Soong Mei-ling was a Chinese political figure who was First Lady of the Republic of China (ROC), the wife of Generalissimo and President Chiang Kai-shek. Soong played a prominent role in the politics of the Republic of China and was the sister-in-law of Sun Yat-sen, the founder and the leader of the Republic of China.
Background
Song came from a famous and influential family, one of the Big Four families in Republican China. The Songs were an exception in late Qing China Americanized, entrepreneurial, Christian, and puritanical. The family derived its power from blood and marital ties. Of the three sisters, it is said that the oldest one, Ailing, who married Kong Xiangxi, loved money, the second one, Qingling, who married Sun Yat-sen, loved the country and the youngest one, Meiling, who married Jiang Jieshi, loved power. Meiling's brother, Ziwen, was a banker and at one time finance minister; her husband, Jiang Jieshi, was a military general and president of the republican government, while another brother-in-law, Kong Xiangxi, was minister of industries, finance minister, and vice premier.
Education
When Song Meiling was five, she entered a Methodist school for rich girls, the McTyeire School in Shanghai. In 1908, with her older sister Qin-gling, she went to study in the United States, first at the Piedmont College of Demarest and then at Wesleyan College at Macon, Georgia, as a special student for she was under age. She transferred to Wellesley College in Massachusetts as a freshman in 1913 and graduated in 1917. The two girls were educated to be independent and pioneering. Their Christian background and American education gave them a perspective and a status very different from most of the Chinese women of the time.
Career
Upon Song’s return to Shanghai in 1918,she had become thoroughly American. She joined the YWCA, worked as a censor for the National Film Censorship Board, and was a committee member of the industrial bureau of the foreign concessions. Her marriage to Jiang Jieshi in 1927 was seen as opportunism on both sides. Song Meiling probably wished to follow her sister Qingling to become First Lady in China. Qingling objected to the marriage largely out of political considerations, for Jiang was adopting a reactionary policy. Her brother, Ziwen, also objected initially for he looked down on the old-fashioned warlord from Zhejiang with connections to the notorious Green Gang. However, her oldest sister, Ailing, and her husband, H.H. Kong, were keen matchmakers. Eager to bring the general and future president into the family, they prevailed on their mother to give consent. With Qingling away on a self-imposed exile, the wedding took place when Jiang had temporarily relinquished all his official posts. It is hard to contemplate the romance between a Western-oriented, liberal, overseas- educated woman and a conservative soldier who was non-Christian and had had two wives, but her biographer, Xu Han, believes that there was love between them. The marriage linked Jiang with the financial circle in Shanghai and opened him to the outside world, a connection he badly needed if he were to succeed as a statesman.
While Jiang was busy suppressing the Communists and resisting Japanese invasion, Song became his secretary, filing documents and receiving foreign guests. At times she visited wounded soldiers at the front. From 1929 to 1932, she sat on the Legislative Yuan. Starting from 1934, she was fully involved in the New Life Movement. Even though the orthodox philosophy of the neo-Fascist movement advocated a traditional role for women,that is, that they confine themselves to the home and the family, Song was nevertheless able to exert her influence to start a women's department and became its director. Aided by American journalists like Henry Luce, she helped boost the image of the regime by touring the nation, recruiting wives of officials and missionaries to help in the anti-opium-smoking campaign. In 1936, she became secretary general of the National Aeronautical Affairs Commission aimed at developing a modern air force in face of mounting Japanese aggression. However, most of the work was done by an American pilot, Claire Lee Chennault, her role being confined to liaisons with foreign advisers, endorsing their plans and helping to set up the Flying Tigers. She subsequently relinquished the post to her brother Ziwen in 1938. It was believed that the purchase of planes involved substantial commission, though the P-40s purchased in 1940 did score some victories in the 1941 defense of Kunming.
The Xi'an Incident of 1936 further convinced Jiang and Song that the control of the air force should not fall into any other hands. During the ensuing impasse, some of Jiang's former proteges like General He Yingqing suggested sending an expedition to Xi'an and bombing the city, which would in effect lead to the killing of Jiang, effecting a coup. Song advocated caution, and went in person to Xi'an to arrange for the release of her husband. The propaganda machine of the regime was so effective that the Jiang couple was nominated aMan and Wife of the Year's by Time magazine. Her magnanimity is fully revealed in the visits she paid to Zhang Xueliang when the latter was under house arrest in Taibei.
An incident that proves Meiiing's bravery was on a par with that of Qingling which occurred during the 1937 Songhu battle against Japan. During an air raid in Nanjing that accompanied the Japanese invasion of Shanghai, a bomb narrowly missed the Jiangs' house. Though Jiang asked Meiling to leave with the Kongs, she insisted on staying with him. Subsequently, she formed the Chinese National Women's War Relief Association on August 1, with the mission of tending wounded soldiers and distributing relief to the front. On one of her relief visits with Australian adviser William Donald on October 22, she was severely wounded in an air raid, suffering several broken ribs. Her other relief work was the setting up of orphanages, in cooperation with her sister Qingling. In 1938, Meiling started the National Refugee Children's Association for Orphans, supporting over 20,000 children, with aid from Qingling's China Defense League. It was also in 1938 that the three sisters were allied in their efforts to start industrial cooperatives in rural areas as a backup to the war effort, and sponsored by Ziwen and H H. Kong who set aside five million government dollars to start the movement and became its president. The intrafamilial unity displayed stunned the nation, but the entrepreneurial spirit behind it seemed to have come from their father. The sisters overcame political differences in the wartime spirit of unity against Japan, and in 1940 they assembled in Hong Kong and subsequently in Chongqing.
Her most outstanding achievement, from which she emerged rrom her husband’s shadow, was in diplomacy. It was also a vital part in the regime s propaganda efforts. In 1942 and 1943, she went to the United States for medical treatment at Presbyterian General Hospital in New York. Apart from staying three times at the White House as President Franklin D. Roosevelt's guest, she was also the first private citizen to address both houses of Congress in 1943. U.S. politicians and citizens alike were charmed by this Wellesley graduate with a Georgian accent. Duly impressed, the U.S. government gave huge amounts of aid to China, and Lend-Lease in particular pumped continuously to sustain China's war efforts. Her fund-raising tour secured U.S.$17 million for United China Relief. In Cairo with Jiang in 1943, she reinforced the image of China as a democracy fighting against militaristic, Fascist-oriented Japan. In November 1948, when the GMD was facing imminent defeat by the Communists, Song visited Washington once more to appeal for aid, only this time she was given a cold reception by Harry S. Truman. She retired to the Kongs' mansion in Riverdale, New York and never set foot on main land China again.
In Taiwan, Song established the Chinese Women’s Antiaggression League. She visited the United States in 1965 as the first lady of an ally, and again was given a huge reception. After Jiang's death in 1975, Song quietly left Taiwan and has been living on Long Island and on the Upper East Side in New York City. In 1995, at the age of ninety-seven, she addressed the U.S. Senate to mark the end of World War II in the Pacific. She announced, 4th will always think of America as my second home, and it is good to be back home today.’’
Connections
Soong Mei-ling met Chiang Kai-shek in 1920. Since he was eleven years her elder, already married, and a Buddhist, Mei-ling's mother vehemently opposed the marriage between the two, but finally agreed after Chiang showed proof of his divorce and promised to convert to Christianity. Chiang told his future mother-in-law that he could not convert immediately, because religion needed to be gradually absorbed, not swallowed like a pill. They married in Shanghai on December 1, 1927. While biographers regard the marriage with varying appraisals of partnership, love, politics and competition, it lasted 48 years. The couple had no children. In 1928, she was made a member of the Committee of Yuans by Chiang. They renewed their wedding vows on May 24, 1944 at St. Bartholomew's Church in New York City. Polly Smith sang the Lord's Prayer at the ceremony.