Bai Chongxi
Bai Chongxi (18 March 1893 – 1 December 1966; Chinese: 白崇禧; pinyin: Bái Chóngxǐ; Wade–Giles: Pai Ch'ung-hsi; IPA: [pɑ́ɪ̯ t͡ʂʰʊ́ŋɕǐ], Xiao'erjing: ﺑَﻰْ ﭼْﻮ ثِ ) was a Chinese general in the National Revolutionary Army of the Republic of China (ROC) and a prominent Chinese Nationalist leader. He was of Hui ethnicity and of the Muslim faith. From the mid-1920s to 1949, Bai and his close ally Li Zongren ruled Guangxi province as regional warlords with their own troops and considerable political autonomy. His relationship with Chiang Kai-shek was at various times antagonistic and cooperative. He and Li Zongren supported the anti-Chiang warlord alliance in the Central Plains War in 1930, then supported Chiang in the Second Sino-Japanese War and the Chinese Civil War. Bai was the first defense minister of the Republic of China from 1946-48. After losing to the Communists in 1949, he fled to Taiwan, where he died in 1966.
Bai was born in Guilin, Guangxi, and given the courtesy name Jiansheng (健生). He was a descendant of a Persian merchant of the name Baiderluden, whose descendants adopted the Chinese surname Bai. His Muslim name was Omar Bai Chongxi.
He was the second of three sons. His family was said to have come from Sichuan. At the age of 14 he attended the Guangxi Military Cadre Training School in Guilin, a modern-style school run by Cai E to modernize Guangxi's military. Bai and classmates Huang Shaohong and Li Zongren would become the three leading figures of the Guangxi's military. For a time Bai withdrew from the military school at the request of his family and studied at the civilian Guangxi Schools of Law and Political Science.
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