A US court has awarded Academia Historica ownership of the diaries of former presidents Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) and Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國), ending a decade-long legal battle and setting up their return to Taiwan later this year.
The ruling on the documents, which are currently housed at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, was made on Tuesday last week by the US District Court in San Jose, California, the San Francisco Standard reported on Tuesday.
The dispute dates back to 2005, when Chiang Ching-kuo’s daughter-in-law Chiang Fang Chih-yi (蔣方智怡) signed an agreement for the Hoover Institution to curate the diaries for 50 years.
Photo: CNA
After receiving conflicting claims of ownership to the diaries, Stanford University filed an interpleader action in the US in 2013 to determine who had legal rights to the documents.
Later that year, when several members of the Chiang family transferred ownership of the diaries to Academia Historica, Taiwan’s state archives, the institution was added to the university’s inquiry.
In 2015, the US court ruled that Academia Historica should first launch a legal inquiry into the diaries’ ownership in Taiwan, where most of the litigants are located.
Following a multiyear trial, the Taipei District Court in 2020 ruled that the diaries dating from the Chiangs’ time in office were the property of the state, while all other files belonged to the Chiang family.
That decision was upheld on appeal last year by the High Court and was recognized by the US court in its ruling last week.
While the rulings could have led to the documents being split up, several members of the Chiang family who had claimed the diaries agreed after the trials in Taiwan to donate them to the archives. Chiang Ching-kuo’s granddaughter Chiang Yo-mei (蔣友梅) was the last family member to reach an agreement in May.
Academia Historica President Chen Yi-shen (陳儀深) told the Central News Agency that the archives had recently sent two experts to take an inventory of the documents, which include the personal diaries of Chiang Kai-shek from 1917 to 1972 and Chiang Ching-kuo from 1937 to 1979, as well as copies of their speeches and diplomatic correspondence.
Once the inventory is completed, the collection will most likely be shipped to Taiwan before the end of the year, Chen said.
In terms of the collection’s content, Chen said he was planning to publish at the end of October an “especially valuable” portion of Chiang Kai-shek’s diary, covering his first term as president from 1948 to 1954.
While Chiang Ching-kuo’s diaries only run through the end of 1979, Chen said the portions from 1977 to 1979 — which include the period when the US switched diplomatic recognition to Beijing — are already available in Academia Historica’s online database.
Asked if the diaries would be displayed in public, Chen was noncommittal, saying his first priority was to make them available to academics, and, in the longer term, have them uploaded into the archives’ presidential database.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) on Wednesday said that a new chip manufacturing technology called “A16” is to enter production in the second half of 2026, setting up a showdown with longtime rival Intel over who can make the fastest chips. TSMC, the world’s biggest contract manufacturer of advanced computing chips and a key supplier to Nvidia and Apple, announced the news at a conference in Santa Clara, California, where TSMC executives said that makers of artificial intelligence (AI) chips will likely be the first adopters of the technology rather than a smartphone maker. Analysts said that the technologies announced on
A total of 41 US military personnel were stationed in Taiwan as of December last year, a US congressional report said on Friday last week ahead of Tuesday’s passage of an aid package that included US$8 billion for Taiwan. The Congressional Research Service in a report titled Taiwan Defense Issues for Congress said that according to the US Department of Defense’s Defense Manpower Data Center, 41 US military personnel were assigned for duty in Taiwan. Although the normalization of relations with the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1979 included a vow to withdraw a military presence from Taiwan, “observers have indicated
NO RECIPROCITY: Taipei has called for cross-strait group travel to resume fully, but Beijing is only allowing people from its Fujian Province to travel to Matsu, the MAC said The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday criticized an announcement by the Chinese Ministry of Culture and Tourism that it would lift a travel ban to Taiwan only for residents of China’s Fujian Province, saying that the policy does not meet the principles of reciprocity and openness. Chinese Deputy Minister of Culture and Tourism Rao Quan (饒權) yesterday morning told a delegation of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers in a meeting in Beijing that the ministry would first allow Fujian residents to visit Lienchiang County (Matsu), adding that they would be able to travel to Taiwan proper directly once express ferry
CALL FOR DIALOGUE: The president-elect urged Beijing to engage with Taiwan’s ‘democratically elected and legitimate government’ to promote peace President-elect William Lai (賴清德) yesterday named the new heads of security and cross-strait affairs to take office after his inauguration on May 20, including National Security Council (NSC) Secretary-General Wellington Koo (顧立雄) to be the new defense minister and former Taichung mayor Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) as minister of foreign affairs. While Koo is to head the Ministry of National Defense and presidential aide Lin is to take over as minister of foreign affairs, Tsai Ming-yen (蔡明彥) would be retained as the nation’s intelligence chief, continuing to serve as director-general of the National Security Bureau, Lai told a news conference in Taipei. Koo,