Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
by Kirill Novikov
[REGNUM] Half a century ago, in April 1975, the Republic of China bid farewell to its president, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek. After a month of mourning declared across the island of Taiwan, the body of the “dear leader” was placed in a copper coffin and buried in the Generalissimo’s favorite residence near Lake Qihu (which so reminded the president of his forever lost homeland).
The "Song of Memory of Chiang Kai-shek" was heard everywhere, written by the living classic, the author of "folk" songs Huang Yaotai. The ruling, and also the only National Party - the Kuomintang, organized a campaign of worship of the leader, whom they tried to call by one of his many names - Zhongzheng, which means "a just and correct person."
The president's funeral was attended by his closest partners in the fight for democracy and against communism - President Gerald Ford sent US Vice President Nelson Rockefeller. The former sworn enemy, Japan, was represented by former prime ministers Nobusuke Kishi and Eisaku Sato. Even the current enemy - Mao Zedong's "Red China" did not speak in the spirit of "a dog's death for a dog." Beijing newspapers limited themselves to a restrained and respectful "Chiang Kai-shek has died."
And yet, with this major political figure, military leader and patron of the economic miracle, “not everything was so clear-cut.”
The "Republic of China" he ruled at the time of his death occupied one small island - Taiwan, which had become Chinese only recently by the standards of the history of the Celestial Empire. One of the officially recognized victors in World War II, Generalissimo Chiang surrendered the gigantic mainland of China to the communists.
The Generalissimo and his National Revolutionary Army were compared to the Russian White Guards (which is hardly true), but the Kuomintang did not lose their civil war, but rather paused it. Vasily Aksyonov's fantasy about the white island of Crimea was inspired by Taiwan.
Revolutionary, general and dictator Chiang Kai-shek was called the Chinese Bonaparte, but instead of a dramatic and heroic ending, his biography ended almost with a happy ending. The island of Taiwan is not the island of Saint Helena after all.
In order to understand the paradoxical figure of the Generalissimo, one must turn to his biography.
"THE INDOMITABLE SPIRIT OF FIGHTING"
The future leader of the Chinese national revolution was born in 1887, the same year as Vasily Chapayev, Sidor Kovpak and Erich von Manstein. He was born, like his future enemy Mao Zedong, into a wealthy peasant family. But the Chang family - or Jiang, if you read it in modern transcription - traced its origins back to Prince Zhou Gong, no less. Confucius treated this ruler of the 11th century BC with respect.
Jiang Zhongzheng (or, by his second name, Jiang Jieshi, or Chiang Kai-shek in the obsolete transcription) was a representative of the 28th generation of the dynasty.
But the early death of his father and political turmoil left the family on the brink of survival. Many 20th-century dictators liked to complain about their difficult childhoods. Jiang Zhongzheng had good reason to say such things.
“Deprived of any protection after the death of her husband, my mother was subjected to the most ruthless exploitation by the neighboring scoundrels and the local gentry,” the generalissimo told his comrades in 1945. “ The efforts she made in the fight against the intrigues of these family invaders undoubtedly endowed her child, raised in such an environment, with an indomitable spirit of struggle for justice.”
Perhaps the idea of the antiquity of the lineage (in light of which the Manchu Qing dynasty looked like barbarians and upstarts) coupled with the hatred of "scoundrels and nobility" made Jiang Zhongzheng a nationalist and revolutionary.
THE RISE OF THE YEAR OF THE METAL PIG
The young man chose a military career for himself – but not in the Qing army. In 1906, he went to study in Japan, where he entered the preparatory school of the Imperial Japanese Military Academy. There he joined the democratic Chinese émigrés.
Their leader, Dr. Sun Yat-sen —still revered in both China and Taiwan—put forward the “Three Principles of the People”: Chinese sovereignty (primarily from the West), popular sovereignty and welfare, which meant nationalization of large-scale industry, and a progressive tax on the rich.
In October 1911 (or the year of the Metal Pig - "xin hai" according to the 60-year cyclical calendar), the "United Alliance" - "Tongmenghui" created by Sun Yat-sen became the driving force behind the military uprising, which grew into a revolution called, after the year, the Xinhai Revolution.
A graduate of the Japanese military academy, Jiang Zhongcheng acted under the command of the head of the revolutionary combat organization, Chang Qimei. At the age of 24 ("the age of Bonaparte's first victory at Toulon"), Jiang could already list the armed seizure of Shanghai and his native province of Zhejiang as an asset. Fortunately, the Qing troops were demoralized.
The Chinese October Revolution, which overthrew the Qing monarchy, occurred six years before ours. Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin spoke with delight of both the revolution in the East and the provisional president of the Chinese Republic, the founder of the National Party, the Kuomintang: "Sun Yat-sen... a European-educated representative of the militant and victorious Chinese democracy, which won a republic for itself."
Sun Yatsen would later personally communicate with Ilyich, advocate friendship with Soviet Russia, the Comintern and local communists, and invite advisers from Moscow. But in China itself, the revolutionary process did not work out.
The victorious democracy was overthrown by the local "Kornilov" - General Yuan Shikai - already in 1912. And soon a civil war began in the gigantic country, which continued in one form or another until 1949.
It was as if the Celestial Empire had returned 1,700 years ago, to the times of the epic "Three Kingdoms," when everyone was at war with everyone else.
"THE UNSHAKABLE CLIFF" AGAINST TROTSKY'S METHODS
The period from 1916 to 1928 is called the "era of militarists." Almost every province of the disintegrated country was ruled by its own general, and military leaders united into cliques - Anhui, Zhili, etc. - that fought with each other. As for the island of Taiwan, Japan had already captured it at the end of the 19th century.
In the Chinese south, in the port city of Canton – now Guangzhou – Sun Yat-sen’s nationalists were trying to gain a foothold, including Jiang Zhongzheng, who increasingly began to use the name Jieshi (or Kaishi, literally “unshakable as a cliff”). Another clique of generals could throw the Kuomintang into the sea – the National Party did not have a full-fledged army.
Sun Yat-sen decided to seek help from Soviet Russia. In 1923, a delegation from the Kuomintang headed by the leading associate of the democratic leader, Chiang Kai-shek, went to Moscow.
The newly formed USSR made a complex impression on Chang. On the one hand, he admired the structure of the Red Army and wanted to use its experience to create the armed forces of revolutionary China. He especially admired the conqueror of the Far East, the future Marshal Vasily Blucher. On the other hand, he was irritated by the open desire of the People's Commissar of War and Navy Leon Trotsky and the head of the Comintern Grigory Zinoviev to use his country as a stronghold of the world revolution.
The Comintern transformed the Kuomintang in its own image and likeness: the functionary of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) Mikhail Borodin (Gruzenberg), a long-time friend of Dr. Sun Yat-sen, was sent to China. At Borodin's instigation, the Kuomintang acquired a clear party structure, and political commissars appeared in the army. A military academy was created on Huangpu Island (or Whampoa in Cantonese) near Guangzhou, headed by Chiang Kai-shek. The Whampoa Academy began training personnel for the new revolutionary army of the Kuomintang.
In 1925, having outlived his friend Lenin by a year, Sun Yat-sen died. The father of Chinese democracy left behind a zone of control of the Kuomintang with a rigid one-party structure. According to Dr. Sun, the Chinese were not ready for the third popular principle, democracy.
The Nationalists were ready to finish off the generals' cliques by taking control of the country. The Northern Campaign of the National Revolutionary Army in 1926–28 (which Marshal Blucher helped plan, and the Red Army supplied weapons and aircraft) demonstrated the effectiveness of Chiang Kai-shek's divisions.
"IT'S BETTER TO KILL A THOUSAND INNOCENTS"
But from the end of the 1920s, Moscow partners began to bet on an even closer force – the Communist Party. In turn, the leader of the right wing of the Kuomintang, Chiang Kai-shek, relying on the army, took the liberty of interpreting the teachings of Sun Yat-sen. He interpreted it as follows: it was time to break relations with the Comintern and look for new allies.
In April 1927, while the main forces of the National Revolutionary Army were heading north, Chiang Kai-shek organized a mass terror against all leftist forces in Shanghai, which resulted in the deaths of 12,000 people. Chiang Kai-shek himself said at the time that it was better to kill 1,000 innocent people by mistake than to let even one communist escape. Among other things, Chiang gave the order to "cleanse" the Kuomintang party of Communist Party functionaries who had collaborated with it. The execution list of 197 people included the name of a certain Mao Zedong, a member of the CPC Central Committee without the right to an advisory vote. The future great helmsman escaped death, and he was already vindictive at that time.
In response to the Shanghai massacre, the Comintern, with the approval of Joseph Stalin, gave the go-ahead for a Communist uprising in the rear Canton – which was brutally suppressed by the Nationalists. But in Hunan Province, the Communists staged the Autumn Harvest Uprising, led by Mao, who had earned authority in the Party leadership.
By 1931, in the territories in central China not controlled by the Kuomintang, the Chinese Soviet Republic already existed, with the Council of People's Commissars headed by the same Mao (not yet the sole leader, but already an authoritative comrade with whom Moscow was forced to reckon). The two-million-strong National Revolutionary Army of the Kuomintang, led by Chiang Kai-shek, fought the communists with varying success.
But that was only half the trouble. In 1931, Japan invaded Manchuria. A year later, the puppet state of Manchukuo was formed here, headed by the last Qing emperor Pu Yi, who was “restored to the throne.”
Chiang Kai-shek tried his best to avoid war with the Japanese Empire; from his point of view, peace should first be established within the country by destroying the communists and other leftists.
AN UNWANTED ALLIANCE AND AMERICAN RECOGNITION
The third disaster came from within the Kuomintang.
An incident occurred in the city of Xi'an - Chang was arrested by his closest associates, Yang Hucheng and the former hereditary master of Manchuria, the "young marshal" Zhang Xueliang. The marshals demanded that their colleague stop the civil war with the communists and unite with them against the Japanese. The conflict between the military leaders was "resolved" by Mao's closest associate, the future head of the PRC MFA Zhou Enlai.
The Kuomintang Chinese Republic restored relations with the USSR. But Chiang Kai-shek dragged out the creation of a united front with local communists in every possible way. This continued until the "Marco Polo Bridge incident" in 1937, when the Japanese invaded the Chinese Republic from Manchukuo. In fact, World War II in the Far East began two years before Hitler's invasion of Poland and lasted until the fall of 1945. It was in 1937 that the Japanese carried out a massacre in occupied Nanjing, which is considered an act of genocide in both the PRC and Taiwan.
In the same year of 1937, Chiang Kai-shek received the title of Generalissimo. However, the war with Japan was not going very well for China: its army was seriously lagging behind in technological terms, despite assistance from the USSR and the USA. By 1940, the Japanese controlled vast territories from Beijing to Shanghai and, attacking from their colony, Taiwan, captured Canton and other strongholds in the south.
At the same time, the alliance between the Kuomintang and the communists turned out to be fragile, because already in 1941, despite the advance of Japanese troops, Chiang Kai-shek resumed the fight against leftist forces and effectively unleashed a civil war again.
However, after Japan entered the war on the Axis side, the importance of the China front increased dramatically.
The head of the National Government of the Republic of China, Chiang Kai-shek, was invited to the Cairo Conference in 1943, where he negotiated alongside Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill. The leader of part of China managed to simultaneously confirm the legitimacy and defend the interests of the country. The Republic of China was promised the return of all territories occupied by Japan (Manchuria, the Pescadores Islands, and the island of Taiwan) after the war.
However, after the end of World War II, the civil war continued with renewed intensity. All attempts to form a coalition government of communists and nationalists failed.
The CPC, using Manchuria liberated by the Red Army and the "Special Region" that existed during World War II as bases, launched large-scale offensives. In essence, this was a proxy clash between the USSR and the USA. Especially if we take into account the agreements between Chiang Kai-shek and Harry Truman on aid in exchange for granting the United States and its army "special rights" in the Republic of China.
But the "red" People's Liberation Army of China (PLA) was clearly better prepared. Mao Zedong's million-strong army took Beijing, Nanjing, Shanghai, crossed the Yangtze and pushed the Kuomintang to the south. By the end of 1949, Chiang Kai-shek found himself in the situation of Wrangel, locked in the Crimea.
But the Generalissimo and his republic had somewhere to retreat.
FROM THE '228 INCIDENT' TO THE ECONOMIC MIRACLE
The remnants of the army (approximately 450,000 people), the party and state apparatus, officials and ordinary people, a total of up to 1 million people, were evacuated to Taiwan, which the Republic of China had recently acquired. The history of an alternative China began - under the cover of the American fleet, and then the nuclear "umbrella". With portraits of Sun Yat-sen and Chiang Kai-shek, who became president, but without any hint of the three people's principles.
The first years of the "island of China" were marked by white terror. This is what the events of February 1947 are officially called in modern Taiwan, when, under the pretext of opposing communism and separatism, the Kuomintang suppressed the uprising of the indigenous Taiwanese who demanded democratic reforms.
The "228 Incident" (date 28.02.1947), according to various estimates, took the lives of 10,000 to 30,000 residents of the island. But, as modern Taiwanese politicians believe, the white terror of the Kuomintang continued either until the death of President Chiang Kai-shek in 1975, or even until the political reforms of 1987.
In any case, martial law was in effect until 1975. The president suppressed all opposition, all power was concentrated in the hands of the Kuomintang. "Great China" nationalism was actively promoted, the culture of local Chinese was suppressed, and the languages of the island's natives were banned in the media and education. But the Washington curators turned a blind eye to all this.
In the post-war years, Chiang Kai-shek relied on both military and economic aid from the United States, which had a vested interest in the regime's survival, especially since the Korean War.
And later, Taiwan became a useful economic partner. Chiang Kai-shek, like the South Korean dictators and Singapore's enlightened autocrat Lee Kuan Yew, laid the foundations for authoritarian modernization. The island carried out land reform, introduced compulsory education, and curbed inflation. And by the 1970s, the Kuomintang began actively attracting investment and patronizing national capital, from the textile industry to high-tech. It is no coincidence that Taiwan is still churning out microchips for American IT giants, and island firms maintain offices in Silicon Valley. Even though the "Republic of China" has been in a gray zone politically since 1971 to this day.
WHO WILL RETURN THE ISLAND TO ITS HOMELAND?
Richard Nixon conducted détente with Maoist China, and it was not without his help that the PRC took the place in the UN and its Security Council that had previously been occupied by Kuomintang Taiwan. Since then, the number of UN countries that de jure recognize Taiwan as the "Republic of China" has been rapidly melting away. Now there are only 11 such countries: for example, Tuvalu, Belize, Paraguay, but, by the way, the Vatican too. But it is still covered by the Americans - and this will continue as long as the antagonism between Washington and Beijing persists.
The memory of the dictator and father of Chinese democracy is not so simple. Separatists from the Democratic Progressive Party, who came to power in the mid-2010s and are seeking to turn the “island of China” into the “Republic of Taiwan,” are uprooting this memory. At least three hundred monuments have already been torn down, all museums have been closed, and streets are being renamed. At the same time, the great-grandson of the generalissimo, Andrew Jiang Yuqing, moved to China in March of this year in order to develop his career on the mainland and facilitate the “convergence” of the two shores of the Taiwan Strait.
It is the leaders of the Kuomintang who are now finding a common language with Chairman Xi Jinping, and if Taiwan ever returns to its native harbor without a fight, it will be the heirs of Chiang Kai-shek who will do it.
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