Xi'an Incident

In December 1936 two Nationalist generals, Zhang Xueliang and Yang Hucheng, detained China's leader Chiang Kai-shek at Xi'an to force him to stop fighting the Communists and turn against Japan. The crisis lasted from 12 to 26 December and ended with Chiang's release after he gave verbal promises. It paved the way for the Second United Front between the Nationalists and the Communists, which was concluded after the outbreak of full-scale war with Japan in 1937.

The Nationalists (Kuomintang) and the Communists had been at war since 1927. Japan's seizure of Manchuria in 1931 did not change Chiang's priorities: he ordered Zhang Xueliang, the former ruler of Manchuria, not to resist, and insisted on defeating the Communists before confronting Japan. After the Long March, the battered Communist forces reached northern Shaanxi in October 1935. Facing them from Xi'an were Zhang's Northeastern Army, about 130,000 strong, and Yang's Northwestern Army of some 40,000. Both generals were former warlords who kept a degree of independence from the central government.

Zhang, whose men longed to recover their Manchurian homeland, resented being sent against fellow Chinese rather than the Japanese. After defeats at the hands of the Red Army and Communist overtures for a joint front against Japan, Yang agreed a secret ceasefire, and Zhang held secret talks with Zhou Enlai and formalised an alliance in September 1936. Public pressure for resistance to Japan was also growing. Chiang, meanwhile, was planning a sixth encirclement campaign to finish off the Communists, and repeatedly and angrily rejected Zhang's appeals to change course.

Chiang arrived at Xi'an on 4 December 1936 and stayed at the Huaqing Pool hot-spring resort at Lintong outside the city. On 9 December he threatened to strip both generals of command and send their troops to distant southern provinces unless they moved against the Communists. Early on 12 December Zhang's bodyguards stormed the resort. Chiang escaped through a window and fled up a snowy hillside, injuring his back, but was found within hours and taken into the city, while Yang's troops seized Xi'an and detained senior Nationalist officials. The plotters telegraphed eight demands across China, chief among them an end to the civil war and a united national resistance.

In Nanjing, the war minister He Yingqin favoured an attack on Xi'an, while Chiang's wife Soong Mei-ling and his relatives pressed for negotiation. Much of the Chinese public and press was alarmed for Chiang's safety. The Communist leadership at first welcomed the arrest and called for Chiang to be tried, but Joseph Stalin saw Chiang as indispensable to Chinese resistance and suspected a Japanese plot; Moscow instructed the party to seek a peaceful settlement, and by 17 December it had changed course.

William Henry Donald, an adviser to both Chiang and Zhang, arrived on 14 December, Zhou Enlai on 17 December and T. V. Soong on 20 December, followed by Soong Mei-ling. Chiang refused to sign anything but verbally agreed to end the civil war, reorganise the government and cooperate with the Communists against Japan. On 25 December Zhang released him and flew with him to Nanjing, where crowds of over 400,000 cheered his return. Chiang then had Zhang court-martialled; the general remained in detention for more than half a century, until 1990. Yang was arrested on his return from exile in 1937 and executed in September 1949.

The Northeastern Army was broken up early in 1937, but a ceasefire with the Communists took hold. After the Second Sino-Japanese War began, the Second United Front was formally agreed in September 1937. Nationalist historians long argued that the incident robbed Chiang of victory over the Communists, while the Communists celebrated it as putting national resistance first. By halting the Nationalist offensive, it gave Mao Zedong's party a reprieve in the Chinese Civil War.

Our 1938 map shows the Republic of China after the incident, in the early stages of the war with Japan.