Feng Yuxiang

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Feng Yuxiang bigraphy, stories - Presidents

Feng Yuxiang : biography

06 November 1882 – 01 September 1948

Feng Yuxiang ( 6 November 1882 – 1 September 1948) was a warlord and leader in Republican China from Chaohu, Anhui. He served as Vice Premier of the Republic of China from 1928 to 1930. He was also known as the Christian General for his zeal to convert his troops and the Betrayal General for his penchant to break with the establishment. In 1911, he was an officer in the ranks of Yuan Shikai’s Beiyang Army but joined forces with revolutionaries against the Qing Dynasty. He rose to high rank within Wu Peifu’s Zhili warlord faction but launched the Beijing coup in 1924 that knocked Zhili out of power and brought Sun Yat-sen to Beijing. He joined the Nationalist Party (KMT), supported the Northern Expedition and became blood brothers with Chiang Kai-shek, but resisted Chiang’s consolidation of power in the Central Plains War, and broke with Chiang again in resisting Japanese incursions in 1933. He spent his later years supporting the left-wing of the KMT, which cooperated with the Communists.

Conversion to Christianity

Feng, like many young officers, was involved in revolutionary activity and was nearly executed for treason. He later joined Yuan Shikai’s Beiyang Army and with the help and advice of Chinese diplomat Wang Zhengting, converted to Christianity in 1914, being baptised into the Methodist Episcopal Church.Chinese Warlord: The Career of Feng Yu-hsiang, page 55

Feng’s career as a warlord began soon after the collapse of the Yuan Shikai government in 1916. Feng, however, distinguished himself from other regional militarists by governing his domains with a mixture of paternalistic Christian socialism and military discipline. He forbade prostitution, gambling and the sale of opium and morphia.Marshall Feng: A Good Soldier of Jesus Christ, 2nd edition, page 19. From 1919, he was known as the ‘Christian General’.Chinese Warlord: The Career of Feng Yu-hsiang, page 82

In 1923, British Protestant Christian missionary Marshall B. Broomhall said of him:

The contrast between Cromwell’s Ironsides and Charles’s Cavaliers is not more striking than that which exists in China to-day between the godly and well-disciplined troops of General Feng and the normal type of man who in that land goes by the name of soldier… While it is too much to say that there are no good soldiers in China outside of General Feng’s army, it is none the less true that the people generally are as fearful of the presence of troops as of brigand bands.Marshall Feng: A Good Soldier of Jesus Christ, 2nd edition, page 1.

He was reputed to have liked baptizing his troops with water from a fire hose. But no such incident is mentioned in Sheriden’s detailed biography,Chinese Warlord: The Career of Feng Yu-hsiang or in Broomhall’s account.Marshall Feng: A Good Soldier of Jesus Christ Both Broomhall and Sheriden say that baptism was taken very seriously and that not all of Feng’s troops were baptised.Chinese Warlord: The Career of Feng Yu-hsiang, page 82

Later years

Chinese Warlord: The Career of Feng Yu-hsiang

After World War II, he traveled to the United States where he was an outspoken critic of the Chiang regime and of Truman administration’s support for it. While there he came to General Stilwell’s house in California, as he admired Stilwell. Barbara Tuchman tells the story (Stilwell and the American Experience in China 1911-1945, pp. 82–3): "a few days after her husband’s death, Mrs. Stilwell was upstairs at her home in Carmel when a visitor was announced with some confusion as ‘the Christian.’ Mystified, she went down to find in the hall the huge figure and cannonball head of Feng Yu-hsiang, who said, ‘I have come to mourn with you for Shih Ti-wei, my friend.’"

Although he was never a Communist, he was close to them in his final years.Chinese Warlord: The Career of Feng Yu-hsiang, page 281

According to descendants whose father was raised as a young boy by Feng Yu-hsiang in his household, and was inspired by the elder Feng’s example of service to country and countrymen to join and serve in the military, Feng Yu-hsiang also visited and lived for several months in Berkeley, California during his stay as visiting scholar.