KAI-SHEK CHIANG: (1887-1975) Chinese President 1948-49, 1950-75.

Signed postcard photograph, the official portrait depicting Chiang in a head and shoulders pose. Photograph by Hu Chung Hsien. Signed, in Chinese characters, with his name alone in black fountain pen ink to a clear area of the image. One very slight, extremely minor corner crease, VG

Chiang Kai-Shek served as leader of the Republic of China from 1928-75 and was a close ally of Sun Yat-sen, taking his place as leader of the Kuomintang (KMT) following the Canton Coup of 1926. A socially conservative leader, promoting traditional Chinese culture in the New Life Movement and rejecting western democracy as well as Sun's nationalist democratic socialism in favour of an authoritarian government, Chiang Kai-Shek was however unable to maintain cordial relations with the Communists and purged them in a massacre at Shanghai. At the onset of the Second Sino-Japanese War (later becoming the Chinese theatre of World War II) Chiang was kidnapped and obliged to establish a Second Unit Front with the Communists. In 1946, after the defeat of the Japanese, an attempt to form a coalition government failed and the Chinese Civil War resumed with the CCP defeating the Nationalists and declaring the People's Republic of China in 1949. Chiang's government and army retreated to Taiwan, where Chiang imposed martial law in a period of his rule known as the 'White Terror'. Chiang's government continued to declare its intention to retake mainland China and Chiang ruled Taiwan securely as President of the Republic of China until his death in 1975.