Whampoa marks 80th anniversary
(China Daily)
Updated: 2004-06-17 23:34

One of China's top leaders said Thursday that the complete reunification of the country is the dream of all sons and daughters of the Chinese nation.

Jia Qinglin, chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), made the remarks Thursday on the 80th Anniversary of the founding of the Whampoa (Huangpu) Military Academy.

The school is the first educational institution for revolutionary officers in Chinese history.

Jia called for concerted efforts from compatriots across the Straits, especially students of the academy to oppose to all words and deeds done by the Taiwan authority aimed at splitting Taiwan from China.

He said the union of Whampoa schoolmates is an important component of the patriotic united front.

He hoped that the alumni can unite and further communicate with one another, as well as relatives in Taiwan and foreign countries, to carry forward the Whampoa spirit of "Patriotism and Revolution" to realize the reunification of the motherland at an early stage.

The academy was set up in 1924 by Dr. Sun Yat-sen, forerunner of China's domestic revolution and founder of the Kuomintang.

It witnessed the first co-operation between the Kuomingtang and the Communist Party of China and eventually became a major pool of Chinese army commanders in the Chinese civil war and the War of Resistance against Japan (1937-1945).

Chiang Kai-shek, the leader of Kuomingtang, acted as the first academy president and the late Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai was director of the academy's political department.

The academy concentrated its talented revolutionary military personnel at the time and a lot of its students later became noted generals and marshals for the both sides.

Statistics showed that from 1924 to 1949, when the Communist Party of China won civil war on Chinese mainland, there were a total of more than 30,000 academy graduates.

The first six generations of the Whampoa students, involving 8,107 people, studied in Guangzhou, South China's Guangdong Province where the school was originally located.Some 17 later generations of about 25,000 people moved to Nanjing, capital of East China's Jiangsu Province and Chengdu, capital of Sichuan Province.

The academy initially had many instructors from the Soviet Union. Those instructors left, however, after Ching Kai-Shek broke with Communist Party of China in the late 1920s.

There are still unions of alumni on both sides of the Straits and around the world.

Miao Qingpu, representative of Whampoa students said that the Whampoa students must give full play to their unique advantage to push forward the reunification of the motherland.

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