Stanford University’s Hoover Institution on Tuesday gave a preview into the personal diaries of former president Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國), which are to be open to public viewing starting in February.
The diaries show Chiang focused on Taiwan’s political and economic development in the late 1960s and early 1970s, in sharp contrast to his father, Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石), said Lin Hsiao-ting (林孝庭), curator of East Asia collections at Hoover Institution Library and Archives.
Based on the elder Chiang’s diaries, “his heart was always with mainland China, and he was mostly interested in retaking the mainland,” Lin said.
Photo: CNA
The Chiang Ching-kuo diaries cover May 1937 to December 1979, and offer insight into his life from the time he returned to China from Soviet Russia and his move to Taiwan.
The diaries of the year 1948 were lost, while the entries from 1937 to 1940, and from 1945 to 1949 are transcripts, and the rest are handwritten originals, Lin said.
Chiang Ching-kuo, who served as president from 1978 until his death in 1988, stopped keeping a diary in 1979 for reasons that are not known, Lin said, adding that it might be due to health problems, because he underwent prostate surgery that year.
During the preview, the institution showed a selection of the copied and original Chiang Ching-kuo diaries, focusing mostly on his participation in major decisionmaking processes in Taiwan after 1949.
Among the most notable entries was his reaction after he was told in the early hours of Dec. 16, 1978, by then-US ambassador Leonard Unger that Washington was severing ties with Taipei.
It was a hard blow for Chiang Ching-kuo, who wrote: “[I am] in agony. While shouldering heavy responsibilities, [I] should handle it rationally and calm people down first.”
He also wrote that he thought Taiwan’s “strength” and “morality and sense of justice” would serve as the core of the nation’s diplomacy thereafter.
According to entries written on Jan. 18, 1970, he said the best policy for Taiwan was developing the economy, and he wanted to work for the well-being of the people.
The diaries are to be available for public viewing in their entirety at the Hoover Archives’ Reading Room, which is to open in February. They will also complement the collection of diaries from 1915 to 1972 left by his father, who led China from 1928 to 1949 and then ruled Taiwan after the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lost the Chinese Civil War to the communists in 1949 until his death in 1975.
The elder Chiang’s diaries were made public by the institution in 2006 and have since been the most requested collection in the institution’s possession.
The 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.
Legal disputes over ownership of the diaries have been ongoing since, but all parties involved last summer agreed to make them public to facilitate research.
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
The Central Weather Administration has issued a heat alert for southeastern Taiwan, warning of temperatures as high as 36°C today, while alerting some coastal areas of strong winds later in the day. Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門) and Pingtung County’s Neipu Township (內埔) are under an orange heat alert, which warns of temperatures as high as 36°C for three consecutive days, the CWA said, citing southwest winds. The heat would also extend to Tainan’s Nansi (楠西) and Yujing (玉井) districts, as well as Pingtung’s Gaoshu (高樹), Yanpu (鹽埔) and Majia (瑪家) townships, it said, forecasting highs of up to 36°C in those areas
RSS