On this day 80 years ago, Chiang Kai-Shek became the Chairman of the Republic of China. Chiang was a participant in the revolutionary forces which overthrew the Qing Dynasty in the early part of the 20th Century, and he became a founding member of the Kuomintang, the Chinese Nationalist Party. Sun Yat-Sen, the “Father of Modern China”, was the leader of the Kuomintang until his death in 1925, and after a brief power struggle Chiang succeeded him as leader.
To legitimise his position as successor of Sun Yat-Sen, Chiang divorced his wife and concubines and converted to Christianity in order to marry Soong May-Ling, the younger sister of Sun Yat-Sen’s widow, in 1927. Following a successful military campaign in Northern China, Chiang seized control of Beijing and was named Generalissimo of all Chinese forces and Chairman of the National Government in 1928. For the next decade, the capital of China was Nanjing, rather than Beijing.
Japan invaded in 1937, and Nanjing had fallen to the Japanese by the end of the year. Chiang moved the government further inland, and China joined the Allies during World War 2. However, the government was very weak by the time the Japanese surrendered in 1945, and a power struggle broke out between the Communists, led by Mao Zedong, and the Kuomintang. By the end of 1949 the Kuomintang had been defeated and evacuated to Taiwan, where Chiang remained president until his death in 1975.