Chiang Kai-shek
蔣介石
Nationalist leader who combined resistance to Japan with anti-communist rule
After signing the pact with the Soviet Union in 1937, he insisted that it did not mean permitting communism to grow, explaining that Nanking could not fight Japan and the Communists simultaneously.
Chiang Kai-shek was the Nationalist Party's military and political leader, rising through the Northern Expedition of the 1920s to consolidate much of China under a government based in Nanjing. He had prioritised the civil war against the Communists, but after the Xi'an Incident accepted a united front against Japan and secured Soviet arms and aircraft through the 1937 Sino-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact. He led China's wartime resistance, then moved the Republic of China's government to Taiwan after defeat in the civil war, where he built a long authoritarian rule under martial law.
Career timeline
- 1908Joined the Tongmenghui
- 1924–1927Commandant, Whampoa Military Academy
- 1926–1928Commander-in-chief of the National Revolutionary Army, led the Northern Expedition
- 1928–1931Chairman of the Nationalist government and President of the Executive Yuan
- 1937–1945Supreme commander of China's theatre in the war against Japan
- 1948–1975President of the Republic of China
- 1950–1975Ruled the Nationalist government in Taiwan