Chiang Kai-shek was born on the 31st of October 1887 in Xikou, a small town at the foot of the Wuling Mountains in Fenghua, Zhejiang province. He grew up under the strict guidance of his mother after his father died when he was eight years old.
On the 12th of April 1927, Chiang Kai-shek purged thousands of suspected Communists in Shanghai, killing more than five thousand people that month alone. This event drove most Communists into rural areas and marked the start of the Chinese Civil War with over three hundred thousand deaths occurring across China in the following year.
Chiang Kai-shek sent over three hundred thousand soldiers to defend Shanghai and moved his government inland from Nanjing to Wuhan and finally to Chongqing. He authorized scorched-earth tactics including destroying dams around Zhengzhou in 1938 which left four million Chinese homeless and caused hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths.
Chiang Kai-shek resigned as president on the 21st of January 1949 after Nationalist forces suffered terrible losses and fled to Taiwan via Fenghuangshan Airport on an aircraft named May-ling on the 10th of December 1949. He reassumed the presidency in Taipei on the 1st of March 1950 and never returned to mainland China again.
Chiang Kai-shek was re-elected five times by the Eternal Parliament with six-year terms while martial law lasted until 1987 and the White Terror repression campaign ended in 1992. The ROC seat at the United Nations transferred to the People's Republic of China in 1971 before Chiang died on the 5th of April 1975 and was succeeded by his son Chiang Ching-kuo.