52 Facts About Chiang Ching-kuo

Chiang Ching-kuo was a politician of the Republic of China.

The eldest and only biological son of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, he held numerous posts in the government of the Republic of China and ended martial law in 1987.

Chiang Ching-kuo served as premier of the Republic of China between 1972 and 1978, and was president of the Republic of China from 1978 until his death in 1988.

Chiang Ching-kuo attended university there and spoke Russian fluently, but when the Chinese Nationalists violently broke with the Communists, Stalin sent him to work in a steel factory in the Ural Mountains.

Chiang Ching-kuo was first given control of the secret police, a position he retained until 1965 and in which he used arbitrary arrests and torture to ensure tight control as part of the White Terror.

Chiang Ching-kuo then became Minister of Defense, Vice-Premier and Premier.

Chiang Ching-kuo courted Taiwanese voters, and reduced the preference for those who had come from the mainland after the war.

Toward the end of his life, Chiang Ching-kuo decided to relax government controls on the media and speech, and allowed Han born in Taiwan into positions of power, including his eventual successor Lee Teng-hui.

Chiang Ching-kuo is the last president of the Republic of China to be born during the rule of the Qing dynasty.

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 Jianfeng.

Chiang Ching-kuo Kai-shek appeared to his son as an authoritarian figure, sometimes indifferent to his problems.

From 1916 until 1919 Chiang Ching-kuo attended the "Grammar School" in Wushan in Hsikou.

Chiang Ching-kuo Kai-shek 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-nationally famous father a proposal concerning the grass-roots organization of the rural population in Hsikou.

Chiang Ching-kuo planned to provide free education to allow people to read and to write at least 1000 characters.

In early 1925, Chiang Ching-kuo entered Shanghai's Pudong College, but Chiang Ching-kuo Kai-shek decided to send him on to Beijing because of warlord action and spontaneous student protests in Shanghai.

Chiang Ching-kuo asked Wu Zhihui to name him as a KMT candidate.

Chiang Ching-kuo Kai-shek was not keen, but after a discussion with Chen Guofu he finally agreed.

Chiang Ching-kuo stayed in the Soviet Union for nearly twelve years.

Soon Chiang 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 Ching-kuo even applied to be a member of the All-Union Communist Party, although his request was denied.

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.

Chiang Ching-kuo Kai-shek refused to negotiate a prisoner swap for his son in exchange for a Chinese Communist Party leader.

Chiang Ching-kuo was appointed as commissioner of Gannan Prefecture between 1939 and 1945; there he banned smoking, gambling and prostitution, studied governmental management, allowed for economic expansion and a change in social outlook.

Chiang Ching-kuo's efforts were hailed as a miracle in the political war in China, then coined as the "Gannan New Deal".

In regard to the ban on prostitution and closing of brothels, Chiang Ching-kuo implemented a policy where former prostitutes became employed in factories.

Chiang Ching-kuo 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.

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.

Chiang Ching-kuo was determined to do this because of the fears arising from the Nationalists' increasing lack of popularity during the Civil War.

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.

Chiang Ching-kuo enforced low prices on all goods to raise support from the Proletariat.

Chiang Ching-kuo was eventually freed after negotiations, and Chiang Ching-kuo resigned, ending the terror on the Shanghainese merchants.

In 1950, Chiang Ching-kuo'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.

Chiang Ching-kuo orchestrated the controversial court-martial and arrest of General Sun Li-jen in August 1955, allegedly for plotting a coup d'etat with the American CIA against his father.

From 1955 to 1960, Chiang Ching-kuo administered the construction and completion of Taiwan's highway system.

Chiang Ching-kuo's father elevated him to high office when he was appointed as the ROC Defense Minister from 1965 until 1969.

Chiang Ching-kuo was the nation's Vice Premier between 1969 and 1972, during which he survived a 1970 assassination attempt while visiting the US Afterwards he was appointed the nation's Premier between 1972 and 1978.

Chiang Ching-kuo was elected president of the ROC in the 1978 Taiwanese presidential election by the National Assembly on 20 May 1978.

Chiang Ching-kuo was reelected to another term in the 1984 Taiwanese presidential election.

Chiang Ching-kuo turned down many of the suggestions of the conservatives in the KMT regime to violently suppress the protesters.

Chiang Ching-kuo loosened the harsh anti-strike laws and union busting practice, thus giving the labor movement more opportunity to bargain for fairer wages as he lifted the martial law provisions.

Chiang Ching-kuo emphatically declared that his successor would not be from the Chiang Ching-kuo family in a Constitution Day speech on 25 December 1985:.

On 15 July 1987, Chiang Ching-kuo finally ended martial law and allowed family visits to the mainland.

Chiang Ching-kuo's 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.

Chiang Ching-kuo increased the political representation of Native Taiwanese under his rule, allowing them to have various positions, which paved the way for Lee Teng-hui to come to power and further democratize Taiwan.

Chiang Ching-kuo died at Taipei Veterans General Hospital on 13 January 1988, aged 77, from a heart attack.

Chiang Ching-kuo used a wheelchair during the last months of his life, and had diabetes, alongside vision and heart problems.

Chiang Ching-kuo was interred temporarily in Daxi Township, Taoyuan County, but in a separate mausoleum in Touliao, a mile down the road from his father's burial place.

In January 2004, Chiang Ching-kuo Fang-liang asked that both father and son be buried at Wuchih Mountain Military Cemetery in Hsichih, Taipei County.

Unlike his highly controversial father, Chiang Ching-kuo's reputation is overwhelmingly positive among the Taiwanese population as the people of Taiwan recognizes his economic and social achievements, as well as his efforts of democratization.