Moral Winner of This Confrontation

¶ … moral winner of this confrontation was Chiang Kai Shek and the political winner was Zhang Xueliang. Chiang's plea towards the general for obedience to the central government highlighted his concern for having a unified central government free of outside influence. He was aware that letting outside influences from diverse parties, such as the Communists, in could cause infighting and power struggles within the regime, leading to its ineptitude. That situation would give the Japanese an opportunity to consolidate their hold on China.

Thus, he was aware that if China wanted to defeat the Japanese, it could not afford to have its central government be at the mercy of bickering political parties. The political winner in this confrontation was Zhang Xueliang because he successfully launched a coup d'etat against Chiang. Although Zhang later freed him, he forced Chiang to cooperate with the Communists for a while. He was in charge of the Northeastern Army, which served an essential part in the civil war.

When he began to side with the Communists during the civil war, he became capable of undermining Chiang's strategy for defeating them. He had the support of his army behind him, since some of the soldiers were from Manchuria. They had experienced the Japanese invasion firsthand and so were reluctant to fight the Red Army while their own territory was being lost. The confrontation greatly weakened China because it revealed how weak and ineffective Chiang's central.