Yan Xishan

Yan Xishan, photo taken between 1936 and 1945

Yan Xishan ( Chinese  閻錫山  /  阎锡山 , Pinyin Yán Xíshān , W.-G. Yen Hsi-shan ; born October 8, 1883 in Wutai County, Shanxi Province ; † May 24, 1960 in Taipei ), controlled the Chinese province of Shanxi during and after the Xinhai Revolution and an influential warlord during the era of warlords and the Chinese Civil War .

Yan was born into a wealthy family who worked in the Chinese banking industry. Due to the worsening economic situation, he attended the free military academy in Shanxi Province and, on a scholarship from the Chinese government, went to Japan in 1904 to undergo further military training at the Army Officer's School . There he was strongly influenced by the tradition of Bushido . In 1905 he joined the Tongmenghui of Sun Yat-sen and became a member of a brigade of soldiers who were ready to launch suicide attacks against the Manchurian Qing dynasty . He also agreed that China could only be saved with the help of militarism . In 1907 he returned to China and worked in the regional administration, at the same time preparing an underground revolt against the Qing rule. From 1909 he was a member of the imperial army as a training officer, but continued his secret activities for the revolution. After the Wuchang Uprising of 1911 and the subsequent Xinhai Revolution , Yan led his forces in the Taiyuan uprising . He was appointed military governor of Shanxi Province, however, these items temporarily lost during the conquest of Shanxi by the Beiyang Army from Yuan Shikai . He collaborated with Yuan and was reappointed governor of Shanxi.

During the era of warlords, Yan gave priority to maintaining the stability and economic development of his province. Only rarely did he take part in armed conflicts with his troops. Like many other young rulers, he began to implement reforms at the regional level. He achieved limited success with experiments on the reorganization of rural areas (cunzhi). He also tried to promote cultural and moral reforms through mass mobilization and collective education. The tying of the feet , prostitution, homosexuality, idleness, gambling, the Chinese calendar and the celebration of long festivals were to be stopped, he ordered that all citizens should be up at six o'clock in the morning at the latest. The youth were instrumentalized to monitor compliance with these regulations. For this purpose he founded an association similar to the boy scouts . In every city, the administrators and local dignitaries were grouped into conscience cleansing societies (洗 心 社), which had to meet regularly, confess wrongdoing and strengthen their allegiance to Yan. At the same time, he rose to become the leading warlord in North China, nicknamed the Peasant Emperor (土皇帝).

Yan avoided solid alliances with other warlords in the 1920s. In 1927, Chiang Kai-shek began his northern campaign . Yan had to choose and joined the right wing Kuomintang of Chiang. Yan's Shanxi Army became part of the National Revolutionary Army , Yan was formally commander of the 3rd Army Corps and Supreme Commander of the Northern Revolutionary Marsh Army and occupied Beijing on June 6, 1928, completing the northern campaign on the victorious side. Chiang recognized Yan's rule over Shanxi and allowed him to expand his influence to neighboring Hebei . Yan was appointed Minister of Interior and Deputy Commander in Chief of the National Revolutionary Army.

During the numerous rebellions of other warlords against Chiang, Yan repeatedly demanded greater autonomy as the price for his neutrality in the conflicts. In February 1930 he and Feng Yuxiang rebelled against Chiang's Nanjing government and Chiang's plans to demobilize soldiers on a large scale. The ensuing war in the central Chinese plain between the alliance of Yan, Feng, the Guangxi clique around Li Zongren and the Kuomintang faction around Wang Jingwei on the one hand and Chiang Kaishek on the other hand lasted until September and, with 300,000 fatalities, were among the most expensive and most costly military undertakings during the civil war. Yan became head of an opposing government that was installed in Beijing but was soon overthrown. Yan then withdrew to the Japanese- controlled Dalian . A year later, Yan reached an understanding with Chiang and went back to Shanxi to build a bulwark against the Japanese army advancing from the northeast . There he drew up a ten-year plan for Shanxi, invested in industry and infrastructure, and established state monopolies to fund the investments. These measures made Shanxi the model province of China under the Kuomintang government. By the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War , Yan is believed to have invested around 100 million Chinese dollars in Shanxi's industry.

During the war against Japan, Yan was the commander of the Second War Zone. In 1936, the Chinese Communist Party established itself in neighboring Shaanxi Province and tried to gain influence in Yan's Shanxi Province. Yan first formed an anti-Japanese alliance with the communists and integrated communist troops into his New Army . However, in 1939, Yan removed all communists from his armed forces. His area of ​​influence shrank in favor of the Japanese until he only had a small area in western Shanxi under control. Attempts by the communists to get Yan on their side failed. Yan negotiated a secret truce with the Japanese in 1939 and 1941 so that he could largely stay out of the Sino-Japanese War . After the surrender of Japan , Yan fought on the side of Chiang against the communists. His first campaign against the communists ( Shangdang campaign ) ended in defeat. Later, with the support of Fu Zuoyi's troops, he was able to defeat the communists under He Long and Nie Rongzhen in East Shanxi. In March 1949, Yan's home province was conquered by the communist troops, and Yan fled to Nanjing after the People's Liberation Army under Xu Xiangqian had conquered the provincial capital, Taiyuan .

In June 1949, Chiang appointed him prime minister of a nationalist government, which he had to evacuate to Guangzhou shortly afterwards . After the Kuomintang government fled to Taiwan , Yan briefly served on the Advisory Committee of the Republic of China . He retired in Taiwan and died in Taipei on May 24, 1960 .

literature

• Donald G. Gillin: Warlord: Yen Hsi-shan in Shansi Province 1911-1949 . Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey 1967.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h} Wang Ke-Wen : Yan Xishan . In: Leung, Pak-Wah (Ed.): Political leaders of modern China: a biographical dictionary . 1st edition. Greenwood Press, Westport, Conn. 2002, ISBN 0-313-30216-2 , pp. 182-184 .
2. ↑ ^{a b c d e f} Christopher R. Lew and Edwin Pak-wah Leung: Historical dictionary of the Chinese Civil War . 2nd Edition. Scarecrow Press, Lanham 2013, ISBN 978-0-8108-7874-7 , pp. 255-257 .
3. ↑ Helwig Schmidt-Glintzer : Mao Zedong: "There will be battle": a biography . Matthes & Seitz, Berlin 2017, ISBN 978-3-95757-365-0 , pp. 50 .
4. ↑ Helwig Schmidt-Glintzer: Mao Zedong: "There will be battle": a biography . Matthes & Seitz, Berlin 2017, ISBN 978-3-95757-365-0 , pp. 51 f .
5. ^ ^{A b} Dieter Kuhn: The Republic of China from 1912 to 1937 - Draft for a political history of events . 3. Edition. Edition Forum, Heidelberg 2007, ISBN 3-927943-25-8 , p. 436 .
6. ↑ Dieter Kuhn : The Republic of China from 1912 to 1937 - Draft for a political history of events . 3. Edition. Edition Forum, Heidelberg 2007, ISBN 3-927943-25-8 , p. 409 .