Biographie
Chinese warlord and later military official in the Republic of China government Xueliang Zhang was born in the Chinese province of Manchuria in 1901. His father, Zhang Zuolin, was a warlord with his own army. In 1913, with the help of the Japanese government, he took over Manchuria and, though it was nominally a Chinese province, ruled it as an independent state from 1913-28, when he was assassinated by a Japanese officer in a unit stationed in Manchuria.
Young Zhang enlisted in the Chinese army and fought in the first Sino-Japanese War from 1894-95. After the war he organized his own "self-defense unit"--i.e., militia--which was so effective it was soon absorbed into the regular Chinese army, and Zhang was made a divisional commander. In 1916 he was appointed military governor of Manchuria, and turned the area from a backwards province to an autonomous region within the Chinese state. In 1920 he decided to expand his influence further into China, and four years later had managed to take over Peking, appointing himself military dictator. However, the next year the Nationalist Chinese forces under Gen. Kai-Shek Chiang embarked on an offensive known as The Northern Expedition, whose purpose was to either bring under control or wipe out the country's numerous--and feuding--independent warlords. Knowing that his forces were far weaker than the much larger, better trained and better equipped Nationalist armies, Zhang's father ordered him to abandon Peking to the Nationalists. This angered the Japanese, who saw the Nationalists as a threat to them also, and on June 4, 1928, Zhang's father was in a railroad car headed north when a bomb planted by a Japanese officer on a viaduct exploded just as the car was passing underneath it. Zhang's father was killed.
Zhang took over from his father as ruler of Manchuria. Later that year he made peace with the Nationalists and placed himself and his forces under their control. The Japanese had been under the impression that Zhang would be a much weaker ruler than his father and thereby easier to control. They found out differently, however. His father's assassination had convinced him that the Japanese were a far greater threat to China then the Communists--whom Chiang was beginning to wage an extermination campaign against--would be. Zhang purged the Manchurian government of Japanese influence--by firing, transferring and even executing pro-Japanese officials-- and attempted to convince Chiang that the Nationalists should form a united front with the Communists against the Japanese and fight them together, but Chiang adamantly refused. When he came to Zhang's headquarters on December 12, 1936, to take charge of the offensive against the Communists, Zhang and another of his generals kidnapped him, hid him in a prison and told him he would not be released until he agreed to form a united front against the Japanese. After much negotiation, Chiang agreed to do so and Zhang agreed to become Chiang's prisoner and give up his role in Manchurian politics.
After releasing Chiang, Zhang accompanied him to Nanking, where Chiang immediately had him arrested. He was tried for treason and sentenced to ten years in prison, but Chiang intervened and had the sentence reduced to house arrest. In 1949, when Nationalist forces were driven from China by the Communists and set up a government on Taiwan, Zhang was taken along, still under house arrest. When Chiang died in 1990, Zhang was officially released from house arrest--under which he had spent more than 50 years.
In 1993 Zhang emigrated to Honolulu, Hawaii. The Communist Chinese government--which had long considered him a hero--pleaded with him to visit China, but he refused, saying he was out of politics for good and was taking no sides. He died of pneumonia at his home in Honolulu on Oct. 14, 2001, at the age of 100.
