Chang Hsueh-liang

摘要

Some writers about China believe that Chang Hsueh-liang changed the course of modern Chinese history, and indeed of the world. This is what happ ened.rnIn the 1930s three armies competed for possession of China, those of the Nationalist government, the Communists and the Japanese. Mr Chang was unsure where his best interests lay. He was a "warlord", one of China's numerous local despots who gave tacit support to the Nationalists. His fief, inherited from his father, a bandit who created one of China's most ferocious fighting forces, was Manchuria, a territory the size of Western Europe.