Chiang Ching-kuo

Chiang Ching-kuo (27 April 1910 – 13 January 1988) was a Chinese and Taiwanese statesman and diplomat. He served as the president of the Republic of China from 1978 until his death in 1988, and acted as a de facto leader of the country by serving as Premier from 1972 to 1978. He was also the chairman of the ruling Kuomintang (KMT) party from 1975. During his presidency, Taiwan ended martial law and began political liberalization.

Chiang was born in Fenghwa, Chekiang as the eldest and only biological son of Chiang Kai-shek, the commander of National Revolutionary Army and KMT leader. He attended school in Shanghai and Beijing, where he became interested in socialism and communism. As a teenager in 1925, when the KMT and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) were allied in the First United Front, he was sent to the Soviet Union (USSR) to attend university; he spoke Russian fluently. In 1927, due to the KMT's White Terror against the CCP, the Soviets sent Chiang to work in a steel factory in the Ural Mountains where he met and married Faina Vakhreva. In 1937, the Soviets returned the couple back to China shortly before the Second Sino-Japanese War. He entered the Nationalist government and served as the administrative commissioner of Gannan Prefecture in Jiangxi province from 1939 to 1945 during World War II. In 1948, Chiang went to Shanghai to enforce strict economic controls and fight inflation. He tried to freeze prices and force wealthy merchants to turn in Chinese gold yuan, but the campaign ultimately failed amid severe economic collapse. In 1949, he moved to Taiwan when the KMT lost the Chinese Civil War.