Background
Zhang Xueliang popularly known as the Young Marshal was born in Taishan Liaoning on June 4, 1901 but Haicheng also in Liaoning has been regarded as his native place.
Zhang Xueliang popularly known as the Young Marshal was born in Taishan Liaoning on June 4, 1901 but Haicheng also in Liaoning has been regarded as his native place.
Zhang was educated by private tutors and, unlike his father, felt at ease in the company of westerners. He graduated from Fengtian Military Academy, was made a colonel in the Fengtian Army and appointed commander of his father's bodyguards in 1919. In 1921 he was sent to Japan to observe military maneuvers, where he developed a special interest in aircraft. Later he developed an air corps for the Fengtian Army, which was widely used in the battles that took place within the Great Wall during the 1920s. In 1922 he was promoted to Major General and commanded an army-sized force two years later he was also made commander of the air units. Upon the death of his father in 1928, he succeeded him as the leader of the Northeast Peace Preservation Forces, which controlled China's northeastern provinces of Heilongjiang, Fengtian, and Jilin (Kirin). In December of the same year he proclaimed his allegiance to the Kuomintang (KMT).
With most of the Northeastern Army under his command, Zhang began to be called the Young Marshal, as his father was called the Old Marshal. Raised in the era of the great patriotism movement of May Fourth and dealing with the constant threat of the two great imperialists, Japan and Russia, the Young Marshal was extraordinarily patriotic. With much reluctance, he had to fight against the national Revolutionary Army during the Northern Expedition launched by Jiang Jieshi in July 1926. In the Yellow River battle around Zhengzhou in spring 1927, Zhang, with a superior force under his command, withdrew to the north bank of the river instead of fighting. Then he recommanded to his father not to stay in North China to fight the revolutionary army as the Japanese wanted him to do, for to do so would only have benefited the Japanese.
When his father was assassinated by the Japanese on June 4, 1928, the Young Marshal seemed to be well prepared to succeed him. But his succession to his father was not without challenge. At one stroke, he eliminated his enemies, Yang Yuting and Chang Yinhuai, thereby making himself the undisputable leader in the northeast. Rejecting both inducement and pressure from Japan, he gave up his semiindependent status for the unification of China by joining the Nanjing government. On the other hand, he devoted himself to reconstructing the northeast: building railways, developing industries, and establishing private and public schools, especially expanding and improving the Northeastern University. He also drastically built up his air force and navy. All this Japan had viewed with alarm that apparently has tened its aggression against the northeast by launching the September 18 incident in 1931, which developed into the seizure of the whole Manchuria.
Once the Young Marshal joined hands with Jiang Jieshi in 1929, he was increasingly involved in national affairs. In 1930, when Feng Yuxiang, joined by Yan Xishan and Wang Jingwei, fought against Jiang Jieshi in a great civil war, it was the arbitration of the Young Marshal that saved Jiang from defeat. The next year, to answer Jiang's call for the suppression of Shi Youshan’s revolt, he dispatched his crack troops to North China with his headquarters set up at Beijing.
The Japanese saw this as the golden opportunity to fulfill their long-coveted ambition to seize Manchuria. In pursuance to Jiang's repeated orders that by all means Zhang must restrain his troops not to provoke the Japanese who sought pretext for furthering their aggression, Zhang did not put up fighting, when the Japanese Kwantung Army seized Manchuria, for the loss of which Zhang earned the ignominious title of Knonresistant general. Despite the fact that it was Jiang's order and policy that led to Zhang's nonresistance, as a leader of Manchuria and commander-in-chief of a huge army to defend the national border territories, he cannot be exonerated for the wrong decision and the loss of the northeast, a fact which he later ruefully admitted.
Following the loss of Rehe province to the Japanese in March 1934, under the pressure of public opinion and Jiang’s urge Zhang resigned. Having cured his narcotic habit, together with his Australian adviser William Donald he went on a European tour. In Europe, he was much impressed by the revival of Germany and Italy under Fascism. Upon learning of the Fujian revolt in December 1933, he sailed for Shanghai, where he arrived in early January 1934. Refreshed by his European tour, the Young Marshal regained his health and was filled with new ideas, particularly Fascism. Once again he became Jiang’s most favored and valuable partner as his Northeastern army still 300,000 men strong, could be used to suppress the Communists, the archenemy of Jiang whiie his Fascist ideology would bolster Jiang’s aspiration to dictatorship. Most concerned for recovering his lost homeland the Young Marshal reluctantly assumed responsibility for suppressing the Red Army and found Jiang's persistent policy of "internal pacification before resistance against external aggression” contradictory to the best interest of the nation, whose enemy was none other than the Japanese. More and more, he was leaning toward the student and the national salvation movements. Further his think tank comprised half a dozen highly educated men, notably Du Zhongyuan and Gao Chongmin, who were all opposed to continuing the civil war, but rather inclined to form a United Front with the Chinese Communists and others to fight Japan. When the Young Marshal with his major force transferred to the northwest with Xi’an as his headquarters and after suffering some heavy losses in fighting the Red Army, he decided to ally with the Communists rather than to continue Jiang’s “suppression and encirclement” campaign against the Red Army. In this new approach to the national problem, he was joined by General Yang Hucheng and his North-western Army in early 1936.
Failing to persuade Jiang to change his policy by suspending the civil war and uniting the nation to fight Japan Zhang-Yang staged the “remonstration with military forceM(Bing-jian) to put Jiang under house arrest in Xi'an on December 12, 1936. Two weeks later, having given verbal promise to the Zhang-Yang demands Jiang was set free and returned to Nanjing accompanied by the Young Marshal, who turned out to be a captive of Jiang’s for over 50 years, the longest confinement in history. Ignoring law and human morality Jiang Jieshi and his son Jingguo obdurately kept “the tiger instead of allowing it to return to the mountain.M Zhang and his faithful wife Zhao Yidi had long been converted to Christianity and were diligent in God’s work. It was the next president Li Denghui another professed Christian, who set the Young Marshal free on the ninetieth anniversary of his birth. Insouciant to mundane affairs and politics, Zhang lived in the paradise of Hawaii from 1995 until his death on October 14, 2001.