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 a son of President Chiang Kai-shek, adoptive brother of President Chiang Ching-kuo, and an important figure in the Kuomintang (KMT). His nickname was Jianhao (建鎬) and sobriquet Niantang (念堂).
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[edit] Early life
Born in Tokyo when Chiang Kai-shek and the KMT was exiled to Japan by the Beiyang Government, 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] (However, oddly enough, after his admission, there began to be claims that he was falsely claiming adoption in order to bypass his brother Chiang Ching-kuo's declaration that no member of the Chiang family could or would run for president after him. It should be noted that the similarity in appearance between Chiang Kai-shek and Tai makes it difficult to tell, by appearance alone, whose biological son Chiang Wei-kuo was.) There has been no public indication that any DNA testing has been done to determine Chiang's paternity.
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 Yecheng (姚冶誠), Chiang's wife at the time, raised Wei-kuo as her own. The boy called Tai his "Dear Uncle" (親伯).
Chiang moved to the Chiang ancestral home in Xikuo Town of Fenghua in 1910.
He studied at several universities, including Soochow University and National Chiao Tung University, but did not complete his education at either school. Chiang Kai-shek had sent his eldest son, Chiang Ching-kuo to the Soviet Union to study, but it became impossible for him to send Wei-kuo there after the KMT violently ended its alliance with the Chinese Communists in the Shanghai Massacre. Consequently, he sent Wei-kuo to Nazi Germany for military training instead. During his time in Germany, he participated in the Spanish Civil War as a tank commander in the German Condor Legion after completing his training, and then served as a Lieutenant commanding a panzer tank during the 1938 Anschluss with Austria, and finally, the invasion of Poland. Afterwards, he returned to China and quickly rose 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 supposedly believed that the Shih family was using his son to gain influence within the Chiang family. Wei-kuo later established the Jinsin Elementary School (靜心小學) in Taipei to commemorate his late wife.
In 1957, Chiang married again, to Chiu Ju-hsüeh (丘如雪), also known as Chiu Ai-lun (邱愛倫), a daughter of Chinese and German parents. 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 Chiang family. Although married, the couple lived in almost complete separation, with Chiang living in Taiwan and Chiu in New York.
[edit] Political career
His positions in the Republic of China government included:
- Commanding general of the armored vehicles division (甲兵司令)
- Commanding general of the unified logistics division (聯勤總司令)
- Commandant of the Army Strategies College (陸軍指揮參謀大學)
- Chancellor of the Three-Military University (三軍大學校長)
- Senior advisor to the President (總統府資政)
- Secretary-General, Council of National Security (國安會秘書長)
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 1990 indirect presidential election. Lee ran as the KMT 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 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. 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 1930s.
[edit] 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 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 step-mother and his father's widow, Soong May-ling in November 1996.
In 1994, a hospital was supposed to be named after him (蔣緯國醫療中心) in Sanchih, Taipei County, after an unnamed politician donated to Ruentex Financial Group (潤泰企業集團), whose founder was from Sanchih. People then questioned whether Chiang was to be actually commemorated or was simply used in this the unnamed politician's hypocritical scheme of corruption.
In 1996, the Chiang estate was 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 gave it to his son. Since the estate was located in a military area and neither the father nor the son was an active soldier, the government decided that neither could own its land.
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 at Veterans General Hospital, Taipei at 82. He wished to be buried in Suzhou in mainland China, but was instead buried at Wuchih Mountain Military Cemetery.
