Early Life and Career
Born to a Hakka peasant family in Guangdong, Xue joined the army in 1914, at the age of 18. When Chiang Kai-shek formed the Whampoa Military Academy years later, Xue was one of the members of the first graduating class. He was one of the most effective nationalist commanders of the Northern Expedition, and was promoted to command the 4th army after the April 12 Incident. During the first stage of the Chinese Civil War, Generalissimo Chiang Kai Shek ordered General Xue to lead the Cantonese First Army to attack the Chinese communists during the Fifth Encirclement Campaign against Jiangxi Soviet, forcing them to start the Long March and his forces chased the retreating communists all the way to Sichuan and Guizhou, until the communist forces retreated across the great swamplands and finally escaped to Shaanxi Province. He then turned his forces around and marched unstopped to Central China and defeated the famed Red Army commanders like He Long and Ye Ting of the communist area which they controlled and forced out of these strong holds. For these accomplishments, Chiang Kai-shek hailed him as "a true example of a Chinese officer".
Read more about this topic: Xue Yue
Famous quotes containing the words early, life and/or career:
“I believe that if we are to survive as a planet, we must teach this next generation to handle their own conflicts assertively and nonviolently. If in their early years our children learn to listen to all sides of the story, use their heads and then their mouths, and come up with a plan and share, then, when they become our leaders, and some of them will, they will have the tools to handle global problems and conflict.”
—Barbara Coloroso (20th century)
“Many older wealthy families have learned to instill a sense of public service in their offspring. But newly affluent middle-class parents have not acquired this skill. We are using our children as symbols of leisure-class standing without building in safeguards against an overweening sense of entitlement—a sense of entitlement that may incline some young people more toward the good life than toward the hard work that, for most of us, makes the good life possible.”
—David Elkind (20th century)
“The 19-year-old Diana ... decided to make her career that of wife. Today that can be a very, very iffy line of work.... And what sometimes happens to the women who pursue it is the best argument imaginable for teaching girls that they should always be able to take care of themselves.”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)