Chiang Ching-kuo
Chiang Ching-kuo () (
April 271,
1910 -
January 13,
1988),
Kuomintang politician and leader, was the son of
Chiang Kai-shek and held numerous posts in the government of the
Republic of China (from
1949 on
Taiwan). He succeeded his father to power, serving as
Premier of the Republic of China from
1972 to
1978, and
President of the Republic of China from
1978 until his death in
1988. Under his tenure, the government of the Republic of China, although still
authoritarian, became much more open and tolerant of
political dissent. Towards the end of his life, Chiang relaxed government controls on the press and
speech and put native Taiwanese in positions of power, including his successor
Lee Teng-hui who furthered the course of democratic reforms.
The son of
Chiang Kai-shek and his first wife
Mao Fumei, Chiang Ching-kuo was born in
Fenghua,
Zhejiang and had the
courtesy name of Jianfeng (建豐). He had an adopted brother,
Chiang Wei-kuo.
In
1925 he went to
Moscow to study
communism on his own volition; his father agreed, since it seemed a sensible thing to do at the time because the
Kuomintang and
Communist Party of China were allied in the
First United Front in preparation for the
Northern Expedition. In Moscow, he was given the Russian name "Nikolai Vladimirovich Elizarov" and put under the tutelage of
Karl Radek. He was noted for having an exceptional grasp of international politics. His classmates included other children of influential Chinese families, most notably the future Chinese Communist party leader,
Deng Xiaoping. In Moscow, the younger Chiang became an enthusiastic student of Communist ideology, particularly
Trotskyism. Following the
Great Purge,
Joseph Stalin privately met with Chiang and ordered him to denounce Trotskyism. Chiang even applied to be a member of the
Communist Party of the Soviet Union, although his request was denied.
In April
1927, however, Chiang Kai-shek purged the leftists and Communists from the KMT and expelled his
Soviet advisors. Following this event, Chiang Ching-kuo wrote an editorial, harshly criticizing his father's actions. The Soviet government then sent Chiang Ching-kuo to work in the Ural Heavy Machinery Plant, a
steel factory in
Siberia where he met Faina Ipatyevna Vakhreva, a native Russian. They married on
March 15 1935, and she would later became known as
Chiang Fang-liang. In December of that year, a son,
Hsiao-wen (孝文) was born. A daughter,
Hsiao-chang (孝章), was born the next year.
Stalin allowed Chiang Ching-kuo to return to China with his Russian wife and two children in April
1937 after living in Russia for 12 years. The Communists under Chairman
Mao Zedong and the Nationalists still under Chiang's father had signed a ceasefire and formed a
Second United Front to counter the Japanese invasion of
Manchuria. Stalin hoped the Chinese would keep Japan from invading of the Soviet Pacific coast, and he hoped to form an anti-Japanese alliance with the senior Chiang.
Back in China, Chiang and his wife eventually had two more sons,
Hsiao-wu ("孝武) and
Hsiao-yung ("孝勇). Out of his affair with
Chang Ya-juo (章亞若), Chiang also had two twin sons in
1941:
Chang Hsiao-tz'u and
Chang Hsiao-yen. (Note the identical
generation name of
Hsiao between all sons, legitimate or not.)
During the
Chinese Civil War, Chiang Ching-kuo briefly served as the mayor of
Shanghai and tried to crackdown the corruption and
hyperinflation that plagued the city. He was determined to do this because of the fears arising from the Nationalists' increasingly lack of popularity during the Civil War. He pinpointed the source of the corruption to be from the family of his stepmother
Soong Mei-ling. Ching-kuo's stepmother told Ching-kuo's father
Chiang Kai-shek to force Ching-kuo to back off. Although Ching-kuo backed off, Soong Mei-ling and Ching-kuo remained on bad terms perhaps for the rest of their lives.
Cite SourceChiang Ching-kuo followed his father and the retreating Nationalist forces to
Taiwan after the Nationalists lost control of
mainland China to the Communists in the
Chinese Civil War. On
December 8,
1949 the capital was moved from
Nanjing to
Taipei. In early morning
December 10,
1949, Communist troops laid siege to
Chengdu, the last KMT controlled city on mainland China, where Chiang Kai-shek and his son Chiang Ching-kuo directed the defense at the
Chengdu Central Military Academy. The aircraft
May-ling evacuated them to Taiwan on the same day; they would never again return to mainland China.
In 1950, Chiang's father appointed him director of the
secret police, better known as the "Blue Shirts", where he remained until 1965. As the director of the Blue Shirts, Chiang orchestrated the controversial court-martial and arrest of General
Sun Li-jen in August 1955 for allegedly plotting a coup d'etat against his father. General Sun was a popular Chinese war hero from the
Burma Campaign against the Japanese and remained under house arrest until Chiang Ching-kuo's death in 1988. Chiang Ching-kuo's activities as director of the secret police have been widely criticized as heralding an era of
human rights abuses in Taiwan, including the mysterious disappearances of both documents and people that seemed to oppose the Nationalist government.
From 1955 to 1960 Chiang administered the construction and completion of the Taiwan's highway system. Chiang's father elevated him to high office when he was appointed as the ROC Defense Minister in 1965, where he remained until 1969. He was the nation's Vice Premier between 1969 and 1972, and he was the nation's Premier between 1972 and 1978. In Chiang Kai-shek's final years, he gradually gave more responsibilities to his son. Chiang Kai-shek died in April
1975 and was succeeded to the presidency by
Yen Chia-kan while Chiang Ching-kuo succeeded to the leadership of the
Kuomintang (opting to take the title "Chairman" rather than the elder Chiang's title of "Director-General").
Chiang was officially elected President of the Republic of China by the
National Assembly after the end of the term of President
Yen Chia-kan on
May 20,
1978. He was reelected to another term in
1984. At that time, the National Assembly consisted mostly of "thousand year" legislators who had been elected in
1947/
8 before the fall of the mainland.
Chiang maintained many of his father's autocratic policies during the early years of his term in office. He continued to rule Taiwan as a military state under
martial law, as it had been since the Nationalists re-established its capital on Taiwan, in anticipation of an imminent invasion by the
People's Republic of China. For this reason, the United States maintained a permanent military presence on the island to defend its World War II and Cold War ally.
Chiang launched the "Fourteen Major Construction Projects" and "Ten Major Construction Projects and the Twelve New Development Projects" contributing to the "Taiwan miracle." Among his accomplishments were accelerating the process of modernization to give Taiwan a 13% growth rate, $4600 per capita income, and the world's second largest
foreign exchange reserves.
However, in December 1978, U.S. President,
Jimmy Carter made the shocking announcement that the United States would no longer recognize the ROC as the legitimate government of China. Under the
Taiwan Relations Act, the United States would continue to sell weapons to Taiwan. However, the TRA was purposely vague in any promise of defending Taiwan in the event of an invasion. But the United States would now end all official contact with the Chiang's government and withdraw its troops from the island. Carter was so eager to make the announcement that the American ambassador had to wake Chiang up in the middle of the night to inform him of the decision.
In 1987 Chiang ended
martial law and allowed family visits to the
Mainland China. His administration saw a gradual loosening of political controls and opponents of the Nationalists were no longer forbidden to hold meetings or publish papers. Opposition political parties, though still illegal, were allowed to form. When the
Democratic Progressive Party was established in
1986, President Chiang decided against dissolving the group or persecuting its leaders, but its candidates officially ran in elections as independents in the
Tangwai movement.
Chiang Ching-kuo appointed Taiwan-born
Lee Teng-hui as his successor as Chairman of the Nationalist Party and President of the Republic of China. He stated that none of his family members shall succeed him.
Chiang died of
heart failure and
hemorrhage in
Taipei at the age of 78. Like his father, he was interred "temporarily" in Tahsi Township,
Taoyuan County, but in a separate
mausoleum. The hope was to have both buried at their birthplace in Fenghua once the mainland was recovered. In January
2004,
Chiang Fang-liang asked that both father and son be buried at
Wu Chih-shan Military Cemetery in Sijhih,
Taipei County. The state funeral ceremony was initially planned for Spring
2005, but was eventually delayed to winter 2005. It may be further delayed due to the recent death of Chiang Ching-kuo's oldest daughter-in-law, who had served as the de-facto head of the household since Chiang Fang-liang's death in 2004. Chiang Fang-liang and Soong May-ling had agreed in
1997 that the former leaders be first buried but still be moved to mainland China in the event of reunification.
In contrast to his father
Chiang Kai-shek, Chiang Ching-kuo built himself a folksy reputation and remains a generally popular figure among the Taiwanese electorate, particularly those who support
Chinese reunification. His memory and image is frequently invoked by the Kuomintang, which is unable to base their electoral campaign on Chiang's successor as President and KMT Chairman
Lee Teng-hui because of Lee's stand in support of
Taiwan independence. Especially after the
2000 presidential election, the
Pan-Blue Coalition has elevated Chiang's status to the point which some critics see as excessive.
Among the
Tangwai and later the
Pan-Green Coalition, opinions toward Chiang Ching-kuo are more reserved. While long-time supporters of political liberalization do give Chiang Ching-kuo some credit for relaxing authoritarian rule, they point out that Taiwan, particularly in the early years of his rule, was still quite authoritarian, and tend to emphasize the
democratization of Taiwan under Chiang Ching-kuo as a result of general internal and external forces rather than his personal actions or characteristics. In particular, critics have argued that Chiang's support of democratization was a direct result of the fall of
Ferdinand Marcos. Nonetheless, as with Pan-Blue followers, many still think rather highly of him for his efforts in domestic developments.
Under President
Chen Shui-bian, pictures of Chiang Ching-kuo and his father have gradually disappeared from public buildings. The AIDC, the ROC's air defense company, has nicknamed its
AIDC F-CK Indigenous Defense Fighter the
Ching Kuo in his memory.
All of his legitimate children studied abroad and two of his children married in the
United States. Only two remain living:
John Chiang is a prominent KMT politician and Chiang Hsiao-chang and her children and grandchildren reside in the United States.
*
Politics of the Republic of China*
History of the Republic of China#Many sources, even Taiwanese official ones, give
March 18,
1910 as his birthday, but this actually refers to the traditional Chinese
lunar calendar* Taylor, Jay.
The Generalissimo's Son: Chiang Ching-Kuo and the Revolutions in China and Taiwan. ISBN 0674002873
*
ROC Government biography*
Remembering Chiang Ching-kuo*
1981 GIO video: Hello, Mr. President-Chiang Ching-kuo and His People
