Early Life and Career
Zhang Fakui was born in 1896 in Shixing County, Guangdong province. He entered a private learning facility at a young age and went to Guangzhou to became an apprentice before join the local militia. He entered elementary military academy in Guangdong in 1912 and then went to Wuhan's military high school. He served as Dr. Sun Yat-Sen's personal bodyguard and was appointed as a battalion commander of the newly created 4th corps of the National Revolutionary Army. In 1923 he joined the campaign to dislodge Cantonese warlord Chen Jiongming from power, he was promoted to regiment, brigade and division commander. During the Northern Expedition, He led the 4th corps defeated Wu Peifu's warlord armies in Central China. The 4th corps became known as the Iron Army, Zhang was lauded by the public as hero of the iron army. When Chiang Kai-shek unleashed his forces against the communists in the Shanghai Massacre on April 12, 1927, Zhang stayed with Wang Jingwei's Wuhan government. He was awarded to command both 4th and 11th corps. In the same month both KMT governments launched separate campaigns against the northern warlords, Zhang again scored a major victory against Marshal Zhang Zuolin's Fengtian clique in Henan province. He was then promoted as commander-in-chief of the 4th area army and prepared to attack Nanjing. When Wang Jingwei and Chiang Kai Shek reconciled in July 1927 many communist officers under his command mutinied, resulting in the Nanchang Uprising. Zhang's army defeated the communists and chased the mutineers across into Fujian and then returned to his home province. While in Guangdong, he drove out the New Guangxi clique and again supported Wang Jingwei over Chiang Kai Shek. The remaining communists in his army used the confusion to launch the Guangzhou Uprising, while Zhang immediately quelled with three divisions. However he was blamed for the fiasco and resigned his command. Before the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War, he participated in a series of local conflicts into order to stop the growing influence of Chiang Kai-hek's Nationalist Government into his province and was an active member during the Central Plains War against the Nanjing Government. In 1936, he and Chiang reconciled and he was appointed as commander-in-chief of Zhejiang, Jiangxi, Anhui, and Fujian border regions, to eradicate communist activities in those places.
Read more about this topic: Zhang Fakui
Famous quotes containing the words early, life and/or career:
“[In early adolescence] she becomes acutely aware of herself as a being perceived by others, judged by others, though she herself is the harshest judge, quick to list her physical flaws, quick to undervalue and under-rate herself not only in terms of physical appearance but across a wide range of talents, capacities and even social status, whereas boys of the same age will cite their abilities, their talents and their social status pretty accurately.”
—Terri Apter (20th century)
“Man staggers through life yapped at by his reason, pulled and shoved by his appetites, whispered to by fears, beckoned by hopes. Small wonder that what he craves most is self-forgetting.”
—Eric Hoffer (1902–1983)
“The problem, thus, is not whether or not women are to combine marriage and motherhood with work or career but how they are to do so—concomitantly in a two-role continuous pattern or sequentially in a pattern involving job or career discontinuities.”
—Jessie Bernard (20th century)