Chiang Ching-kuo

Studies in the Soviet Union

Chiang Ching-kuo, courtesy name Jianfeng, was born in 1910 in Fenghua, Zhejiang, the eldest son of Chiang Kai-shek. In October 1925, during the first period of cooperation between the Kuomintang and the Communists, he went to study at Sun Yat-sen University in Moscow, where his contemporaries included Deng Xiaoping and Liao Chengzhi; he later attended a Red Army military-political school and joined the Communist Youth League and the Communist Party. After the April 12 Incident of 1927 he publicly denounced his father's anti-Communist actions. He was then unable to return home for many years; he worked at a heavy-machinery plant in the Ural region, where in 1935 he married a factory worker, Faina Vakhreva, who later took the name Chiang Fang-liang. In 1937 he returned to China with his wife and children.

Southern Jiangxi and Shanghai

After his return Chiang served in Jiangxi, joining the provincial security apparatus in January 1938 and, from June 1939, administrative inspector and security commander of the Fourth District, concurrently magistrate of Gan County. In April 1945 he became director of the political department of the Youth Army's training command; in August that year he travelled to the Soviet Union with the delegation negotiating the Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship and Alliance, and was appointed the Foreign Ministry's special commissioner for the Northeast. In August 1948 the Nationalist government issued the gold yuan and froze prices, and the Executive Yuan set up an Economic Control Commission; in the Shanghai district Yu Hongjun was supervisor and Chiang his assistant, though Chiang was in practice in charge. According to the historian Yang Tianshi, he vowed to "fight the tigers", detaining figures such as Rong Hongyuan, general manager of the Shenxin textile company, and Du Weiping, son of Du Yuesheng; but after he sealed the warehouses of Kong Lingkan's Yangtze Company in October, Soong Mei-ling hurried to Shanghai, the case went no further, and Chiang soon resigned and left the city. In 1949 he was assigned to arrange the shipment of the Central Bank's gold and foreign-exchange reserves to Taiwan.

Military, Political and Security Affairs on Taiwan

In March 1950 Chiang became director of the General Political Department of the Ministry of National Defense, reorganising the armed forces' political-warfare system and founding the School for Political Warfare Officers, while concurrently heading an information office under the Office of the President that supervised the intelligence and security services. In October 1952 he led the founding of the China Youth Corps and became its director; in 1956 he became chairman of the Veterans Affairs Commission, personally directing construction of the East–West Cross-Island Highway; and during the 1958 bombardment of Kinmen he visited the island. He was promoted to Minister of National Defense in January 1965 and became Vice Premier in 1969. Reviewing Jay Taylor's biography of Chiang, the American scholar Andrew Nathan wrote that the book examines his role as his father's "brutal security capo on Taiwan", and noted that the two Chiangs carried out "a white terror against activists and democrats on Taiwan".

Premier and President

Appointed Premier in June 1972, Chiang launched the Ten Major Construction Projects and the Twelve New Development Projects, promoted more young Taiwan-born officials, and increased the number of supplementary seats in the national representative bodies. After Chiang Kai-shek's death in 1975 he became chairman of the Kuomintang. He was sworn in as the sixth-term president on 20 May 1978 and re-elected in 1984. When the United States announced on 16 December 1978 that it would establish relations with the People's Republic of China, Chiang immediately protested, placed the military on higher alert, ordered financial stabilisation measures and suspended elections then under way for national public office; on 15 February 1979 he set up the Coordination Council for North American Affairs to conduct relations with the United States on a new footing. On 10 December 1979 opposition (dangwai) activists centred on Formosa magazine held a march in Kaohsiung that ended in clashes with security forces, after which the Taiwan Garrison Command arrested many opposition figures and tried them in military courts. Towards Beijing's calls for talks from 1979 onward he maintained a stance of "no contact, no negotiation, no compromise".

Late Reforms and Death

On 24 July 1982 Liao Chengzhi — Chiang's schoolmate in Moscow and deputy head of the CCP Central Committee's leading group on Taiwan affairs — issued an open letter to him, published the next day in the People's Daily, addressing him as "my younger brother Ching-kuo" and calling for a "third cooperation" between the two parties and peaceful reunification. On 25 December 1985 Chiang stated that his successor would be chosen according to the Constitution and that members of his family "cannot and will not" run. On 28 September 1986 opposition activists announced the formation of the Democratic Progressive Party at the Grand Hotel in Taipei; on 7 October Chiang told Katharine Graham, publisher of The Washington Post, that martial law would be lifted and new parties permitted once national security legislation was in place. Martial law, in force since May 1949, was lifted from midnight on 15 July 1987, followed by the opening of registration for new newspapers; from November that year Taiwan residents were permitted to visit relatives on the mainland. Chiang died in Taipei on 13 January 1988 and was succeeded as president by Vice President Lee Teng-hui. Nathan described his emergence late in life as a patron of democracy as "paradoxical".