Dr Sun Yat -sen - The challege of having own military force

Dr Sun Yat-sen may be the Provincial President of newly found Republic of China, but he held the post for a short while, thereafter he had to pass the post to Yuan Shikai. Dr Sun realized that he needed his own military forces for revolution.

After the death of Yuan Shikai, China fragmented into numerous fiefdoms ruled by warlords. Sun Yat-sen attempted in 1917 and 1920 to set up a base in his native Guangdong to launch a northern campaign to unite China under his Three Principles of the People. However, his government remained militarily weaker than local warlords armies. Calls by Sun for arms and money were ignored by the western powers.

Then in 1921 the representative of Comintern, Henk Sneevliet (using the name Maring), met with Sun in Guangxi. He proposed to set up a military academy and train the revolutionary army, which confirmed Sun's ideas and he eventually accepted. The Chinese Communist Party sent Li Dazhao and Lin Boqu (林伯渠) to discuss with Sun and his party on how to set up this academy.

In 1924, in the 1st National Congress of Kuomintang, the policy of alliance with the Soviet Union and CCP was passed as guidance for KMT. As a result, the final decision of establishment of a military academy was made and preparatory committee was set up accordingly. The money necessary for the construction and support of the Academy in 1924-1925 was provided by the Soviets.

The Nationalist Party of China Army Officer Academy (中国国民党陆军军官学校/中國國民黨陸軍軍官學校), commonly known as the Whampoa Military Academy (黄埔军校), was a military academy in the Republic of China (ROC) that produced many prestigious commanders who fought in many of China's conflicts in the 20th century, notably the Northern Expedition, the Second Sino-Japanese War and the Chinese Civil War.

Chiang Kai-shek(蔣中正/蔣介石) was appointed the first commandant of the academy. Liao Zhongkai (廖仲愷), the famous leftist of Kuomintang and Sun's treasury secretary, was appointed as representative of KMT to the academy. Zhou Enlai, Hu Han-min and Wang Ching-wei were among the instructors in the political department. He Yingqin and Ye Jianying were once military instructors.

The military academy was officially opened on May 1, 1924 under the Kuomintang (KMT), but the first lessons began on June 16, 1924. The inauguration was on Changzhou Island offshore from the Whampoa dock in Guangzhou, thus earning its common name. During the inaugural ceremonies, Sun Yat-sen delivered a speech that was later to become the lyrics of the national anthem of the Republic of China.

The original Whampoa Military Academy existed from 1924 to 1926, over 6 terms it enrolled more than 7000.

Sun Yat-sen died on March 12, 1925, creating a power vacuum in the Kuomintang. Liao Zhongkai was one of the three most powerful figures in the Kuomintang Executive Committee, the other two were Wang Jingwei and Hu Hanmin. A contest ensued between Chiang, who stood at the right wing of the KMT, and Sun Yat-sen's close comrade-in-arms Wang Jingwei, who leaned towards the left. Liao was assassinated before a Kuomintang Executive Committee meeting on August 30, 1925 in Guangzhou, Hu was suspected and arrested, and Wang Jingwei was the only one left. On June 5, 1926, Chiang became Commander-in-Chief of the National Revolutionary Army (NRA), and on July 27 he launched a military campaign known as the Northern Expedition in order to defeat the warlords controlling northern China and to unify the country under the KMT. Chiang Kai-shek occupied Shanghai in April 1927, and began a bloody suppression of suspected Communists known as the "White Terror". Within several weeks of Chiang's suppression of Communists in Shanghai Wang's leftist government was attacked by a KMT-aligned warlord and disintegrated, leaving Chiang as the sole legitimate leader of the Republic. Chiang Kai-shek purged the Chinese Communist Party during the Northern Expedition, which caused the beginning of Chinese civil war. Wang Jingwei's National Government was weak militarily, and was soon ended by Chiang with the support of a local warlord. Wang, fearing retribution as a Communist sympathizer,publicly claimed allegiance to Chiang and fled to Europe. Chiang become the Chairman of the Nationalist Government of China on 10-10-1928 and new political power in modern China until 1949.

The academy was moved to the newly established capital in Nanjing after the defeat of the warlords in 1928. The academy moved again to Chengdu during the Japanese invasion. In 1950, after the Communist victory on mainland China and the establishment of the People's Republic of China, the academy was re-established in Fengshan, Kaohsiung County (now part of Kaohsiung City, Taiwan as the Chinese Military Academy (陸軍官校) and changed name in 2004 to the Military University. (軍官大學) The site of the original academy in Guangzhou is now a museum.

Note: In 1925, Chiang Ching-Kuo, son of Chiang Kai-shek went on to Moscow to study at a Communist school. Ching-kuo was an enthusiastic student of Communist ideology, particularly Trotskyism. He lived in Russia for 12 years and have a Russian wife, Faina Ipat'evna Vakhreva,one son and one daughter were born in Russia.









For reader's information, Dr Sun also had pilot training school in Japan, and modern army training base in USA.

It is also interesting to know that Wang Jingwei, the successor of Dr Sun faced the same problem of no support by own army. The political power was within the hands of General Chiang Kai-shek,a military dictator and a fake republican, like General Yuan Shikai, taken away the fruit of Xinhai Revolution, obstruct the road to democracy and Republic. The military power prevail over the democratic constitutional forces, the democrats and republicans, who due to lack of military power to protect their belief, failed one by one, some were assassinated or faded away on the way... the winner were military opportunist General Chiang Kai-shek and Chinese communists, who bought the people more wars, dead, and sufferings....

辛亥革命以来，共和制度的生存非常短暂，阻碍民主的反动势力并未受到致命的打击，以至孙中山先生在长达10年捍卫共和的历程中，充满了浓郁的悲剧色彩。俄国革­命的胜利使孙中山看到了希望。他创建黄埔军校，为了统一全国，他再次进行北伐。