Chiang Wei-kuo


Chiang Wei-kuo was an adopted son of Republic of China President Chiang Kai-shek, adoptive brother of President Chiang Ching-kuo, retired Army general, and an important figure in the Kuomintang. His courtesy names were Jian'gao and Niantang.
Chiang served in the Wehrmacht before fighting in the Second Sino-Japanese War and Chinese Civil War.

Early life

As one of two sons of Chiang Kai-shek, Chiang Wei-kuo's name has a particular meaning as intended by his father. "Wei" literally means "parallel " while "kuo" means "nation"; in his brother's name, "Ching" literally means "longitude". The names are inspired by the references in Chinese classics such as the Guoyu, in which "to draw the longitudes and latitudes of the world" is used as a metaphor for a person with great abilities, especially in managing a country.
Born in Tokyo when Chiang Kai-shek and the KMT were exiled to Japan by the Beiyang Government, Chiang Wei-kuo was the biological son of Tai Chi-tao and a Japanese woman, Shigematsu Kaneko. Chiang Wei-kuo previously discredited any such claims and insisted he was a biological son of Chiang Kai-shek until his later years, when he admitted that he was adopted.
According to popular gossip, Tai believed knowledge of his Japanese tryst would destroy his marriage and his career, so he entrusted Wei-kuo to Chiang Kai-shek, after Yamada Juntarō brought the infant to Shanghai. Yao Yecheng, a concubine of Chiang Kai-shek at the time, raised Wei-kuo as his foster mother. The boy called Tai his "Dear Uncle".
Chiang moved to the Chiang ancestral home in Xikou Town of Fenghua in 1910. Wei-kuo later studied Economics at Soochow University.

In the Wehrmacht

With his sibling Chiang Ching-kuo being held as a virtual political hostage in the Soviet Union by Joseph Stalin having previously been a student studying in Moscow, Chiang sent Wei-kuo to Nazi Germany for a military education at the Kriegsschule in Munich. Here, he would learn the most up to date German military tactical doctrines, organization, and use of weaponry on the modern battlefield such as the German-inspired theory of the Maschinengewehr led squad, incorporation of Air and Armored branches into infantry attack, etc. After completing this training, Wei-kuo completed specialized Alpine warfare training, thus earning him the coveted Gebirgsjäger Edelweiss sleeve insignia. Wei-kuo was promoted to Fahnenjunker, or Officer Candidate, and received a Schützenschnur lanyard.
Wei-kuo commanded a Panzer unit during the 1938 Austrian Anschluss as a Fähnrich, or sergeant officer-candidate, leading a tank into that country; subsequently, he was promoted to Lieutenant of a Panzer unit awaiting to be sent into Poland. Before he was given the mobilization order, he was recalled to China.

Service during the Second Sino-Japanese War

Upon being recalled from Germany, Chiang Wei-kuo visited the United States as a distinguished guest of the US Army. He gave lectures detailing on German army organizations and tactics. Whilst in the northwest, Chiang Wei-kuo became acquainted with the local generals and organized an armour mechanized battalion to formally take part in the National Revolutionary Army. In addition, he spent some time in India studying tanks. There, Wei-kuo became a Major at 28, a Lieutenant Colonel at 29, a Colonel at 32 whilst in charge of a tank battalion, and later in Taiwan, a Major General. Chiang Wei-kuo was stationed at a garrison in Xi'an in 1941.

Service during the Chinese Civil War

During the Chinese Civil War, Chiang Wei-kuo employed tactics he had learned whilst studying in the German Wehrmacht. He was in charge of a M4 Sherman tank battalion during the Huaihai Campaign against Mao Zedong's troops, scoring some early victories. While it was not enough to win the campaign, he was able to pull back without significant problems. Like many troops and refugees of the Kuomintang, he retreated from Shanghai to Taiwan and moved his tank regiment to Taiwan, becoming a divisional strength regiment commander of the armoured corps stationed outside of Taipei.

Taiwan

Chiang Wei-kuo continued to hold senior positions in the Republic of China Armed Forces following the ROC retreat to Taiwan. In 1964, following the Hukou Incident and his subordinate Chao Chih-hwa's attempted coup d'état, Chiang Wei-kuo was punished and never held any real authority in the military again.
From 1964 onwards, Chiang Wei-kuo made preparations in establishing a school dedicated to teaching warfare strategy; such a school was established in 1969. He was also the Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of China from 1968 to 1969. In 1975, Chiang Wei-kuo was further promoted to the position of general, and served as president of the Armed Forces University. In 1980, Chiang served as joint logistics commander in chief; then in 1986, he retired from the army and became National Security Council Secretary-General.
In 1993, Chiang Wei-kuo was employed as the advisor of the president of the Republic of China.
After Chiang Ching-kuo's death, Chiang was a political rival of native Taiwanese Lee Teng-hui, and he strongly opposed Lee's Taiwan localization movement. Chiang ran as vice-president with Taiwan Governor Lin Yang-kang in the :zh:1990年中華民國總統選舉|1990 ROC indirect presidential election. Lee ran as the KMT presidential candidate and defeated the Lin-Chiang ticket.
In 1991, Chiang's housemaid, Li Hung-mei was found dead in Chiang's estate in the Taipei City. 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 permanently tarnished Chiang Wei-kuo's name, at a time when the Chiang family was increasingly unpopular on Taiwan and even within the Nationalist Party.

Personal life

In 1944, he married Shih Chin-i, the daughter of Shih Feng-hsiang, a textile tycoon from North West China. Shih died in 1953 during childbirth. Wei-kuo later established the Chingshin Elementary School in Taipei to commemorate his late wife.
In 1957, Chiang remarried, to Chiu Ru-hsüeh, also known as Chiu Ai-lun, a daughter of Chinese and German parents. Chiu gave birth to Chiang's only son, Chiang Hsiao-kang, in 1962. Chiang Hsiao-kang is the youngest of the Hsiao generation of the Chiang family.
Chiang Wei-kuo was also quite active in civil society, where he was the founder of the Chinese Institute of Strategy and Sino-German Cultural and Economic Association, as well as the Chairman of the Republic of China Football Association. He was the first chairman of Chingshin Primary School and served as the president of the United States Students Association of China.

Final years

In the early 1990s, Chiang Wei-kuo established an unofficial Spirit Relocation Committee to petition the Communist government to allow his adopted father Chiang Kai-shek and brother Chiang Ching-kuo to be interred in mainland China. His request was largely ignored by both the Nationalist and Communist governments, and he was persuaded to abandon the petition by his father's widow Soong Mei-ling in November 1996.
In 1994, a hospital was supposed to be named after him in Sanchih, Taipei County, after an unnamed politician donated to Ruentex Financial Group, whose founder was from Sanchih. Politicians questioned the motivation.
In 1996, the Chiang home on military land was finally demolished by the order of the Taipei municipal government under Chen Shui-bian. The estate had been constructed in 1971. After Chiang moved elsewhere in 1981, he deeded it to his son. The justification was that his son was not in military service and thus was not entitled to live there.
Chiang Wei-kuo died at the age of 80, on 22 September 1997, from kidney failure. He had been experiencing falling blood pressure complicated by diabetes after a 10-month stay at Veteran's General Hospital, Taipei. He had wished to be buried in Suzhou on the mainland but was instead buried at Wuchih Mountain Military Cemetery.

Political and military career

His positions in the Republic of China government included:

Footnotes