Taking THE LEAD IN CHINA.

Wairarapa Age, 22 April 1927, Page 2

Taking THE LEAD IN CHINA.

I CHIANG KAI-SHEK’S CAREER. Chiang Kai-Shek, who has lately . become probably the most powerful < figure in China to-day, has so far j been the striking force of the Naticmali ist revolution. Starting in the isolated i southern province of Canton, he hajs led 1 his armies a thousand miles to- the north over mountain passes that have no railways and in some cases no ‘ roads. As a result of a series of vicj tories without parallel in Chinese hisi tory, he is now master of li/Tl the coun- ' try. Chiang has so far figured only as ( a military leader, and as an administraj ter is practically untried. He was born ;in 1888, in a village in Chekiang Pro- ! vince, and in 1906 won a scholarship to i the new military academy, where the ' Manchu dynasty was trying to form the , nucleus of an army on Western lines. During tho Russo-Japanese war he was studying in Japan, but when the revolution broke <iut in China in 1911, he returned and commanded a brigade for the republic. In 1913, when Sun. Yatsen broke with Yuan Shik-kai, who was moulding the republic on monarchical lines, Chiang joined him, and served in the war with such success that he was afterwards made Scad of the Whampoa Military Academy, across the river from Canton. A joint demonstration by foreign fleets before the Canton Customs House in 1022 drove Sun Yat-sen to seek assistance from Russia. As a result, (jfhiang was sent to 1 Moscow, for a few months’ study, and Borodin came to Canton. Russia later sent military experts to assist Chiang at Whampoa, and it was commonly supposed that he was under Soviet domination. Last year, however, he suddenly rounded up • nearly all the Russians in Canton and I deported them on the ground that they | had been stirring up extremism in the » Kuomintang. Since then, his attitude I has been one of uncompromising' hostilI ity towards Communist agitators, and ; it lifts been apparent for some time that ' a split with the left wing of his party ! was inevitable.