History UsefulNotes / ChiangKaiShek

* BadBoss: He was of an impatient nature and often screamed at his subordinates, supposedly beating one to death.
* BananaRepublic: The "Republic" of China was a non-Latin American example.

* BlackAndGreyMorality: As vicious and authoritarian as he was, Chiang was an angel compared to the Japanese he fought against, as well as some of the warlords he was allied with.
** Chiang valued only one thing: obedience. And he trusted only one man: himself. That is why he at one point personally held ''82 official positions'' in the KMT, most importantly acting as head of all the armed forces (the KMT has also been considered the party front of an army - Chiang's army). He picked his generals for their incompetence, because he suspected that more talented men might turn against him. Yes, this was the Good Guy of the Asian theater.
* CulturePolice: China under his reign was a wannabe-authoritarian and reactionary BananaRepublic. It was right for the rich to get even richer. It was wrong with all sorts of "immoral" behavior. Divorce and abortion were outlawed, and any provocative art was burned. Even spitting on the street was punishable. Militia bands called "Blueshirts" marched around and terrorized peasants with impunity.

* EpicFail: Chiang is well known for his incompetence, but nothing compares to the time when he ordered a [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1938_Yellow_River_flood dike to be blown up]] in order to stop the advancing Japanese. It didn't work, as the Japanese were still months away, and drowned close to 800,000 people.
* FascistButInefficient: China was a lethargic BananaRepublic under his rule, plagued by corruption and chaos. The Post Office was the most efficient, and also the only universal and apolitical, arm of 'government'. The whole country fell to pieces when the Japanese invaded, and once again during the Chinese Civil War.
** He did learn his lesson (finally!), since he turned Taiwan into a fascist and efficient PoliceState.
** Credit where credit is due: things did get better under his regime, but his efforts were focused mainly on the army and not the administration. Things got a lot easier on Taiwan as the entire island was basically directly under his control, unlike those vast portions of the mainland which had never truly been governable or paid anything more than lip service to the regime.

* HoistByHisOwnPetard: If this guy had done a better job of running his country (harder than it sounds), MaoZedong would never have come to power. China was a corrupt and misruled agricultural country, where the peasants were oppressed and miserable. In other words, ripe for a communist revolution focusing on the peasantry.

* NecessaryEvil: He still has many defenders, mostly among non-Mainlander Chinese (not surprising, since the alternative is the DirtyCommies), who believe he did more good than bad.

* ProperlyParanoid: He spent all his days obsessed with purging conspirators and communist sympathisers in his ranks, at the same time taking a page out of Stalin's book and doing his best to make himself indispensable to the Republic's continued existence to ward off any future attempts at coups or assassination. Various foreign advisers and commentators called him paranoid, but he was quite right in thinking that even members of his own inner circle (who shared his views) were looking kill him and replace him with someone more competent.

* UglyGuyHotWife: His second - political - marriage into the Soong family. They hated each other.

* WhatCouldHaveBeen: If the Japanese hasn't invaded in the midst of the war, it's likely that the Communists would have been defeated instead of being allowed to rearm itself following Japanese defeat.

* WhatCouldHaveBeen: If the Japanese hasn't invaded in the midst of the war, it's likely that the Communists would have been defeated instead of being allowed to rearm itself following Japanese defeat.

Japan went on to occupy the very heartland of Guomindang territory - the entire lower Yangzi delta all the way up to Wuhan, which fell the next year - with Guomindang forces fighting, and dying, hard. For four years the Guomindang fought Japan alone, holding onto just one major agricultural area (the recently-subjugated upper Yangzi 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 Guomindang China and most-heavily-bombed city in history. Operation Zet - a generous delivery of Soviet aeroplanes, artillery, small-arms, and technical assistance - and continued Soviet loans made the Guomindang's survival possible for the first couple of years. Those supplies were essential, you see, as the Guomindang were unable to produce any those goods (though they could make some ammunition for them) by themselves. 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 Guomindang was totally on their own.

After four years of warfare, in 1941 the Guomindang was on the verge of collapse. Soviet aid had been ''invaluable'' to the Guomindang's survival to-date, with the USSR providing the Guomindang with petrol, aeroplanes, artillery, machine tools, advisors, and huge loans with which to continue the war. The Guomindang had also bought petrol, machine tools, and military supplies from overseas via French Indochine and British Burma. But since the Soviet-Japanese Non-Aggression pact of 1939 Soviet aid had dropped off to just a trickle, and Japan had since occupied French Indochine and thus cut the Kunming-Saigon railway. A single, narrow road through the mountains was the Guomindang's only remaining link to the outside world. And with the Guomindang scraping the bottom of the fiscal barrel and most of the world's industrial 'slack' now occupied producing war materiel for powers that 'weren't' as broke as them, it wasn't doing them much good.

Japan went on to occupy the very heartland of Guomindang territory - the entire lower Yangzi delta all the way up to Wuhan, which fell the next year - with Guomindang forces fighting, and dying, hard. For four years the Guomindang fought Japan alone, holding onto just one major agricultural area (the recently-subjugated upper Yangzi 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 Guomindang China and most-heavily-bombed city in history. Operation Zet - a generous delivery of Soviet aeroplanes, artillery, small-arms, and technical assistance - and continued Soviet loans made the Guomindang's survival possible for the first couple of years. Those supplies were essential, you see, as the Guomindang were unable to produce any those goods (though they could make some ammunition for them) by themselves. But both Soviet military supplies and credit dried up soon after the Soviets' resounding victory under General Zhukov at Nomonhan/Kalkhin Ghol and the resultant Soviet-Japanese Non-Agression Pact. By 1940, the Guomindang was totally on their own.

Japan went on to occupy the very heartland of Guomindang territory - the entire lower Yangzi delta all the way up to Wuhan, which fell the next year - with Guomindang forces fighting, and dying, hard. For four years the Guomindang fought Japan alone, holding onto just one major agricultural area (the recently-subjugated upper Yangzi 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 Guomindang China and most-heavily-bombed city in history.

In 1930, after two years of chafing under Chiang's attempts to expand his power-base at their expense, the several major Warlords formed a grand alliance to topple Chiang and destroy the Guomindang once and for all. The Guangxi Clique, Yan Xishan of Shanxi and Shaanxi, and Feng Yuxiang of Anhui teamed up and attacked the Guomindang on all sides - only Long Yun of Yunnan and Zhang Xueliang of Manchuria abstained from joining in the fun. Though the situation was grim at first, as the Guomindang's forces were outnumbered and the regime teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, the Guomindang eventually pulled through - though the Guangxi Clique had taken Guangdong from them, their geographical remoteness from the Yangzi and the core of Guomindang territory meant that Chiang had had time enough to annex Feng's territories before focusing on them and Yan. Then, when it looked like Chiang might win after all, Zhang declared his support for Chiang and made threatening moves against Yan in the north. Yan and the Guangxi clique soon signed a peace with Chiang, much of the North China Plain remaining in the hands of the Guomindang and formerly-Guomindang Guangdong province in those of the Guangxi Clique. With the end of the Central Plains' War, the Guomindang was confirmed as China's strongest faction and the Warlord Era was over.

Chiang, too, had only been made more paranoid and distrustful by the experience of the war (and the usual near-assassination and near-coup experiences) and so assumed even more official positions in the Guomindang - so many, in fact, that it was physically impossible for him to do them all properly even in the course of his relentless sixteen-hour working days. The failure of the Guomindang's autumn-winter offensive of 1946 to crush the Communist Party is partly the result of his failure as a general, but also his failure as an administrator; his troops basically ran out supplies half-way, allowing the Communist forces to flee from Yan'an largely intact. Such oversights could have been survivable, however, had Chiang not already decided to spread his loyal and allied forces across such a large area of north China and Manchuria, without bringing their overall c. 2:1 numerical superiority to bear on any one part of that area. This meant that the Guomindang didn't have enough troops to either secure areas properly or force the Communists into decisive battle, meaning they were whittled away by constant attacks on their supply lines and on isolated forces.

The Peoples' Liberation Army's unified command and unit structure also paid dividends in the regular fighting that followed in Manchuria in 1947, wherein most of the Guomindang forces there (Chiang's best) were isolated and cut off, then exterminated. Though the troops numbers were about equal after this point, the raw numbers betray a massive organisational advantage on the part of the Communist Party, which commanded the loyalty and obedience of most of its commanders and soldiers - something Chiang did not, and never had.

The Guomindang 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 Guomindang was driven back and eventually made an epic last stand at the Yangzi. When the line was broken, the Guomindang broke with it. Chiang took what remained of his loyal forces - a couple hundred thousand troops - and used them to ship the national bank's precious metal reserves and a couple of million refugees to the islands of Hainan and Taiwan. The People's Republic of China was proclaimed just months later, on the First of October 1949.

In 1930, after two years of chafing under Chiang's attempts to expand his power-base at their expense, the several major Warlords formed a grand alliance to topple Chiang and destroy the Guomindang once and for all. The Guangxi Clique, Yan Xishan of Shanxi and Shaanxi, and Feng Yuxiang of Anhui teamed up and attacked the Guomindang on all sides - only Long Yun of Yunnan and Zhang Xueliang of Manchuria abstained from joining in the fun. Though the situation was grim at first, as the Guomindang's forces were outnumbered and the regime teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, the Guomindang eventually pulled through - though the Guangxi Clique had taken Guangdong from them, their geographical remoteness from the Yangzi and the core of Guomindang territory meant that Chiang had had time enough to knock Feng out of the war before focusing on them and Yan. Then, when it looked like Chiang might win after all, Zhang declared his support for Chiang and made threatening moves against Yan in the north. Yan and the Guangxi clique soon signed a peace with Chiang, much of the North China Plain remaining in the hands of the Guomindang and formerly-Guomindang Guangdong province in those of the Guangxi Clique. With the end of the Central Plains' War, the Guomindang was confirmed as China's strongest faction and the Warlord Era was over.

At the height of a Guomindang '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 Marshall' Warlord General Zhang Xueliang (son of the late 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. China and the Guomindang 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 present a greater threat).

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. very). 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.

By the end of the Northern Expedition, Chiang was dubbed by some as the "Red General", due to his close ties with Soviet leaders and alleged communist sympathies. However, in 1927 Chiang decided to eradicate the socialists within the GMD government, and initiated the Shanghai Massacre which saw the purges of thousands of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) members, and soon escalated into a campaign of "White Terror" up the Yangzi to Wuhan, which the Socialist-GMD 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. Chiang went on to use anti-communist campaigns repeatedly as an excuse to move his troops into various areas and effectively take over from the local warlords, capturing the area for his own regime. His 'allies' didn't like this very much, and was one reason why they would all team up to turn on him and try to destroy the Guomindang in the Central Plains War of 1930. The CCP's standing armies in the Wuhan-Hunan area were crushed by the end of 1927, however, and the survivors went on to found several Soviets in the mid-Yangzi region which Chiang went on to crush after he had finished 'unifying' the country later the next year. This unification was in name only, however, as he Chiang effectively had to choose between fighting ''everyone'' and making compromises. Given the weakness of the country's factions, especially compared to an increasingly jingoistic [[ImperialJapan empire on their doorstep]], he tried to take out most of his political enemies without fighting - i.e. through politicking, or assassination or effectively annexing their territories in the course of Communist Suppression campaigns and 'campaigns'.

In 1930, after two years of chafing under Chiang's attempts to consolidate his power at their expense, the Warlords of China formed a grand alliance to topple Chiang and destroy the Guomindang once and for all. The Guangxi Clique, Yan Xishan of Shanxi and Shaanxi, and Feng Yuxiang of Anhui teamed up and attacked the Guomindang on all sides - only Long Yun of Yunnan and Zhang Xueliang of Manchuria abstained from joining in the fun. Though the situation was grim at first, and the Guomindang's forces were outnumbered and its budget at breaking point, the Guomindang eventually pulled through - though the Guangxi Clique had taken Guangdong from them, their geographical remoteness from the Yangzi and the core of Guomindang territory meant that Chiang had had time enough to knock Feng out of the war before focusing on them and Yan. Then, when it looked like Chiang might win after all, Zhang declared his support for Chiang and made threatening moves against Yan in the north. Yan and the Guangxi clique soon signed a peace with Chiang, much of the North China Plain remaining in the hands of the Guomindang and formerly-Guomindang Guangdong province in those of the Guangxi Clique. With the end of the Central Plains' War, the Guomindang was confirmed as China's strongest faction and the Warlord Era was over.

The Peoples' Liberation Army's unified command and unit structure also paid dividends in the regular fighting that followed in Manchuria in 1947, wherein most of the Guomindang forces there (Chiang's best) were isolated and cut off, then exterminated. Though the troops numbers were about equal after this point, the raw numbers betray a massive organisational advantage on the part of the Communist Party, which commanded the loyalty and obedience of most of its troops - something Chiang did not, and never had.

Chiang remains a divisive figure today, both among the Chinese in mainland China and Taiwan. He is known well known for his (administration's; personally, the man had a reputation for being utterly incorruptible and honest to a fault) corruption and military incompetence, as well as his political purges which saw the deaths of millions of Chinese. However, he is also credited for re-unifying China by defeating the warlord-lead Beiyang government, and even today's China lies closer to his vision than those of his archrival Mao's.

Japan went on to occupy the very heartland of Guomindang territory - the entire lower Yangzi delta all the way up to Wuhan, which fell the next year - with Guomindang forces fighting, and dying, hard. For four years the Guomindang fought Japan alone, holding onto just one agricultural area (the recently-subjugated upper Yangzi basin), a mountain range (Henan-Jiangxi), 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 Guomindang China and most-heavily-bombed city in history.

After four years of warfare, in 1941 the Guomindang was on the verge of collapse. Japan hadn't sued for anything less than an extremely advantageous peace because they had lost a lot already, and they knew the Guomindang couldn't possibly win just holding onto a few scraps of territory. They were right; since '39-'40, the Guomindang 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 Guomindang was forced to print money in ever-larger amounts to pay its troops.

In 1930, after two years of chafing under Chiang's attempts to consolidate his power at his expense, the Warlords of China formed a grand alliance to topple Chiang and destroy the Guomindang once and for all. The Guangxi Clique, Yan Xishan of Shanxi and Shaanxi, and Feng Yuxiang of Anhui all teamed up and attacked the Guomindang on all sides - only Long Yun of Yunnan and Zhang Xuelian of Manchuria abstained from intervention. When it looked like Chiang might win after all, as the Guangxi Clique's geographical distance from Guomindang territory meant that Chiang had time enough to knock Feng out of the war before focusing on Yan and the Guangxi Clique, Zhang made threatening moves in the north and Yan Xishan signed a peace with Chiang. With the end of the Central Plains' War, the Guomindang was confirmed as China's strongest faction and the Warlord Era was over.

By the end of the Northern Expedition, China was dubbed by some as the "Red General", due to his close ties with Soviet leaders and alleged communist sympathies. However, in 1927 Chiang decided to eradicate the allied Communists within the KMT government, and initiated the Shanghai Massacre which saw the purges of thousands of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) members, and soon escalated into a campaign of "White Terror" right up the Yangzi. Chiang went on to use anti-communist campaigns repeatedly as an excuse to move his troops into various areas and effectively take over from the local warlords, capturing the area for his own regime. His 'allies' didn't like this very much, which is part of the reason why they kept betraying him and invading Guomindang territory from 1927-37. The CCP's standing armies in the Wuhan-Hunan area were crushed by the end of 1927, however, and the survivors went on to found several Soviets in the mid-Yangzi region which Chiang went on to crush after he had finished 'unifying' the country later the next year. This unification was in name only, however, as he Chiang effectively had to choose between fighting ''everyone'' and making compromises. Given the weakness of the country's factions, especially compared to an increasingly jingoistic [[ImperialJapan empire on their doorstep]], he tried to take out most of his political enemies without fighting - i.e. through politicking, or assassination or effectively annexing their territories in the course of Communist Suppression campaigns and 'campaigns'.

In 1931, during the height of the Guomindang's '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 Marshall' Warlord General Zhang Xueliang (son of the late 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. China and the Guomindang 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 present a greater threat).

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, Zhang 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 recognised the groundswell of popular opinion that supported Zhang's proposal, though not the way he got it, and called off the campaign. He did, however, have Zhang imprisoned. For the rest of his life.

[[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/[[TheReasonMaoChangedHisName 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 Guomindang as the 'Chinese Guomindang' Party in Guangzhou, in league with friendly warlord allies. 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 Guomindang's military forces for Sun's programme of centralisation vis-a-vis armed force. The academy produced most of the famous Chinese generals of the age, and some other notables like [[TheVietnamWar Ho Chi Minh]]. Sun died after just a few years, and not long after his death Chiang claimed leadership of the Guomindang 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).

After four years of warfare, in 1941 the Guomindang was on the verge of collapse. Japan hadn't sued for anything less than an extremely advantageous peace because they had lost a lot already, and they knew the Guomindang couldn't possibly win just holding onto a few scraps of territory. They were right; since '39-'40, the Guomindang 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 tool where before they had collected their own taxes, now they 'farmed' the collection out to local landlords; when before they had administered every province from the centre, 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 drained - was beyond their means. The Guomindang basically had to issue local and regional government quotas, and pray that they weren't too brutal in the way they met them. Inflation, too, resulted as the Guomindang was forced to print money to pay its troops.

These problems were not solved when Japan brought the USA into the war, but US Loans did at least help stave off the Guomindang's imminent implosion; however, the rest of the war was marked by an inexorable deterioration in the quality of the Guomindang as a military force and as a regime. It was during the war that the Guomindang - rightfully - began to be associated with inefficiency, and corruption inefficiency.

Chiang, too, had only been made more paranoid and distrustful by the experience of the war (and the usual near-assassination and near-coup experiences) and so assumed even more official positions in the Guomindang - so many, in fact, that it was physically impossible for him to do them all properly even in the course of his relentless sixteen-hour working days. The failure of the Guomindang's autumn-winter offensive of 1946 to crush the Communist Party is partly the result of his failure as a general, but also his failure as an administrator; his troops basically ran out supplies half-way, allowing the Communist forces to flee from Yan'an largely intact. That said, what really lost the war was his decision to spread his loyal and allied forces across such a large area of north China and Manchuria, without bringing their overall c. 2:1 numerical superiority to bear on any one part of that area. This meant that the Guomindang didn't have enough troops to either secure areas properly or force the Communists into decisive battle, meaning they were whittled away by constant attacks on their supply lines and on isolated forces.

The Peoples' Liberation Army's unified command and unit structure also paid dividends in the regular fighting that followed in Manchuria, wherein most of the Guomindang forces there (Chiang's best) were cut off and exterminated. Though the troops numbers were about equal after this point, the raw numbers betray a massive organisational advantage on the part of the Communist Party, which commanded the loyalty and obedience of most of its troops - something Chiang did not, and never had.

Following his defeat 1949, Chiang and the remnants of the KMT fled to the island of Taiwan, which managed to remain unscathed from the Communists thanks to U.S. intervention. Chiang ruled Taiwan with an iron fist and prepared for an eventual counter-attack against mainland China, which went unfulfilled by the time of his death in 1975. Following his death, his son and successor Chiang Ching-kuo managed to undo much of his excessive political policies, and paved the way for Taiwan to transfer into a democracy.

What is not often mentioned is the fact that the Guomindang ''did'' fight Japan the very next year, in the 1932 Battle of Shanghai. Chiang had his doubts about his forces' preparedness before then, but the battle revealed numerous weaknesses and deficiencies (of unit- and command-structure, of logistics, of training, of equipment) that would likely have proven utterly disastrous had the battle escalated into a full-blown war. The Guomindang was forced to abandon its programmes of land-reform and focus on preparing its military for war; desperate for support, Chiang turned to Weimar and then Nazi Germany to provide his forces with the arms and the training they needed; he had his staff set out a plan for the reorganisation and rearmament of the Guomindang's forces and a plan for the defence of the country, with the help of the renowned General Alexander von Falkenhausen. He even sent his adopted son to train with the Wehrmacht's officer corps. In the meantime, however, he set his troops about another series of Communist and 'Communist' suppression campaigns.

Throughout most of the Second Sino-Japanese War and later World War II, Chiang's army was horribly under-equipped and under-trained as compared to the Japanese. He is also known for his poor military skills, often issuing unrealstic orders and sacrificing his best soldiers to fight Pyrrhic battles, losing much of his best trained soldiers during the costly Battle of Shanghai in 1937. As a result, his government was forced to relocate many times throughout the war, and survived largely due to foreign aid, largely from America.

Chiang frequently clashed with his Joseph Stilwell, who - despite his own demonstrable incompetence as a leader - was angered by what he saw as endemic and characteristically oriental incompetence and corruption in the Guomindang regime. Because of his frequent demand for American aid which produced few visible results, Chiang earned (courtesy of Stilwell) the nickname "General Cash-My-Check". By the end of World War II, Chiang's incompetence drove many people into the arms of MaoZedong's Communists, which led to its victory in the Chinese Civil War when it re-erupted in 1946.

[[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/[[TheReasonMaoChangedHisName 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 Guomindang as the 'Chinese Guomindang' Party in Guangzhou, in league with friendly warlord allies. 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 Guomindang's military forces for Sun's programme of centralisation vis-a-avis military force. The academy produced most of the famous Chinese generals of the age, and some other notables like [[TheVietnamWar Ho Chi Minh]]. Sun died after just a few years, and not long after his death Chiang claimed leadership of the Guomindang 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).

By the end of the Northern Expedition, China was dubbed by some as the "Red General", due to his close ties with Soviet leaders and alleged communist sympathies. However, in 1927 Chiang decided to eradicate the allied Communists within the KMT government, and initiated the Shanghai Massacre which saw the purges of thousands of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) members, and soon escalated into a nationwide campaign of "White Terror". This caused the CCP to flee to the countryside and initiate guerrilla campaigns against Chiang.

In 1931, during the height of the KMT's eradication campaign against the CCP, the Japanese invaded China through Manchuria. Nevertheless, Chiang decided to avoid an open confrontation against the Japanese and continue his campaign against the communists, seeing them as the greater threat to his rule. He quipped, "The Japanese are a disease of the skin. The Communists are a disease of the heart". By 1936 however, Chiang was forced to change his position after his own generals rebelled against him, forcing him to form an alliance with his former communist enemies against the invading Japanese.

Chiang frequently clashed with his American advisers, particularly general Joseph Stilwell, who was angered by the incompetence and corruption throughout the KMT. Because of his frequent demand for American aid which produced little results, Chiang earned the nickname "General Cash-My-Check". By the end of World War II, Chiang's incompetence drove many people into the arms of MaoZedong's Communists, which led to its victory in the Chinese Civil War when it re-erupted in 1946.

Chiang Kai-Shek, also known as Jiang Jieshi in [[ChineseLanguage Mandarin]], was born in 1887 to an upper class family of merchants. While studying in Japan, he became attracted to the ideals of Chinese nationalism, which, under Dr. Sun Yat-sen, led to the Xinhai Revolution that overthrew the Manchu Emperors of the Qing Dynasty in 1911.

However, the revolution did not last long, and by 1913, former Qing general Yuan Shikai managed to seize control of Beijing and drove the KMT southward. After his death, northern China under rival cliques of warlords. Under Sun and Chiang, the KMT was reformed in Guangzhou, where Chiang served as Commandant of the famous Whampoa Military Academy, which oversaw reform of the KMT military and produced many famous Chinese generals of the 20th century. With his new army, Chiang launched the Northern Expedition, which successfully defeated the rival, warlord-led Beiyang government.

Chiang remains a divisive figure today, both among the Chinese in mainland China and Taiwan. He is known well known for his corruption and military incompetence, as well as his political purges which saw the deaths of millions of Chinese. However, he is also credited for re-unifying China by defeating the warlord-lead Beiyang government, and even today's China lies closer to his vision than those of his archrival Mao's.

Chiang Kai-Shek was the president of China from 1929 until 1946, and then dictator of Taiwan until his death in 1975. Also known as Jiang Jieshi in [[ChineseLanguage Mandarin]].

A controversial figure in history, he did both good and bad. For most people, pretty much his only saving grace is that he wasn't MaoZedong.

* BlackAndGreyMorality: As vicious and authoritarian as he was, Chiang was an angel compared to the Japanese he fought against.
** Chiang valued only one thing: obedience. And he trusted only one man: himself. That is why he at one point personally held ''82 official positions'' in the GMD, most importantly acting as head of all the armed forces (the GMD has also been considered the party front of an army - Chiang's army). He picked his generals for their incompetence, because he suspected that more talented men might turn against him. Yes, this was the Good Guy of the Asian theater.

* TheDreaded: He became this in Taiwan.

** He did learn his lesson (finally!), since he turned Taiwan into a fascist and efficient PoliceState.

* NecessaryEvil: He still has many defenders (not surprising, since the alternative is the DirtyCommies), who believe he did more good than bad.

* VindicatedByHistory: To an extent. It's been noted that modern-day "[[InNameOnly Communist]]" China much more closely resembles Chiang's vision than it does Mao's.

* RightHandVersusLeftHand: The biggest issue plaguing Chiang's administration. Virtually every region without a permanent garrison of troops loyal to him was inexplicably unable to provide the lions share or even any its tax revenue to the central government. The situation with the army was even worse, leading to an outright rebellion of the southern provinces and their armies in '37.

* DetractorNickname: In the United States, his detractors referred to him as "General Cash-My-Check", claiming that his only skill was spending the money that the US government sent him.

* UglyGuyHotWife: His second - political - marriage into the Soong family. They hated each other.

* CareerKiller: It is known that he was a member of more than one Triad gang / society and an associate of others, some political and some outright criminal, and many prominent members would find positions in his new regime. According to writer Martin Booth, in his youth he was not only a gangster but actually carried out hits in Japan and elsewhere, before later moving on to politics and war full time.

A controversial figure in history, he did both good and bad. For most people, pretty much his only saving grace is that he wasn't as disastrous as MaoZedong.

* DystopiaIsHard: Probably one of the modern TropeCodifiers.
* EvilVersusEvil: Mostly notably against ImperialJapan and the Chinese communists, though his opposition to the (other) Chinese warlords and to the Qing Dynasty also count.