Chiang Kai-shek

Chiang Kai-shek (31 October 1887 – 5 April 1975) was a Chinese politician, revolutionary, and general who led the Republic of China (ROC) from 1928 until his death in 1975. His government was based in mainland China until it was defeated in the Chinese Civil War by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 1949, after which he continued to lead the Republic of China on the island of Taiwan. Chiang served as leader of the Nationalist Kuomintang (KMT) party and the commander-in-chief of the National Revolutionary Army (NRA) from 1926 until his death.

Born in Zhejiang, Chiang received a military education in China and Japan and joined Sun Yat-sen's Tongmenghui organization in 1908. After the 1911 Revolution, he was a founding member of the KMT and head of the Whampoa Military Academy from 1924. After Sun's death in 1925, Chiang became leader of the party and commander-in-chief of the NRA, and from 1926 to 1928 led the Northern Expedition, which nominally reunified China under a Nationalist government based in Nanjing. The KMT–CCP alliance broke down in 1927 following the KMT's Shanghai Massacre, starting the Chinese Civil War. Chiang sought to modernise and unify the ROC during the Nanjing decade, although hostilities with the CCP continued. After Japan's invasion of Manchuria in 1931, his government tried to avoid a war while pursuing economic and social reconstruction. In 1936, Chiang was kidnapped by his generals in the Xi'an Incident and forced to form an anti-Japanese Second United Front with the CCP, and between 1937 and 1945 led China in the Second Sino-Japanese War, mostly from the wartime capital of Chongqing. As the leader of a major Allied power, he attended the 1943 Cairo Conference to discuss the terms for Japan's surrender in 1945, including the return of Taiwan, where he suppressed the February 28 uprising in 1947.

When World War II ended, the civil war with the CCP (led by Mao Zedong) resumed. In 1949, Chiang's government was defeated and retreated to Taiwan, where he imposed martial law and the White Terror, a campaign of mass political repression; they lasted until 1987 and 1992, respectively. Beginning in 1948, he was re-elected five times by the same Eternal Parliament with six-year terms as President of the ROC, the head of a de facto one-party state, for 25 years until his death. Chiang presided over land reform, economic growth, and crises in the Taiwan Strait in 1954–1955 and again in 1958. He was considered the legitimate leader of China by the United Nations until 1971, when the ROC's seat was transferred to the People's Republic of China. After Chiang's death in 1975, he was succeeded as leader of the KMT by his son Chiang Ching-kuo, who was elected president in following terms by the same parliament since 1978.

Chiang is a controversial figure. Supporters credit him with unifying the nation and ending the century of humiliation, leading the resistance against Japan, fostering economic development and promoting Chinese culture in contrast to Mao's Cultural Revolution. He is also credited with safeguarding Forbidden City treasures during the wars with Japan and the CCP, eventually relocating some of the best to Taiwan, where he founded the National Palace Museum. Critics fault him for his early pacifism toward Japan's occupation of Manchuria, flooding of the Yellow River, cronyism and tolerating corruption of the four big families, and his white terror on both mainland China and Taiwan.

According to Chinese practice, Chiang had several names. At his birth, his grandfather chose a "milk name" (乳名) Jiang Ruiyuan (Chinese: 蔣瑞元; Wade–Giles: Chiang Jui-yuan), meaning "Auspicious Beginning". All the children in his generation, the twenty-eighth since the clan, the Wuling Jiangs, was established in Xikou, at the foot of the Wuling Mountains, contained the character 瑞 (Jui). His "register name" (譜名), inscribed in the genealogical records of his family, is Chiang Chou-t‘ai (Chinese: 蔣周泰; pinyin: Jiǎng Zhōutài; Wade–Giles: Chiang³ Chou¹-t‘ai⁴). It is the name by which his extended relatives knew him and used in formal occasions, such as marriage, but not outside of the family.

In 1903, the 16-year-old Chiang went to Ningbo as a student, and chose a "school name" (學名), Zhiqing (Chinese: 志清; Wade–Giles: Chih-ch‘ing), which means "purity of aspirations". For the next fifteen years he was known by this name and by which Sun Yat-sen knew him. This was the formal name used by older people and the one he would use the most in the first decades of his life. As he grew older, younger people would use one of the courtesy names. Colloquially, the school name is called "big name" (大名), whereas the "milk name" is known as the "small name" (小名).

In 1912, when Chiang was in Japan, he started to use the name Jiang Jieshi (Chinese: 蔣介石; pinyin: Jiǎng Jièshí; Wade–Giles: Chiang³ Chieh⁴-shih²) as a pen name for the articles that he published in a Chinese magazine he founded: Voice of the Army (軍聲). Jieshi is the pinyin romanization of this name, based on Standard Chinese, but the most recognized romanized rendering is Chiang Kai-shek which is in Cantonese romanization. Because the Republic of China was based in Guangdong (a Cantonese-speaking area), Chiang (who never spoke Cantonese but was a native Wu speaker) became known by Westerners under the Cantonese romanization of his courtesy name, while the family name as known in English seems to be the Mandarin pronunciation of his Chinese family name, transliterated in Wade–Giles.^{[citation needed]}

"Kai-shek" soon became Chiang's courtesy name (字). Some think the name was chosen from the classic Chinese book the I Ching; "介于石"; '[he who is] firm as a rock', is the beginning of line 2 of Hexagram 16, "豫". Others note that the first character of his courtesy name is also the first character of the courtesy name of his brother and other male relatives on the same generational line, while the second character of his courtesy name shi (石—meaning "stone") suggests the second character of his "register name" tai (泰—the famous Mount Tai).