Jiang Baili: Frustrated Military Intellectual in Republican China

Abstract

The 1911-1927 period represented a window of opportunity for the creation of a Chinese military structure with a professional officer corps. After the fall of the Qing dynasty, Jiang Baili emerged as a rare military theorist who had intellectual status, a nuanced understanding of civil-military affairs, and both domestic and foreign military training. The failure of Jiang Baili to influence China’s military development was mainly due to his individual difficulties in focusing his intellectual talents on real-world issues. After producing two seminal works in the 1910s, Jiang lived for another twenty years as a marginalized, increasingly eccentric military analyst.