On 12 December 1936 in Xi'an, warlords Zhang Xueliang (
张学良) and Yang Hucheng (
杨虎城) detained Chiang Kai-shek (
蒋介石) and forced him to suspend the civil war against the Communists and unite against Japan. Zhang spent the next fifty-plus years under house arrest until his 1990 release in Taiwan.
