By overwhelming demand of the Chinese people, President Chiang Kai-shek was re-elected to a fifth term by the National Assembly on March 21 of 1972. He received all but eight of the 1,316 ballots cast—a return of 99.3 per cent and the highest yet accorded by the Republic of China's electoral college.
The presidential election started at 9 a.m. at the Chungshan Building at Yangmingshan (Yangming Mountain) in the Taipei suburbs. Tabulation of votes began at 11:30 a.m.
President Chiang's election, announced at 1 p.m., evoked shouts of "Long Live the President."
The rejoicing on Yangmingshan was echoed throughout free China. Tens of thousands of people had gathered in the Presidential Plaza in downtown Taipei to hear Paul Cardinal Yupin announce the result from the balcony of the Presidential Building.
All Taipei reverberated with the explosion of firecrackers, the beating of drums and gongs and shouts of joy.
Addressing the closing meeting of the National Assembly's fifth session on March 25, President Chiang pledged that "for the remainder of my life I shall endeavor to do my very best to extinguish the evil sources of Maoist treachery and violence internally, while externally endeavoring to ensure welfare, peace and justice in free Asia."
Speaking of his re-election, President Chiang said: "It is not without a deep sense of diffidence that I have ventured to answer your call. Instead of pointing out my failures, the National Assembly is continuing to trust me with the duty of suppressing the Communist rebellion and accomplishing national recovery."
Criticizing international appeasers of the Chinese Communists, the President said it is regrettable that some "shortsighted and misguided people have mistaken wrong for right and have labeled black as white."
"They have evaluated the situation of strength or weakness on the basis of counting the number of people and have indulged in alarming reports and false statements," the President said.
Reaffirming free China's dedication to mainland recovery and national reconstruction, President Chiang said the fifth session of the National Assembly "heralded a new epoch for our nation and people in their quest for freedom and unification internally and for justice and peace externally, culminating in victory and success."
President and Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek is unique among the chiefs of state in the world today. He helped preside at the birth of the Republic of China, helped give special character to the first republican experiment in Asia. Then—as China's chief of state for forty years—he himself has been continuously regenerated in the fires of his own dedicated leadership.
Chiang Kai-shek is a name with which to conjure, a figure who stands among the very greatest of the 20th century. He took his place at the side of modern China's founding father, Dr. Sun Yat-sen, even before the Revolution of 1911. When the first shots were fired at Wuchang, he rushed home from Japan to join the revolutionaries on the barricades. A decade and a half later Sun Yat-sen was gone and it remained for Generalissimo Chiang to take the helm, defeat the warlords, and unify China.
For fourteen years—eight of them in hot war—he was the nemesis of militaristic Japan, then generously extended a peace without vengeance to the defeated Japanese. He has fought Communism longer and harder than any other free world statesman, past or present. He is the colossus of freedom fighters, standing astride Taiwan and defying every undertaking of the Communists to dislodge him. Amidst the struggle he has built Taiwan into the strongest, most prosperous province in Chinese history.
This is the man—only surviving member of World War II's Big Three—who met with Churchill and Roosevelt at Cairo and with Mahatma Gandhi at Calcutta. This is a man who has never compromised either principle or ideal in his battle for the truth and in his endeavors to set his people free. This is the man who has pledged he will never leave the island of Taiwan until he returns to the mainland to liberate 700 million Chinese people from Communist tyranny.
Chiang Kai-shek, who is known to his countrymen as Chiang Chung-cheng, was born October 31, 1887, to a Chikow farm family in the district of Fenghua in the coastal province of Chekiang. His forbears had been farmers for generations, but his grandfather and father also acquired local renown for scholarship. He was only 8 when his father died and his mother had a strong influence on him during his formative years. Although a devout Buddhist who hoped her son would become a scholar, she understood and accepted his 1906 decision to go from high school in Fenghua to a military academy in Japan. The young Chiang, who as a little boy had liked to play at war games, had decided to be a soldier.
During his Japanese school years, he came under the influence of Chinese revolutionaries who had gone to Tokyo to escape the wrath of the Manchu authorities. He came to know revolutionary leader Chen Chi-mei as early as 1906, and in 1909, the same year he was graduated from Japanese military school, he met Dr. Sun for the first time and joined the Tung Meng Hui (Society of the Common Cause), forerunner of the Kuomintang (Nationalist Party).
"That man," said Dr. Sun prophetically, pointing to military cadet Chiang, "will be the hero of our revolution."
Chiang joined the 13th Field Artillery Regiment of the Japanese Army as a candidate for admission to the Japanese Military College. But the Chinese Revolution began on October 10, 1911, and he could remain patient no longer. When he reached Shanghai, Chen Chi-mei gave him command of revolutionary forces attacking Hangchow, the capital of Chekiang. His spectacular victory was the first in a lifetime of exceptional military exploits.
For the next 10 years he held various commands and steadfastly supported Dr. Sun in the confusing struggle of warlords versus freedom-seeking revolutionaries. In June, 1922, Canton warlord Chen Chiung-ming turned against Sun Yat-sen, who took refuge on a gunboat anchored off Whampoa. Chiang rushed to the side of the Republic's founder and stayed through 56 days of a dangerous ordeal. The common experience brought Chiang Kai-shek into a more intimate relationship with Dr. Sun, who in 1923 sent his young lieutenant to Moscow for a four-month look at the Soviet Union. Chiang returned with his famous "don't trust Russia" report. When the Whampoa Military Academy was established in 1924 to train officers for the revolutionary army, Chiang Kai-shek was named its commandant.
Sun Yat-sen died on March 12, 1925, aged only 59, in the old capital of Peking, whence he had gone to seek peace with the northern warlords. The mantle of leadership fell on Chiang, who in the following year was named commander-in-chief of the National Revolutionary Armed Forces and sent on the great March Northward that was to bring all of China under the National Government of the Republic. The campaign took two years. After the liberation of Shanghai in 1927, Chiang married Mayling Soong, the daughter of one of China's most distinguished families and a graduate of Wellesley College in Massachusetts. Soon afterward he joined his wife in the Christian faith, which has been a powerful force and source of inspiration in his daily life ever since.
During the years from 1928 to 1948, he held various official positions: President of the Executive Yuan, Chairman of the Military Council, and Chairman of the National Government. Conflict with Japan prevented constitutional rule during this period, and the Kuomintang and government exercised power under a plan of political tutelage that had been proposed by Dr. Sun. Four regional revolts were put down in 1929 and 1930. Then, in 1931, the Japanese invaded Manchuria to begin their 14-year-long attempt to dominate China.
Communism, which had been exported to China by the Russians in the early 1920s, also made trouble. By 1931 and 1932, the Reds were entrenched in mountainous areas of Kiangsi and began a military insurrection against the government. Generalissimo Chiang's suppression offensive of 1934 drove the Communists from Kiangsi into remote, desolate northern Shensi. There they might have been destroyed had it not been for government preoccupation with Japanese aggression.
In 1936, an incident at Sian, deep in northcentral China, gave indication of the place which Chiang Kai-shek was finding in the hearts of the Chinese people. The Generalissimo had gone to Shensi to direct government forces in a more active campaign against the Communists. He and his aides were attacked by conspiring, Red influenced generals and he was made a prisoner. Although his life hung by a thread. Chiang refused to treat with his captors, who demanded policy changes that would have abetted the Communist conspiracy. Indignation swept the country. Government troops began to move against the rebels. At this point, Madame Chiang Kai-shek heroically flew to Sian—into what her husband described as a "death trap"—and set in progress discussions that were to resolve the crisis. In the end, the Young Marshal, Chang Hsueh-liang, accepted responsibility for the attempted coup and flew with the Generalissimo from Sian back to Nanking. All over China the people joyously celebrated release of their leader.
War with Japan was formalized July 7, 1937, and entered upon a hot stage that was to last until 1945. Throughout those terrible, exhausting eight years—for half of which China doggedly fought the Japanese militarists alone and unaided—Chiang Kai-shek was the country's unyielding rock of reliance. He could have surrendered. Japan was looking for puppets. Not for a moment did he think of such a way out. He rallied the people and led the armies and kept the Japanese out of China's vast hinterland. With his other hand he held at bay the Communists, who were trying to stab the government in the back even as it grappled with the Japanese. Pearl Harbor sealed Japan's fate. But China was still the farthest front. Assistance to the Chinese remained scant right down to V-J Day. The people suffered grievously and devastation was widespread. The government had to face a thousand serious domestic problems as well as the Japanese and Communist enemies. It was the towering figure of Chiang Kai-shek, able administrator as well as victorious general, who held the nation together.
As 1945 neared an end, Japanese prisoners were forgiven and quickly sent home, a magnanimous gesture by Chiang that contrasted sharply with Stalin's imprisonment of every Japanese he could get his hands on. China had fought Japan for eight years, Russia for a few days. Tragically, the Republic was worn out, its economy war wrecked, at the very moment the Communists were preparing to make an all-out bid for power. Russia's infamous Manchurian treachery strengthened the Chinese Reds for their final push. In violation of agreements made with the Chinese Central Government, the Russian Communists protected Mao's men as they moved into Manchuria and took over weapons of the defeated Japanese. The civil war raged on. Coalition was attempted and failed. American mediation proved futile. The Communists had decided on total power or nothing.
With the strong encouragement of Chiang Kai-shek, the journey toward Sun Yat-sen's goal of democratic constitutional government was resumed as soon as the Japanese were shipped home. Chiang believed more freedom, not less, was the way to combat the machinations of the Communists. China's Constitution was drafted, approved, and brought into force. On March 29, 1948, Chiang Kai-shek was elected by the popularly chosen National Assembly as China's first constitutional President. An elected Legislative Yuan, elected Control Yuan, and other instruments of constitutional government also began to function.
President Chiang showed the totality of his patriotism in January of 1949, when he temporarily retired from the presidency and went to his home town, hopeful that this would open the way to peaceful settlement of civil conflict. His unselfish gesture was of no avail; negotiations collapsed. Three months later the President was compelled to become active once more in a last attempt to save the mainland from Communism. Although he did not then resume his presidential powers, he personally rallied resistance at Shanghai, Canton, Chungking, Chengtu, and other beleaguered cities. Almost single-handed, he kept the spark of the freedom fight alive for many months. He flew to the Philippines to confer with President Elpidio Quirino and to Korea to meet with President Syngman Rhee in a quest for free Asian anti-Communist unity and alliance. It was too late for the mainland. On October 1, the Communists proclaimed their so-called Peoples' Republic. In December, 1949, government forces made their last stand in Szechwan and the national capital was moved to Taiwan.
Superlative strategist that he is, Chiang already had prepared for the possible use of the island province of Taiwan as a last redoubt. Naval and air force units were sent to the Netherlands-size island 100 miles off the Fukien coast. Armies were withdrawn to Taiwan from Shanghai and Canton. Communist insurgents finally were stopped at the water's edge in a battle for the offshore island of Kinmen. The Legislative Yuan asked Chiang to resume exercise of presidential powers, and he did so on March 1, 1950, vowing to make Taiwan a model province and the bastion of counterattack and national recovery. He has succeeded beyond all but his own expectations.
Military forces on Taiwan are the strongest in free Chinese history. Attacks on the offshore islands of Kinmen and Matsu, and in the Taiwan Straits, have been hurled back. The island is second only to Japan in terms of East Asian prosperity—a per capita income of US$329 a year, a national product of more than $6.2 billion, foreign trade of more than $4 billion and economic growth in excess of 9.5 per cent annually. Industry is growing at a rate of between 15 and 20 per cent. Agricultural production has doubled in the last two decades and is sufficient to feed a population of 15 million and leave a big export surplus.
Despite the unceasing Communist invasion threat, freedom has been expanded, not curtailed. Local and provincial governments are popularly elected by secret ballot. The 1972 session of the National Assembly empowered the President to increase the number of Central Government representatives who come from free and overseas areas. The Assembly also authorized the President to make adjustments in the administrative and personnel organs of the Central Government, as well as their organizations, so as to meet the requirements of national mobilization and the suppression of the Communist rebellion.
Chiang Kai-shek has every intention of personally heading the victorious procession back to the mainland. His health is good, his carriage ramrod straight. He works long hours and lives austerely. His recreation is found in walking and the family circle, where he puts aside his five-star Generalissimo's uniform for the loose-fitting, comfortable Chinese long gown. Stress and strain leave his serenity undisturbed.
As a boy, Chiang Kai-shek marveled at the courage of fish swimming against the raging currents of mountain streams near his home. "In the same way," he said, "men have to fight against the odds of life, often repulsed but never despairing." President Chiang's fight for a new and better China has endured through four score years. He has known victory and defeat but he has never despaired. His confidence in himself and in China's future of freedom is resolutely unshakable.
Also re-elected by the fifth session of the National Assembly was Vice President C.K. Yen. He received 1,095 votes. His popularity and prestige increased during his first term and his ability is recognized by the whole nation.
Vice President C.K. Yen is concurrently the President of the Executive Yuan (Premier of the Cabinet). He has devoted more than 40 years to the service of the Chinese people. His basic political philosophy is: "No government can be called good unless the people are happy and secure."
C. K. Yen was born October 23, 1905, in a village six miles from scenic Soochow in Kiangsu province of coastal China. His family was large and moderately well off. He had a traditional Chinese upbringing. At the age of 4 he could recite dozens of ancient poems. Formal schooling began at home when he was 5. The year was 1910 and the Wuchang Revolution that overthrew the Manchus and established the Republic of China was less than a year in the future.
"The most important lesson I learned from my first tutor was that cleverness should not be confused with wisdom," he has said. He learned to manipulate the difficult Chinese writing brush, to mix his own ink on a stone slab and to appreciate calligraphy as an art form as well as a medium of communication. Today he still enjoys using a brush to write the graceful Chinese characters.
With the establishment of the Republic, he was sent to a primary school to begin learning the modern ways that the Manchus had rejected. He was quickly attracted to the scientific method—to its insistence on facts in the solution of problems and its rejection of anything less than the truth. As his college major, he chose chemistry. He later became one of Asia's outstanding economists by applying test-tube procedures to fiscal affairs.
His institution of higher learning was St. John's University in Shanghai, a missionary school which graduated many of the young men who were to become leaders of the new China. He led his class and still found time for extra-curricular activities. He was editor of an English-language monthly periodical and of the Chinese-language college yearbook. Along with chemistry, he took an honor's course in mathematics. He learned his English at St. John's. It is so fluent that many of his foreign friends jump to the conclusion that he must have attended university in some Western country.
Following his graduation in 1926, he became director of supplies in a railroad bureau. His immediate advance was not dramatic. He was practicing what he has always preached—that it is more important to do a good job than to be successful. War with Japan came in 1937. The need for honest, energetic, imaginative young civil servants was greater than ever. In 1938, C.K. Yen was named reconstruction commissioner of Fukien province. There was little money for the projects he was supposed to undertake and he asked for more financial support. With poetic justice, he was appointed finance commissioner in 1939—and found out there is never enough money for everything.
Nevertheless, fiscal responsibility began to bring out the financial genius that was to make him famous. He initiated land taxes in kind to help alleviate the dual problem of food shortages and a nearly empty treasury. The National Government was impressed by his successes. Levies in kind were introduced nationwide and helped feed China during the final stage of the war with Japan.
Fukien's finance commissioner had become too valuable a civil servant to be allowed to remain in a provincial post. He was drafted by the National Government as procurement director of the new War Production Board. He had charge of supplies under both U.S. Lend-Lease and the British and Canadian loan programs. His foreign travels began. He visited India twice to expedite deliveries over the "hump". After World War II, he was sent to Nanking as a Ministry of Economic Affairs representative to serve under General Ho Ying-chin in rehabilitating the nation's devastated industrial structure.
Taiwan, which had been ceded to Japan in 1895, was retroceded to China in 1945. War damage to the island was heavy. C.K. Yen was sent to Taiwan, first as director of the Department of Communications of the Provincial government. He served in that post in 1945 and 1946. Once again his financial abilities quickly came to the fore. In 1946, he became director of the Department of Finance and in 1947 assumed the concurrent post of chairman of the Bank of Taiwan.
The National Government was preoccupied with the mainland struggle against the Chinese Communists in the late 1940s. It had neither time nor energy for the problems of Taiwan. Rampant inflation almost destroyed the island's economy. C.K. Yen saw the danger. He reformed the currency and brought prices under control.
When the National Government moved to Taipei, the obvious choice of a top official responsible for economic and financial affairs was C.K. Yen. He received cabinet appointment in 1950, first as the Minister of Economic Affairs and later as Minister of Finance. He held the latter post until 1954, when he was named Governor of the Province. In 1957 and 1958 he was chairman of the Council for United States Aid, then became Minister of Finance once more and held that position until his accession to the prime ministership in 1963.
His financial accomplishments included revision of the tax system, budget and foreign exchange reforms, acceleration of economic development, and reactivation of the Central Bank of China, the Bank of China and the Bank of Communications. He has consistently served the public interest while acting on his conviction that a sizable content of free enterprise is essential to economic prosperity and well-being.
As Finance Minister and then as Prime Minister, he made several trips abroad. He represented the Chinese Government at international conferences on economic and financial matters, and served as a governor of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the International Development Association and the International Monetary Fund. On December 16, 1963, he was called to the prime ministership to succeed Vice President Chen Cheng.
Prime Minister Yen carried on the policies of his predecessor with energy and determination. His encyclopaedic knowledge of government administration in general and economic affairs in particular served him well. The boom that had begun while Vice President Chen was Prime Minister reached the point of what the economists call economic take-off. By June of 1965, the United States was able to announce the termination of economic assistance to the Republic of China—the first such accomplishment in the history of American aid to Asian countries.
Vice President Chen Cheng died in 1965. Presidential and vice presidential elections were scheduled for the spring of 1966. When the Kuomintang (Nationalist Party) began the search for a vice presidential nominee, it had the guidance of these words of President Chiang Kai-shek: "The candidate for the vice presidency, if he is to share with me the heavy responsibility of national recovery, should be a person who is relatively young and who has great energy. In choosing the vice presidential candidate, therefore, consideration must be given not only to his experience, ability and contributions to the Party, but also to his age."
At 60, C.K. Yen was rich in experience, buoyant in spirit and resourceful in imagination. He was quickly nominated and then elected by the National Assembly. President Chiang welcomed the choice by saying that as his new right hand he had "a man nearly 20 years my junior; gifted with intelligence, insight and many other talents; incorruptible, upright and selfless; possessing virtues reinforced by many decades of revolutionary experience; and invigorated with radiant spirit and enduring fortitude."
C. K. Yen is the Republic of China's first civilian Vice President. With strong support from the legislature and with the close cooperation of his colleagues, he conscientiously directed his efforts toward all phases of national development. The success thus achieved has exceeded all expectations except his own. Taiwan is an island of less than 14,000 square miles with a population of more than 15 million. Two-thirds of the island is mountainous, making Taiwan the world's most densely populated area in terms of the number of people and the arable land. Mineral resources are scanty. Natural gas and timber are important but their exploitation has scarcely begun.
By 1971, under the leadership of President Chiang and thanks to the administrative and financial skills of C. K. Yen, the Republic of China had attained foreign trade of US$4,125 million, a gain of 32.2 per cent over 1970. The favorable balance was a sizable US$ 145 million. Taiwan was expected to overtake the huge Chinese mainland in foreign trade in 1972.
Vice President Yen was invited by President Lyndon Johnson to visit the United States in May of 1967. The two statesmen reaffirmed the solidarity of the Sino-U.S. free world partnership. The Vice President visited Chinese communities across the American continent, talking to scholars and students, listening to the views of Chinese who live in the new world. In New York, more than 800 leaders of world business and industry recognized his contributions to free enterprise at a special dinner.
In July, 1967, the Vice President went to Korea as Special Envoy of President Chiang Kai-shek to attend the second inauguration of President Park Chung Hee. This was his second visit to Korea. During his first visit in 1964, he received an honorary LL.D. from Seoul National University.
In January, 1968, Vice President Yen paid an official visit to Thailand. He was received by Their Majesties King Bhumibol Adulyadej and Queen Sirikit. He conferred with Prime Minister Thanom Kittikachorn and other government leaders and received an honorary degree from Chulalongkorn University.
In October, 1971, Vice President Yen went to Saigon as the Special Envoy of President Chiang Kai-shek to attend the second term inauguration of President Nguyen Van Thieu. During his four-day stay in Saigon, he talked with President Thieu, U.S. Secretary of Treasury John Connally and Korean Prime Minister Kim Jong Pil on matters of mutual concern.
The Vice President looks to the Republic of China's founding father, Dr. Sun Yat-sen, for inspiration in economics as well as politics. Nearly fifty years ago, Dr. Sun drafted a program for the development of China. One of his principal recommendation was for international investment. In Taiwan today, foreign investment is nearing the US$800 million mark. C.K. Yen helped guide through the legislature a foreign investment law that has helped attract overseas capital.
Of the future, the Vice President has this to say: "What modest progress we have achieved is but a foretaste of the shape of things to come in the Chinese mainland after it has been returned to freedom and democracy. We shall launch the greatest building program the world has ever seen. We shall give top priority to the war on poverty. We shall embark on nuclear research for peaceful purposes. Instead of pursuing ideological quarrels based on a dream of world revolution, we shall throw open our doors and welcome the capital and technical know-how of all friendly countries."
In personal relationships, C. K. Yen exhibits a warm friendliness and an unassuming attitude. He is gentle, easy to know, always accessible and strict only with himself. "We are not all alike," he says. "Everyone has his own personality and should be encouraged to develop it." Another of his favorite aphorisms advocates "thinking everything through twice and putting yourself in the other person's shoes." He is never satisfied that he is well enough informed. He reads widely in both Chinese and English—books on astronomy and geography, economics and literature, periodicals of every kind, and leading newspapers published at home and abroad. He has kept up with the latest developments in public administration and the growing computerization of political science. What he doesn't know, he knows where to find—whether in a book or from an authority on the subject.
Vice President Yen derives his greatest enjoyment from family life. He and his wife, the former Liu Chi-shun, have five sons, four daughters and seventeen grandchildren. Sunday outings are a favorite family recreation. The Vice President is sure to take along a camera or two. As an enthusiastic amateur photographer, he is endlessly exchanging technical information and equipment notes with news cameramen. His day begins at 6 in the morning and ends late at night. His health is excellent. Careful adherence to schedule gets him through the day's work both as the Vice President and the Prime Minister without any sign of exhaustion.
Yen Chia-kan is a leader of the new China, yet he also represents and preserves the traditional virtues of an old China in which life was slower and more contemplative. He is wholly modern in his service to government and people—an organization man and a team worker who gets things done efficiently and on time. In private life he retains the individuality and serenity of the Chinese mandarins of olden times. Above all, he is a dedicated patriot. Following the leadership of his President, he insists on a united, free, peaceful and democratic China that will take its rightful place in the world.