted to Christianity by decree of Soong's mother, and prayed every morning alongside his morning meditations.

In 1920, Chiang met his fourth [[note]]He had three other wives previously, and many concubines as per the norm for men of his time[[/note]] and most famous wife, Soong Mei-ling, the youngest of the famous Soong sisters. Educated in America, fluent in English (speaking with a Georgia accent) and belonging to one of the wealthiest families in China, 'Madame Chiang' was an effective diplomat, and instrumental in establishing foreign relations with Allied leaders later on. Soong Mei-ling stayed with Chiang for the rest of her life, and had no children with him. Interestingly, Chiang converted to Christianity by decree of Soong's mother, and prayed every morning alongside his morning meditations.

However, he is also credited for partial re-unification of China by subjugating and attempting to eradicate the Warlords and - most importantly - leading China through her War of Resistance against Japan, while Mao sat back for the most part. Interestingly, today's Mainland China is very much as Chiang seems to have wanted it - and is ''almost nothing'' like what Mao wanted it to be, despite the mainland remaining [[InNameOnly officially]] Communist.

->''"娘戏屄！[[note]]Pronounced: Niang Xi Bi. Meaning: [[AtomicFBomb Motherfucker]]![[/note]]"''
-->-- '''Chiang Kai-shek''', in private and in public

Oddly enough, few mention his political purges and repression in China[[note]] Authoritarian policies which killed tens of thousands but were, it must be noted, perfectly normal in China during that period as no-one could 'afford' to imprison their enemies, not least because they might be released and work against you at a later date.[[/note]] as well as Taiwan, where the KMT began the second longest period of martial law in history under Chiang's rule. Beginning with the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/February_28_Incident February 28 incident]], the decades of martial law saw tens of thousands (many who were actually innocent) of Taiwanese killed or imprisoned, turned the island into a brutally-run police state and wiped out most of the Taiwanese intellectual elite. Many of the survivors of the 228 Incident deeply resent Chiang and dislike the KMT, with some even [[http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2016/02/29/2003640462 vandalizing statues of Chiang]] on the anniversary of the incident. Many Taiwanese of the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoklo_people Hoklo minority]] that were targeted during the Terror also have nostalgia for Imperial Japan's rule of Taiwan compared to the KMT's, and Chiang is practically reviled on the island today [[note]] Although many Taiwanese greatly respect Sun Yat-sen and Chiang Ching-kuo [[/note]]. However, [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiwanese_aborigines Taiwanese aborigines]] tend to challenge this view, as they suffered from racial persecution and vicious pogroms under Japanese rule. Although the KMT attempted to forcibly assimilate the aborigines into Han Chinese culture, most aborigines were spared from the Terror and the KMT also introduced several patronage programs that allowed aborigines to get jobs.

Japan hadn't sued for anything less than an extremely advantageous peace because they had lost a lot already (no thanks to their repeated atrocities on the locals enraging the Chinese armies), and they knew the Kuomintang couldn't possibly win just holding onto a few scraps of territory. They were right; since '39-'40, the Kuomintang had been forced to resort to increasingly extreme (and brutal) measures to survive. Where before they had only taxed the towns, now they taxed the peasants too. Moreover, they had once collected all of their own taxes; but now they had to 'farm' the collection out to local landlords. In 1937 they had administered their provinces from Nanjing; now, they were forced to let the provinces govern themselves. Even conscription - needed to fill the ranks, now that the supply of willing recruits had been exhausted - was beyond their means. The Guomindang basically had to issue quotas to the local and regional governments, and pray that said governments weren't too brutal in the way they met them. Inflation, too, resulted as the Kuomintang was forced to print money in ever-larger amounts to pay its troops.

Despite his victories against the warlords, Chiang demonstrated poor military skills when fighting the Japanese, often issuing unrealistic orders and sacrificing his best soldiers to fight Pyrrhic battles, losing much of his elite and best-trained German divisions during the costly Battle of Shanghai of 1937. As a result, his army suffered frequent defeats, his government was forced to relocate many times throughout the war, and survived largely due to foreign aid, mainly from America and their Lend-Lease program.

Japan went on to occupy the very heartland of Kuomintang territory - the entire lower Yangtze delta all the way up to Wuhan, which fell the next year - with Kuomintang forces fighting, and dying, hard. For four years the Guomindang fought Japan alone, holding onto just one major agricultural area (the recently-subjugated upper Yangtze basin), a mountain range (Henan-Jiangxi), some mines and a handful of factories disassembled in their entirety and hauled a thousand miles upriver (by ox-cart in many cases) to Chongqing, wartime capital of Kuomintang China and most-heavily-bombed city in history. Operation Zet - a generous delivery of Soviet aeroplanes, artillery, small-arms, petrol, machine-tools (so KMT factories could be re-tooled to produce ammunition) and technical assistance - and continued Soviet 'donations' delivered by truck through Mongolia made continuing to fight the war possible, and Soviet loans helped fill the massive holes in the Guomindang's budget. All those supplies were essential, you see, as the Kuomintang were unable to produce any those goods (though they could make some ammunition for them) by themselves and the Japanese had made it virtually impossible to get those goods by sea. But both Soviet military supplies and credit dried up soon after the Soviets' resounding victory under General Zhukov at Nomonhan/Khalkhin Gol and the resultant Soviet-Japanese Non-Agression Pact. By 1940, the Kuomintang was totally on their own, only saved by Japanese military incompetence and the fact that the KMT army was constantly mobilizing, despite their chronic supply problems.

After four years of warfare, by 1941 the Kuomintang was on the verge of collapse. Soviet aid had been ''invaluable'' to the Kuomintang's survival to-date, but no longer. The Kuomintang's had to scale-back the war effort now, as they didn't actually have enough ammunition to sustain an open war anymore - the 1938 Battle of Wuhan had seen a full ''quarter'' of the entire Kuomintang's ammunition used up, and that was when they still had Soviet assistance. The Guomindang had turned to buying the petrol, machine tools, and military supplies they needed via French Indochina and British Burma. But compared to the days of Soviet Aid it was just a trickle, and Japan had since occupied French Indochina and thus cut the Kunming-Saigon railway in two. A single, narrow road - the 'Burma Road' - through the mountains was the Kuomintang's only remaining link to the outside world. And with the Kuomintang scraping the bottom of the fiscal barrel and most of the world's industrial 'slack' now occupied producing war material for powers that ''weren't'' as broke as them, the road was pretty much useless as they could barely afford to buy and ship anything over it.

Japan hadn't sued for anything less than an extremely advantageous peace because they had lost a lot already, and they knew the Kuomintang couldn't possibly win just holding onto a few scraps of territory. They were right; since '39-'40, the Kuomintang had been forced to resort to increasingly extreme (and brutal) measures to survive. Where before they had only taxed the towns, now they taxed the peasants too. Moreover, they had once collected all of their own taxes; but now they had to 'farm' the collection out to local landlords. In 1937 they had administered their provinces from Nanjing; now, they were forced to let the provinces govern themselves. Even conscription - needed to fill the ranks, now that the supply of willing recruits had been exhausted - was beyond their means. The Guomindang basically had to issue quotas to the local and regional governments, and pray that said governments weren't too brutal in the way they met them. Inflation, too, resulted as the Kuomintang was forced to print money in ever-larger amounts to pay its troops.