Born in 1887, Chiang Kai-shek was the natural successor of Sun Yat-sen, the leader of the Chinese Nationalist Party, known as the Kuomintang or Guomindang. Kai-shek would become an essential part of Chinese history in the 1900s. (Trueman)Chiang Kai-shek was born in China's coastal province of Zhejiang. (“Chiang Kai-shek”) He was born the son of a wealthy salt merchant. (Fredriksen) However, Kai-shek was raised by his widowed mother, and with the necessary and relevant standard Chinese education and education he received as a child, he was able to graduate from the Baoding Military Academy. (Upshur) Kai-shek then attended a college in Japan dedicated to training military officers, and Kai-shek also served in the Imperial Japanese Army for a short period of time. (Trueman) In the year 1911, while still in Japan, Kai-shek became a member of Sun Yat-sen's revolutionary front, known as the Kuomintang, or Chinese Nationalist Party. (Upshur) Later that same year, Kai-shek returned to China to serve under the Kuomintang in the subversion of the Manchu (Qing) dynasty. After the fall of the Qing dynasty, the constitution of the new Republic of China was established. (Fredriksen) About twelve years later, in 1923, Sun Yat-sen ordered Kai-shek to travel to the Soviet Union to acquire Soviet Red Army skills and techniques. (Upshur) With Sun Yat-sen's reinforcement, Kai-shek was decreed commandant of the Whampoa Military Academy established in Canton in 1924. ("Chiang Kai-shek") In 1925, a tragedy occurred when the beloved and revered leader Sun Yat-sen died, and with this aforementioned disastrous death, Chiang Kai-shek managed to directly enter Yat-sen's substantia... middle of paper... Kuomintang and the Communists. ("Chiang Kai-shek") The Kuomintang was steadily, but conclusively, defeated, and shortly thereafter, in 1949, Chiang and his existing Kuomintang troops sought recourse on the island of Taiwan. Mao Zedong then announced the beginning of the People's Republic of China. (Fredriksen) For the remainder of Chiang Kai-shek's life, he established and directed a government in Taiwan that was accepted by a large number of nations as the effective government of China. ("Chiang Kai-shek") Shortly before his death, Kai-shek appointed his son Chiang Ching-kuo as his successor. Chiang Kai-shek died on April 5, 1975, but he did not leave the world a nothing. Kai-shek left a legacy of Chinese unification and was an important source of assistance in China's development and its modernistic growth as a powerful nation. (Fredriksen)