Chiang Kai-shek becomes Chairman of the National Government

On 10 October 1943, the anniversary of the outbreak of the 1911 revolution, Chiang Kai-shek was sworn in at Chongqing as Chairman of the National Government of the Republic of China – the formal head of state. He succeeded Lin Sen, who had died in August after holding the office, largely as a figurehead, for twelve years. Before Chiang took up the post, the organic law was amended so that the chairman would wield real power. The leader who for years had in practice ruled China as head of the party and the army now became its constitutional head as well, just as the Allies were beginning to treat China as one of the coalition’s four great powers.

The National Government and its chairman

The National Government (Guomin Zhengfu) was the highest organ of the state that the Kuomintang had built after unifying the country in 1928. In line with the doctrine of Sun Yat-sen, China was passing through a period of “political tutelage”, in which the party exercised power on behalf of the nation until a constitution was adopted. The government was divided into five branches, known as yuan: executive, legislative, judicial, examination and control. Above them stood the Chairman of the National Government, and above him the Central Executive Committee of the Kuomintang.

From 1928 to 1931 the chairman was Chiang Kai-shek himself, and the office gave him full power. In 1931 a dispute within the party, provoked by Chiang’s arrest of Hu Hanmin, combined with the crisis that followed the Japanese attack in Manchuria. In December 1931 Chiang stepped down. His opponents in the party wanted to avoid a repeat of one-man rule, so the organic law was amended: the chairman became a head of state without political responsibility or real powers, and executive authority passed to the Executive Yuan. The office went to Lin Sen, a respected veteran of the revolution, who formally took it up on 1 January 1932.

Lin Sen made no attempt to govern. He lived modestly, signed laws and received ambassadors, and the American weekly Time spitefully called him a “puppet president”. Chiang Kai-shek, meanwhile, had returned to power as early as 1932 as Chairman of the Military Affairs Commission, and it was he, not Lin, who decided China’s policy. The separation of offices did not trouble him as long as real power was in his hands.

The death of Lin Sen

In the spring of 1943 Lin Sen’s car was involved in an accident in Chongqing. Soon afterwards the elderly politician suffered a stroke. According to Chinese sources, during his illness he insisted that the post-war settlement should provide for the return of Taiwan to China. He died on 1 August 1943 at the age of 75. That same day the Standing Committee of the Kuomintang Central Executive Committee, at an extraordinary meeting, entrusted Chiang Kai-shek with the duties of Chairman of the National Government. A month of mourning was declared across the country.

The September plenum and the new law

From 6 to 13 September 1943 the Eleventh Plenum of the Fifth Central Executive Committee of the Kuomintang met in Chongqing. It amended the organic law of the National Government. The chairman was henceforth to be head of state, to represent China abroad and to exercise supreme command over the army, navy and air force. His term was three years, with the right of re-election, and the presidents of the five yuan became responsible to him. He himself was answerable to the party’s Central Executive Committee. In this way the arrangements of 1931, conceived as a safeguard against the dominance of one person, were turned round in favour of the very person they had been meant to guard against.

On 13 September the plenum elected Chiang Kai-shek Chairman of the National Government. It also resolved that within a year of the end of the war a National Assembly would be convened to adopt a constitution and end the period of party tutelage. On the question of the Communists, Chiang declared at the plenum that it was a political problem and should be solved by political means. The words sounded conciliatory, but they did not change the fact that the best government divisions were still blockading the Communist base in Shaanxi. Two weeks after the plenum, in Xinjiang, whose governor Sheng Shicai had turned against the Communists and the USSR, Mao Zemin was executed – the brother of Mao Zedong.

The oath on Double Tenth Day

For the ceremonial assumption of office 10 October was chosen – the national day of the Republic of China, known as Double Tenth. On that day in 1911 the Wuchang Uprising had broken out, setting off the Xinhai Revolution and the fall of the Qing dynasty. The date underlined the continuity between Sun Yat-sen’s revolution and the rule of Chiang, who presented himself as Sun’s heir. The ceremony took place in the wartime capital, Chongqing, a city that had for years been devastated by Japanese air raids.

Sources agree that on this day Chiang Kai-shek took the oath as Chairman of the National Government. The election itself, however, had taken place on 13 September, and Chiang had been performing the chairman’s duties since 1 August. 10 October marked the formal assumption of office.

All offices in one pair of hands

The oath of 10 October completed a concentration of power such as republican China had never known. Since 1938 Chiang had been Director-General (zongcai) of the Kuomintang, the party’s leader with a veto over its organs. He chaired the Military Affairs Commission, which directed the whole war against Japan, and the Supreme National Defence Council. Since December 1939 he had also been President of the Executive Yuan – head of the government in the strict sense. The cabinet’s day-to-day work was run by his brother-in-law Kong Xiangxi (H. H. Kung), vice-premier and finance minister, and foreign affairs by another brother-in-law, Song Ziwen (T. V. Soong). Now the dignity of head of state was added to these functions.

Critics, including some within the Kuomintang itself, saw this as a further step towards dictatorship. In the spring of 1943 Chiang’s book China’s Destiny appeared, blaming the unequal treaties and foreign influence for all the country’s misfortunes while attacking both communism and Western liberalism. Western diplomats read it with unease. Chiang’s supporters replied that a state that had been at war with Japan for six years, with its coasts and great cities occupied, needed a single centre of decision.

Two National Governments

The oath in Chongqing also had a propaganda dimension. In occupied Nanjing, since 1940, the pro-Japanese National Government of Wang Jingwei had been operating; it used the same name, the same flag and Sun Yat-sen’s symbolism, and claimed to be the legitimate government of China. Its chairman was Wang himself, and in January 1943 his regime declared war on the United States and Britain. Chiang’s assumption of full power on the anniversary of the revolution was a reminder of which of the two governments the world fighting Japan recognised.

Chiang in Washington’s eyes

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt wanted post-war China to be one of the four “policemen” keeping the peace, alongside the United States, Britain and the USSR. In January 1943 the Americans and the British renounced their extraterritorial rights in China, and the visit of Chiang’s wife, Soong Mei-ling, to the United States in the winter and spring of that year, including an address to Congress, won China enormous sympathy among the American public. For many Americans Chiang was a hero who had stood up to Japan since 1937.

On the spot the picture looked different. General Joseph Stilwell, who since 1942 had been Chiang’s chief of staff, regarded him as an incompetent commander who was saving his army for a post-war showdown with the Communists. The American embassy reported corruption, inflation and famine. In the very weeks after the election the most serious crisis yet over Stilwell was under way, when Chiang demanded his recall. Roosevelt, however, had staked on Chiang as China’s leader, and the new title of head of state strengthened his position in dealings with the Allies.

Place in the war

As Chairman of the National Government, Chiang Kai-shek took part in the Cairo Conference with Roosevelt and Winston Churchill in November 1943. It was the only great-power conference attended by China’s leader. The Cairo Declaration announced the return to China of Manchuria, Taiwan and the Pescadores. Earlier, on 30 October, the Chinese ambassador in Moscow had signed the Four-Power Declaration on General Security, which formally raised China to the rank of a great power.

The peak of prestige was soon over. In 1944 the Japanese Operation Ichi-Go shattered the government’s armies in central and southern China, and the dispute with Stilwell flared up anew, ending with his recall in October 1944. The office of Chairman of the National Government existed until 1948, when, after a constitution had been adopted, Chiang was elected President of the Republic of China by the National Assembly. Defeat in the civil war with the Communists forced him to flee to Taiwan in 1949. The oath of 10 October 1943 remained the moment when Chiang Kai-shek formally united in his own hands the power of the party, the army and the state, at a time when China was for the first time sitting at the table as an equal partner of the great powers.