Chiang was born in Fenghwa, Chekiang as the eldest and only biological son of Chiang Kai-shek, the commander of National Revolutionary Army and KMT leader. He attended school in Shanghai and Beijing, where he became interested in socialism and communism. As a teenager in 1925, when the KMT and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) were allied in the First United Front, he was sent to the Soviet Union (USSR) to attend university; he spoke Russian fluently. In 1927, due to the KMT's White Terror against the CCP, the Soviets sent Chiang to work in a steel factory in the Ural Mountains where he met and married Faina Vakhreva. In 1937, the Soviets returned the couple back to China shortly before the Second Sino-Japanese War. He entered the Nationalist government and served as the administrative commissioner of Gannan Prefecture in Jiangxi province from 1939 to 1945 during World War II. In 1948, Chiang went to Shanghai to enforce strict economic controls and fight inflation. He tried to freeze prices and force wealthy merchants to turn in Chinese gold yuan, but the campaign ultimately failed amid severe economic collapse. In 1949, he moved to Taiwan when the KMT lost the Chinese Civil War.
Chiang held successively powerful government posts on Taiwan. Initially he was director of Taiwan Garrison Command, the military secret police organization which used arbitrary arrests and torture to support the White Terror. He became Minister of Defense in 1965, vice-premier in 1969, premier in 1972, and then president for two terms starting in 1978 and 1984 respectively. He became KMT chairman after Chiang Kai-shek died in 1975. As president, the authoritarian state became more tolerant of political dissent, eventually relaxing restrictions to media and speech and permitting Democratic Progressive Party candidates to stand for election. Chiang increased the political representation and participation of local Taiwanese (benshengren) over post-World War II migrants from the mainland (waishengren) who had typically been favored; his successor, Lee Teng-hui, was benshengren. Chiang is credited with Soviet-inspired city planning policies, economic development with the Ten Major Construction Projects, anti-corruption efforts and Taiwan's democratic transition.
Family picture of Chiang Ching-kuo in the arms of his grandmother Wang Caiyu (middle), mother Mao Fumei (left) and father Chiang Kai-Shek (right), taken in 1910Chiang Ching-kuo in 1920s
The son of Chiang Kai-shek and his first wife, Mao Fumei, Chiang Ching-kuo was born in Fenghua, Zhejiang, with the courtesy name of Chien-feng (Chinese:建豐; pinyin:Jiànfēng; Wade–Giles:Chien4-feng1). He had an adopted brother, Chiang Wei-kuo. Ching literally means 'longitude', while kuo means 'nation'; in his brother's name, wei literally means 'parallel (of latitude)'. The names are inspired by the references in Chinese classics such as the Guoyu, in which "to draw the longitudes and latitudes of the world" is used as a metaphor for a person with great abilities, especially in managing a country.
While the young Chiang Ching-kuo had a good relationship with his mother and grandmother (who were deeply rooted to their Buddhist faith), his relationship with his father was strict, utilitarian and often rocky. Chiang Kai-shek appeared to his son as an authoritarian figure, sometimes indifferent to his problems. Even in personal letters between the two, Chiang Kai-shek would sternly order his son to improve his Chinese calligraphy. From 1916 until 1919 Chiang Ching-kuo attended the Grammar School in Wushan Temple, an important temple in Xikou Town. Then, in 1920, his father hired tutors to teach him the Four Books, the central texts of Confucianism. On 4 June 1921, Ching-kuo's grandmother died. What might have been an immense emotional loss was compensated for when Chiang Kai-shek moved the family to Shanghai. Chiang Ching-kuo's stepmother, historically known as the Chiang family's "Shanghai Mother", went with them. During this period Chiang Kai-shek concluded that Chiang Ching-kuo was a son to be taught, while Chiang Wei-kuo was a son to be loved.
During his time in Shanghai, Chiang Ching-kuo was supervised by his father and made to write a weekly letter of 200–300 Chinese characters. Chiang Kai-shek also underlined the importance of classical books and of learning English, two areas he was hardly proficient in himself. On 20 March 1924, Chiang Ching-kuo was able to present to his now-nationally famous father a proposal concerning the grass-roots organization of the rural population in Xikou.
In early 1925, Chiang entered Shanghai's Pudong College, but Chiang Kai-shek decided to send him on to Beijing because of warlord action and spontaneous student protests in Shanghai. In Beijing, he attended the school organized by a friend of his father, Wu Zhihui, a renowned scholar and linguist. The school combined classical and modern approaches to education. While there, Ching-kuo started to identify himself as a progressive revolutionary and participated in the flourishing social scene inside the young Communist community. The idea of studying in Moscow now seized his imagination. Within the help program provided by the Soviet Union to the countries of East Asia, there was a training school that later became the Moscow Sun Yat-sen University. The participants to the university were selected by the CPSU and KMT members, with a participation of CPC Central Committee.
Chiang Ching-kuo asked Wu Zhihui to name him as a KMT candidate. Wu did not try to dissuade him, even though Wu was a key figure of the right-leaning and anti-Communist Western Hills Group of the KMT. In the summer of 1925, Chiang Ching-kuo traveled south to Whampoa Military Academy to discuss his plans for study in Moscow with his father. Chiang Kai-shek was not keen, but after a discussion with Chen Guofu he finally agreed. In a 1996 interview, Ch'en's brother, Chen Li-fu, recalled that Chiang Kai-shek accepted the plan because of the need to have Soviet support at a time when his hold over the KMT was tenuous.
Moscow
With or without his father's enthusiastic approval, Chiang Ching-kuo went on to Moscow in late 1925. He stayed in the Soviet Union for nearly twelve years. While there, Chiang was given the Russian name Nikolai Vladimirovich Elizarov (Николай Владимирович Елизаров) and put under the tutelage of Karl Radek at the Communist University of the Toilers of the East. 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. Chiang Ching-kuo joined the Communist Youth League under Deng. Soon Ching-kuo was an enthusiastic student of Communist ideology, particularly Trotskyism; though following the Great Purge, Joseph Stalin privately met with him and ordered him to publicly denounce Trotskyism. Chiang even applied to be a member of the All-Union Communist Party, although his request was denied.
In April 1927, however, Chiang Kai-shek purged KMT leftists, had Communists arrested or killed, and expelled his Soviet advisers. Chiang Ching-kuo responded from Moscow with an editorial that harshly criticized his father's actions but was nonetheless detained as a "guest" of the Soviet Union, a practical hostage. The historiographic debate still continues as to whether he was forced to write the editorial, but he had seen Trotskyist friends arrested and killed by the Soviet secret police. The Soviet government sent him to work in the Ural Heavy Machinery Plant, a steel factory in the Urals, Yekaterinburg (then Sverdlovsk), where he met Faina Ipat'evna Vakhreva, a native Belarusian. They married on 15 March 1935, and she would later take the Chinese name Chiang Fang-liang. In December of that year, their son, Hsiao-wen was born.
Chiang Kai-shek refused to negotiate a prisoner swap for his son in exchange for a Chinese Communist Party leader. He wrote in his diary, "It is not worth it to sacrifice the interest of the country for the sake of my son." In 1937, he maintained that "I would rather have no offspring than sacrifice our nation's interests", since he had no intention of stopping the war against the Communists.
Return to China and WWII
Chiang Ching-kuo with his father Chiang Kai-shek (1940s)
Stalin allowed Chiang Ching-kuo to return to China with his Belarusian wife and son in April 1937 after living in the USSR for 12 years.
By then, the National Revolutionary Army (NRA) under Chiang Kai-shek and the Communists under Mao Zedong had signed a ceasefire to create the Second United Front and fight the Japanese invasion of China, which began in July 1937. Stalin hoped the Chinese would keep Japan from invading the Soviet Pacific coast, and he hoped to form an anti-Japanese alliance with the senior Chiang.[citation needed]
On Ching-kuo's return, his father assigned a tutor, Hsu Dau-lin, to assist with his readjustment to China. Chiang Ching-kuo was appointed as a specialist in remote districts of Jiangxi where he was credited with training of cadres and fighting corruption, opium consumption, and illiteracy. Chiang Ching-kuo was appointed as commissioner of Gannan Prefecture (贛南) between 1939 and 1945; there he banned smoking, gambling and prostitution, studied governmental management, allowed for economic expansion and a change in social outlook. His efforts were hailed as a miracle in the political war in China, then coined as the "Gannan New Deal" (贛南新政). During his time in Gannan, from 1940 he implemented a "public information desk" where ordinary people could visit him if they had problems, and according to records, Chiang Ching-kuo received a total of 1,023 people during such sessions in 1942.[citation needed]
In regard to the ban on prostitution and closing of brothels, Chiang implemented a policy where former prostitutes became employed in factories. Due to the large number of refugees in Ganzhou as a result from the ongoing war, thousands of orphans lived on the street; in June 1942, Chiang Ching-kuo formally established the Chinese Children's Village (中華兒童新村) in the outskirts of Ganzhou, with facilities such as a nursery, kindergarten, primary school, hospital and gymnasium. During the last years of the 1930s, he met Wang Sheng, with whom he would remain close for the next 50 years.
The paramilitary "Sanmin Zhuyi Youth Corps" was under Chiang's control. Chiang used the term "big bourgeoisie", in a disparaging manner to call H. H. Kung and T. V. Soong.
While in mainland China, Chiang and his wife had a daughter, Hsiao-chang, born in Nanchang (1938), and two more sons, Hsiao-wu, born in Chongqing (1945), and Hsiao-yung, born in Shanghai (1948).
Relationship with Chang Ya-juo and her death
Chiang met Chang Ya-juo when she was working at a training camp for enlistees and he was serving as the head of Gannan Prefecture during the war. The two had a relationship that brought twin sons: Chang Hsiao-tz'u and Chang Hsiao-yen, born in 1942. In August 1942, Chang felt sick at a dinner party, and died the next day in a Guilin hospital. The circumstances of her death raised speculation that it was murder. Over the years, many of her relatives, including her sons and highly ranked ex-security personnel, insisted that KMT's security apparatus orchestrated her murder to keep a lid on CCK's marital affair, and to protect CCK's political career.
Hostage claim
Jung Chang and Jon Halliday claim Chiang Kai-shek allowed the Communists to escape on the 1934–1935 Long March because he wanted Stalin to return Chiang Ching-kuo. This is contradicted by Chiang Kai-shek's diary, "It is not worth it to sacrifice the interest of the country for the sake of my son." He refused to negotiate for a prisoner swap of his son in exchange for the Chinese Communist Party leader (Zhou Enlai). Again in 1937 he stated about his son: "I would rather have no offspring than sacrifice our nation's interests." Chiang had absolutely no intention of stopping the war against the Communists. Chang and Halliday likewise claim that Chiang Ching-kuo was "kidnapped" in spite of the evidence that he went to study in the Soviet Union with his father's own approval.
Economic policies in Shanghai
Chiang Ching-kuo in 1948Chiang Ching-kuo (left) with father Chiang Kai-shek in 1948.
After the Second Sino-Japanese War and during the Chinese Civil War, Chiang Ching-kuo briefly served as a liaison administrator in Shanghai, trying to eradicate the corruption and hyperinflation that plagued the city. He was determined to do this because of the fears arising from the Nationalists' increasing lack of popularity during the Civil War. Given the task of arresting dishonest businessmen who hoarded supplies for profit during the inflationary spiral, he attempted to assuage the business community by explaining that his team would only go after big war profiteers.
Chiang Ching-kuo copied Soviet methods, which he learned during his stay in the Soviet Union, to start a social revolution by attacking middle class merchants. He also enforced low prices on all goods to raise support from the Proletariat.
Chiang Ching-kuo used his own agents to make arrests in Shanghai, rather than the Shanghai city police.:178 Chiang Ching-kuo relied on two relatively new organizations which answered directly to him.:178 He used the Sixth Battalion of the Bandit-Suppression National-Reconstruction Corps to search warehouses for hoarded goods and to place secret report boxes in the city where people could anonymously report violators.:178–179 He also used the Shanghai Youth Service Corps for enforcement.:179
As riots broke out and savings were ruined, bankrupting shopowners, Chiang Ching-kuo began to attack the wealthy, seizing assets and placing them under arrest. The son of the gangster Du Yuesheng was arrested by him.
Ching-kuo ordered KMT agents to raid the Yangtze Development Corporation's warehouses, which was privately owned by H. H. Kung and his family, as the company was accused of hoarding supplies. H. H. Kung's wife was Soong Ai-ling, the sister of Soong Mei-ling who was Chiang Ching-kuo's stepmother.
Chiang Ching-kuo had H. H. Kung's son David Kung and several employees of the Yangtze Development Corporation arrested on allegations of holding foreign exchange.:181 Soong Mei-ling called Chiang Kai-shek to complain and also called Chiang Ching-Kuo directly.:182 David Kung was eventually freed after negotiations, and Chiang Ching-kuo resigned, ending the terror on the Shanghainese merchants.
The major impact of Chiang Ching-kuo's campaign was to cause the flight of prominent capitalists from Shanghai to Hong Kong and elsewhere.:183 The failure of the campaign also affected Ching-kuo's political influence and reputation temporarily.
After the Nationalists lost control of mainland China to the Communists in the Chinese Civil War, Chiang Ching-kuo followed his father and the retreating Nationalist forces to Taiwan. On 8 December 1949, the Nationalist capital was moved from Chengdu to Taipei, and early on 10 December 1949, Communist troops laid siege to Chengdu, the last KMT-controlled city on mainland China. Chiang Kai-shek and Chiang Ching-kuo directed the city's defense from the Chengdu Central Military Academy, before the aircraft May-ling evacuated them to Taiwan; they would never return to mainland China.
In 1950, Chiang's father appointed him director of the secret police, which he remained until 1965. An enemy of the Chiang family, Wu Kuo-chen, was kicked out of his position of governor of Taiwan by Chiang Ching-kuo and fled to America in 1953. Chiang Ching-kuo, educated in the Soviet Union, initiated Soviet-style military organization in the Republic of China Military, reorganizing and Sovietizing the political officer corps, surveillance, and KMT party activities were propagated throughout the military. Opposed to this was Sun Li-jen, who was educated at the American Virginia Military Institute.
Chiang orchestrated the controversial court-martial and arrest of General Sun Li-jen in August 1955, allegedly for plotting a coup d'état with the American CIA 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. Ching-kuo also approved the arbitrary arrest and torture of prisoners.
Defense Minister Chiang Ching-kuo at the Pentagon with U.S. Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, 23 September 1965
From 1955 to 1960, Chiang administered the construction and completion of Taiwan's highway system. Chiang's father elevated him to high office when he was appointed as the ROC Defense Minister from 1965 until 1969. He was the nation's Vice Premier between 1969 and 1972. Afterwards he was appointed the nation's Premier between 1972 and 1978.
In 1970, Chiang was the target of an assassination attempt in New York City by Peter Huang.:27
As Premier Chiang organized a people's diplomacy campaign in the United States in an effort to mobilize American political sentiment in opposition to the PRC through mass demonstrations and petitions.:42 Among these efforts, the KMT worked with the John Birch Society to launch a petition writing campaign through which Americans were urged to write their local government officials and ask them to "Cut the Red China connection.":42
As Chiang Kai-shek entered his final years, he gradually gave more responsibilities to his son, and when he died in April 1975, Vice President Yen Chia-kan became president for the balance of Chiang Kai-shek's term, while Chiang Ching-kuo succeeded to the leadership of the KMT (he opted for the title "Chairman" rather than the elder Chiang's title of "Director-General").
Leadership
In the 1970s, Chiang became acting head-of-state when Chiang Kai-shek became too ill to govern; Chiang Kai-shek died in 1975. The National Assembly elected Chiang as ROC president in the 1978 and 1984 Taiwanese presidential elections; at the time the assembly was called the "Eternal Parliament" because its membership, elected in mainland China before the end of the Chinese Civil War, was permanent. Chiang reformed many autocratic policies, gradually phased out the White Terror and permitted political pluralism by allowing the Tangwai movement to operate; the Tangwai movement later created the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), the KMT's main opponent. Chiang refused to violently suppress political opposition, as suggested by KMT conservatives.
Chiang contributed to the "Taiwan Miracle" through the "Ten Major Construction Projects" and the "Twelve New Development Projects". At one point, economic modernization produced a 13% growth rate, $4,600 per capita income, and the world's second largest foreign exchange reserves. On 16 December 1978, U.S. president Jimmy Carter announced 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, but the TRA was purposely vague in any promise of defending Taiwan in the event of an invasion.[citation needed]
In an effort to bring more native Taiwan-born citizens into government services, Chiang Ching-kuo "exiled" his over-ambitious chief of General Political Warfare Department, General Wang Sheng, to Paraguay as an ambassador (November 1983), and hand-picked Lee Teng-hui as vice-president of the ROC (formally elected May 1984), first-in-the-line of succession to the presidency.
Chiang attempted to continue the political dynasty through his sons, but all three sons became unsuitable due to disinterest, scandals and poor health. On 25 December 1985, Constitution Day in Taiwan, Chiang reported that no members of his family would be presidential candidates in the next presidential elections; Chiang Wei-kuo, Chiang's younger brother, became a vice-presidential candidate and repudiated Chiang's restrictions.
Chiang Ching-kuo openly maintained a staunch anti-communist policy toward the People's Republic of China (PRC) and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) during most of his leadership, while quietly laying the groundwork for family visits and informal exchanges near the end of his life. Following the U.S. severance of diplomatic ties with Taiwan in 1979, Chiang instituted the Three Noes policy: "no contact, no negotiation, and no compromise" with the Communists. As CCP general secretary, Hu Yaobang extended a public invitation to Chiang to visit his historical family home on the mainland in order to propose talks to forge a unified front and offered a power-sharing peace agreement, a move that was rejected by Chiang as a political trick aimed at imposing eventual Communist rule in Taiwan.
Meanwhile, Chiang's relations with the United States under Ronald Reagan remained complex. Despite the Reagan administration assuring Chiang privately that the U.S. had not set a date to end arms sales, would not consult Beijing beforehand on arms and would not pressure Taipei to negotiate with the PRC (Six Assurances) after the signing of the August 1982 U.S.-PRC Joint Communiqué, which agreed to gradually reduce U.S. arms sales to Taiwan, a frustrated Chiang also pursued a military self-reliance policy that also aimed to boost Taiwan's defenses without overreliance on the United States. Relations also soured after Taiwanese military intelligence operatives orchestrated the October 1984 murder of Henry Liu, a Taiwanese-American dissident and journalist, inside the garage of his California home.
Chiang Ching-kuo also shared a strong personal friendship and political alliance with Singapore Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew that laid the foundation for deep cooperation between Taiwan and Singapore. Both nations signed an agreement codenamed Project Starlight, which allowed the Singapore Armed Forces (SAF) to train troops and conduct military exercises in Taiwan. Lee occasionally acted as a discreet interlocutor or messenger between mainland China and Taiwan during Chiang's tenure.
In February 1985, Cathay Group—one of Taiwan's largest private conglomerates— alongside the Tenth Credit Cooperative, a major Taiwan savings and loan institution, collapsed after flagrant violations of financial regulations, massive illegal self-dealing and unauthorized internal deposit collection. The failure sparked widespread panic and massive bank runs on local credit cooperatives and financial institutions and led to the resignations of high-ranking officials, which dented Chiang's political authority.
On 15 July 1987, Chiang finally ended martial law in Taiwan and allowed Taiwanese citizens to visit separated families in mainland China. The ban on tourism to Hong Kong and Macau was also lifted. His administration saw a gradual loosening of political controls and opponents of the Nationalists were no longer forbidden to hold meetings or publish political criticism papers. When the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) was established on 28 September 1986, President Chiang decided against dissolving the group or persecuting its leaders, but its candidates were required to officially run in elections as independents in the Tangwai movement.
Chiang Ching-kuo also increased the political representation of locally born Taiwanese people (Benshengren) to certain degree under his rule, allowing them to have various positions, which paved the way for his hand-picked successor Lee Teng-hui to come to power and further democratize Taiwan. Lee was a highly educated agronomist and economist with a PhD from Cornell University and earned a strong reputation as an effective technocratic administrator while serving as Mayor of Taipei and Governor of Taiwan Province, which distanced him from the infighting and internal politicking within the KMT and solely beholden to Chiang's political authority.
Death and legacy
Chiang Ching-kuo lies in state.
Chiang Ching-kuo died at Taipei Veterans General Hospital on 13 January 1988, aged 77, from a heart attack. He used a wheelchair during the last months of his life, and also had diabetes, alongside vision and heart problems. He was interred temporarily in Daxi Township, Taoyuan County (now Daxi District, Taoyuan City), but in a separate mausoleum in Touliao, a mile down the road from his father's burial place. The hope was to have both buried at their birthplace in Fenghua once mainland China was recovered. Composer Hwang Yau-tai wrote the Chiang Ching-kuo Memorial Song in 1988.
In January 2004, Chiang Fang-liang asked that both father and son be buried at Wuchih Mountain Military Cemetery in Hsichih, Taipei County (now New Taipei City). 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 Mei-ling had agreed in 1997 that the former leaders be first buried, but still be moved to mainland China.[citation needed]
Murray A. Rubinstein called Chiang Ching-kuo more of a civilian leader than his father, whom Rubenstein refers to as a "quasi-warlord."
Unlike his highly controversial father, Chiang Ching-kuo's reputation is overwhelmingly positive among the Taiwanese population as the people of Taiwan recognize his economic and social achievements, as well as his efforts of democratization. 38.7% of the population considers him the best president who contributed the most to Taiwan, and he was rated 84.8/100 by the Taiwanese population.
↑Bai Hua (白樺) (30 May 2016). "台灣舞蹈團體追尋蔣經國在俄足跡" (in Chinese). Voice of America Cantonese site. Archived from the original on 2 February 2021. Retrieved 27 November 2020.
↑Zhao, Li; Baihao, Li (1975). "Chiang Ching-kuo and the regional planning of Gannan under the influence of Soviet Experience (1941–1945)". Looking at the World History of Planning. 18 (1). doi:10.7480/iphs.2018.1.2722.
↑Pantsov, Aleksander (March 1994). "From Students to dissidents. The Chinese Troskyites in Soviet Russia (Part 1)". Issues & Studies. 30 (3). Taipei: Institute of International Relations: 113–114.
12Minami, Kazushi (2024). People's Diplomacy: How Americans and Chinese Transformed US-China Relations during the Cold War. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. ISBN9781501774157.
↑Jacobs, J. Bruce (2012). "Three: The Lee Teng-Hui presidency to early 1996". Democratizing Taiwan. Leiden, The Netherlands: Koninklijke Brill NV. p.72. ISBN978-90-04-22154-3. Retrieved 19 May 2016. On February 13, 1990 a group of National Assembly members proposed Lin Yang-kang for president and the following day Chiang Wego denied that his brother Chiang Ching-kuo had said, "Members of the Chiang family cannot and will not run for president." Footnote 19: [...] Chiang Ching-kuo made this statement on 25 December 1985.
Corpus of Political Speeches Free access to political speeches by Chiang Ching-kuo and other Chinese politicians, developed by Hong Kong Baptist University Library
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