Background
Mr. Chang was born in Nanzing in Wuhsing, Chekiang (Zhejiang). He came from a family well-known for its wealth, whose members had been great traders in silks and curios in Europe and Amercia in the closing days of the Ching dynasty.
Government official and revolutionary leader
Mr. Chang was born in Nanzing in Wuhsing, Chekiang (Zhejiang). He came from a family well-known for its wealth, whose members had been great traders in silks and curios in Europe and Amercia in the closing days of the Ching dynasty.
Chang Ching-Kiang met Dr. Sun Yat-sen in Shanghai and joined the revolutionary cause, for which he contributed all his family inheritance. After the success of the 1911 Revolution, he joined Dr. Sun's Provisional Government at Nanking, but did not accept any political appointment. Chang Ching-Kiang was proscribed by Yuan Shih-kai for his anti-monarchy movement and fled to France.
While in France, he opened a store dealing in Chinese curios and also established a Chinese bean-curd factory, of which Chu Min-yi (member of the Central Executive Committee of the Kuomintang) was the manager. When Dr. Sun was in need of funds for his revolutionary movements he sold his business in France and contributed all its proceeds to the revolutionary cause upon returning to China. He took up his residence in Shanghai and interested himself in cotton exchange and gold-bar exchange business in Shanghai in order to raise more funds for the Revolution.
Chang Ching-Kiang went to Canton in 1925 and was elected member of the Central Executive Committee of Kuomintang. When Chiang Kai-shek launched his Northern Punitive Expedition in 1926, he accompanied him to Wuhan and Kiukiang, but after the split of the Wuhan and Nanking factions he retired for a short time.
When the Nanking Government was established by General Chiang Kai-shek, he was invited to join it. Chang Ching-Kiang was a member of the Central Executive and Supervisory Committees of Kuomintang, member and chairman of the Chekiang Provincial Government from 1928 to 1930. Since 1930 he was elected chairman of the National Reconstruction Commission.