Background
General Chang spent his early years in Manchuria. He was born in Shandong province in 1881.
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Chung-chang Chang
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During the Russo-Japanese War, the Czarists offered him a commission in their army and he was given the rank of Captain and won a considerable reputation for his bravery and energy. When the first revolution broke out in China in 1911, he at once identified himself with the Republican cause. With the assistance of Lieut- Col. T. C. Soo, later his foreign advisor, but at that time compradore of Bryner, Konsentzoff and Co. of Siberia, he organized the first force of Manchurian troops to be despatched to Shanghai to attack the government arsenal. Six hundred men and 100 horses were shipped to the lower Yangtsze. They were consigned to General Li Tsung-wu, who was then in charge of the revolutionary forces at Shanghai and he led the attack against the Arsenal which was held by the loyalists.
General Chang later came to Shanghai himself and served under Li as a commander of a cavalry brigade. After the establishment of the Republic, General Chang and his forces were transferred to Nanjing, serving under General Lung Yu-chiu in command of the Third Division. After the second revolution, he was stationed in Hsuchowfu to undertake the work of bandit suppression in this district, which was over run with brigands and stragglers. When Lung retired, he was given command of the third division upon the recommendation of brother officers.
In 1917 when Feng Kuo-chang went to Peking to become President, Chang was appointed his adjutant. He and General Ho Chung-lien were commissioned to Harbin, where they dissolved the Russian White Army which had become a menace to the residents. Upon his return, he was made superintendent of Military Education in the Ministry of War. In the following year, General Chang was sent to Hubei at the head of the sixth mixed brigade on an expedition to Canton to stop the march of General Tan Yen-kai, who had occupied Hunan. His victory at Chuchow and Liling was complete. From then on, he remained in Jiangsi as a division commander. In 1922 he left Jiangsi for Manchuria.
After defeating General Kao Shih-ping, who was then plotting against Marshal Chang Tso-lin at the instance of the Zhili Party, Chang succeeded him as Occupation Commissioner of Suiling, Kirin. Due to his intimate knowledge of the Russians all the “white” officers and men serving under the Mukden Marshal were placed under General Chang’s command. Being in command of the first army he was the first to enter Tianjin and Peking after the defeat of Wu Pei-fu in 1924 as a result of General Feng Yu-hsiang’s historical coup d’etat. He was assigned duties under Marshal Lu Yung-hsiang when the latter was appointed Pacification Commissioner for Jiangsu and Anhui in December 1923. At the head of Marshal Lu’s army, he came to Shanghai in less then a month along the Tianjin-Pukow and Shanghai-Nanking Railways with little bloodshed. General Chang is popular with his officer and men, and leads them personally at the front. He was reputed to be lacking in political ambition. In January 1925, he was made Field Marshal and has established his headquarters at the towns of Hsuchowfu and Changchow in Jiangsu Province.
