The World War II protagonists (China)
Chiang-Kai-shek
Chiang Kai-shek was born in Fenghua in 1887.
Chinese politician, he rose to power as founder and president of the National Republic of China in 1949 until his death.
He completed his military studies in Tokyo where, in 1907, he met Sun Yat-sen, founder of the Kuomintang (the Chinese Nationalist Party), alongside whom he took part both in the revolution that led to the establishment of the Republic of China (1911) and in the subsequent struggle against Yuan Shikai, one of the “warlords.” He was sent in 1923 to the Soviet Union to study the social and military system of the “Soviets”; the following year he took over the leadership of the Kuomintang military academy.
The growing internal conflicts within the party after the death of its founder in 1925 did not prevent Chiang Kai-shek from decisively carrying out action against the power centers of the warlords in the northern regions. Meanwhile, the final break with the communist component of the Kuomintang developed, culminating in 1930 in a full-scale civil war, which was fought simultaneously with the conflict aimed at resisting the Japanese invasion of Manchuria.
Having failed to prevent the forces led by Mao Zedong from escaping the government siege with the Long March of 1934, Jiang was forced to reach a truce with Mao to establish a common front against the Japanese. The long Sino-Japanese conflict, which unfolded within the broader context of the Second World War, allowed Jiang to serve as the official representative of China at the Allied wartime conferences held from 1942 onward.
At the end of the Second World War in 1945, the war with the Communists resumed. The regime, based on Jiang’s personal power and that of his family, proved inefficient and corrupt and soon found itself in difficulty. After the failure of mediation attempts by the United States in 1946–47, the conflict quickly turned in favor of the Maoist army, which in 1949 forced Jiang to flee to Taiwan along with more than two million followers. With the economic and military support of the United States, the nationalist leader turned the island into an independent state under his own rule, pursuing an economic development policy that made the country highly competitive in foreign trade.
Upon his death on 5 April 1975 in Taipei, he was succeeded by his son Jiang Qinghuo.
Mao Zedong
He was born in 1893 into a peasant family and had irregular studies. In 1911 he joined the republican army, then (1913–18) attended a teacher training school. He was influenced by Western thought and the October Revolution, and in 1921 in Beijing he joined the Communist Party, which sent him as its agent to his native region of Hunan. There he organized peasant associations, reworking Marxist-Leninist theory and becoming convinced of the possibility of autonomous revolutionary initiative by the rural masses in the Chinese context.
He soon came into conflict with the leadership of the Communist Party, developing a personal revolutionary perspective based on guerrilla action in the countryside. From 1927, after the break between the Communists and Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang, Mao led the struggle against the latter, promoting agrarian reform in the occupied areas and linking armed struggle to a broader economic revolution. In 1931 he founded a communist republic in the regions of Hunan and Jiangxi.
To escape the advance of Chiang Kai-shek’s troops, in October 1934 he began the “Long March,” traveling with his followers over 5,000 kilometers and earning on the ground the title of leader of the Chinese Communist movement. Faced with the Japanese invasion of the country, he reached a truce with Chiang Kai-shek for a joint defense.
At the end of the Second World War, the two sides confronted each other in a civil war, which ended in 1949 with Mao’s complete victory. This marked the beginning of the long history of the People’s Republic of China, in which Mao devoted himself to building a communist society, before entering a phase characterized by tensions with the Soviet Union and attempts to secure autonomy and prestige for China, making it a reference point for the international communist movement.
The “Great Helmsman” died in 1976.
