10
THE CHINA MAIL DOUBLE TENTH SUPPLEMENT
THE STRONG MAN OF CHINA
THERE was a time when,
to adapt Byron, civil war in China was as certain- ly to be expected as "an epic from Bob Southey every spring." Though civil war is. still, to be expected. the time. of its expectation every spring is no more. That if Is no more is due in large part to General Chiang Kai-shek. President of the National Government of China.
Chiang Kai-shek is the man of China's yesterday and China's to-day. Still under 50, he may be the man of China's to-morrow. Slightly built. with high fore- head and delicate hands; nervy: restless; moody, he has none of the physical aids to greatness. But he has a directness, af speech and action. whien has made him the master of fellow- countrymen bound by courteous convention. And he hus せせず been ready to sacrifice the im mediate for the ultimate gain.
Long sight at least must be allowed a man who could give up the Presidency of a great country wher, he had just at- tained it; something more than desire for material guin to a man, who could make a million dollars on the Shanghai Stock Exchange, as Chiang did. and then sur- render it to Sun Yat Sen and the national cause.
..
Chiang Kai-shek never knew his father. who died when he was two years old. He was born in 1888 in a village in the Pro- vince of Chekiang, and brought up among his mother's relatives, Ningpo tradesmen. Chekiang at that time supplied 40 scholar- ship students a year to the Na- tional Military Academy at Pac- ting. At 18 Chiang"was
leof the 40.
From Paoting he went with a Government scholarship to the Tokyo Military College, then shining in the reflected glory won by Japanese, arms in the Russo-Japanese War. The 1911 revolution broke out as he was about to graduate. He dashed back to China and was given the command of a riff-raff revolu- tionary battalion which brought · no particular honour either to him or to itself.
The Yuan Shih-kai régime.
too.
proved a disappointment. Chiang drifted out of revolu-" tionary polities and into the lower strata of business in Shanghai. While there he mar ried for the first time.
General: Tsai Ting-kai, hero al, the “Shanghai war" and former Commander of the Nineteenth Route Army, is stil! seeking sup- port for the hindrance of Japanese penetration into China,'
General Chen Chai-tong, formerly Commander-in-Chief of Military j sea and air forces of the Kwangtung Provincial Government, was forced to leave the country after an unsuccessful attempt to oppose the Gen- eralissimo's efforts to bring about the unification of China. The failure of General. Chen, who is now touring Europe, precipitated the Gen- éralissimo's ambition of a unified China.
An
Dr. Wang Chung-hui, above, the well-known jurist and diplomat and former member of the World Court at The Hague, resigned his post in Europe in order to return to China to stave off the civil war threat in the South.
unsatisfactory life in Shanghai ended with the failure of the second revolution in 1913. The failure made a deep impres-" sion on Chiang. He left China again for Tokyo, there met Sun Yat Sen and became Sun's de- voted slave. When Sun went back to Kwangtung in 1917. Chiang went with him as a mem- ber of his staff.
In 1923 Suu sent him to Mos- cow for six months, to study the organisation of the Red Army and Kuomintang. On his return. he made a report on the Com- munist system which was large- ly responsible for the establish- ment of the principle of party dictatorship in the Kuomintang, and was made head of the party Military Academy at Whampoa. across the river from Canton.
The Whampoa Academy was officered partly by Kuomintang members of undiluted allegiance, partly by Soviet advisers whom Chiang had brought back with
It him from Moscow.
success. It provided the.. cadres of the Kuominchun, or Chinese National Army, a force superior in morale to any that had existed in China for many.
great
gears..
was a
The Kuominchun's successes In the troubled years from 1923 to 1928 were not invariable, and not always gained while Chiang was in command. But
they were enough. and in suffi- cient measure due to the spirit with which he had inspired the Whampoa cadets, to raise his prestige to a height from which it has never since fallen-for long-t
of the re-
His political is not so clear as his military record. From early days he was suspect to the Left Wing of the Kuomintang. After the establishment of the prepon- derantly Left Wing Nationalist Government at Hankow he seems to have done his best to justify its suspicions. Coming to Shang- hai, rich war-chest volution, he got into touch with Chang Ching-chiang, an old re- volutionary: friend, and through him with the influential Chinese bankers. With their aid he es tablised a rival government at Nanking in 1927- Possibly with their aid, probably with their approval, he at the same time carried out in "purge" of alleged "Reds" which is the one big blat on his record. the Chiang barely survived birth of his government.
Soon after he was defeated in the field, resigned his command, and for the third time took the Tokyo road. As he took with him a not inconsiderable for- tune, it was generally prophesied that he had left China for good. Vaulting personal ambition or a sincere love of his country--it
Dr. Chow Lou. Hon. LL.D. (Heidelberg), above. recently returned to China from an ex- tensive tour of Europe. It ix thought likely that he will take an active Fart in Southern polīties.
would be an idle impertinence for a Westerner, to attempt to decide which he put the phets in the wrong.
pro-
In January. 1928, the Nanking Government was reorganised. In February Chiang was reappoint- ed Commander-in-Chief of the Nationalist Armies. In October. having in the meantime made proposals for the disbandment of overgrown armies which pleased the Chinese financiers, he became President of the State Council, that is, effectively, Pre- sident of the Republic.
Such, but for a brief interval when he again resigned office at 'the demand of Left Wing Can- tonese, he has remained since. He has accomplished few of the aims the Chinese Nationalists set themselves. The unequal” treaties remain. China has lost, in Manchuria. what potentially the richest of her provinces.
The social changes that have come are not. Chiang's work, but the effect of a new spirit which would have done its work no matter who had been at the head of the State.
But it must be reckoned to his credit for the past, that, not- withstanding all the prophets who in 1927 foresaw the immin- ent partition of this unwieldy empire. China still if precarious- ly. exists. It must be reckoned to his credit for the future that "he is both an excellent general and a politician without equal
DR. SUN YAT-SEN, THE MAZZINI OF CHINA
(Continued from Page 1).
At the commencement of 1925 Dr. Sun proceeded to North China, partly with a view to recovering his health, which had been gradually failing, and part- ly with the intention of calling a meeting of the Northern lead- ers. His health, however, grew rapidly worse and he passed away in Peking on March 12, 1925.
had SUA For 40 years Dr. Shanghai a
struggled, first against the Man- chus, then against the militarists and the imperialists, heroically from the beginning to the end without weakening, surviving countless failures and almost in- surmountable difficulties.
Dr. Sun was the author of the Three-People's Principles, (Na- fionalism, Democracy and Liveli- hood of the People) which are well-known throughout. the world.