When Chiang Kai-shek employs people, he generally follows three unwritten rules, one is to reuse military personnel from the Huangpu family, the other is to reuse fellow villagers in Zhejiang, and the third is to reuse people who are loyal to him. Chen Cheng is in line with Chiang Kai-shek's standards for employing people, so he has won Chiang Kai-shek's trust and his career has been smooth.
As a military general, Chen Cheng's method of managing the army is unique, practicing three openness, namely: personnel disclosure, financial disclosure, and separation of opinions. Chen Cheng also formulated a personnel system that was different from other units, stipulating that there were no special circumstances, and ordinary employees, even financial personnel, could not leave their posts with their commanders.
The army led by Chen Cheng was influenced by the old warlords, the internal atmosphere was not good, and there were many false reimbursements. After Chen Cheng understood, he vigorously grasped the management of the army. In the course of running the army, Chen Cheng hated people who bragged about their horses, ate empty quotas, withheld military salaries, and were corrupt and corrupt. He advocated incorruptibility, and he also led by example, his life was very simple, he never talked about pomp and circumstance, and his daily diet was so simple that he was jokingly called "monk".
When he was the commander of the artillery battalion of the Crusade Army, an officer in the battalion framed him for embezzling military pay. His superiors went to him and showed him the letter of complaint. Chen Cheng was very angry, he felt greatly insulted, and asked his boss to investigate him thoroughly. The boss wanted to be a peacemaker and let him go back to work with peace of mind and not be affected by this letter. But Chen Cheng refused to give up, insisted that his superiors investigate and deal with it, and return his own innocence. At Chen Cheng's insistence, the matter was clarified, and Chen Cheng was indeed falsely accused. In the end, the officer who complained was dealt with by his superiors, and Chen Cheng was finished.
One day, while the Eleventh Division was stationed in Xiangyang, Chen Cheng listened to several soldiers in the bathhouse saying that their company commander had not paid their salaries for two months, and when he heard this, he immediately ordered an investigation. It was soon confirmed that the company commander had embezzled the salary for a month, and Chen Cheng ordered the Division's Military Justice Department to examine it. According to the military law provisions, the military justice department sentenced the company commander to dismissal or sentence at most, but Chen Cheng gave two words: "shooting".
Because Chen Cheng's sanctions for misappropriation of military salaries, embezzlement of public funds, and short-term consumption were very severe, almost no officers of the Eleventh Division and his later Eighteenth Army dared to offend.