Word: chiangs
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Desperation," said the new governor of Formosa last week, "is the mother of reform . . . We've got to try new men and new ideas." Shrewd, capable K. C. Wu, onetime mayor of Shanghai and longtime friend of Generalissimo Chiang Kaishek, was talking about plans for the administration and defense of his new domain, the rich, 250-mile-long island of Formosa, which had become the last refuge of China's Nationalist government...
...plot against the Generalissimo failed, and two days after Premier Yen's departure, Chiang himself abandoned the land on which he had fought for half a lifetime, headed for the new capital 90 miles off the China coast...
...stubborn, aging (63) leader, the flight across the sampan-flecked Strait of Formosa was a time for bitter remembrance. For China, and the world, it was the end of an era. A quarter of a century ago, with Sun Yat-sen's mantle on his shoulders, young Chiang had marched up the mainland to Nanking and into a new Nationalist China. He had embraced Christianity. According to his lights, he had sought to guide his nation into the mainstream of modern civilization. He had broken the warlords, checked an early international Communist conspiracy, survived Japanese aggression-only...
...Greatest Threat. Chiang would try to fight on from Formosa, though the U.S. and British governments had written off the strategic island. Actually, Formosa (the size of Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island combined, pop. 7,200,000) could be a strong redoubt; it is one of Asia's most prosperous areas, carefully developed by the Japanese in half a century of colonial rule. Its paddy fields can grow three rice crops a year. It has large sugar and tea plantations, banana groves,, camphor forests. Its Jap-built industry includes sugar mills, waterworks, hydroelectric stations, an aluminum plant...
...Formosa, the Nationalists at last held a good defensive position. Chiang had an estimated 300,000 troops on the island, small air and naval forces to garrison and guard it, and the Communists lacked an air force and navy to help them hurdle the moat that surrounds the island. But Chiang could not count on the loyalty of Formosa's people, disgusted by Nationalist carpetbaggers who rushed to Formosa after the war's end. Probably the greatest threat facing the Nationalists on Formosa was Red fifth-column tactics within the island stronghold...