[Deathwatch] Madame Chiang Kai-shek,one time driving force in Taiwan's Nationalist gov't, 106

[Deathwatch Central <cdw@slick.org>]

Madame Chiang Kai-shek dies
Friday, October 24, 2003 Posted: 4:11 AM EDT (0811 GMT)

http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/asiapcf/east/10/24/obit.madame.chiang.ap/
index.html

TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) -- Madame Chiang Kai-shek, the widow of the
Nationalist Chinese president who used her charm and fluent English to
lobby Washington and become a driving force in Taiwan's Nationalist
government, died Thursday in New York. She was 106. 

She died in the evening at her apartment in Manhattan, according to
Andrew Hsia, director-general of the Taipei Economic and Cultural
Office in New York. Her niece, her niece's husband and a great-grandson
were with her at the time, he said. 

"I was told by family members that she died very peacefully in her
sleep," Hsia said. 

"Her niece, her niece's husband and her great-grandson were with her at
the time of her passing." 

The cause of death was not immediately available, according to Taiwan's
Foreign Ministry spokesman Richard Shih. 

Madame Chiang had been treated for cancer and other ailments. She lived
in semi-seclusion after her husband's death in 1975, spending most of
the time in her Manhattan apartment or at her family's 36-acre estate
in Lattingtown, an exclusive Long Island suburb 35 miles east of New
York City. 

Madame Chiang and Chiang Kai-shek were one of the world's most famous
couples. They married in 1927, a year after Mr. Chiang, also known as
the Generalismo, took over China's ruling Nationalist Party. 

The Nationalists, or Kuomintang, overthrew China's last dynasty, the
Qing, but their pledges to bring democracy to China and modernize the
economy were frustrated by Japan's invasion during World War II and
corruption within the government. After the war, the Nationalists lost
a bloody civil war to Mao Tse-tung's Communist Party and retreated to
Taiwan in 1949. 

Though born in the East, Madame Chiang was thoroughly Western in
thought and philosophy. Brought up in a Methodist family, she studied
in America from the age of 10 to 19 and graduated with honors from
Wellesley College in Massachusetts in 1917. 

"The only thing Oriental about me is my face," she once said. 

Her supporters said she was a powerful force for international
friendship, understanding and good. But her detractors called her an
arrogant dragon lady and propagandist for her husband's corrupt and
incompetent government. 

She was born Soong Mei-ling in 1898, on the southern Chinese island of
Hainan. Her family's background could stand as a brief history of
modern China as seen through revolution, efforts to unify and modernize
and the split between the communist People's Republic of China and the
Nationalists Republic of China. 

Her father, Charles Soong, was educated as a Christian missionary at
Vanderbilt University in Tennessee. Soong worked closely with Dr. Sun
Yat-sen, leader of the Nationalist revolution that overthrew China's
last emperor in 1911. 

Education was important to Soong, and Madame Chiang and her two sisters
were among the first Chinese women educated in the West at a time when
foreign education was considered important only for sons. 

A scholar at heart, Madame Chiang once said her idea of happiness would
be a life of uninterrupted reading, studying and writing. 

Madame Chiang met her husband, a disciple of Sun Yat-sen, around 1920
and married him December 1, 1927. She later converted him to Methodism,
but their marriage was often stormy, in part because of Chiang's
infidelities. 

Madame Chiang's sisters also married prominent Chinese figures and all
three of her brothers held high posts in the Nationalist regime. 

Ching-ling, the second of six Soong children, married Sun Yat-sen, the
father of modern China. She broke with the family's Nationalist
ideology and sided with the Communists after her husband's death in
1925. 

She eventually was appointed to a high-ranking position in the
Communist government in Beijing, one roughly equivalent to vice
president. Madame Sun died in 1981. 

Madame Chiang was a working wife, taking on tasks ranging from
interpreter and social worker to head of China's air force during World
War II, an ironic twist of fate since she suffered greatly from air
sickness. 

She also was one of her husband's most prominent lobbyists in
Washington. The Generalismo could not speak English and disliked
dealing with foreigners, so his wife became his mouthpiece to the
outside world, creating an image of an attractive, young couple trying
to steer China out of war. 

As the Generalismo's health deteriorated, control of the Nationalist
government eventually passed in 1972 to one of his two sons by a
previous marriage, Chiang Ching-kuo. Madame Chiang and her husband had
no children of their own, and she had long been on bad terms with
Chiang Ching-kuo. 

After her husband's death in 1975, Madame Chiang moved to the United
States, staying in the stucco Long Island mansion where a large
portrait of her late husband decked in full military regalia hung in
the living room. She moved out of the house in 1998 and spent most of
her time in her Manhattan apartment. 

When President Jimmy Carter announced in 1978 that the United States
was breaking off diplomatic relations with Taiwan and establishing
formal ties with the People's Republic of China, Madame Chiang remained
in seclusion and did not comment. 

The Nationalists eventually gave up the goal of "retaking the
mainland," and the party's ranks began to fill with native Taiwanese as
the influence of the mainlanders who retreated with Chiang Kai-shek
faded away. 

In March 2000, the party lost its five-decade control of Taiwan's
presidency. Madame Chiang endorsed Nationalist candidate Lien Chan, but
few voters paid serious attention to her and Lien was battered at the
polls -- an example of her fading influence.