Yan Xishan
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Yan Xishan (Traditional Chinese: 閻錫山; Simplified Chinese: 阎锡山; Hanyu Pinyin: Yán Xíshān; Wade-Giles: Yen Hsi-shan) (8 October 1883–22 July 1960) was a Chinese warlord who served in the government of the Republic of China.
Yan received his formal military training first in China and later at Imperial Japanese Army Academy. In Japan he became a member of Sun Yat-sen's Revolutionary Alliance (Tongmenghui) and following the 1911 Xinhai Revolution he seized power in Shanxi Province. Though a member of the Beiyang Army and affiliated with Duan Qirui, he avoided the violent national politics of the time by enforcing a neutrality policy on Shanxi which freed his province from the civil wars. This ended when he joined the Kuomintang Northern Expedition when it became clear it would be victorious.
Although Yan was known as the "Model Governor" for his enlightened policies, he was nonetheless a military dictator. In 1926, he pledged his loyalty to Chiang Kai-shek's new government, but in 1929 he joined Feng Yuxiang and Wang Jingwei in their attempt to overthrow the Chiang administration. During the Central Plains War, Yan Xishan joined Feng Yuxiang to fight Chiang Kai-shek, but both were defeated when Zhang Xueliang decided to join Chiang. It was reported by Chiang's frontline troops that Yan Xishan's troops were addicted to opium, and during the decisive battle that determined the outcome of the Central Plains War in the rainy days, the drugs of Yan's troops were wet and since most of Yan's troops took the drug via smoking, the soaked drugs made it impossible to do so, thus Yan's troops lost their stimulants and were soundly defeated. Yan Xishan was forced to flee Shanxi to Dalian after his defeat, but after a brief retirement in the early 1930s, Yan returned to power in Shanxi and undertook social and military reforms to counteract the spread of Communism in the province. He also supported Zhang Xueliang's seizure of Chiang Kai-shek in the 1936 Xi'an Incident. During Second Sino-Japanese War, most regions of Shanxi was overrun by the Japanese but Yan refused to fled the province and after losing the provincial capital Taiyuan, he relocated his headquarter in the remote corner of the province, and then effectively resisted Japanese attempts to completely seize Shanxi
After World War II, his troops (including tens of thousands of former Japanese troops) held out against the communists during the Chinese Civil War and attempted to rid Shanxi of communists by launching one of the first post World War II nationalist campaigns against the communists with Chiang Kai-shek's authorization. Much to the dismay of Kuomintang, Yan Xishan and his fellow commanders proved to be absolutely no match for his communist enemy Liu Bocheng and Deng Xiaoping, losing 13 divisions of his best troops (with absolute numerical and technical superiorities) totaled more than 35,000 in less than a month during the Shangdang Campaign.
However, Yan Xishan refused Chiang Kai-shek's help after his defeat, fearing Chiang would take the opportunity to takeover his turf. As a result, in the following campaigns against his communist enemy, Yan and his commanders once again proved to be absolutely no match for his fellow Shanxi colleague Xu Xiangqian, who was on the communist side. During the campaigns in the central Shanxi, Yan Xishan managed to have his best 100,000 elite troops with absolute numerical and technical superiorities to be completely wiped out by Xu Xiangqian's mere 60,000 strong force in less than 6 weeks. Unwilling to concede defeat, Yan Xishan immdiately sent another a quarter million crack troops of his against Xu Xiangqian's 60,000 strong force, hoping to defeat communists by not letting them to have the opportunity to regroup and recover from the previous battles, only to have another 200,000 out of the quarter million to be completely decimated once again by Xu Xiangqian's communist force in less than 17 months that followed. Yan Xishan's loss of his best 300,000 trooops within 18 months was a serious blow that Yan could never recover from, and it marked the beginning of the end of Yan Xishan's (as well as Kuomintang's) reign in Shanxi.
Although Yan Xishan's force was nearly wiped out by the numerical and technologically inferior communist force led by his Shanxi colleague Xu Xiangqian, Yan did succeed in buying valuable time to strengthen the defense of the provincial capital Taiyuan because the communist force needed the time to recover, regroup, and to prepare for the final assult of the provincial capital. Yan Xishan was so confident in the defense of the city that he promised that he would die in the city. However, when the inevitable final assult on the provincial capital begun, Yan Xishan and his commanders again proved that they were absolutely no match for Xu Xiangqian: Yan's force of more than 130,000 with numerical and technical superiorities not only failed to defend the city against the numerically and technically inferior 100,000 strong communist force led by Xu Xiangqian, but also was completely decimated by the communist forces in the desparate and hopeless battle. Just shortly before fortress city of Taiyuan fell in April 1949, Yan betrayed his own promise of dying with the city and fled with the provincial treasury to Guangdong. After reaching Guangdong, he soon fled to Taiwan along with the rest of the Republic of China government on 8 December 1949. From 3 June 1949 to 7 March 1950, he served as Premier of the Republic of China first briefly in Guangdong and then in Taiwan.
