Chiang Kaishek was the military leader of the Guomindang from the mid-20s and the military and political leader of China from 1927 to 1949. Then the leader of the independent Taiwan until his death in 1975.
Biography
Chiang Kaishek was born south of China in the Zhejiang province in 1887. His youth was spent at a Japanese military academy and in subsequent service in the Imperial Japanese Army and the rebellious Guomindang army fighting the Qing dynasty. He additionally spent a significant part of this time in Shanghahi where he established connections to the leadership of the Green Gang.
After the Guomindang established its government in Guangzhou, he rejoined its military and quickly advanced thanks to a personal friendship with Sun Yatsen who he had saved from an assassination attempt. This earned him a trip to Moscow on a military exchange and the command of the Guomindang military academy at Whampoa where he established an alliance of cadets looking to him as their leader. It was this military support which gave him the position of chief of staff of the Guomindang army. As he rose in the Guomindang hierarchy, he came to be the leader of the right wing and the anticommunists of the party.
During the Northern Expedition the Guomindang army rapidly advanced under his campaign. This success convinced him that the time was right to use the elimination of the Communists as a pretext for a coup against the civilian government of the Guomindang. This coup was carried out by drawing on his contacts in the Green Gang and an alliance with Sun Yatsen's in-laws, sealed by marriage and his conversion to Methodism.
Chiang continued his conquest of eastern China after the coup and began the work of building a modern Chinese state. This state was plagued by the continued power of the warlords, a rebellious government in Guangzhou, the continued opposition of the Communists in a number of remote mountain regions and above all Japanese aggression. While Chiang held on to power, these difficulties undermined his ability to implement his agenda.
The 1937 Japanese invasion led to his appointment of the unified Chinese resistance and, after 1939, the allied forces in the Chinese theater of the second world war. This international recognition didn't help him much in the subsequent civil war, though, which ended in a Communist victory and his exile on Taiwan. Here American aid allowed him to build an authoritarian state in his own image which he ruled until his death.
Political thought
Chiang's vision and political ideals above all centered on a nationalist desire for a strong China. Unlike most of the early Guomindang, his vision was complicated by an ambivalent relationship to modernism. Unlike others, he sought to preserve traditional, indigenous Chinese culture while adopting modern technology and administration, with Christianity as the main exception of his rejection of foreign culture. A dedicated Confucian, he viewed modern artforms like jazz, modernist literature and abstract art as unchinese and corrupting the youth.
He also ignored the parts of the Guomindang program that called for democracy, which he never implemented in either China or Taiwan. Instead he sought to base the power of the state on the military and his political blue shirt organization. One of the characteristics of his rule was the use of military force to solve most issues.
Economically he was opposed to both the free exercise of capitalism and Communist planned economy. The latter was clearly visible in his consistent opposition to the Communist from his time in Whampoa to his death on Taiwan. The former could both be seen in the way he extorted the wealthiest Chinese to contribute to the finances of the state and in open calls for greater authority over Chinese industry.
Generally speaking, Chiang Kaishek was politically the closest to Mussolini and other European Fascists and authoritatian conservatives. This affinity was also seen in how he maintained Nazi Germany as his closest international partner in the 1930s, which only ended by a German decision to pursue Japan as its Asian ally instead.