In December 1949, Chiang Kai-shek fled to Taiwan by special plane, and Li Zongren, the former "acting president" of the Nationalist Government, saw that the Kuomintang was gone, so he went to the United States with his family in the name of medical treatment. Since then, Li Zongren has lived overseas for 16 years.
On July 20, 1965, Li Zongren actively responded to the call of the motherland, broke through many obstacles, and returned to Beijing from the United States, thus ending his exile.
Li Zongren's return to the motherland can undoubtedly be called a historical comedy, Li Zongren is the protagonist of the play, and Cheng Siyuan is the director of the play. Without Cheng Siyuan's matchmaking, Li Zongren's return to the mainland would be far away.
So, who is this Cheng Siyuan? What's his story?
Cheng Siyuan, a native of Binyang County, Guangxi, was born in August 1908, and participated in the Northern Expedition with the Seventh Army of the National Revolution in his early years, and began his military career. Four years later, Cheng Siyuan was discovered by Li Zongren, then commander-in-chief of the Kuomintang Fourth Army, and transferred him to his side as a secretary.
Cheng Siyuan's work ability is very strong, and he is meticulous, and he can write all the letters and telegrams dictated by the chief with one wave, and there is no need to draft or rewrite them at all. In addition, he was able to conduct a comprehensive and detailed analysis of the situation and provide reasonable advice to the commander, so he was deeply trusted and respected by Li Zongren.
In 1934, he was sent to the Department of Political Science of the University of Rome in Italy for further study, and obtained a doctorate in political science. It is worth mentioning that this is also the first public position held by Cheng Siyuan after returning to Europe.
During the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, Cheng Siyuan relied on his outstanding personal ability to successively serve as the director of the Political Department of the Guangxi Pacification Office, the executive director of the Central Committee of the Kuomintang, and the fourth senator of the National Political Council.
In fact, not only Li Zongren and Bai Chongxi, but even Chiang Kai-shek himself liked Cheng Siyuan very much.
At the beginning of 1942, when Cheng Siyuan arrived in Chongqing, Chiang Kai-shek personally received him and prepared to make him the director of the Political Department of the Chinese Expeditionary Force.
However, Cheng Siyuan considered that he was not very familiar with General Luo Zhuoying, the commander of the expeditionary force, and was afraid that he would not be qualified for the post, so he politely refused, but even so, Chiang Kai-shek still appointed him as the executive secretary of the Central Youth League Headquarters and let him participate in the work of the party and government meeting in the official residence.
On the eve of the victory of the Anti-Japanese War in 1945, Cheng Siyuan was also elected as a member of the Central Executive Committee of the Kuomintang, and then was elected as a member of the Standing Committee of the Central Committee of the Kuomintang and a member of the Legislative Yuan. Cheng Siyuan, who is not confused at a young age, has ushered in the peak of his career.
However, Cheng Siyuan never agreed with Chiang Kai-shek's dictatorship.
In the second half of 1948, with the successive defeats of the Kuomintang army on various battlefields, Chiang Kai-shek was under tremendous pressure from inside and outside the party, and the new Gui faction headed by Li Zongren and Bai Chongxi began to force Chiang Kai-shek to "go into the wilderness".
On January 21, 1949, Chiang Kai-shek officially announced the "Lower Field" and Li Zongren assumed the post of "Acting President".
After Li Zongren took office, he immediately started peace talks with our party. During that period, Cheng Siyuan, as Li Zongren's personal representative, often traveled back and forth between Nanjing, Shanghai, and Taiwan, and worked hard to promote peace talks.
However, everyone knows that the reason why Chiang Kai-shek announced the "going into the wilderness" was nothing more than his strategy of retreating into advance, and Chiang Kai-shek, who was in his hometown in Xikou, seemed to have no quarrel with the world, but in fact still controlled the actual power in the Kuomintang and the army. Therefore, there is no doubt that the peace talks that Li Zongren hoped for will inevitably end in failure.
Moreover, our party categorically will not agree to Li Zongren's so-called proposal of "dividing the river and ruling the country," and it does not have enough patience to deal with it. On April 20, 1949, the Second Field, the Third Field and the First Division of the Fourth Field officially launched the "River Crossing Campaign".
After only 42 days of fighting, our army annihilated more than 430,000 Kuomintang troops in one fell swoop, liberated Nanjing, Shanghai, Wuhan and other large cities, as well as the entire territory of Jiangsu and Anhui provinces, most of Zhejiang Province, and one each of Jiangxi, Hubei, and Fujian provinces.
The army was defeated like a mountain, and Li Zongren, who had no military power, had no choice but to leave Nanjing by plane and return to Guangxi.
Soon after, Chiang Kai-shek convened the Standing Committee of the Central Committee of the Kuomintang in Guangzhou, announcing the establishment of an extraordinary committee of the Central Committee, with him as chairman, Li Zongren as vice chairman, and Cheng Siyuan as deputy secretary general. This meeting marked Chiang Kai-shek's official shift from behind the scenes to the front of the stage.
However, for Cheng Siyuan at this time, although he was in a high position again, he had completely lost confidence in the Kuomintang, so he resigned and went to Hong Kong.
Cheng Siyuan's decision was undoubtedly very correct, and in the next few months, our People's Liberation Army successively won victories in the Hengbao Campaign and the Guangxi Campaign, and the main force of the Xingui system was completely annihilated.
Seeing that the defeat was irretrievable, Li Zongren decided to go to the United States with his family, but Bai Chongxi fled to Taiwan despite Li Zongren's dissuasion, but ended up in a bleak end.
On March 1, 1950, Chiang Kai-shek, who was living in Taiwan, officially announced his reinstatement, and Li Zongren's authority as "acting president" was abolished. Four years later, Chiang Kai-shek concocted the "Case of Impeachment of Vice President Li Zongren for Illegal and Dereliction of Duty", which caused Li Zongren to lose all political positions and become an ordinary Chinese immigrant living in the United States.
As for Cheng Siyuan, after he resigned and came to Hong Kong, he first opened a chicken farm with the support of a friend, but due to the disaster, he lost everything. After that, he worked as a columnist for a newspaper organization.
In April 1956, Cheng Siyuan was invited to return to China for sightseeing, and Premier Zhou held a banquet in Ziguang Pavilion. During the banquet, Premier Zhou said to Cheng Siyuan: I hope he can invite Li Zongren to come back to have a look, and Cheng Siyuan immediately expressed his willingness to work hard for this.
As a matter of fact, as early as when Li and Bai Shogunate were in office, Cheng Siyuan maintained close ties with our party and was a close friend of our party. During the Anti-Japanese War, he had many contacts with Zhou Enlai and was deeply influenced by him. Therefore, it is undoubtedly the most suitable choice for him to complete this historical task.
And Cheng Siyuan did not fail to live up to the trust of our party, he went to Beijing five times and Europe twice, and went all out to promote the return of Li Zongren and his wife to the motherland.
After director Li Zongren returned to the motherland in 1965, Cheng Siyuan was reused by our party, and later served as chairman of the China Association for the Promotion of Peaceful Reunification, member of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, member of the Standing Committee of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, and vice chairman of the National People's Congress.
On July 28, 2005, Cheng Siyuan completed his wonderful and legendary life at the age of 97.
Mr. Cheng Siyuan has a son and four daughters, each of whom is very good, among which the eldest daughter Cheng Yueru, that is, Lin Dai, is also a famous actress in Hong Kong and a four-time Asian actress.
However, what people never expected was that such an excellent actress committed suicide at the age of 30, which is really regrettable.