Kuomintang - History - Chiang Kai-shek Assumes Leadership

Chiang Kai-shek Assumes Leadership

When Sun Yat-sen died in 1925, the political leadership of the Nationalist Party fell to Wang Jingwei and Hu Hanmin, respectively the left wing and right wing leaders of the Kuomintang. The real power, however, lay with Chiang Kai-shek, also known as Jiang Jieshi, who, as superintendent of the Whampoa Military Academy, was in near complete control of the military.

With this military power, the Kuomintang confirmed their power on Guangzhou, Guangdong (the province containing Guangzhou) and Guangxi (the province west of Guangdong). The Nationalists now had a rival government in direct opposition to the warlord government based in the northern city of Beijing.

Unlike Sun Yat-sen, whom he admired greatly, Chiang Kai-shek, who assumed leadership of the Kuomintang in 1926, had little contact with or knowledge of the West. Sun Yat-sen had forged all his political, economic, and revolutionary ideas primarily from Western materials that he had learned in Hawaii and later in Europe. Chiang Kai-shek, however, knew almost nothing about the West; he was firmly rooted in his Chinese identity and was steeped in Chinese culture. As his life progressed, he became more militantly attached to Chinese culture and traditions. His few trips to the West confirmed his pro-Chinese outlook and he studied the Chinese classics and Chinese histories assiduously.

Of the three Principles of the People of Sun Yat-sen, the one he most ardently and passionately adhered to was that of nationalism. Chiang was also particularly committed to Sun's idea of "political tutelage". Using this ideology, Chiang built himself into the dictator of the Republic of China, both in the Chinese Mainland, and when the national government was relocated to Taiwan.

Following the death of Sun Yat-sen, General Chiang Kai-shek emerged as the KMT leader and launched the Northern Expedition to defeat the northern warlords and unite China under the party. With their power confirmed in the southeast, the Nationalist Government appointed Chiang Kai-shek commander-in-chief of the National Revolutionary Army, and the Northern Expedition to suppress the warlords began. Chiang had to defeat three separate warlords and two independent armies. Chiang, with Soviet supplies, conquered the southern half of China in nine months.

A split, however, erupted between the Chinese Communist Party and the Nationalist Party; this split threatened the Northern Expedition. Joseph Stalin, the leader of the Soviet Union healed the split by ordering the Chinese Communists to obey the Kuomintang leadership in everything. Once this split had been healed, Chiang Kai-shek resumed his Northern Expedition and, with the help of Communist strikes, managed to take Shanghai. There he began to eliminate the Communists in what is today known as the Shanghai massacre of 1927 and the Nationalist government, which had moved to Wuhan, dismissed him. Unfazed, Chiang set up his own alternative government in Nanjing. When the Wuhan government collapsed in February 1928, Chiang Kai-shek was the only Nationalist government still standing.

When Kuomintang forces took Beijing, as the city was the internationally recognized capital, though previously controlled by the feuding warlords, this event allowed the Kuomintang to receive widespread diplomatic recognition in the same year. The capital was moved from Beijing to Nanjing, the original capital of the Ming Dynasty, and thus a symbolic purge of the final Qing elements. This period of KMT rule in China between 1927 and 1937 became and is still known as the Nanjing decade.

During the Nanjing Incident, (March 1927) the Kuomintang took on the western Imperialist powers in China, launching an all out attack against the Imperialist concessions in multiple Chinese cities. The Chinese forces stormed the consulates of America, Britain, and Japan, looting nearly every foreign property and almost assassinating the Japanese consul. An American, two British, one French, an Italian, and a Japanese were killed by Chinese Nationalist forces. Chinese snipers targeted the American consul and marines who were guarding him, Chinese bullets flew into Socony Hall where American citizens were hiding out, one Chinese soldier declared- "We don't want money, anyway, we want to kill." The Chinese Kuomintang forces also stormed and seized millions of dollars worth of British concessions in Hankou, refusing to hand them back to Britain. Britain then decided to give them up.

After the Northern Expedition in 1928, the Kuomintang government declared to the Great Powers in China that China had been exploited for decades under unequal treaties, and that the time for such treaties was over, demanding they renegotiate all of them on equal terms.

Muslim Generals in Gansu waged war against the Guominjun in favor of the Kuomintang during the Kuomintang Jihad in Gansu (1927-1930).

In sum, the KMT began as a heterogeneous group advocating American-inspired federalism and provincial independence. However, after its reorganization along Soviet lines, the party aimed to establish a centralized one party state with one ideology - Three Principles of the People. This was even more evident following Sun's elevation into a cult figure after his death. The control by one single party began the period of "political tutelage," whereby the party was to control the government while instructing the people on how to participate in a democratic system.

The Kuomintang had many Muslim members who used the secular, nationalist ideology of the party to rise up higher in Chinese society. An example of this is after the Northern Expedition, Qinghai and Ningxia provinces were created out of Gansu province, and three Muslim Ma Clique Generals, Ma Qi, Ma Hongkui, and Ma Hongbin were appointed as their military governors for their assistance and their joining the KMT. Bai Chongxi, and Kuomintang member became the Minister of National Defences, the highest position a Muslim had reached in the Chinese government. The Kuomintang sponsored and sent Chinese Muslim students like Muhammad Ma Jian and Wang Jingzhai to study at Al Azhar in Egypt. Ma Fuxiang, a Muslim army General, joined the Kuomintang and filled many important positions as he preached Chinese unity. Ma Hongkui worked with an Imam, Hu Songshan, who ordered all Muslim Imams in Ningxia to preach Chinese nationalism at the mosque and ordered all Muslims to salute the National Flag and pray for the Kuomintang government. Many Muslim generals like Ma Chengxiang and Ma Hushan were hard liner Kuomintang members. The Ma Bufang Mansion, owned by the Muslim General Ma Bufang has numerous portraits of the Kuomintang founder Dr. Sun Yatsen and Blue Sky with a White Sun flags. Muslim Generals like Ma Zhongying used KMT banners and flags for their armies and wore KMT armbands.

After several military campaigns and with the help of German military advisers (German planned fifth "extermination campaign"), the Communists were forced to withdraw from their bases in southern and central China into the mountains in a massive military retreat known famously as the Long March, an undertaking which would eventually increase their reputation among the peasants. Less than 10% of the army would survive the 10,000 km march to Shaanxi province.

The Kuomintang continued to attack the Communists. This was in line with Chiang's policy of solving internal conflicts (warlords and communists) before fighting external invasions (Japan). However, Zhang Xueliang, who believed that the Japanese invasion constituted the greater prevailing threat, took Chiang hostage during the Xi'an Incident in 1937 and forced Chiang to agree to an alliance with the Communists in the total war against the Japanese.

The Second Sino-Japanese War had officially started, and would last until the Japanese surrender in 1945. However in many situations the alliance was in name only; after a brief period of cooperation, the armies began to fight the Japanese separately, rather than as coordinated allies. Conflicts between KMT and communists were still common during the war, and documented claims abound of Communist attacks upon the KMT forces and vice versa.

In these incidents, it should be noted that The KMT armies typically utilized more traditional tactics while the Communists chose guerrilla tactics, leading to KMT claims that the Communists often refused to support the KMT troops, choosing to withdraw and let the KMT troops take the brunt of Japanese attacks. These same guerrilla tactics, honed against the Japanese forces, were used to great success later during open civil war, as well as against the Allied forces in the Korean War and the U.S. forces in the Vietnam War.

During Chiang's rule, the Kuomintang became rampantly corrupt, where leading officials and military leaders hoarded funding, material and armaments. This was especially the case during the Second Sino-Japanese War, an issue which proved to be a hindrance with US military leaders, where military aid provided by the US was hoarded by various KMT generals. US President Truman wrote that "the Chiangs, the Kungs, and the Soongs (were) all thieves", having taken $750 million in US aid.

The Kuomintang was also known to have used terror tactics against suspected communists, through the utilization of a secret police force, who were employed to maintain surveillance on suspected communists and political opponents. In “The Birth of Communist China”, C.P. Fitzgerald describes China under the rule of KMT thus: “the Chinese people groaned under a regime Fascist in every quality except efficiency.”

Full-scale civil war between the Communists and KMT resumed after the defeat of Japan. The Communist armies, previously a minor faction, grew rapidly in influence and power due to several errors on the KMT's part: first, the KMT reduced troop levels precipitously after the Japanese surrender, leaving large numbers of able-bodied, trained fighting men who became unemployed and disgruntled with the KMT as prime recruits for the Communists.

Second, the KMT government proved thoroughly unable to manage the economy, allowing hyperinflation to result. Among the most despised and ineffective efforts it undertook to contain inflation was the conversion to the gold standard for the national treasury and the Gold Standard Scrip in August 1948, outlawing private ownership of gold, silver, and foreign exchange, collecting all such precious metals and foreign exchange from the people and issuing the Gold Standard Scrip in exchange.

The new scrip became worthless in only ten months and greatly reinforced the nationwide perception of KMT as a corrupt or at best inept entity. Third, Chiang Kai-shek ordered his forces to defend the urbanized cities. This decision gave the Communists a chance to move freely through the countryside. At first, the KMT had the edge with the aid of weapons and ammunition from the United States. However, with the country suffering from hyperinflation, widespread corruption and other economic ills, the KMT continued to lose popular support.

At the same time, the suspension of American aid and tens of thousands of deserted or decommissioned soldiers being recruited to the Communist cause tipped the balance of power quickly to the Communist side, and the overwhelming popular support for the Communists in most of the country made it all but impossible for the KMT forces to carry out successful assaults against the Communists.

By the end of 1949, the Communists controlled almost all of mainland China, as the KMT retreated to Taiwan with a significant amount of China's national treasures and 2 million people, including military forces and refugees. Some party members stayed in the mainland and broke away from the main KMT to found the Revolutionary Committee of the Kuomintang, which still currently exists as one of the eight minor registered parties in the People's Republic of China.