Chiang Soong Mei-ling

Chinese-born activist and government official

• Born: March 5, 1897
• Birthplace: Shanghai, China
• Died: October 23, 2003
• Place of death: New York, New York

Chiang Soong Mei-ling is best known as the wife of Chinese nationalist General Chiang Kai-shek. She was a strong advocate for Chinese interests in the United States during World War II and immediately thereafter. Chiang was very successful in convincing the United States government to support China’s war effort against the Japanese and later against the Communists.

Birth name: Soong Mei-ling

Areas of achievement: Government and politics, diplomacy, activism

Early Life

Soong Mei-ling was born on March 5, 1897, in Shanghai, China, the fourth of six children and the youngest of three daughters. Her father was a Methodist minister and businessman who made a considerable fortune printing Bibles. Soong was sent to the United States to be educated at Wesleyan and Wellesley Colleges, where she received a degree in English literature. Soong was well versed in Western ways prior to her return to China. Intelligent and outspoken, she was not averse to using her charm to accomplish her goals.

Upon returning to China in 1917, Soong became active in a number of social and religious causes. In 1918, she volunteered at the Shanghai Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA) and raised funds from Shanghai businesses. Soong became involved with women’s issues and believed strongly that women should play an active role in modernizing China. In 1919, Soong was elected vice president of the American College Women’s Club of Shanghai. She became the president of the American College Club and a board member of the YWCA. She launched a campaign against child labor and was appointed to the Shanghai Municipal Council’s Child Labor Commission.

Life’s Work

Soong’s father was a close associate and friend of political leader Sun Yat-sen, the revolutionary who helped found the Chinese republic in 1912. Soong had become more aware of the chaotic politics of China and the weakness of the country’s central government. She subscribed to the policy formulated by Sun Yat-sen for revitalizing China. In 1922, Soong met Chiang Kai-shek, a close associate of Sun Yat-sen and a military leader of the Kuomintang, the Chinese Nationalist army. On December 1, 1927, they married. The marriage served both well, as he gained the prestige and finances of the Soong family while she gained access to the national political arena. She became a member of the Legislative Yuan and the head of the Chinese Aeronautical Affairs Committee, in effect, the commander of the air force. In 1945, she became a member of the Central Executive Committee of the Kuomintang.

As Chiang Kai-shek’s principal adviser and translator, Chiang Soong Mei-ling became a symbol of a modernizing China. As a Christian Chinese woman educated in the West, she was very popular in the United States. She used this popularity to trade for political influence and financial and military support for the Kuomintang; Chiang acted as a de facto Chinese ambassador to the Western powers. In 1937, Time magazine claimed that she was the most powerful woman in the world.

Chiang worked tirelessly to portray the Chinese Nationalist government as the bulwark of resistance against the Japanese and later the Chinese Communists. She was fiercely loyal to her husband, although she was well aware of his limitations. She protected him by acting as his spokesperson at formal gatherings and state dinners and insisted that China be recognized as a major power. In 1943, Chiang toured the United States making numerous speeches. She was the first Chinese person and the second woman to address a joint session of the US Congress. Her efforts to generate financial and military support were hugely successful, although much of the aid was wasted as a result of corruption within the Chinese government.

With the defeat of the Kuomintang by the Communists and the Kuomintang’s retreat to Taiwan, Chiang’s influence gradually waned. However, she continued to lead lobbying efforts in the United States for continued support of her husband’s government. Chiang was active in gaining the support of the so-called China lobby within the Republican Party. Upon the death of her husband in 1975, Chiang moved permanently to New York, where she made few public appearances until her death in 2003.

Significance

For many decades, Chiang Soong Mei-ling was the public face of China. She was a powerful woman. A crusader for the role of women, she established hospitals for wounded veterans and fought against child labor. Chiang was the most influential voice arguing for the continued support of China’s Nationalist government in Taiwan. Despite the corruption of the Kuomintang, she remained loyal to the regime and its progressive Western-style reform initiatives. Later in life, Chiang blamed the United States for the loss of China to the Communists, a position readily supported by the China Lobby. She supported US senator Joseph McCarthy’s anticommunist purges of the 1950s. Chiang would remain the face and voice of Nationalist China until her death in 2003.

Bibliography

Leong, Karen J. The China Mystique: Pearl S. Buck, Anna May Wong, Mayling Soong, and the Transformation of American Orientalism. Los Angeles: U of California P, 2005. Print. Discusses the image and role of Chiang Soong Mei-ling with regard to diplomacy and the West during the 1930s and 1940s.

Li, Laura Tyson. Madame Chiang Kai-shek: China’s Eternal First Lady. New York: Atlantic Monthly, 2006. Print. A portrait of Chiang detailing much of the corruption and ruthlessness that was a part of her husband’s rule. Discusses Chiang’s unwavering loyalty to her husband and family.

Pakula, Hanna. The Last Empress: Madame Chiang Kai-shek and the Birth of Modern China. New York: Simon, 2009. Print. A detailed biography of Chiang from her birth in 1897 to her death in 2003. Includes many personal details about her and her family.