Chiang Kai-shek
Chiang Kai-shek
Chiang Kai-shek, better known in China as Jiang Jieshi or Jiang Zhongzheng, was a Chinese political and military leader who served as the leader of the Republic of China between 1928 and 1975. Chiang was an influential member of the Kuomintang, the Chinese Nationalist Party, and was a close ally of Sun Yat-sen. He became the Commandant of the Kuomintang's Whampoa Military Academy and took Sun's place as leader of the KMT following the Canton Coup in early 1926. Having...
NationalityChinese
ProfessionPolitician
Date of Birth31 October 1887
CityXikou, China
CountryChina
Contempt for China on the part of the enemy is his weak point. Knowledge of this weak point is our strong point.
The aim of the Revolution is, so far as the interests of China herself are concerned, the restoration of her original frontiers and, in regard to the rest of the world, a gradual advance of all nations from the stage of equality to that of an ideal unity.
I have implicit faith in Sun Yat-sen, not because I am his blind follower, but because he really arouses the deepest respect in everybody. I do not know of another person in China who has such a broad and international outlook, whose ideas are so constructive, and who has such deep faith and confidence in his own mission.
Japan cannot conquer China with America in her rear, Soviet Russia on her right and England on her left - her most powerful enemies in the South Sea all flanking her. It is this international situation that constitutes one of Japan's great weaknesses.
Dr. Sun Yat-sen, Father of the Republic, made it his great aim in his revolutionary leadership to secure freedom and equality of status for China among the nations of the world.
If we are to give the people of China complete self-government we must first solve the problem of livelihood for all, and give real freedom to the races within China. If the foundations of democracy are secure, then true equality can be achieved.
Because of my intense hopes for the youth of China, I feel very keenly my responsibility for their future success or failure. The fate of China lies in their hands. The responsibility for organizing and training them to become worthy citizens of China, able to undertake the tasks of Resistance and Reconstruction, is mine; I cannot evade it.
Externally China desires independence, internally she seeks to maintain her existence as a nation; China therefore strives to loose the bonds that bind her people, and to complete the establishment of a new State.
I have often said China is not lacking in material resources. The question is whether we can make full and good use of them.
China is the largest and most ancient of Asiatic countries, but it is not for us boastfully to talk of her right to a position of 'leadership' among those countries.
We Chinese are instinctively democratic, and Dr. Sun's objective of universal suffrage evokes from all Chinese a ready and unhesitating response.
I should like very much to go to America. I have heard so much of the great industrial and economic development of that great land, and I wish to see things for myself.
Modern warfare is by no means merely a matter of military operations. Economic affairs stand together with them in the first rank of the factors of importance.
My father died when I was 9 years old. The miserable condition of my family at that time is beyond description. My family, solitary and without influence, became at once the target of much insult and abuse.