World War II Database

Contributor: C. Peter Chen

ww2dbasePang Bingxun was born in Xinhe County, Hebei, China in 1879. He joined the army of the Qing Dynasty, and was forced to resign during the Xinhai Revolution which began in 1911 due to suspected rebel sympathies. In 1920, after a series of unsuccessful business ventures and a drought, he joined the Northwestern Army, which was under control of a local warlord. During the Northern Expedition of 1926, he broke away from General Wu Peifu and the Northwestern Army and instead declared allegiance to Chiang Kaishek's Nationalist Party. In 1927, he left the Nationalists and joined warlord General Feng Yuxiang and became a divisional commander. Near the conclusion of the Central Plains War of 1930, he switched back to the Nationalist Party once again, becoming the commanding officer of the 40th Corps. In the early 1930s, he conducted actions against Communist forces in the Shaanxi Province in China and then participated in the First Battle of Hebei against Japanese forces. In 1935, Chiang named Pang the Chairman of Chahar Province. In 1936, he was promoted to the rank of lieutenant general. At the opening stage of the Second Sino-Japanese War, he covered the retreat of Chinese troops from the Beijing-Tianjin area into Shandong Province in 1937, and then played a role in the successful defensive battle at Tai'erzhuang in Shandong Province in 1938. As the Chairman of Hebei Province and the commander-in-chief of the 24th Army Group, his troops battled both Chinese Communist forces as well as the Japanese. In 1941, at the age of 61, he asked Chiang Kaishek to authorize his retirement, which was rejected due to war demands. In 1943, as he fell back against a strong Japanese offensive, he lost contact with his headquarters troops and became captured. Turned over to the Nanjing Nationalist Government, a puppet regime answering to Japan, he was installed as the commander of the 24th Army Group by President Wang Jingwei. In this role, he maintained communications with the Nationalist government in secret, which was discovered by Japanese intelligence, resulting in the disbanding of the 24th Army Group and his reassignment to Kaifeng in Henan Province. He continued to maintain a channel of communications with the Nationalists, thus after the end of the war, he was welcomed back to the victorious Nationalist military by Chiang despite his 2-year association with the Japanese-sponsored regime in Nanjing. During the Chinese Civil War, troops under his command were defeated in Handan, Hebei, China in late 1945. Subsequently appointed a military advisor to the Ministry of National Defense, he largely delegated his duties to his subordinates due to his wish to retire. He arrived on the island of Taiwan in 1949, formally retired from military service, and opened a restaurant in the temporary capital of Taipei with another former general Sun Lianzhong. Pang passed away in Taiwan in 1963.

Photographs

Pang Bingxun Timeline