Li Zongren

Rise of the Guangxi Clique

Li Zongren was born on 13 August 1891 into a farming and schoolteaching family in Xixiang, Lingui County, Guangxi (now part of Guilin). He entered the Guangxi Military Primary School in 1908, joined the Tongmenghui in 1910, and graduated from the Guangxi Military Accelerated School in 1913. He then served under Lu Rongting of the Old Guangxi Clique, rising steadily from platoon commander. In October 1923 he joined the Kuomintang. Between 1924 and 1925, together with Huang Shaohong and Bai Chongxi, he defeated Lu Rongting, Shen Hongying and other Old Guangxi Clique forces, and in July 1925 drove back the Yunnan army of Tang Jiyao that had entered Guangxi, unifying the province. The military-political group led by the three men came to be known as the "New Guangxi Clique".

The Northern Expedition and Opposition to Chiang

In 1926 the Guangxi forces were reorganised as the 7th Army of the National Revolutionary Army, with Li as its commander, and joined the Northern Expedition, fighting through Hunan, Hubei and Jiangxi. In 1928 he became Commander-in-Chief of the 4th Army Group, taking part in the second phase of the Northern Expedition alongside the forces of Chiang Kai-shek, Feng Yuxiang and Yan Xishan. When the Chiang–Guangxi War broke out in March 1929, the Guangxi forces were defeated; Li was stripped of his posts and expelled from the Kuomintang. In 1930 he joined Yan Xishan, Feng Yuxiang and others against Chiang in the Central Plains War, returning to Guangxi after its defeat. In June 1936 he and Chen Jitang of Guangdong launched the Liangguang Incident, confronting the central government in Nanjing under the banner of resisting Japan; the incident ended peacefully that September.

The War Against Japan

After full-scale war with Japan began, on 12 October 1937 the Military Affairs Commission appointed Li Commander of the Fifth War Zone, headquartered in Xuzhou and responsible for the southern section of the Tianjin–Pukou Railway. In March and April 1938, Fifth War Zone forces fought Japanese troops at Taierzhuang in southern Shandong and ultimately recaptured the town, after which the wider Battle of Xuzhou unfolded. The Fifth War Zone later took part in the Battle of Wuhan, the Battle of Suixian–Zaoyang and other campaigns. At the end of 1943 Li left the Fifth War Zone and later became Director of the Hanzhong Headquarters of the Chairman of the Military Affairs Commission; after Japan's surrender he became Director of the Beiping Headquarters.

Vice President and Acting President

In April 1948 the First National Assembly elected a vice president. Li ran against Sun Fo and other candidates and, after four rounds of voting, won on 29 April by 1,438 votes to 1,295; he took office on 20 May. On 21 January 1949 Chiang Kai-shek announced his "retirement", and Li assumed the powers of the presidency as acting president. He sent a peace delegation headed by Zhang Zhizhong to Beiping to negotiate with a Communist delegation led by Zhou Enlai; on 20 April Nanjing refused to sign the final text of the "Agreement on Domestic Peace" presented by the Communists, the People's Liberation Army crossed the Yangtze, and Nanjing fell on 23 April. The Nationalist government moved successively to Guangzhou and Chongqing, and Li found himself increasingly constrained in his power struggle with Chiang. On 20 November 1949 he flew from Nanning to Hong Kong, and in December left for the United States, citing medical treatment. In March 1950 Chiang announced in Taiwan that he was "resuming his duties"; in March 1954 the National Assembly removed Li from the vice presidency.

Exile and Return

Li lived in the United States for more than a decade, during which he worked with the Columbia University historian Tong Te-kong on an oral-history memoir; the English edition, The Memoirs of Li Tsung-jen, was published in 1979 in the Studies of the East Asian Institute of Columbia University series, and the Chinese edition is generally known as Li Zongren Huiyilu. His confidant Cheng Siyuan travelled to Beijing several times to discuss his return with Zhou Enlai and others. On 20 July 1965 Li and his wife Guo Dejie arrived in Beijing, where Zhou Enlai and others met them at the airport; Li issued a statement at the airport saying he wished to contribute to completing the country's unification. Mao Zedong later received him in Zhongnanhai. Guo Dejie died in March 1966. Li Zongren died in Beijing on 30 January 1969, aged 78.