31 Facts About Anna Chennault

Anna Chennault was married to American World War II aviator General Claire Chennault.

Anna Chennault attended Lingnan University, which was normally based in Hong Kong, but had relocated to "free China".

Anna Chennault was a war correspondent for the Central News Agency from 1944 to 1948 and wrote for the Hsin Ming Daily News in Shanghai from 1945 to 1949.

Chen Xiangmei and Anna Chennault, who was 30 years her senior, married in December 1947.

In 1946, Anna Chennault had divorced his first wife, the former Nell Thompson, whom he had wed in 1911 in Winnsboro, Louisiana, and the mother of his eight children, the youngest of whom, Rosemary Anna Chennault Simrall, died in August 2013.

The Chennaults divided their time between Taipei and Monroe, Louisiana, where Anna Chennault became the first non-white person to settle into a previously all-white neighborhood; General Chennault's status as a war hero silenced objections to his Chinese wife.

General Anna Chennault was a Sinophile and a strong admirer of Chiang Kai-shek, and in the 1940s, he joined the China Lobby, an informal and diverse group of journalists, businessmen, politicians, intellectuals and Protestant churchmen who believed that it was in the best interest of the United States to support the Kuomintang regime.

Anna Chennault ultimately followed her husband into the China Lobby, and by 1955, she was regularly delivering speeches calling for American support of Chiang and Taiwan as well as the eventual return of the Kuomintang to the Chinese mainland.

Fluent in English, a good speaker, and as a Chinese-American woman who was presumably in a position to know what was best for China, Anna Chennault became a popular figure for the China Lobby through her speeches.

In 1894, the state of Louisiana had passed a law forbidding marriage between whites and non-whites, and General Chennault was advised by his lawyer that his marriage to Anna was "null and void" in Louisiana and that the state would therefore not respect his will leaving his assets to his wife and daughters.

In 1960, Anna Chennault gained her first political experience when she campaigned for Richard Nixon, being used as the Republicans' principal campaigner among Chinese-Americans.

Anna Chennault was an occasional correspondent for the Central News Agency and the US correspondent for the Hsin Shen Daily News.

Anna Chennault was a broadcaster for the Voice of America from 1963 to 1966.

Anna Chennault was very active as the president of a group named Chinese Refugee Relief, which sought to care for the destitute refugees in Hong Kong.

In 1962, Anna Chennault testified before the Senate in an appeal for the US government to fund the CRR.

Anna Chennault was useful to the Goldwater campaign not only for her work in attempting to persuade Chinese-Americans to vote Republican, but importantly to attract the support of nonwhite voters who opposed Goldwater's vote against the Civil Rights Act.

On July 12,1968, at the Hotel Pierre in New York, Anna Chennault introduced South Vietnamese ambassador Bui Diem to Nixon.

The CIA had bugged Thieu's office, and as a result knew that Anna Chennault's messages were indeed encouraging Thieu to make unreasonable demands at the Paris peace talks.

Anna Chennault offers that there was at least a moment of hope for peace in Vietnam in 1968, and that Nixon's encouragement, via Chennault, of Thieu's obstinance had ended that hope for purely partisan reasons, making it the "most reprehensible" of all of Nixon's actions.

In 1970, Chennault received an appointments from President Nixon to his advisory committee for the John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and to the US National Committee for UNESCO.

Anna Chennault was president of Chinese Refugee Relief from 1962 to 1970 and served as president of the General Claire Chennault Foundation after 1960.

Anna Chennault served as a Republican national committeewoman representing the District of Columbia and led the National Republican Asian Assembly.

Anna Chennault encouraged many Chinese Americans to become active in politics, and in 1973, she helped found the Organization of Chinese Americans.

In October 1971, Anna Chennault helped lead an unsuccessful effort to stop the United Nations General Assembly from expelling the Republic of China and seating the People's Republic of China.

In January 1981, Anna Chennault visited Beijing to meet Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping, ostensibly as a private citizen, but in fact as an unofficial diplomat representing incoming Republican president Ronald Reagan, who was due to be sworn in as president on January 20.

Anna Chennault conveyed this message to Deng and told him that Reagan's denunciations of the evils of communism applied only to Soviet communism, not to Chinese communism.

In 1984, Anna Chennault led a trade mission to China that was intended to facilitate US-China trade following Deng's reforms in the 1980s that opened up China's economy.

Anna Chennault was attacked in the Taiwanese media in 1989 for her statement that she was in favor of "separating economics from politics", which led the pro-Kuomintang newspaper China Times to condemn her in an editorial for letting "personal financial considerations" influence her political views.

At the request of the American government, Anna Chennault passed a message to Deng saying that Washington still wanted a good relationship with Beijing, that the sanctions imposed on China were only to appease American public opinion and that the sanctions would be ended in the near future.

Anna Chennault died on March 30,2018, in Washington, DC at the age of 94.

Anna Chennault is buried next to her husband at Arlington National Cemetery.