He was a veteran admiral who joined the navy in the late Qing Dynasty, was the commander-in-chief of the Kuomintang navy, and was praised by some as the father of China's modern navy. During the Liberation War, Lao Jiang ordered him to go north, but he went south.
I'll talk to you about him today.
His name is Chen Shaokuan, a native of Minxian County, Fujian Province.
Chen Shaokuan was born in 1889 to a naval family, and his father served in the naval forces of the late Qing Dynasty and served as a sergeant pipe ship. He was also admitted to the Jiangnan Admiralty School at the age of 17, and after graduation, he entered the Beiyang Navy, successively serving as a lieutenant colonel of the Beiyang Navy General Command, and the acting captain of the "Zhaohe" training ship.
Because Chen Shaokuan studied in the church school in his early years and had a good English level, he was later sent by the Admiralty of the Beiyang Government to the United States, Britain, France and other countries to study and investigate the construction and combat readiness of the modern navy, and during the First World War, he also joined the British Navy submarine fleet to participate in the war, and won the commendation of the British naval authorities and the "Special Medal of Merit".
After returning to China, Chen Shaokuan successively served as chief of staff of the General Command of the Navy and rear admiral of the Second Fleet of the Beiyang Navy. After the Northern Expedition of the Southern Revolutionary Army began, Chen Shaokuan felt that only the revolutionary army could achieve his ambition of strengthening the country and enriching the army. In March 1927, when the Northern Expeditionary Army approached the Yangtze River. Chen Shaokuan believed that "the time has come, and it must be done", so he led his troops to the National Revolutionary Army and participated in the battle with Sun Chuanfang. He then formed the Western Expeditionary Fleet and assisted the Northern Expeditionary Army in conquering Hankou, Changsha, Yuezhou and other places.
In 1928, after Chen Shaokuan took charge of the Naval Administration, he reformed the bad habits of nepotism and factionalism in the old navy; he organized personnel to consult relevant Chinese and foreign literature, combined with the actual conditions of the navy, carefully and meticulously studied them, put forward drafts of detailed regulations on the ranks of seafarers, executive officers, rewards and punishments, and reformed the old navy; he also founded the Fuzhou Naval School, hired British naval instructors to teach at the school, and trained hundreds of graduates. Chen Shaokuan also served as the parliamentary secretary of the Ministry of the Navy and the commander of the Second Fleet, acting minister and director of the Jiangnan Shipbuilding Institute, and admiral minister.
How can a backward China be able to build a strong navy. Therefore, the navy in the Republic of China period basically did nothing, especially in the period of the War of Resistance Against Japan, and everyone almost did not see the navy in the various battles. The only one was the Battle of Jiangyin during the Battle of Songhu, but the final result was the loss of the main force of my First Fleet, but it also reflected the determination and heroism of the backward Chinese nation to resist Chinese people in the face of a strong enemy. Later navies also organized guerrillas behind enemy lines to disrupt Japanese operations on the water.
Although the navy of the Republic of China did not have a strong maritime force, the Central Military Commission still established a naval command and appointed Chen Shaokuan as the commander-in-chief of the navy, and after the victory of the War of Resistance, he also went to Japan on behalf of the Chinese Navy to accept the surrender of the Japanese Navy, which is undoubtedly the pride of the Chinese Navy.
At the end of 1945, our Eighth Route Army advanced into the northeast, and when Chiang Kai-shek saw that the situation was not good, he ordered Chen Shaokuan's navy Changzhi to go north to the Bohai Sea in an attempt to prevent our army from advancing north at Bohai Bay. However, Chen Shaokuan was very disgusted with the civil war, so he led his ship south to Taiwan for inspection on the grounds that "after the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, the navy's vitality has not yet recovered, and Shaokuan has not had much to do in the date of the War of Resistance, and he is already ashamed of his countrymen, and if he participates in the civil war again, he will feel a great deal of guilt." This move made old Chiang Kai-shek angrily scold "Niang Xipi", and then directly dismissed the naval command and removed him from the post of commander.
Chen Shaokuan was also eager to be spared, and packed up and returned to his hometown of Fuzhou, Fuzhou. Every day, I have a light tea and a light meal, read books and newspapers, and have no quarrel with the world.
After the liberation of the whole country, Zhang Dingcheng, secretary of the Fujian Provincial CPC Committee, went to Fuzhou's Plei Township twice to invite Chen Shaokuan to go out of the mountains to work for New China, and Secretary Zhang's sincere invitation finally touched Chen Shaokuan, and he later became vice governor of Fujian and vice chairman of the Central Committee of the Kuomintang Revolutionary Committee. On July 30, 1969, Chen Shaokuan died of illness at the age of 80.
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