Chiang Kai-shek Explained This One Defeat Three Times in His Diary: How Large a Shadow It Must Have Cast

Author: Clio Walker
Historical span: December 1918 to July 1919; the central documents were written on January 26, June 21, and July 9, 1919.

December 22, 1918: "Looking back, the causes of this defeat are many..." Chiang Kai-shek picked up his pen to explain a lost battle. From then on, this pattern of the defeated commander explaining himself would run, remarkably, through the rest of his life.

The battle was already lost. Explaining it had only just begun.

Over the next half year he wrote it out three more times. Each time, the point of the blame came a little closer to himself.

I. The First Version: The Ceasefire Order Arrived, and Then the Enemy Came Back

On January 26, 1919, in Zhangzhou, he finished "A Full Account of the Second Detachment of the Guangdong Army's Attack on Yongtai."

The report begins at Songkou. The Guangdong Army had heard news of a ceasefire but had not yet received a formal order; the Fujian side misread the Guangdong Army's movements and struck first. The Second Detachment counterattacked, fighting its way from Songkou past Qiuyan, Wutongwei, and the area near Jiezhukou, all the way into the town of Yongtai.

December 9 was the turning point. The Guangdong Army had meant to push on toward Fuzhou when Chen Jiongming's ceasefire order arrived. Chiang halted the pursuit and wrote to the Fujian military governor, Li Houji: did he accept the ceasefire, with each side holding its original lines? According to the report, Li Houji agreed.

Six days later, Fujian troops under Zhou Yonggui counterattacked.

The report's accounting is very clear. Externally, Li Houji used the ceasefire to buy time. Internally, the units of Liang and Qiu, in the thick of the fighting, disobeyed orders and fell back on their own. Chiang found that the front had already collapsed, and had no choice but to break out of the encirclement.

His lessons are equally neat: an isolated force that has driven deep must not stop once it has the advantage; an enemy's promises cannot be trusted.

But set this report beside the diary for December 9, and the picture is not so tidy. On the very day they entered the town, the battalions were fighting over who had won first honors and who would get the county magistracy. Someone held on to the county seal and would not hand it over; someone seized the salt bureau. Chiang wrote in his diary that he was furious, and helpless.

Before the enemy ever counterattacked, the victors were already dividing up offices and tax stations.

The battle report does not hide the subordinates' disobedience. It simply gives the most prominent place to the ceasefire and the enemy's bad faith.

It was written more than forty days after the retreat, in Zhangzhou, after he had been urged to stay on. The routes and times can be checked; the causes and the lessons had already been selected.

Chen Jiongming's reply attributed the defeat to many causes and urged him to remain in his post. This shows that the Guangdong Army did not simply lay the Yongtai defeat at Chiang's door. It does not show that the battle report had stated all the causes.

II. The Second Version: A Commander on Paper Cannot Move Other Men's Battalions

Half a year later, on June 21, on Gulangyu, he wrote to the Guangdong Army's chief of staff, Deng Keng.

He began by saying that friends ought to speak frankly, and admitted that when others found fault with him, he had mostly handed them the opening himself.

Then he broke the Second Detachment's sickness into two layers.

The first was the troops. The units had come ready-made. He could not choose his own commanders or retrain the men. In peacetime they could be kept placated; in battle they might not follow orders. Any attempt to change the organization would pull on a whole chain of relationships.

The second was the men in charge. When the detachment was formed, it lacked suitable officers; later, when he wanted to replace them, there was no one to replace them with. Between headquarters and the units, it was hard to achieve anything like an arm directing its fingers.

He was still defending himself, explaining how frugal the headquarters had been with staff and money. But he also admitted that since its formation the detachment had never been properly reorganized, and had done nothing but consume pay.

Later research supplies the background. The Guangdong Army sent to aid Fujian had expanded too fast: guard battalions, locally recruited men, militia, and surrendered troops had been absorbed in batches, and many units kept their original leaders and personal ties. On paper they were arranged into armies, detachments, commands, and battalions. In practice, soldiers still answered to whoever had recruited them.

During expansion, this was a shortcut: someone brought men and rifles, and the force grew overnight. When several units had to advance and retreat together, the shortcut became a dead knot. When a detachment commander gave an order, what a battalion commander weighed first might be his own capital, his old superior's wishes, and his turf.

Why did Liang and Qiu fall back? January's answer was that they disobeyed orders. June's answer went one step further back: from the moment it was formed, this army had never had a solid chain of command.

None of this relieves Chiang of responsibility. He knew the troops were not ones he had raised himself, and still led an isolated force deep into enemy ground. The consequences of that judgment were his to bear.

III. The Third Version: If No One Obeys, What Kind of Commander Is This?

On July 9 he wrote to Deng Keng again, at greater length than before, in something closer to a self-interrogation.

Since the retreat from Yongtai, he wrote, there had been endless talk. He had meant to bear the humiliation and wait for a chance to make amends; now he said he was worn out in mind and body.

What he listed was not the enemy's strength, but three failings of his own: his ability was not enough to control his subordinates; his virtue was not enough to win their submission; his credibility was not enough to earn their trust.

In a letter of resignation, humility can be genuine self-examination, and it can also be a way of persuading.

But his conclusion was not the least bit vague: the Second Detachment headquarters was a superfluous body. Its military work had shown no improvement while it went on spending pay. Abolish it, and at least some money would be saved.

He then widened the point to the whole Guangdong Army: its units carved out turf and fought along factional lines, military discipline was slack, and the army was not of one mind.

He had moved from staying on to find a remedy to abolishing his own headquarters. There was strategy in this: saving the army money was a more dignified exit than walking out in a huff. But he also conceded that nominal authority could not turn into daily drill and obedience in battle; keeping the body in existence would only make the organization look good on paper.

A 2026 study, drawing on Beiyang government reports, coverage in the Shenbao, and recollections of former Guangdong Army men, shows that during the Fujian campaign many units came over whole, by battalion or regiment, and after being absorbed kept their men and structure unchanged. The army swelled, but the lines of command did not keep pace.

An earlier study had noted that between 1918 and 1924 Chiang took up and left posts with great frequency. A man from Zhejiang who was also close to Sun Yat-sen found himself hemmed in at every turn, in an army whose skeleton was made of Guangdong commanders and their old subordinates.

Yongtai was not the root of the illness. It simply lit up an old ailment all at once.

IV. Which Version Is True?

January: bad faith, plus subordinates who fell back on their own. June: a detachment that had never been reorganized, and a commander unable to choose his officers or train his men. July: a failure to command respect, a useless headquarters, and an army riddled with factions.

The last version is not necessarily the truest. The battle report was written for superiors, the private letter to a friend in search of help, the resignation to prove that he had to go. Each had its purpose.

A lost battle rarely has only one cause, either. The ceasefire arrangements may have had gaps; the Fujian army really did counterattack; the front really did fall back. A loose organization and Chiang's limited control made it easier for those risks to turn into a rout. Personal responsibility and institutional responsibility do not cancel each other out.

The 1919 diary has many gaps, and in places has been inked out. What he thought between one letter and the next can no longer be recovered.

What is certain is that he did not seal away the Yongtai defeat in a single sentence. Within half a year he wrote it out at least three times, each time drawing it further inward.

The Second Detachment could be abolished. The problem would not be handed in along with an official seal.

He wrote out the causes of the defeat three times, yet there is one account that none of the three examines closely: before Yongtai, where had the money for the fighting come from?

———

Notes on sources and writing (original draft: Sources and editorial boundaries)

Principal base text: the user-supplied electronic compilation and transcription "Chiang Kai-shek Diaries 1917–1936 copy.docx," actually rechecked for December 9, 22, 24, and 30, 1918, and the surviving 1919 entries. After "the causes of this defeat are many" on December 22, the compilation has an ellipsis; many 1919 passages are marked as inked out, missing pages, or surviving only as fragments, and this story does not fill them in. The base text is not a complete manuscript image, and its full text is not published.

1919 documents by the participant: "A Full Account of the Second Detachment of the Guangdong Army's Attack on Yongtai" (January 26, 1919, Zhangzhou); "Letter to Deng (Keng) Zhongyuan on the Difficulty of Reorganizing the Guangdong Army" (June 21, Gulangyu); "Letter to Deng Zhongyuan on Whether I Should Stay or Go" (July 9, Gulangyu); and "Reflections on Resigning as Commander of the Second Detachment" (July 12). The Academia Historica catalog for "Record of Self-Examination, Collection One (1)" confirms the date, related persons, and place of the first document; the text was read in the public transcription in the Collected Works of Chiang Kai-shek, without claiming to have seen images of the originals. https://tcmb.culture.tw/zh-tw/detail?id=002-060500-00006-018&indexCode=drnh ; https://lianhuaxiaofo.blogspot.com/2014/06/1032013-09-21-041702.html

Independent research, group one: Huang Tzu-chin, "The Revolutionary Apprenticeship of the Young Chiang Kai-shek (1906–1924)," Bulletin of the Institute of Modern History, Academia Sinica, no. 65, September 2009, actually read at printed pages 33–35 and 37 and in the notes. The article explains Chiang's situation in terms of his taking up and leaving posts and the regional ties of the Guangdong Army; the archival documents it cites were not separately read item by item. https://www.mh.sinica.edu.tw/MHDocument/PublicationDetail/PublicationDetail_27.pdf

Independent research, group two (outside Chiang's political circle): Chen Mo, "The Origins of the Split in the Guangdong Army around the Constitutional Protection Movement: Organizational Form and Internal Contradictions," Anhui History, 2026, no. 4; the full text reprinted on September 18, 2026, was actually read. The article uses Beiyang government reports, the Shenbao, and recollections of former Guangdong Army men to analyze the absorption of whole battalions, soldiers belonging to their commanders, and a loose chain of command; this story offers only a limited factual summary and has not personally read all of its underlying sources. https://www.aisixiang.com/data/182908.html

Limits of the evidence: the January report and the June and July letters were all produced by Chiang himself and cannot serve as independent witnesses for one another; they prove that his explanation changed, not automatically that each attribution of blame is correct. Chen Jiongming's urging him to stay is checked against later citations and research; this story does not expand it into dialogue from an original letter it has not seen. Judgments about the units of Liang and Qiu still come mainly from Chiang's side, and no motives are supplied for them.

Time, place, rights, and retelling: Zhangzhou, Gulangyu, and Yongtai are paired only with where the documents were written or with the scope of the events; the places where letters were written in 1919 are not passed off as the 1918 battlefield, and modern reference coordinates are not treated as precise points for the old headquarters, residences, or mountain roads. This is an AI-assisted, source-checked contemporary bilingual historical narrative by Shitu, not a submission by Chiang Kai-shek himself; it uses only necessary short quotations and does not reproduce the user's base text or modern research in full.