Zhang Xueliang - Xi'an Incident, House Arrest, and Later Life

Xi'an Incident, House Arrest, and Later Life

On 6 April 1936, Zhang Xueliang met with Zhou Enlai to plan the end of the Chinese Civil War. In the Xi'an incident (12 December 1936), Zhang and another general Yang Hucheng kidnapped Chiang Kai-shek and imprisoned the head of the Kuomintang government until he agreed to form a united front with the Communists against the Japanese invasion.

Chiang at the time took a non-aggressive position against Japan and considered the Communists to be a greater danger to the government of Republic of China than the Japanese, and his overall strategy was to annihilate the Communists before focusing his efforts on the Japanese. He believed that "communism was a cancer while the Japanese represented a superficial wound." However, growing nationalist anger against Japan made this position very unpopular, leading to Zhang's action against Chiang.

After the negotiations, Chiang agreed to unite with the Communists and drive the Japanese out of China. When Chiang was released, Zhang chose to return to the capital with him. However, once they were away from Zhang's loyal troops, Chiang had him put under house arrest. From there he was always watched and lived near Nationalist capitol wherever it moved to. In 1949 Zhang was transferred to Taiwan where he remained under a loose house arrest for the next 40 years in a villa in Taipei's northern suburbs. He spent his time studying Ming dynasty literature, Manchu language, and the Bible, receiving occasional guests and collected Chinese fan paintings, calligraphy and other works of art by illustrious artists. A collection of more than 200 works, using his studio's name "Dingyuanzhai," was auctioned with tremendous success by Sotheby's on 10 April 1994. He and his wife, Edith Chao, became devout Baptists and also regularly attended Sunday services at the Methodist chapel in Shilin, a Taipei suburb with Chiang Kai-Shek's family. After Chiang Kai Shek's death in 1975, his freedom was restored officially.

He emigrated to Honolulu, Hawaii, in 1993. There were numerous pleas for him to visit mainland China, but Zhang, claiming his political closeness with the KMT, declined. He died of pneumonia at the age of 100 (following the Chinese way of counting, his age is often given as 101) and was buried in Hawaii. His papers, an extensive oral history and correspondence covering his life from 1937 to 1999, and some paintings by friends, such as Zhang Daqian, Chiang Ching-kuo and Mme. Chiang Kai-shek, can be found at Peter H. L. Chang (Zhang Xueliang) Oral History Materials in Columbia University's Rare Book and Manuscript Library.