Zhang Xueliang

The Young Marshal

Zhang Xueliang was born on 3 June 1901 in Taian County, Liaoning (some sources give Haicheng County), the eldest son of Zhang Zuolin — the dominant warlord of Manchuria and northern China. In 1916, in an arranged marriage, he wed Yu Fengzhi. He entered the artillery programme of the Three Northeastern Provinces Military Academy in 1919, graduated with distinction in 1920, and joined the Fengtian Army, rising rapidly through both paternal favour and his own ability; by 1921 he headed the Fengtian Army's training bureau, and he went on to hold brigade- and corps-commander posts, overseeing the modernisation of the army's artillery and fledgling air units. He became one of the most capable young officers in the Fengtian military and was known from his youth as the 'Young Marshal' (少帅) in contrast to his father's 'Old Marshal.' Around 1927, Zhao Yidi ('Miss Zhao the Fourth,' 赵四小姐) left her family to join Zhang and remained his companion, nominally as a secretary, from then on; Yu Fengzhi formally divorced him in the United States in 1964, and Zhang married Zhao Yidi that same year in Hawaii. He developed a reputation as a dashing, Westernised officer — spoke some English, maintained friendships with foreign diplomats, and was widely popular among northeastern elites. When Zhang Zuolin was assassinated by Kwantung Army officers in June 1928, Zhang Xueliang inherited command of the Northeastern Army, becoming Commander-in-Chief of the Northeastern Frontier Defence Force, and faced an immediate decision of historic consequence: accommodation or resistance toward Japan.

Non-Resistance and the Loss of Manchuria

In late 1928, Zhang Xueliang committed the Northeast to the Nanjing government by replacing the Beiyang flag with the KMT banner (东北易帜), completing China's nominal reunification and aligning himself with Chiang Kai-shek. On the night of 18 September 1931, when the Mukden Incident was staged, Zhang was in Beiping receiving medical treatment — by this time he had developed a severe dependency on opium and morphine, and he subsequently underwent detoxification under the supervision of an American physician. Following instructions from Nanjing not to resist, his Northeastern Army retreated without fighting and Manchuria was lost within months. Zhang became the focus of enormous popular anger — the 'Non-Resistance General' (不抵抗将军) — held personally responsible for the loss of China's richest territory. After the fall of Rehe in March 1933, he resigned all his posts and travelled to Europe for roughly a year, touring the political and military systems of Italy and Germany while continuing his treatment, before returning to China in early 1934. Historians continue to debate how much of the non-resistance decision reflected Chiang Kai-shek's direct order versus Zhang's own judgment under impossible circumstances.

The Xi'an Incident

After 1932, Zhang Xueliang and his Northeastern Army were redeployed to suppress the Chinese Communists in Shaanxi — a mission his demoralized troops deeply resented. They wanted to recover their homeland, not fight fellow Chinese. Zhang came to believe that unity against Japan was the only path to recovering Manchuria. Making secret contact with Zhou Enlai and the CCP, and coordinating with Shaanxi warlord Yang Hucheng, Zhang on 12 December 1936 had Chiang Kai-shek detained at the Huaqing Hot Springs near Xi'an. He demanded that Chiang end the civil war and lead a national resistance. After tense negotiations — with the CCP advising restraint and the Soviet Union urging stability — Chiang was released. Zhang voluntarily accompanied Chiang back to Nanjing, expecting clemency; instead he was arrested, court-martialed, and placed under house arrest.

Decades of House Arrest and Final Years

After the Xi'an Incident, Zhang voluntarily accompanied Chiang Kai-shek back to Nanjing; in January 1937 a military tribunal sentenced him to ten years' imprisonment, immediately commuted to 'strict supervision,' beginning a period of house arrest that would last more than half a century. During the war with Japan and the ensuing civil war, he was moved among a succession of locations — Fenghua (Zhejiang), Huangshan (Anhui), Pingxiang (Jiangxi), Yuanling (Hunan), and Xiuwen and Tongzi (Guizhou) — before being transferred to Taiwan in November 1946, where he was subsequently held at Jingshang Hot Springs (Hsinchu), Xizi Bay (Kaohsiung), and Yangmingshan (Taipei), among other sites. He spent the years reading, practising calligraphy, and studying Ming dynasty history, and it was during this period that he converted to Christianity, being baptised in 1964. Chiang Kai-shek never released him; Chiang Ching-kuo maintained the detention until his own death in 1988. Only then did Zhang's conditions gradually ease, and in 1990, at the age of 89, he was given effective freedom. During the 1990s he gave extensive interviews to Columbia University's Chinese Oral History Project, leaving behind a substantial body of first-hand oral-historical material, portions of which were released only after his death under the terms of the agreement. In 1995, he and Zhao Yidi settled permanently in Honolulu, Hawaii. Zhao died in June 2000, and Zhang died in Honolulu on 14 October 2001 at the age of 100; he was buried alongside her at the Valley of the Temples Memorial Park in Hawaii. His historical legacy is genuinely ambiguous: the man who lost Manchuria through non-resistance, yet who arguably made sustained Chinese resistance to Japan possible by forcing the second united front at Xi'an.