Ли Цзунжэнь: Китайский военачальник и политик

Chinese warlord, politician, and general

Li Zongren (; 13 August 1890 – 30 January 1969; also known as Li Tsung jen), courtesy name Telin (Te lin; ), was a prominent Chinese warlord based in Guangxi and Kuomintang (KMT) military commander during the Northern Expedition, Second Sino Japanese War and Chinese Civil War. He served as vice president and acting president of the Republic of China under the 1947 Constitution.

Li Zongren was born in Xixiang Village (西鄉村), near Guilin in Guangxi, the second eldest in a Han family of five boys and three girls. His father, Li Peiying (李培英), was a village schoolmaster. After a patchy education Li enrolled in a provincial military school. He joined the Tongmenghui, the revolutionary party of Sun Yat sen, in 1910 but had little understanding at that time of Sun's wider goals of reform and national reunification. Li's native province of Guangxi was also the home province of Taiping Gen. Li Xiucheng, to whom Li's family claimed to be related.

Schooled under Cai E, Li graduated from the Guilin Military Cadre Training School and in 1916 became a platoon commander in the army of Guangxi warlord Lu Rongting. Li's direct superior was Lin Hu. Lu, the governor of Guangxi, was a former bandit who had ambitions to expand into neighboring provinces, especially Guangdong. For the next few years the warlords of Guangxi and Guangdong were involved in mutually destructive battles, and both occupied portions of each other's territory at various times. Lu and his closest associates were collectively known as the Old Guangxi Clique. During a battle with a rival warlord in Hunan in 1918, Li's bravery earned him a promotion to battalion commander. In 1921 Li Zongren accompanied Lin Hu and Lu Rongting in Lu's second invasion of Guangdong, attacking forces under the command of Chen Jiongming. When Lu's invasion suffered a disastrous defeat, Li led the rear guard when the Old Guangxi Clique forces retreated. Most of Lin Hu's officers were former bandits and militia recruited earlier by Lin from the Zhuang areas of Guangdong. During the campaign many of Lin's officers defected to the Guangdong forces, taking their units with them. In the face of defeat Li Zongren's battalion shrunk to about 1000 men and "sank into the grasses" in order to escape.

After Lu's defeat, most of his army dissolved into independent bands of soldiers, many of whom resorted to banditry in order to survive. Foreign missionaries and aid workers active in Guangxi at this time reported that banditry in Guangxi was extremely common and severe, with bandits commonly looting all food and valuables from undefended villages and resorting to murder and public cannibalism in order to extort ransoms from the relatives of people they kidnapped.

Li reorganized his forces as the "Guangxi Pacification Army". He was named the Commander in Chief, Huang Shaohong the deputy Commander and Bai Chongxi the Chief of Staff. By August they had driven all other contenders out of the province. Li Zongren was military governor of Guangxi from 1924 to 1925 and from 1925 to 1949 Guangxi remained under his influence. In 1926 Li allowed his soldiers to enroll in Kuomintang armies, but kept personal control of his troops. A Soviet adviser was sent to Guangxi, and Li's forces were renamed the Seventh Army Corps. Against the advice of his Soviet advisors, Li then marched up the north side of the Yangze to attack the forces of warlord Sun Chuanfang. Sun was the leader of the "League of Five Provinces" (Zhejiang, Fujian, Jiangsu, Anhui and Jiangxi), and successfully halted Chiang's advance into his territory in Jiangxi. Li went on to defeat Sun in three successive battles, securing his territories for the KMT. In April 1928 Li, with Bai Chongxi, led the Fourth Army group in an advance on Beijing, capturing Handan, Baoding and Shijiazhuang by June 1. Zhang Zuolin withdrew from Beijing on June 3, and Li's army seized the city and Tianjin. After the fall of Wang Jingwei's government in Wuhan and the expulsion of all Soviet advisors from KMT held territories, Li was put in charge of one of five KMT political councils set up to administer KMT controlled territories, based in Wuhan. In January 1929 he dismissed Nanjing's appointee to the Hunan provincial committee and, fearing retribution, uncharacteristically fled to the foreign concessions in Shanghai. Chiang then arranged for Li and his two closest subordinates to be stripped of their posts within the government and expelled from the Party for life.

After his falling out with Chiang Kai shek, Li Zongren returned to Guangxi and devoted himself to that province's internal administration, with some success. In 1929 he supported Shanxi warlord Yan Xishan in his attempt to form an alternative central government based in Beijing, leading to the Central Plains War. Li led troops to reconquer Hunan as far north as Yueyang, before Chiang's decisive defeat of Yan and his ally, Feng Yuxiang, forced Li to withdraw back to Guangxi. Following Yan's defeat in the Central Plains War, Li allied with Chen Jitang after Chen became the chairman of the government of Guangdong in 1931, and prepared to battle Chiang Kai shek. Another civil war would have broken out if Japan had not invaded Manchuria, prompting Li and Chiang to end their hostilities and unite against the Empire of Japan.

In 1937 full scale war between Japan and China broke out, beginning the Second Sino Japanese War (1937–45). Chiang Kai shek attempted to make use of Li's military experience by promoting him to be the director of the KMT Fifth War Zone. Li's first action against the Japanese came in the 1938 Battle of Taierzhuang, after the Communist Zhou Enlai (who was aiding the Nationalists as part of the United Front) recognized Li as the most capable Nationalist general available and used his influence to have Li appointed overall commander, despite Chiang's reservations about Li's loyalty. Under Li's command the defense of Tai'erzhuang was a major victory for the Chinese, killing 20,000–30,000 Japanese soldiers and capturing a large amount of supplies and equipment. The victory was principally credited to Li's planning and use of tactics, luring the Japanese into a trap and then annihilating them. The battle of Taierzhuang was one of the first major Chinese victories in the war against Japan, proving that with good weapons and inspired leadership Chinese armies could hold their own. Li also participated in the Battle of Xuzhou, Battle of Wuhan, Battle of Suixian Zaoyang, 1939–40 Winter Offensive, Battle of Zaoyang Yichang, Central Hubei Operation, and Battle of South Henan. From 1943 to 1945 Li was made Director of the Generalissimo's Headquarters. This was a virtual and unwanted retirement from active command after his earlier successes. Li spent the last years of the war grumbling about his enforced inactivity.

After Guangdong fell to the Communists, Chiang relocated the government to Chongqing, while Li effectively surrendered his powers and flew to New York City for treatment of his chronic duodenum illness at the Hospital of Columbia University. Li visited the President of the United States, Harry S. Truman, and denounced Chiang as a "dictator" and a "usurper." Li vowed that he would "return to crush" Chiang's movements once he returned to China. The Kuomintang defenses continued to fall apart. General Hu Zongnan ignored Li's orders, and the Muslim General Ma Hongkui was furious at this. Ma Hongkui sent a telegram to Li to submit his resignation from all positions he held. Ma Hongkui then fled to Taiwan, and his cousin Ma Hongbin took charge of his positions. In November 1949, Chongqing fell too, and Chiang relocated his government to Chengdu, before finally moving to Taipei in December 1949. However, he did not formally re assume the presidency until March 1, 1950. In January 1952, Chiang commanded the Control Yuan, now in Taiwan, to impeach Li in the "Case of Li Zongren's Failure to carry out Duties due to Illegal Conduct" (李宗仁違法失職案), and officially relieved Li of the position as vice president in the National Assembly on 10 March 1954.

Li remained in exile until 20 July 1965, when he caused a sensation by returning to Communist held China with the support of Zhou Enlai. His return to China was used as propaganda by the Communist government to encourage other KMT members to return to the mainland, regardless of their politics. Li died of duodenal cancer in Beijing in 1969 at 78, during the Cultural Revolution. A set of Samurai swords and daggers from the Edo period given to Li Zongren as a "gift of truce between enemies who are now friends" by either Seishirō Itagaki or Rensuke Isogai were passed on to Alan Lee as part of the family legacy. Li co wrote Memoirs of Li Zongren with historian Tong Tekong. Li's memoir is notable for its vehement criticism of Chiang Kai shek and its analysis of Japan's strategic failure to conquer China. A more detailed account of Li's life is depicted in the less popular biography My Trusted Aide (Wode Gugong), written by Li's distant relative Namgo Chai.