ar, the tide was turning in favor of the Communists in the Chinese civil war. Chiang gave increasing attention to creating in Taiwan, as he had years before done in Sizhuan during the Second World War, a last resort stronghold from which he could carry on his fight against Mao Zedong. As a preparatory move, Chiang replaced Wei Tao-ming with General Chen Cheng as governor of Taiwan on January 5, 1949. The Chen administration lost no time in reasserting martial law. There followed a wave of arrests and executions of persons charged with being Communist sympathizers. The reign of white terror began.
For more than a month, passengers leaving the Taipei railroad station would see a huge government bulletin pasted on a wall announcing the execution of a score or more Communist traitors every morning. They all faced a firing squad at Machngding (Baba-cho in Japanese), where there used to be a "baba" or race course which was then turned into an army training ground. More than a few were falsely accused. Most of them were mainlanders, but quite a few independence activist islanders were executed as Communist sympathizers.
Some Taiwanese leaders had to flee. Lin Hsien-tang, the leader of Taiwan's autonomy movement in the 1920s and 1930s, fled for Tokyo on September 23, never to return. He died there in 1956. His Taiwan Bunka Kyokai, or Taiwan Cultural Association, founded in 1921, formed an island-wide united front against Japanese colonial rule during what is known as the "Liberal 'Twenties" in Japanese history.
Chiang announced his retirement from the presidency on January 21, 1949. His vice president, Li Tsung-jen, took over the reins of government to negotiate a truce with the Communists. The negotiations, in which Gen. George Marshall as a special U.S. envoy tried to mediate, broke down and the Communists crossed the Yangtze River to continue sweeping South China. Nanjing fell on April 23. Marshall, later made secretary of state, initiated the Marshall Plan for reconstruction of war-ruined Europe.
Shanghai was lost on May 27. On October 1, Mao Zedong proclaimed the People's Republic of China in Beijing. Canton or Guangzhou fell on October 13. The Kuomintang government moved to Taipei on December 7.
While in retirement, Chiang watched the developments with serious concern. Though he stepped down as president, he remained director-general of the Kuomintang, the ruling party. On April 25, he left his home town of Chikow for Shanghai and proceeded to the Chusan Islands. He continued to visit Matsu, Quemoy (Kinmen) and the Penghu Islands before arriving in Taipei on May 6.
In Taipei as head of the Kuomintang, Chiang made his plans of defense against the Communists.
He followed Koxinga's plan, almost to the letter. He kept the Chusans and Quemoy, just as Koxinga did after his defeat at Nanjing in the war of resistance against the invading Manchu horde in 1661. Chiang took time out to meet Elpidio Quirino, president of the Philippines, and Syngman Rhee, president of South Korea, to talk about a grand anti-Communist alliance in Asia.
On July 12, Chiang paid a fleeting visit to Guangzhou, where the government had been relocated. When Guangzhou fell, the government was moved to Zhongqing, where Chiang visited on November 14. The acting president, Li Tsung-jen, did not go to Zhongqing and instead left for the United States, where he lived until his death in 1976. Zhongqing fell on November 30. Chiang, however, stayed on until December 10. He took off for Taipei from Zhengtu on the Republic of China's National Day, never to return to China. He vowed never to leave Taiwan before he could recover the mainland of China. He kept his word. He died in Taipei on April 5, 1975.
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