Copies of former president Chiang Ching-kuo’s (蔣經國) diaries are to be made public at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution in February, after a long-running dispute prevented them from being publicly displayed.
The announcement was jointly made by the institution, Academia Historica, Chiang’s granddaughter Chiang Yo-mei (蔣友梅) and the family of Chiang Hsiao-yen (蔣孝嚴), the former president’s third son.
The diaries would be made available at the Hoover Archives Reading Room, which is being renovated and is to reopen early next year, the institution said.
However, some of the copies would be made public on Dec. 17 at a conference marking the unveiling of the diaries, said Lin Hsiao-ting (林孝庭), curator of the institution’s Modern China Collection.
The diaries span the period from 1937, when Chiang Ching-kuo returned to China after studying and working in the Soviet Union, to 1979, one year after he became president and when the US severed diplomatic ties with Taiwan.
The only year missing in the collection is 1948, as the diaries from that year have been lost, Lin said.
As the diaries offer a rare glimpse into the inner world of Chiang Ching-kuo and shine a light on an important period in modern Chinese history, they are considered an invaluable resource to academics and the public alike, Lin said.
They would also complement the collection of diaries covering the years 1915 to 1972 left behind by Chiang Ching-kuo’s father, Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石), which were made public by the institution in 2006, and have since been the most requested collection in its possession, Lin said.
The Hoover Institution has held the diaries of the Chiangs since 2005, when Chiang Ching-kuo’s daughter-in-law Chiang Fang Chih-yi (蔣方智怡) signed a 50-year agreement for the documents to be curated by the institution.
Disputes over the ownership of the diaries have been ongoing since then and have derailed a plan to make Chiang Ching-kuo’s diaries public in 2010.
Though court proceedings to determine the diaries’ ownership are still under way, all parties involved in the matter last summer agreed to make them public to facilitate academic research.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater