During the Northern Expedition, Chen displayed good leadership ability. Within a year, he was promoted from commanding battalions to divisions already. After the expedition, Chen became active in the wars against the warlords. His successes in the battles allowed him to be promoted again, to the commander of the 18th Army.
Anticommunist campaigns
In 1931, Chen was assigned the task of suppressing the Red Army. In various campaigns searching for the main force of Red Army, Chen's units experienced heavy casualties. In the fifth campaign against the Communists, he finally managed to defeat them, which forced the Red Army to launch its epic Long March. Campaigns against the Red Army came to an end after the Xi'an Incident in which Chiang and his staff were forced to agree to co-operate with the communists against the invading Imperial Japanese Army.
After the Second Sino-Japanese War, Chen became the Chief of the General Staff and commander-in-chief of the navy. He followed Chiang's orders and began to raid the "liberated" areas of the Red Army, which launched the Chinese Civil War. In August 1947, Chiang appointed Chen as director of the Northeastern Headquarters to command the Nationalist forces against the Communists in that area. He made the crucial mistake of dissolving the local security regiments because they had served in the Japanese-collaborationist Manchukuo Imperial Army, which made the total Nationalist strength in Manchuria fall from 1.3 million to less than 480,000. He also dismissed some of the most capable Nationalist commanders, such as Du Yuming, Sun Li-jen, Zheng Dongguo, and Chen Mingren. As a result, he suffered a series of major defeats, and Chiang recalled Chen to Nanjing and sent Wei Lihuang to replace him in Shenyang as Commander-in-Chief of the Northeast and Fan Hanjie as deputy commander-in-chief and director of Jinzhou forward command center. Chen took a sick leave in Taiwan to treat his chronic stomach ailment.
In Taiwan
Chiang appointed Chen as the Governor of Taiwan Province in 1949 to plan the development of Taiwan as a Nationalist strongholds. After the Nationalist force retreated to Taiwan, Chen went on to hold key civilian government positions such as Vice-Executive of the Kuomintang, Vice President, and Premier of the Republic of China. In his years on Taiwan, he introduced various land and economic reforms and carried out the reconstruction of Taiwan. Chen's "375 rent reduction" initiative was credited with stopping the spread of communism in Taiwan. The policy capped the rent farmers paid to landlords at 37.5% of the harvest. Prior to the directive, landlords had often sought more than half of the crop as payment. He was also credited with launching several construction projects. One was the Shimen Reservoir, in Taoyuan County, which reduced flooding and increased the rice crop production. On May 19, 1949, Chen promulgated the Order of Martial Law to announce the imposition of martial law throughout Taiwan to expel communist infiltration and to buffer defense capabilities.
