Zhang Xueliang

Zhang Xueliang

Zhang Xueliang or Chang Hseuh-Liang ( Chinese  張學良 , Pinyin Zhāng Xuéliáng , W.-G. Chang Hsüeh-liang ; Zì 汉卿 , Hànqīng , Han-ch'ing ; Hào 毅 庵 , Yì'ān , I-an ; milk name 小 六 子 , Xiǎo Liùzi , Hsiao Liu-tzu , real nickname 双喜 , Shuāng Xǐ , Shuang Hsi ; sometimes also called himself in English: Peter Hsueh Liang Chang ; * June 3, 1901 (other reports give as year of birth 1898 or 1900) im district Haicheng , Province Fengtian ; † 14. October 2001 in Hawaii , United States ), called "the young Marshal" ( 少帥 , Shao Shuai , shao shuai ), dominated by the murder of his father Zhang Zuo-lin on 4 June 1928 a officer of the Japanese Kwantung army , the Manchuria and much of northern China. He spent more than half his life under house arrest as the instigator of the Xi'an incident , but is considered a patriotic hero in the People's Republic of China .

youth

He was raised by private tutors and, unlike his father, felt at home in the company of Western people. Zhang Xueliang graduated from the Fengtian Military Academy, was appointed colonel in the Fengtian Army, and in 1919 was appointed chief of his father's bodyguard. In 1921 he was sent to Japan to observe military maneuvers. There he developed a special interest in airplanes. He later built the Fengtian Army's Air Force Corps, which was used extensively in fighting in the Great Wall area in the 1920s . In 1922 he was promoted to major general and commanded a force the size of an army, two years later he was also commander in chief of the air force. After his father's death in 1928, he succeeded him as Manchuria's most important warlord . In December of the same year, he joined the Guomindang .

Manchurian warlord and republican general

The Japanese believed that Zhang Xueliang - known as a womanizer and an opium addict - would be easier to control. An officer of the Japanese Kwantung Army killed his father Zhang Zuolin as a result in a bomb attack while his train passed under a viaduct. Surprisingly, the younger Zhang turned out to be more independent than anyone expected. He overcame his opium addiction and publicly declared his support for Chiang Kai-shek . In order to purge his leadership of Japanese influences, in January 1929 he had two officials known to be pro-Japanese executed in front of the assembled guests at a dinner. Zhang also tried to eliminate Soviet influence on Manchuria, but suffered defeat in the Soviet-Chinese border war . At the same time he was approaching the United States .

When the warlords Feng Yuxiang and Yan Xishan tried to overthrow the Guomindang government under Chiang Kai-shek in 1930 , Zhang supported the Nanjing government against the northern warlords. In return, he was given control of the main railways in Hebei Province and the customs revenue from the port of Tianjin City . After the Mukden incident and the Japanese invasion of Zhang's own dominion in Manchuria in 1931, Zhang's troops withdrew from the front without any significant fighting. It has been speculated that Chiang Kai-shek wrote a letter to Zhang asking him to withdraw, but Zhang later insisted that he gave the orders himself. Apparently he realized how weak his armed forces were compared to the Japanese army and preferred to protect his position by maintaining his own army. That would also be in line with Chiang's overarching strategic intentions. Zhang later traveled through Europe and then returned to China to take command of the suppression campaigns against the communists, first in Hebei, Henan and Anhui, and later in the northwest.

Xi'an Incident, House Arrest, and Later Life

→ Main article : Xi'an Incident

On April 6, 1936, Zhang Xueliang met with Zhou Enlai to end the Chinese Civil War. Together with General Yang Hucheng , Zhang kidnapped Chiang Kai-shek on December 12, 1936 and imprisoned the head of the Guomindang government until Chiang agreed to form a united front with the communists against the Japanese invaders.

Chiang had taken a non-aggressive stance towards the Japanese at the time and considered the communists to be a greater danger to China than the Japanese. His strategy was to first eliminate the communists before turning to the Japanese. However, growing nationalist anger against Japan made these policies very unpopular, which led to Zhang's crackdown on Chiang.

The following negotiations were delicate and have not been recorded. Apparently, Chiang agreed to join forces against the Japanese rather than the communists. In return, Zhang would become Chiang's prisoner and forego any political role.

After Chiang Kai-shek was released, Zhang Xueliang was tried and sentenced to ten years in prison. Chiang intervened, and Zhang was placed under house arrest. When the Republic of China was evacuated in 1949 , Zhang was taken to Taiwan , where he continued to live under house arrest. He devoted his time to studying Ming poetry. Only in 1990, after the death of Chiang's son and successor Chiang Ching-kuo , did he regain his freedom. This makes Zhang probably the longest-serving political prisoner.

After his release, he immigrated to Honolulu , Hawaii , in 1993 . He was often invited to the People's Republic of China , but Zhang declared himself neutral towards communists like the Guomindang and refused. He never set foot on mainland China again. At the age of 100 years (101 according to the Chinese method) he died of pneumonia and was buried in Hawaii.

literature

• Jung Chang & Jon Halliday: Mao. The life of a man, the fate of a people. Blessing, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-89667-200-2
• Thomas Weyrauch: China's neglected republic. 100 years in the shadow of world history . Volume 1: 1911-1949 . Longtai, Giessen (ie) Heuchelheim 2009, ISBN 978-3-938946-14-5 .
• Chang Hsü-liang , in: Internationales Biographisches Archiv 02/2002 from December 31, 2001, in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely available)

Web links

Commons : Zhang Xueliang  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Koichi Okamoto: On NHK's Interview with Zhang Xueliang (table of contents of an interview given by Zhang Xueliang in the early 1990s, English; PDF file; 206 kB)
• Newspaper article about Zhang Xueliang in the 20th century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .