As everyone knows, after the victory of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, Chiang Kai-shek intended to "go down the mountain to pick peaches" and steal the fruits of victory, but in the end he collapsed under the rapid offensive of the People's Liberation Army and lost Taiwan, thus provoking the beginning of decades of twists and turns in cross-strait relations. However, what few people know is that Chiang Kai-shek also had the idea of reconciliation when he saw that there was no hope of counter-offensive in Taiwan and that he himself was running out of time. So, what is the specific situation of Chiang Kai-shek's defeat and retreat from Taiwan? Why did he have the idea of reconciliation again?
On June 12, 1923, the three major congresses of the Communist Party of China were held, and the congress mainly discussed the specific operation mode of cooperation between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party, although the framework of cooperation between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party of China has been determined, but the specific cooperation methods and mechanisms and the boundaries of cooperation still need to be clarified, and this conference is held to fill the gaps in these frameworks. Since the Kuomintang was superior in terms of size at that time, the main controversy at this meeting was the question of whether the Communist Party should enter the Kuomintang in part or in its entirety and the status in which the Communists should enter the Kuomintang, and in the end, the congress passed the resolution of the Communists joining the Kuomintang in their personal capacity, the first Kuomintang-Communist cooperation was launched, and the revolutionary movement against the feudal warlords was thus pushed forward like a wave.
However, in the later stages of the revolution, the right wing of the Kuomintang, led by Chiang Kai-shek and Wang Jingwei, turned the butcher's knife to the Communist Party, arresting and massacring Communists on a large scale, and the first cooperation between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party broke down.
In 1937, in the face of the Japanese invasion, Chiang Kai-shek was forced to agree to the second cooperation between the Kuomintang and the Communists, and the national anti-Japanese united front was established. However, after the joint expulsion of the Japanese and Kosovo, the fork in the road once again appeared, and the KmT and the Communists had to face the headache of how China would continue to go next.
The two parties of the Kuomintang and the Communist Party have once again fallen into a confrontation, and many eyes are watching this confrontation with concern, and no one wants the end of the confrontation to be war; after many years of war, the Chinese nation has been seriously injured, and a war-weary mood permeates the whole country. Out of this situation, Chiang Kai-shek pretended to seek peace, intending to gain a few years to rest and recuperate, and then compete for the fruits of victory after his strength was strong enough, while the Communist Party was unwilling to start another campaign and consume the little vitality left in the Chinese nation. The two sides maintained the balance of the balance for a short time, so as not to fall into the abyss of war again.
At the end of June 1946, however, Chiang Kai-shek, who had the support of US imperialism, tore up the "Double Tenth" agreement and attacked the liberated areas, with the intention of completely bringing all of China under his rule through war once and for all. Perhaps the complicated problems left over from China's thick history are doomed to be completely resolved through such a gentle means as peace talks.
At the beginning of the war, the People's Liberation Army retreated while fighting, moving the main army to the mountains, and encircling the scattered Kuomintang troops with several times the strength through mobile warfare, and winning the victory. In the stage of the strategic counteroffensive, the Kuomintang changed its tactics and concentrated its forces to attack the Communist base areas of northern Shaanxi and Shandong, and the PLA suffered relatively serious casualties in this area, but because the Kuomintang concentrated most of its troops in the Shandong region of northern Shaanxi, resulting in a weak rear defense, the PLA crossed the Yellow River, advanced into the Dabie Mountains, and pointed its guns directly at the Kuomintang base camp of Wuhan nanjing, coupled with the PLA's strategy in other areas, the PLA successfully reversed the war situation. At this time, the war also ushered in the final decisive stage, through the three major battles of Liaoshen, Huaihai and Pingjin, the PEOPLE's Liberation Army basically eliminated the main force of the Kuomintang, and finally, the People's Liberation Army forcibly crossed the Yangtze River, liberated Nanjing, and ended the rule of the National Government in Nanjing over the whole country. Chiang Kai-shek himself fled to Taiwan with the remnants of his family, but he lived this life.
The historical facts that may have been conclusively established have made most people lose interest in studying the past situation, but when we look back in the depths of history, we still can't help but ask why Chiang Kai-shek chose Taiwan as the last stronghold.
Long before the People's Liberation Army crossed the river, Chiang Kai-shek, who was already on the verge of crossing the river, was planning to use the coastal ports of Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Fujian, and Taiwan as a bastion, and Chiang Kai-shek also inadvertently mentioned to his son Chiang Ching-kuo that he should choose a "simple environment" in the form of "narrowing the scope" to carry out a thorough and fundamental transformation in order to save the Kuomintang from defeat on the mainland. In 1949, the Kuomintang building was about to fall, and Chiang Kai-shek was undecided between moving to the southwest and crossing Taiwan to the east, and finally chose Taiwan, which had a precarious terrain and a certain degree of productivity.
Although Chiang Kai-shek declared to the outside world at this time that he "would not avoid going to Taiwan," in fact he secretly transferred part of his armaments and defense to Taiwan, and at the same time ordered the central bank to transport 800,000 taels of reserve gold to Taiwan and Xiamen to prepare for the retreat of Taiwan.
At that time, Taiwan was also unstable, and the "228 Incident" had just occurred in 1947. After Japan's defeat in the war, China regained taiwan's sovereignty that was taken away by Japan after the Sino-Japanese War, but the main body of the two sides of the Taiwan Strait, which had not been seen for decades, had already made differences in political culture; the value of the Kuomintang's legal tender was lower than one day by one day, inflation was serious, and the phenomenon of corruption under the Kuomintang rule was becoming more and more rampant, and the people had a lot of resentment. The agitated populace went to the police station and the gendarmerie regiment to petition, which soon evolved into a massive uprising that nearly lost control of Taiwan to the Kuomintang, but was eventually suppressed by the Reinforcements.
Although the uprising was suppressed and the contradictions between Taiwan's pinnacles and confrontations still unavoidable, Chiang Kai-shek, in order to ensure that he could smoothly gain control of the local area after arriving in Taiwan, ordered Chen Cheng, the commander-in-chief of the Taiwan Garrison, who had first arrived in Taiwan, to stabilize the local situation and "win the hearts and minds of the people and stabilize the localities."
Finally, in December 1949, Chiang Kai-shek, who had no foothold on the mainland, flew to Taiwan and never set foot on the mainland again.
After Chiang Kai-shek arrived in Taiwan, he stayed in the Grass Hill official residence left by Japan in Taiwan, and on January 5, 1950, Truman declared that the United States would no longer intervene in the Chinese civil war or aid Chiang Kai-shek militarily.
After that, the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950 provided an opportunity for Chiang Kai-shek to stabilize the situation in Taiwan, and in May the Shilin official residence was completed, and Chiang Kai-shek and Soong Meiling moved away from the Caoshan official residence to go to the Shilin official residence, and the Shilin official residence also became the place where Chiang Kai-shek died in the future.
After Chiang Kai-shek arrived in Taiwan, he first set out to gather power, so he had a lot of friction with Chen Cheng, and even quarreled in public, Chen Cheng also questioned Chiang Kai-shek's "dictatorship", and the pressure from internal and external affairs made Chiang Kai-shek, who had just arrived in Taiwan, grumpy.
Although he lost power on the mainland, Chiang Kai-shek's heart of tiger and wolf did not die, and he always plotted a "counter-offensive" in Taiwan, declaring that "one year of preparation, two years of counter-offensive, three years of sweeping, and four years of success." Although Truman announced that he would no longer support the Chiang Kai-shek regime, after Eisenhower came to power, the United States once again "let Chiang Kai-shek out of the cage" and supported Taiwan. With the support of the United States, the Kuomintang authorities used kinmen, Matsu and other islands as bases to continuously harass China's southeast coastal areas, so the People's Liberation Army shelled Kinmen twice on September 3 and 22, 1954, and continued to shell many times thereafter, on October 6, our army suspended shelling for 7 days, on October 31, the People's Liberation Army began to implement a policy of no single-day fighting for two days, and on January 9, 1959, the Central Military Commission of the Communist Party of China decided that "in the future, it is not necessary to fight artillery every single day." It was not until 1979, when the mainland issued the "Message to Taiwan Compatriots," that a historic turning point took place in cross-strait relations, and the shelling of Kinmen officially ceased.
Although he has always been in a state of confrontation with the mainland, Chiang Kai-shek and the cadres who went to Taiwan with him actually still have nostalgia for their hometown in their hearts, such as cursive everyone, the Kuomintang big man Yu Youren wrote such a poem before his death:
Bury me on the high mountain and look at my continent.
The mainland is invisible, only weeping!
Bury me on the top of the mountain and look at my hometown.
The hometown is invisible, never dare to forget!
The sky is clear, the wilderness is vast,
On the mountain, the country is ruined!
In the mid-1950s, there were rumors that the Communist Party had bulldozed Chiang Kai-shek's former residence and ancestral tomb, and Chiang Kai-shek felt that it was difficult to sleep and eat, but in the spring of 1956, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China handed Chiang Kai-shek a letter through Zhang Shizhao, which mentioned the idea of carrying out the third Kuomintang-Communist cooperation and completing the great cause of the reunification of the motherland, and also attached a poem written by Mao Zedong: "The tomb of Fenghua is still there, and the flowers and grass of Xikou are unharmed." This undoubtedly touched on Chiang Kai-shek's heart. After some deliberation, Chiang Kai-shek chose Cao Juren, who had friendship with Zhou Enlai and others, as a messenger, entrusting him to Go to Beijing to convey his ideas and test the truth, and Cao Juren later said through the media: "As long as the regime is unified, everything else can be sat down and discussed and arranged." ”
In October, when Cao Juren visited Beijing again, Mao Zedong told Cao Juren that if Taiwan returned to the motherland, "everything would be business as usual" and that the Three People's Principles could be implemented. Later, the two sides of the taiwan strait exchanged several times through Cao Juren, but later, due to the outbreak of the "Cultural Revolution", cross-strait contacts were interrupted, and in 1968, the Red Guards blew up Chiang Kai-shek's former residence "Ci'an", which made Chiang Kai-shek extremely angry, and since then cross-strait cooperation has been shattered, until Chiang Kai-shek's death in 1975, the talks have not been realized.
Although the Taiwan independence forces have been rampant in recent years, the pace of the motherland's reunification cannot be stopped, and one day cross-strait reunification will be realized.