In April 2004, the Hoover Institution opened nineteen boxes of the restricted personal papers of T. V. Soong, a leading official in the nationalist government from the late 1920s to 1949, along with two thousand documents donated by the Soong family. At the same time the Hoover Institution and the Kuomintang, or Nationalist Party, agreed to preserve those records and make them available for researchers. In late 2005 Chiang Kai-shek’s family placed his diaries and those of Chiang Ching-kuo in the Hoover Archives.

Introduction:

In World War II, the United States joined with a non-Western country, China, to defeat an Asian power: the empire of Japan. The Sino-American alliance was a troubled one, caused, in part, by the bitter relationship between the American representative, General Joseph W. Stilwell, and the leader of Nationalist China, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek.

At first, Washington’s leaders welcomed this alliance and provided China with loans, economic and military materials, and personnel assistance to help China become a stronger and more effective ally against the Japanese imperial army. But China’s image as a great power began to fade in Washington, particularly after the Cairo Summit in November 1943. Disillusioned with Nationalist China’s limited ability to engage Japanese troops, the U.S. government criticized Chiang Kai-shek, his administration, and his armed forces for ineptitude and corruption. In fact, historians have concluded that corrupt and inept Chinese leadership brought about the Nationalist government’s eventual defeat, not the limited economic and military aid that the United States had given China or the postwar Soviet and North Korean aid to the Chinese Communist forces.

The U.S. government tried to pressure Chiang Kai-shek to use Communist troops in the fight against Japan. In the Yalta conference of February 1945, the leading powers, without the presence of Chinese delegates, further agreed that Soviet Russia would secure its special interests in Manchuria and Outer Mongolia after the war. In later Sino-Soviet negotiations in Moscow, Washington declined China’s request for support to counter Moscow’s tough bargaining. Thus, the Sino-American relationship deteriorated during China’s civil war.

Without Washington’s support, Chiang Kai-shek and his Nationalist government finally collapsed and retreated to Taiwan in 1949, only four years after the Allied victory over Japan.

Some Western scholars have tried to explain “who lost China?” Many accused Chiang Kai-shek and his in-laws, namely T. V. (Tse-ven) Soong and H. H. (Hsiang-hsi) Kung, as being responsible for the communist reunification of the Chinese mainland. However, recently released T. V. Soong personal papers in the Hoover Institution Archives tell us much about the U.S.-China relationship during World War II. They reveal close, friendly relations between Washington officials and Soong, a top representative of Chongqing (Chungking; Nationalist China’s wartime capital in Sichuan Province) in 1940–43. They also describe in detail the financial and military aid to China that had been agreed upon by leaders in Washington and Chongqing, and arranged by T. V. Soong.

Close Sino-American relations involving Soong even helped elevate Nationalist China’s international status to become one of the “Big Four.”

How did Chongqing leaders like Soong, in only a few years, convince the United States and its allies to place their trust in Nationalist China? If Soong’s role was so important, why was this period of trust and friendship so short-lived? Did Chinese leaders like T. V. Soong make a difference? If so, then how?

Visit T. V. Soong in Modern Chinese History Web Page

A look at his role in Sino-American Relations in World War II

Tai-chun Kuo
Research Fellow, Hoover Institution
Hsiao-ting Lin
Visiting Fellow, Hoover Institution

HOOVER INSTITUTION PRESS
Copyright © 2006 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University

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About the Authors:

Tai-chun Kuo is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution. She received her Ph.D. in political science from the University of Oregon. Kuo was formerly an associate research fellow at the Institute of International Relations (Taiwan), deputy director-general of the First Bureau, Presidential Office, and press secretary to the president of the Republic of China. Her publications include Understanding Communist China: Communist China Studies in the United States and the Republic of China (coauthored with Ramon H. Myers), and The Power and Personality of Chairman Mao Tse-tung; and she is also the author of many articles in international journals.

Hsiao-ting Lin is a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution who received his D.Phil. from Oxford University in 2003. His academic interests include ethnopolitics in greater China, the political history of modern China, and the Kuomintang (the Nationalist Party) in post-1949 Taiwan. His book, Tibet and Nationalist China’s Frontier: Intrigues and Ethnopolitics, 1928–1949, will be published in the fall of 2006.

Foreword:

In March 2005 the Hoover Institution Archives announced a new initiative, the Modern China Archives and Special Collections, which includes archives and special materials about the Republic of China from 1911 to 1949, Taiwan from 1949 to the present, and the evolution of mainland China from 1949 to the present.

Hoover Institution undertook this initiative because, for many decades, the Hoover Institution Archives has collected and preserved a rich collection of Chinese, Japanese, and Western documents related to the above periods. Those documents consisted of the private papers of individuals and the personal documents and official records of leaders and statesmen, government officials, missionaries, and engineers. In 2003 many of those rare materials describing the rise of the Communist and Nationalist Parties in mainland China and the rise of an opposition party in Taiwan were transferred from the Hoover Institution’s former East Asian Collection to the Hoover Institution Archives. As special materials, few or no copies of them existed in the public domain and thus were, rarely, if ever, revealed to the public. Those materials have now been classified, placed on the Hoover website, and preserved for researchers to use in the Hoover Institution Archives.

In April 2004, the Hoover Institution opened nineteen boxes of the restricted personal papers of T. V. Soong, a leading official in the Nationalist government from the late 1920s to 1949, along with two thousand documents donated by Soong family. At the same time the Hoover Institution and the Kuomintang, or Nationalist Party, agreed to preserve those records and make them available for researchers. In late 2005 Chiang Kai-shek’s family placed his diaries and those of Chiang Ching-kuo in the Hoover Archives.

To encourage researchers to use this new collection, we have established a new essay series of which this is the second monograph (the first is The Modern China Archives and Special Collections). The series introduces new documents from our collections and suggests interpretations of events that may differ from those advanced earlier, especially as they relate to major turning points and significant historical changes in China’s recent history. (These essays reflect only the opinions of the authors.) The essays also identify and discuss special materials that users might find of interest and assistance and provide an impetus for researchers to consult the Hoover Institution’s expanding Chinese archives and special collections.

Ramon H. Myers
Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution,
and Consultant to the Hoover Archives

T. V. Soong Biographical Chronology

1894 December 4  Born, Shanghai, China
1915 B.A., Harvard University
1915–1917 Graduate studies, Columbia University, New York
1917–1923 Secretary, Han-yeh-p’ing iron and coal complex, China (Hanyang steel mill, Tayeh iron mines, P’inghsiang coal mines). Also involved in trade and banking circles, Shanghai 1923 M Manager, Salt Administration in Guangdong and Guangxi Provinces
1924 Manager, Central Bank, Canton Member, Committee for Food Control
1925 Minister of Finance, National Government, Canton
1926 Member, Central Executive Committee
         Minister of Commerce
         Member, National Government (State) Council
1927 M Minister of Finance, Wuhan Government
         Member, Standing Committee, Government Council
         Member, Military Council
         Member, Kuomintang Political Council
1928 Minister of Finance, Nanking Government Governor, Central Bank of China, Shanghai
1932–1933 Acting President, Executive Yuan, Nanking
1933 Head of Chinese Delegation to the World Economic Conference,London
         Resigned government posts, except National Economic Council
1934 Founder, China Development Finance Corporation
1938 Acting Chairman, National Aeronautical Affairs Commission
1940–1942 Personal representative of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Washington, D.C.
1942–1945 Minister of Foreign Affairs
1944 Acting President, Executive Yuan
1945 Head of Chinese Delegation, United Nations Conference, San Francisco, California Elected as one of four chairmen of United Nations Conference
1945–1947 President, Executive Yuan
1947–1949 Governor, Guangdong Province
1949–1950 President, Bank of China, Taiwan
1971 Died, San Francisco. Interred, New York

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