In January 1949, under the joint compulsion of the Americans and the new warlord forces of Guizhou, Chiang Kai-shek reluctantly announced his resignation and relinquished the The President of the Republic of China throne and all military and political powers.
The contradiction between Chiang Kai-shek and Li Zongren can be traced back to the Great Chaos of the Warlords of the Central Plains a few decades ago, and in the decades of open and secret struggle, the Gui warlords and Chiang Kai-shek's Huangpu lineage have always been at odds, and the contradictions are very deep.
Why, then, did Li Zongren, after becoming acting president, take revenge on Chiang Kai-shek and put him under house arrest without taking advantage of his power?
First of all, proceeding from the actual situation in the domestic liberation battlefield at that time, after Li Zongren became the acting president of the Republic of China, the first and most important issue he considered was not how to solve the political enemy Chiang Kai-shek, but to find a way to reconcile with our party and properly handle the civil war issue.
After all, in the three major battles just passed, more than 1.7 million elite troops of the Nationalist army were annihilated and captured by our army, and the area north of the Yangtze River was almost completely liberated, and after Li Zongren came to power, only a few provinces in Jiangnan were actually controlled.
Moreover, with the total annihilation of the elite army of the nationalist army, the second-line troops who did not have strong combat strength in defending Jiangnan were barely strong, and even along the jiangsu and Zhejiang routes were barely strong, and there were many loopholes in defense, so Li Zongren's first priority at present was how to effectively prevent our army from continuing to cross the river to the south, and the situation was very grim.
Therefore, Li Zongren also re-sent a delegation for peace talks to the north and went as far as Beiping to negotiate with our party, hoping to solve domestic problems in this way.
Secondly, and the most important reason, although Li Zongren took up the position of acting president of the Republic of China, he did not have much real power himself and did not have any advantage at all.
Although Chiang Kai-shek was forced to step down, after all, he had been operating within the Nationalist military government for decades and was deeply rooted, so he only resigned in name, but in fact he still firmly controlled the party, government, and military power of the entire Nationalist government.
After all, Li Zongren was only a candidate jointly elected by the Americans and a small number of warlord factions within the Nationalist army who opposed Chiang Kai-shek, which was originally unpopular and useless until he, the acting president, had a lot of real power, but the time left for Li Zongren was running out.
After the victory of the three major battles, it has become inevitable that a million heroic divisions of our army will cross the Yangtze River to fight a decisive battle with the Nationalist army, and Li Zongren's army has skipped people and has extraordinary wisdom, of course, we can see it, and Chiang Kai-shek can also see this.
Therefore, before Chiang Kai-shek was forced to leave the wilderness, he issued several orders in succession: chen cheng was urgently dispatched to the south, moved across the sea to the Taiwan region, served as the commander of the Taiwan garrison and the chairman of the provincial government, and appointed Tang Enbo as the commander-in-chief of Beijing, Shanghai and Hangzhou, and blocked the Huaye and Nakano armies from going south.
Chen Cheng and Tang Enbo were Chiang Kai-shek's Huangpu clan, and the Taiwan area was also the only bottom line and retreat that Chiang Kai-shek insisted on; once the civil war was lost, the whole party and the whole army immediately crossed the hainan and retreated to the Taiwan area.
Therefore, Chiang Kai-shek had foreseen sending his most trusted subordinate Chen Cheng to the Taiwan region in advance, and Tang Enbo was one of the only remaining fruits after Wang Yaowu, Du Yuming, Huang Wei, and other high-ranking huangpu generals who were captured and suppressed.
At the end of the Liberation War, Chiang Kai-shek faced the embarrassment of having no one around him to use, and only Tang Enbo could hold up great responsibilities and be trusted, so he entrusted him with the position of commander-in-chief of the Beijing-Shanghai-Hangzhou garrison in the hope that he could do his best to keep Nanjing, Shanghai, Suzhou, and Hangzhou, which the Jiangsu-Zhejiang consortium had painstakingly operated for many years.
In addition, although Chiang Kai-shek had no choice but to retreat to Taiwan, the economic and industrial centers of gravity along the southeast line of Jiangsu and Zhejiang and the five provinces southwest of Yunchuan and Kang were still controlled and occupied by Chiang Kai-shek's confidants.
After Li Zongren became acting president, there were very few areas that could be directly ordered, there were no soldiers, no powers, no resources, and no territory, and no one obeyed the presidential orders he issued, and even the peace talk delegation sent by Li Zongren, headed by Zhang Zhizhong, had to go to Fenghua Xikou in Zhejiang Province to pay respects to Chiang Kai-shek and report on the situation before going north.
Therefore, although Chiang Kai-shek went to the wilderness, he still firmly controlled the military and political power of the Nationalist Army, so why did Li Zongren talk about putting Chiang Kai-shek under house arrest? Moreover, even if we take 10,000 steps back, even if Li Zongren succeeds in putting Chiang Kai-shek under house arrest with a tough attitude, it can only lead to the further intensification of contradictions and conflicts within the Nationalist army, so it is not that Li Zongren does not want to put Chiang Kai-shek under house arrest, but that the situation does not allow it, and strength does not allow it.
Under chiang kai-shek's secret instructions, the delegation sent by Li Zongren to the Beiping peace talks did not sign the peace talks agreement given by our party and our army, and even Li Zongren had the beautiful dream of dividing the north and south by dividing the yangtze river.
Chairman Mao and Zhu De were furious at this traitorous way of seeking glory, and jointly signed the order to "march to the whole country", and officially launched the Campaign to Cross the River in late April 1949.
At this time, Li Zongren had no choice but to temporarily dispatch a large number of second-line troops to build a solid defensive front relying on the natural dangers of the Yangtze River, but how could the strength of these people be the opponents of our army?
Therefore, in less than a day, Li Zongren's defense against the natural dangers of the Yangtze River collapsed in its entirety under the powerful firepower of our army, and the capital of the nationalist military government, Nanjing, was declared liberated after only two days of holding out, and at this time Li Zongren's acting president also came to the head.
In the Battle of the Crossing River, the last military armed forces controlled by Li Zongren were completely annihilated by our army, and Li Zongren, who had completely lost the support of the army, could only flee to Hong Kong in a hurry, and then take a special plane to live in the United States.
If he had not been able to recognize the situation at that time and continued to defect to Chiang Kai-shek's defeat and flee to Taiwan, it was very likely that Chiang Kai-shek would settle the general ledger and put him under house arrest in reverse, and Bai Chongxi would have received this treatment.
In the past, considering the status and prestige of Li Zongren and Bai Chongxi, the leaders of the new warlords of the Gui clan, and the fact that they had hundreds of thousands of troops under their command, Chiang Kai-shek still needed to have some concerns, but after the Battle of the Crossing River, Li Zongren's Gui warlord armed forces were all scattered and annihilated, and Bai Chongxi was like a dog that lost his family under the siege and interception of the Northeast Field Army and Chen Geng's corps, so Li Zongren had no choice but to flee abroad.
Chiang Kai-shek knew that the rout of the Nationalist army was inevitable, the Americans had lost confidence in the Nationalist government, and he also needed time to run the Taiwan area, so he simply took advantage of The retreat in 1949 when Li Zongren forced the palace to retreat and advance, and pushed him to the stage to divert attention.
And Li Zongren seems to have won the presidency, but in fact he is just a hot potato, and there is no benefit to all kinds of harms, which shows that Chiang Kai-shek is indeed a good hand at playing conspiracy methods.