Chen Cheng

Early Life and the Northern Expedition

Chen Cheng, courtesy name Cixiu, was born in 1898 in Qingtian, Zhejiang. He graduated from the Zhejiang Provincial Normal School and a physical education college in Hangzhou, joined the Kuomintang in 1920, and graduated from the Baoding Military Academy in 1922. From 1924 he served at the Whampoa Military Academy; during the Northern Expedition he rose from artillery company commander to regimental commander, becoming commander of the National Revolutionary Army's 21st Division in 1927, and thereafter one of the leading commanders of Chiang Kai-shek's own forces.

Campaigns Against the Communists and the War Against Japan

In the early 1930s Chen led troops in the campaigns against the Central Red Army in Jiangxi, becoming commander of the 3rd Route of the Northern Route Army in 1933, and later served as director of education at the Emei and Lushan officer training corps. In the Battle of Shanghai in 1937 he was front-line commander-in-chief of the Third War Zone. He went on to serve as Wuhan garrison commander, chairman of the Hubei provincial government, and commander of the Ninth and Sixth War Zones, was for a time commander of the Chinese Expeditionary Force, and became Minister of Military Administration in 1944. Governing Hubei from 1940, he introduced a "25 percent rent reduction": a quarter of the tenant's harvest was first set aside for the tenant and the rest split equally with the landlord, in effect capping rents at 37.5 percent of the harvest; the scheme ran for about three years until the Japanese occupation of Hubei halted it.

Chief of the General Staff and the Northeast

When the Ministry of National Defense was created in 1946, Chen became its first Chief of the General Staff, also serving as commander-in-chief of the navy. In 1947 he took on the post of director of the Northeast Headquarters, in charge of the war in Manchuria; in 1948 Wei Lihuang replaced him there.

Governing Taiwan

In December 1948 Chiang Kai-shek appointed Chen chairman of the Taiwan provincial government. Taking office on 5 January 1949, he held party, government and military authority on the island, also serving as commander of the Taiwan Garrison Command. Soon after taking office he announced the "37.5 percent rent reduction", capping rents at 37.5 percent of the annual harvest. Opening the provincial administrative conference in March 1949, he said the reduction would "avoid the cruel struggle of communism and harmonise relations between landlords and peasants". According to the researcher Chou Mao-chun, many provincial assemblymen were themselves landlords; Chen hosted them at a banquet to seek their support while warning that covert opponents would "have to be dealt with according to law", and when some landlords quietly took back leased land after the reduction began, the provincial land bureau sent inspectors and referred obstructers to the courts. On 19 May that year, as provincial chairman and commander of the Taiwan Garrison Command, he signed and issued the decree placing the island under martial law from 00:00 on the 20th, and on 15 June a currency reform introduced the New Taiwan dollar.

After Chiang "resumed his duties" as president in March 1950, Chen succeeded Yan Xishan as premier. During his tenure Taiwan carried out the "sale of public land", transferring more than 180,000 jia of public farmland to the tenants who worked it; in January 1953 the Legislative Yuan passed the Land-to-the-Tiller Act, bringing land reform into full effect.

Vice President and Final Years

Chen was elected Vice President in 1954, became deputy director-general of the Kuomintang in 1957, served again as premier from 1958 to 1963, and was re-elected Vice President in 1960; in these years he also headed preparations for the Shihmen Reservoir. He resigned as premier in 1963 and died of illness in Taipei in 1965. The land-reform historian Chou Mao-chun judges that among Chen's contributions to Taiwan, "the achievement of Taiwan's land reform was the greatest".