TAMURA, E. e. a. (1998). China. Undestanding its past. Honolulu, University of Hawai Press. Pp. 175.

CHIANG KAI-SHEK (1887-1975)

Born in 1887 to a salt merchant family, Chiang Kai-shek rose from relative obscurity to become leader of the Guomindang-the Nationalist Party-and head of the Republic of China. As a youth, Chiang was fascinated by warfare. Reaching adulthood, he resolved to study military science in Japan.
For three years Chiang studied in Japanese military schools. He returned to China in 1911, just as revolution broke out, ending the Qing dynasty and overthrowing China's imperial system. During the next decade, he served the Guomindang revolutionary leader Sun Yat-sen ably and loyally. (Chapter 2 discusses Sun Yat-sen and the 1911 revolution.) In 1923 he persuaded Sun to send him to Moscow to study the Soviet military system. Upon his return, he became head of the new Whampoa Military Academy, established to train revolutionary officers. With this post, Chiang positioned himself to contend for leadership within the Guomindang.
Sun's death in 1925 provided the opportunity. By outmaneuvering his competitors and crushing the warlords, Chiang rose to the top of the Nationalist Party and reunified most of China under Guomindang rule. The world responded by accepting Chiang as China's sole leader.
Unfortunately for Chiang, during his ascendancy the Chinese Communists were also gaining military and popular strength. At the same time, Japan was challenging the independence of the young republic by seizing Manchuria in 1931 and threatening to move farther south. Before acting against the Japanese intrusion, Chiang decided to battle the Communists, almost destroying them in 1934. But Japan's expansion into China created a wave of public sentiment in the country to end the Guomindang-Communist conflict. During the 193 7-to-1945 War of Resistance, the Guomindang and the Communists toned down their fighting, at times even cooperating to fight their common enemy.
But with the end of World War II, the two factions returned to all out warring. By then, ineffective administration together with rampant corruption among the Nationalists had turned many Chinese against them while enthusiasm for Communism had grown. On December 10, 1949, with the threat of fast-approaching Communist forces, Chiang boarded a military aircraft and escaped to Taiwan, where he relocated his government and named the island the Republic of China (ROC).
As head of the Nationalist government until his defeat in 1949, Chiang did not just represent China. To many in the world, he was China. Because he brought his country into the world's community of nations, Chiang is recognized as an important figure in twentieth-century Chinese history. He continued to rule Taiwan until his death in 1975.