Chiang Wei-kuo
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Chiang Wei-kuo (蔣緯國, 蒋纬国; Hanyu Pinyin: Jiang Weiguo), or Wego Chiang (October 6, 1916 - September 22, 1997) was the son of President Chiang Kai-shek, brother of President Chiang Ching-kuo, and an important figure in the Nationalist Party (The Kuomintang or Guomingdang). His nickname was Jianhao (建鎬) and sobriquet Niantang (念堂).
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Early Life
Chiang Wei-kuo has long been speculated to be an illegitimate child of Tai Chi-tao and a Japanese woman, Shigematsu Kaneko (重松金子). Chiang Wei-kuo discredited any such claims and insisted he was a legitimate son of Chiang Kai-shek until shortly before his death, when he admitted that he was adopted. [1] (http://www.chinainformed.com/Archive/x9709/970923.html)
According to popular speculation, Tai believed knowledge of his extramarital affairs would destroy his marriage and his career, so he entrusted Wei-kuo to Chiang Kai-shek, after the Japanese Yamada Juntaro (山田純太郎) brought the infant to Shanghai. Yao Zhicheng (姚冶誠), Chiang's wife at the time, raised Wei-kuo as her own. The boy called Tai his "Dear Uncle" (親伯).
He studied at several universities, including Dongwu University and Jiaotong University, but did not complete his education at either school. Chiang Kai-shek had sent his first son, Chiang Ching-kuo to the Soviet Union to study, but it became impossible for him to send Wei-kuo there after the Kuomintang violently ended its alliance with the Chinese Communists in the Shanghai Massacre. Consequently, he sent Wei-kuo to Anti-communist Nazi Germany for military training instead. During his time with in Germany, he served as a Leutenant commanding a panzer tank during the 1938 Anschluss with Austria. Afterwards, he returned to China and was quickly raised through the ranks through his father's connections. He became a major at 28, a lieutenant colonel at 29, a colonel at 32, and major general at 34.
In 1944, he married Shih Chin-i (石靜宜), the daughter of Shih Feng-hsiang (石鳳翔), a textile factory owner. Shih died in 1953. She was allegedly assassinated by the order of then President Chiang Kai-shek, who allegedly believed that the Shih family was using his son to gain influence within the Chiang family. Wei-kuo latter established the Jinsin Elementary School (靜心小學) in Taipei to commemorate his late wife Shih Chin-i.
In 1957, Chiang maried again, to Chiu Ju-hsüeh, also known as Chiu Ai-lun, (丘如雪), the daughter of Chinese and German parents (邱愛倫). Chiu gave birth to Chiang's only son, Chiang Hsiao-kang, (蔣孝剛) in 1962. Chiang Hsiao-kang is the youngest of the Hsiao generation of the Chiangs. Although married, the couple lived in almost complete seperation, with Chiang lived in Taiwan and Chiu in New York.
Political Career
After the Nationalist retreat to Taiwan, Chiang Wei-kuo moved to the town of Fenghua. He held several important positions in the Nationalist Republic of China on Taiwan government, including
- (甲兵司令)
- (聯勤總司令)
- (陸軍指揮參謀大學)
- Chancellor of the Three-Military University and (三軍大學校長)
- (國安會秘書長)
- (總統府資政)
- (國民黨中央評議委員會議主席團主席)
- Secretary-General, Council of National Security
Chiang was a political rival of Taiwanese born Nationalist Lee Teng-hui, and he strongly opposed Lee's Taiwan localization movement. Chiang ran as vice-president with candidate Lin Yang-kang in the 1990 1990 indirect presidential election. Lee ran as the presidential candidate and defeated the Lin-Chiang ticket.
In 1991, Chiang's housemaid, Li Hung-mei (李洪美, or 李嫂) was found dead in Chiang's estate in the capital city, Taipei. The following police investigation discovered a stockpile of sixty guns on Chiang's estate. Chiang himself admitted the possibility of a link between the guns and his maid's death, which was later ruled a suicide by the police. The incident permenantly tarnished Chiang Wei-kuo's name, at a time when the Chiang family was increasingly unpopular on Taiwan and even within the Nationalist Party. A new generation of Nationalists no longer had the will or desire to cover the decades of corruption and scandal that the Chiang family had surrounded itself with ever since Chiang Kai-shek rose to power in the 1930's.
Final Years
In the early 1990s, Chiang Wei-kuo established an 11-person unofficial Spirit Relocation Committee (奉安移靈小組) to petition the Communist government to allow his father and brother to be exhumed and re-interred on the Mainland China. His request was largely ignored by both the Nationalist and Communist government, and he was persuaded to abandon the petition by his step-mother and his father's widow, Soong May-ling in 1996 November.
Chiang Wei kuo died at the age of 82 from kidney failure. He had been experienced falling blood pressure complicated by diabetes after a 10-month illness in Veterans General Hospital, Taipei at 82. He wished to be buried in Suzhou on the Mainland, but was buried at the military section of Wujhi Mountain Public Cemetery.
External links
- A quote regarding relocation of the coffins. (http://wikiquote.org/wiki/Chiang_Wei-kuo)