Bai Chongxi

Early Life and the New Guangxi Clique

Bai Chongxi, courtesy name Jiansheng, was born in 1893 in Guilin, Guangxi, into a Hui Muslim family; his Muslim name was Omar. As a youth he entered the Guangxi Military Primary School, and when the 1911 Revolution broke out he joined a student "dare-to-die" corps that went north to take part. He graduated from the Baoding Military Academy in 1916 and returned to serve in the Guangxi army. In the early 1920s he allied with Li Zongren and Huang Shaohong in support of Sun Yat-sen's Kuomintang, and between 1924 and 1925 they defeated Lu Rongting and other Old Guangxi Clique forces and unified the province. The group came to be known as the "New Guangxi Clique", with Bai and Li at its core.

The Northern Expedition and Conflict with Chiang

When the Northern Expedition began in 1926, Bai became acting chief of staff of the National Revolutionary Army's general headquarters and then front-line commander of the Eastern Route Army. In 1927 he took Hangzhou and Shanghai, became Shanghai–Woosung garrison commander, and took part in the KMT's "party purge" in Shanghai that April. In 1928 he led troops north to Beiping and Tianjin. His use of speed, manoeuvre and surprise earned him the nickname "Little Zhuge". After the expedition, tensions between the Guangxi Clique and Chiang Kai-shek boiled over: the Guangxi forces were defeated in the Chiang–Guangxi War of 1929, and Bai and Li withdrew to Guangxi; in 1930 he and Li joined the anti-Chiang coalition in the Central Plains War. From 1930 to 1936 the two concentrated on Guangxi's economic and administrative development; in 1936 they joined Chen Jitang of Guangdong in the Liangguang Incident, reconciling with the central government that September.

The War Against Japan

After full-scale war broke out, Bai went to Nanjing at Chiang Kai-shek's invitation in August 1937 and became Deputy Chief of the General Staff of the Military Affairs Commission, responsible for operations and training; from 1938 he was also Minister of Military Training. In spring 1938 he helped Li Zongren, commander of the Fifth War Zone, direct the Battle of Taierzhuang; at the end of that year he became director of the Guilin Field Headquarters, coordinating several southern war zones, and in 1939–1940 directed the Battle of South Guangxi and the Battle of Kunlun Pass. In October 1940 he and Chief of the General Staff He Yingqin jointly issued the "Hao telegram", ordering the Eighth Route and New Fourth Armies south of the Yellow River to move north of it within a month; friction between the Nationalists and Communists intensified, culminating in the South Anhui Incident of January 1941.

Minister of Defense and the February 28 Incident

In June 1946, when the Military Affairs Commission was reorganised as the Ministry of National Defense, Bai became its first minister. After the February 28 Incident of 1947 he was sent to Taiwan as defense minister on a "pacification" mission, arriving in Taipei on 17 March and staying about two weeks. According to the archives and interviews compiled by Pai Hsien-yung and Liao Yen-po in their 2014 book on Bai and the 228 Incident, Zhitong liaoshang ("Easing the Pain, Healing the Wounds"), he ordered on arrival that there be "no indiscriminate killing, and open trials", and some people already condemned to death were saved; George Kerr of the US consulate in Taipei, by contrast, reported at the time that Bai's investigation in effect endorsed the handling of the incident by Chen Yi (Ch'en I). After Li Zongren was elected vice president in 1948, Bai left the defense ministry and in June became commander-in-chief of the Central China Bandit Suppression Headquarters in Hankou.

Peace Overtures, Defeat and Final Years

In December 1948 Bai cabled Chiang from Hankou arguing that public morale and the troops' fighting spirit could no longer sustain the war, and urged peace talks with the Communists. In January 1949 Chiang announced his retirement and Li Zongren became acting president, while Bai was tasked with organising the Yangtze defense line; after the Communist armies crossed the river he fought on in Central and Southwest China, his plan for a last stand in Guangxi in October came to nothing, and at the end of the year he went to Taiwan. There he served as vice chairman of the Presidential Office's Strategic Advisory Committee and chairman of the Chinese Muslim Association, but his relationship with Chiang was never repaired. According to his son, the writer Pai Hsien-yung, he spent his last years in Taiwan under constant watch by the security services. Bai died of a coronary thrombosis in Taipei on 2 December 1966, aged 73, and was buried with full military honours at the Muslim cemetery in Liuzhangli, Taipei, on 9 December.