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Spelled Jiang Jieshi in mainland Chinese texts and Chiang Kaishek by Cantonese- and Taiwanese-Chinese texts, Chiang was born in Xikou, Fenghua, Zhejiang Province to Chiang Zhaocong and Wang Caiyu. He was married by his parents' arrangement to Mao Fumei, with whom he had a son (Chiang Chingkuo, future president of the Republic of China at Taiwan) and a daughter. At this time, China was undergoing a tumultuous time; the monarch in Beijing was unable to hold the country together at the end of the Qing Dynasty, and foreign countries carved spheres of influence all along the coast. Chiang joined the call of the military in 1906 in hopes that he would be able to help the country. He attended Paoting Military Academy in China in 1906 and then studied at a Japanese military academy in 1907. He served in the Japanese Army from 1909 to 1911, and during this time he joined the movement to overthrow the Qing and set up a Chinese republic. In 1911, the Wuchang Uprising marked the beginning of the Chinese revolution. Chiang returned to China as an officer in the revolutionary forces, and when the revolution was won, he was at the right place at the right time to become a founding father of the Kuomingtang (Nationalist) Party that ruled the new republic. Dr. Sun Yat-sen, the visionary behind the new republic's constitution, took in Chiang as his protégé; additionally, Chiang broadened his support by befriending the powerful criminal underworld boss of the Green Gang and a local warlord in Guangdong (Canton). Though officially the revolution was won and a republic was born, China was actually in a state of anarchy. In 1923, Sun moved his base of operations to Guangzhou, Guangdong in southern China and re-established his government with the aid of Comintern. In the same year, Chiang was sent to Moscow to study Russian political ideals. He returned to China in 1924 and took over the Whampoa Military Academy as its commandant. By 1925, he had already developed a small army of officers at Whampoa who were fiercely loyal to Chiang and not necessarily to the government. Sun passed away in 1925, and Chiang maneuvered himself into the position of power. Naming himself the Commander-in-Chief of the National Revolutionary Forces, he launched the Northern Expedition in Jul 1926 that pushed his government's boundaries into the rest of China. Although the Chinese Communists had helped him in his attempt to unify China, in Apr 1927 Chiang decided Communist influence in his government was not what he wanted, and suddenly turned against them brutally around the time he established himself in Nanjing. In 1927, Russian advisors attached to him were expelled back to Moscow, and by Jun 1928 his troops took control of Beijing. China proper was, at least nominally, finally re-unified. Around this time, he took on the title Generalissimo.

On 1 Dec 1927, Chiang divorced his first wife and married Song Meiling, the younger sister of Sun's widow. To please Song's family, converted to Christianity in 1929.

In the period before 1937, Chiang pushed his government to modernize China, overhaul the legal system, and stabilize the economy. Transportation infrastructure and health systems were also dramatically improved. In the mean time, political instabilities, such as a rebellion by a northern warlord, threatened his government, though Chiang managed to remain in power. He considered the Communist movement his biggest threat, and continued to sternly fight against it, and it drew the attention of Germany. German advisors were sent to Nanjing to train Chinese troops, and prominent figures such as Chiang Weiguo, Chiang's adopted son, traveled to Germany to study (Chiang Weiguo eventually served as a junior officer in the German Wehrmacht until Japan declared war on China). Chiang's slogan of "first internal pacification, then external resistance" kept German interests in China high, along with all the military aid. Domestically, however, this was widely unpopular, as the Chinese majority viewed the Japanese aggression that began in 1931 as a greater source of national shame. On 12 Dec 1936, Zhang Xueliang, a commander loyal to Chiang, instigated the Xi'an Incident where he and General Yang Hu-cheng kidnapped Chiang and forced him to ally with the Communists to fight together against the Japanese. Though he agreed to this temporary unification, throughout the entire war against the Japanese Chiang continuously attacked Communist forces whenever opportunities were presented.

Although Japanese forces occupied Manchuria in northeastern China as early as 1931, the Second Sino-Japanese War did not formally begin until 1937. At the Second Battle of Shanghai, Chiang suffered 250,000 casualties out of his best troops in the unsuccessful defense of that city; though devastating in morale and fighting strength, the valiant attempt attracted the attention of western powers, and Chiang was able to push Britain and the United States in an economic sanction against Japan. Large scale military aid never came to China, however, and Chiang lost all means of industrial capability to the Japanese, therefore he could do little but defend the territory he held in western China proper. As soon as the United States entered the war, his American-educated wife acted as his personal ambassador to the United States, lobbying for US support in China. In the temporary war-time capital of Chongqing, Chiang used the resources from the United States to fight a defensive war against the Japanese, which pleased the Allies, but his main aim was to strengthen his power among the Chinese leaders, and particularly to defeat the Communists now led by Mao Zedong. As a result, instead of using the munitions against the Japanese, a great part of them were stored away for the post-WW2 fight against the Communists. In Nov 1943, he participated in the Cairo Conference with Franklin Roosevelt, Joseph Stalin, and Winston Churchill, in which it was decided that Japanese was to cede Manchuria, Formosa, and the Pescadores back to China.

After WW2, Chiang was elected by the National Assembly as the president of the Republic of China. However, by this time, Mao's Communists were immensely popular especially in China's vast rural areas. As the conflict soon broke out to a full-scale civil war, Chiang's Nationalist troops suffered one defeat after another, and the corrupt government officials corroded away people's confidence. On 21 Jan 1949, Chiang resigned his presidency but continued to lead the Nationalist troops. On 10 Dec 1949, Communist troops surrounded Chengdu, the last major Nationalist stronghold. Chiang and his son Chiang Chingkuo personally directed defenses at Chengdu. Later on the same day, they were evacuated to Taiwan, and eventually the entire Republic of China government retreated there as well, where the government still remains today. On 1 Mar 1950, he resumed his presidential duties. He was re-elected as president in 1954, 1960, 1966, and 1972, though the elections did not offer real alternative candidates. Throughout his presidency he sternly laid claims on all of China, despite strong Communist holding over the land. During the Korean War, Chiang offered his troops to fight in South Korea, and General Douglas MacArthur went as far as recommending the use of Chiang's troops to make small raids on China's coasts, but the United States government turned down these possibilities to prevent an escalation of the conflict; furthermore, American naval forces were sent to the Taiwan Strait to prevent Chiang from attacking China. From 1949 until his death while in office in 1975, he ran the nominally democratic country under a dictatorship, with the special powers granted by a martial law (the "Temporary Provisions Effective During the Period of Communist Rebellion"). Although stories of corruption were not unknown to the Chinese in Taiwan, the unpopular Chiang was still respected for his perseverance against Communist expansion and credited with setting the foundation for Taiwan to become an economic powerhouse decades later. In Communist China, however, he was vilified as a dictator who selfishly expanded his personal influence during the time of national crisis.

Chiang now rests in peace temporarily in Taiwan. It was his wishes to be buried in China after re-unification.

Famous Quote(s)

• "Since peace is now beyond hope, we can but fight to the end."
      » 31 Jul 1937

Photographs

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