Some sources attribute Chiang Kai-shek with responsibility for millions of deaths in scattered mass death events caused by the Nationalist Government of China . He has been deemed partially responsible for the man-made 1938 Yellow River flood , which killed hundreds of thousands of Chinese civilians in order to fend off a Japanese advance . This accusation is usually sourced from Rudolph Rummel who was referring to the Nationalist regime as whole rather than Chiang Kai-Shek in particular . Regardless , the Nationalist government of China has been accused of mass killings by Rummel , who estimated the Nationalist government of China was responsible for between 6 and 18.5 million deaths . He attributes this death toll to a few major causes , for example : In Nanjing , on April 1931 , Chiang Kai-shek attended a national leadership conference with Zhang Xueliang and General Ma Fuxiang , in which Chiang and Zhang dauntlessly upheld that Manchuria was part of China in the face of the Japanese invasion . After the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931 , Chiang resigned as Chairman of the National Government . He returned shortly afterwards , adopting the slogan " first internal pacification , then external resistance " . However , this policy of avoiding a frontal war against the Japanese was widely unpopular . In 1932 , while Chiang was seeking first to defeat the Communists , Japan launched an advance on Shanghai and bombarded Nanjing . This disrupted Chiang 's offensives against the Communists for a time , although it was the northern factions of Hu Hanmin 's Kwangtung government ( notably the 19th Route Army ) that primarily led the offensive against the Japanese during this skirmish . Brought into the Nationalist army immediately after the battle , the 19th Route Army 's career under Chiang would be cut short after it was disbanded for demonstrating socialist tendencies
1938 Yellow River flood
1938 Yellow River flood
Chiang Kai-shek