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A Sports Dispute Started the Cuban Missile Crisis and Other Odd Facts

Khalid Elhassan October 28, 2019 31 min

Wang Jingwei and Chiang Kai-shek in 1926. Wikimedia

6. A Traitor’s Background

Jingwei had been among the bright Chinese students sent by the dying Qing dynasty to study abroad, and he attended a university in Japan. There, he joined radical nationalist Chinese student circles, self-identified as an anarchist, and became a disciple of Sun Yat-sen. Returning to China, he spoke eloquently of Chinese nationalism, and was jailed for plotting to assassinate the Qing regent.

He was freed in the Chinese Revolution of 1911 which did away with the Qing dynasty, and became a national hero. That Revolution and the overthrow of the imperial system led to a chaotic period of warlord rule. A nationalist party, the Kuomintang, was formed to restore order, and in 1925 sent “the Great Northern Expedition” to tame the warlords and restore central authority. Jingwei became chairman of the national government, but Chiang Kai-shek, who led the campaign against the warlords, formed a rival government in southern China.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.