Whampoa Military Academy in the context of Northern Expedition (1926–1927)

Chiang Kai-shek (31 October 1887 – 5 April 1975) was a Chinese politician, revolutionary, and military commander who led the Republic of China (ROC) from 1928 until his death in 1975. His government was based in mainland China until it was defeated in the Chinese Civil War by Mao Zedong's Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 1949, after which he continued to lead the ROC government on the island of Taiwan. Chiang served as leader of the Nationalist Kuomintang (KMT) party and the commander-in-chief of the National Revolutionary Army (NRA), which was reorganized into the Republic of China Armed Forces in 1947, from 1926 until his death.

Born in Zhejiang, Chiang received a military education in China and Japan and joined Sun Yat-sen's Tongmenghui organization in 1908. After the 1911 Revolution, he was a founding member of the KMT and head of the Whampoa Military Academy from 1924. After Sun's death in 1925, Chiang became leader of the party and commander-in-chief of the NRA, and from 1926 to 1928 led the Northern Expedition, which nominally reunified China under a Nationalist government based in Nanjing. The KMT–CCP alliance broke down in 1927 following the KMT's Shanghai Massacre, starting the Chinese Civil War. Chiang sought to modernise and unify the ROC during the Nanjing decade, although hostilities with the CCP continued. After Japan's invasion of Manchuria in 1931, his government tried to avoid a war while pursuing economic and social reconstruction. In 1936, Chiang was kidnapped by his generals in the Xi'an Incident and forced to form an anti-Japanese Second United Front with the CCP, and between 1937 and 1945 led China in the Second Sino-Japanese War, mostly from the wartime capital of Chongqing. As the leader of a major Allied power, he attended the 1943 Cairo Conference to discuss the terms for Japan's surrender in 1945, including the return of Taiwan, where he suppressed the February 28 uprising in 1947.

Baoding Military Academy or Paoting Military Academy (Chinese: 保定軍校; pinyin: Bǎodìng Jūnxiào; Wade–Giles: Pao-ting Chün-hsiao) was a military academy based in Baoding, during the late Qing dynasty and early Republic of China, in the first two decades of the 20th century. For a time, it was the most important military academy in China, and its cadets played prominent roles in the political and military history of the Republic of China. The Baoding Military Academy closed in 1923, but served as a model for the Whampoa Military Academy, which was founded in Guangzhou in 1924. It, along with the Yunnan Military Academy and the Whampoa Military Academy, was one of the “three major strategist cradles in modern China”. During the Second Sino-Japanese War, half of 300 divisions in China's armed forces were commanded by Whampoa graduates and one-third were Baoding cadets.