Before his death in 1975, Chiang Kai-shek handed over the rule of Taiwan to his son Chiang Ching-kuo, an approach that seemed to mark the imminent emergence of Taiwan as the "Chiang Family Domain."
During his tenure, Chiang Ching-kuo also worked hard to raise his sons, hoping that they would take over his place.
However, before his death, Chiang Ching-kuo suddenly repented, saying that he would not choose a successor from the Chiang family and would not allow the Chiang family to participate in the presidential election. So why did Chiang Ching-kuo, who took over the presidency from his father, not want his son to succeed him?
Chiang Ching-kuo's upbringing
Although Chiang Kai-shek has been striving to cultivate Chiang Ching-kuo as his successor from beginning to end, Chiang Ching-kuo is not as obedient and sensible as the public impression.
The concept was also contrary to his father, and he even publicly attacked Chiang Kai-shek. So why did Chiang Kai-shek insist on passing the presidency to him?
Chiang Kai-shek and Chiang Ching-kuo
Chiang Kai-shek's eldest son, Chiang Ching-kuo, was born in 1910 in Fenghua District, Ningbo, Zhejiang Province. Although he was born into the home of the Kuomintang leader, Chiang Ching-kuo's thinking was very different from that of his father, Chiang Kai-shek.
In 1925, Chiang Ching-kuo was expelled from school for participating in the May Thirtieth Massacre parade, and later imprisoned for participating in the campaign against the Beiyang warlords.
It can be said that it is difficult to see from Chiang Ching-kuo's student career that he is a disciple of the Jiang family.
In October of the same year, Chiang Ching-kuo, under the arrangement of his father Chiang Kai-shek, and more than 300 other Chinese students went to study at Sun Yat-sen University in Moscow, the capital of the Soviet Union.
Sun Yat-sen University in Moscow is a Chinese school in honor of Sun Yat-sen, which mainly trains political workers, and the courses are mainly Russian, history, philosophy, works related to Marx and Engels, and Leninism.
Because the world situation was very grim at that time, and revolution was about to break out in China, the Communist International must train a revolutionary leader of the proletariat at an early date.
When he first entered school, Chiang Ching-kuo was given a Russian name, called Nikolai. During his time at the school, he studied very hard, and his russian level improved rapidly, and he was active in other fields.
Just two months after enrolling, the Communist Party branch of Sun Yat-sen University approved him to join the Communist Youth League.
Under the influence of Soviet-style communism, Chiang Ching-kuo had a strong sense of mission to seek liberation for China, and during his school years, he also wrote an article calling for the establishment of Soviet power in China.
And while Chiang Ching-kuo was happily and eagerly studying and pursuing his ideals in the Soviet Union, a great change was taking place in his homeland.
On April 12, 1927, Chiang Ching-kuo's father, Chiang Kai-shek, after seizing power in the Kuomintang, led the Kuomintang New Right to launch an armed coup, known in history as the April 12 counter-revolutionary coup. Since then, the Kuomintang and the Communist Party have stood on opposite sides.
At that time, Chiang Ching-kuo was still studying at Sun Yat-sen University, and the students were very angry when they heard the news, calling Chiang Kai-shek an "accomplice of imperialism."
Chiang Ching-kuo, who was Chiang Kai-shek's eldest son, felt ashamed and humiliated in addition to his anger at this time.
After a fierce ideological struggle, Chiang Ching-kuo openly denounced his father, Chiang Kai-shek, denouncing his counter-revolutionary actions.
After that, Chiang Ching-kuo continued to study, work, and even get married in the Soviet Union.
Chiang Ching-kuo and his wife
In 1937, Chiang Ching-kuo returned to China with his family. Before returning to China, Chiang Ching-kuo had been worried that what he had done in the Soviet Union would be remembered and hated by Chiang Kai-shek.
However, there was no overnight feud between father and son, and when Chiang Ching-kuo came to the ancestral house, the enmity between father and son was naturally extinguished. Later, Chiang Kai-shek also gave Chiang Ching-kuo a bad remedy for Chinese culture, which assimilated his thinking.
Soon after, the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression broke out in full swing, and during the War of Resistance Against Japan, Chiang Ching-kuo was assigned to work in the Gannan region of Jiangxi.
During his work in Gannan Province, Chiang Ching-kuo visited civilians from all over the country, including peasants and refugees, as well as civil servants and businessmen. After a large number of contacts with people of different strata and different situations in China, Chiang Ching-kuo had an understanding of the basic situation in Gannan Province.
Looking at the devastated and ruined Gannan society, the flame in Chiang Ching-kuo's heart to do something practical for the people has risen again, and he has actively promoted the Gannan New Deal and applied all the knowledge he learned in the Soviet Union to govern Gannan.
Unfortunately, all this was just a drop in the bucket for China at that time, so Chiang Ching-kuo's political achievements during the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression could only be regarded as mediocre.
After that, he worked under Chiang Kai-shek for several more years, and when the Kuomintang was defeated and withdrawn to Taiwan Province in 1949, Chiang Ching-kuo also came to Taiwan with the Kuomintang ruling clique.
After Chiang Kai-shek arrived in Taiwan, he took up power, and Chiang Ching-kuo continued to receive education as his successor. Under his father's arrangement, Chiang Ching-kuo held many important positions in the Kuomintang government, paving the way for "succession" for a long time.
In order to enable Chiang Ching-kuo to succeed him smoothly, Chiang Kai-shek did not hesitate to clean up the old department and even had contradictions with Soong Mei-ling.
Finally, at chiang kai-shek's insistence, Chiang Ching-kuo successfully became the sixth president of the Republic of China in 1978. This "son inherits the father's business" method of electing the president made people at that time think that the Taiwan government would become a family regime.
However, when Chiang Ching-kuo's health deteriorated, he firmly stated that he would not choose the Jiang family as his successor.
During Chiang Ching-kuo's presidency, he promoted the speed of Taiwan's economic development and smoothly ranked Taiwan among the "Four Asian Tigers" at that time.
In addition, he is also very concerned about the lives of grass-roots people, visiting the countryside many times, paying attention to rural construction, understanding rural needs, and striving to narrow the gap between urban and rural areas.
In his stand on the mainland, he has always adhered to one China. In 1987, a year before his death, Chiang Ching-kuo announced that some people in Taiwan Province would be granted the right to visit relatives on the mainland.
Most of Chiang Ching-kuo's measures during his administration were widely praised by the people of Taiwan. After Chiang Ching-kuo's death, many people in Taiwan Province were deeply saddened.
However, such a great man in the hearts of the Taiwanese people has not been able to cultivate a successor of the Chiang family who can take over his post.
Earlier, Chiang Ching-kuo had also wanted to select a successor from his sons, but unfortunately, he had never found a suitable candidate.
Chiang Ching-kuo's family portrait
There is no successor to the Jiang family
Initially, Chiang Ching-kuo's eldest son, Chiang Hyo-wen, was the most promising candidate to inherit his father's position, and Chiang Kai-shek and Chiang Ching-kuo had always focused on cultivating him.
However, Jiang Xiaowen failed to live up to their high hopes. When he was a child, Jiang Xiaowen was talented and intelligent, quite favored by the elders of the family, and was also given high expectations.
However, due to the pampering of his family and the prominent family lineage, Jiang Xiaowen was spoiled and became a clumsy child.
Not only did he often use his father and grandfather to oppress people, but he also almost killed the defender Li Zhichu while playing with the revolver given to him by Chiang Kai-shek.
Jiang Xiaowen
After growing up, Jiang Xiaowen became even more intense, not only had poor grades, but also often did not return home at night, drunk driving, fighting and fighting, after hitting Li Zhichu, Jiang Xiaowen was sent to the officers' school by Chiang Kai-shek, but he dropped out of school because of the competition for dancers.
Jiang Xiaowen's stubbornness left jiang's family helpless and could only send him to the United States to study. Unexpectedly, after arriving in the United States, Jiang Xiaowen was even more unscrupulous, rampaged while driving in the United States, and was imprisoned for it.
In the end, Jiang Xiaowen was expelled from the United States for fraudulent insurance.
After returning to Taiwan, Jiang Xiaowen still went his own way. During a drunken drive, he accidentally killed a junior Kuomintang officer, and in his panic, he found a driver as a scapegoat and tried to settle the matter with money.
When his absurd behavior reached Chiang Ching-kuo's ears, Chiang Ching-kuo was completely disappointed in him and no longer had the idea of supporting him as his successor.
In 1970, Jiang Xiaowen suddenly fell into a coma and lay ill for 19 years until his death.
Seeing that Jiang Xiaowen's succession was hopeless, everyone set their eyes on the second eldest Jiang Xiaowu. Different from the obedience of the eldest brother, Jiang Xiaowu's personality is more calm and his behavior is relatively low-key.
Jiang Xiaowu
Under the cultivation of Chiang Kai-shek and Chiang Ching-kuo, Chiang Hsiao-wu went to Germany and studied military and political disciplines.
When Jiang Xiaowen was sick in bed, Jiang Xiaowu became the greatest hope of the entire Jiang family. In order to clear the way for him, Chiang Ching-kuo even sent his third son to study business, directly cutting off his political possibilities.
After that, Jiang Jingguo arranged many important positions for Jiang Xiaowu to undergo training, and Jiang Xiaowu also lived up to expectations and completed everything quite well. However, such meticulous cultivation was interrupted by the death of a person.
In 1984, the "Gangnam Case" that shocked overseas occurred.
"Jiangnan" is the pen name of the Taiwanese writer Liu Yiliang, who published the book "The Biography of Chiang Ching-kuo", which revealed a large number of Chiang family secrets. On October 15, Liu Yiliang was shot dead in his garage.
After thorough investigation, the United States almost determined that Jiang Xiaowu was the real culprit behind the "Jiangnan Case," and because he was dissatisfied with the contents of Liu Yiliang's "Biography of Chiang Ching-kuo," he ordered the Taiwan Bamboo Gang to kill him.
Later, Jiang Xiaowu insisted that the case was not his own doing, but taiwan province and abroad strongly condemned it, and in desperation, Chiang Ching-kuo had to remove his son from his post, and from then on, Jiang Xiaowu could no longer step into Taiwan's political circles.
The third son, Jiang Xiaoyong, was arranged to enter the business world early and was not at all interested in political disputes, as was his married and childbearing daughter Jiang Xiaozhang.
Jiang Xiaoyong, Jiang Xiaozhang and his mother
The only ones left were Jiang Chingguo and the two illegitimate sons born to the secretary, Jiang Xiaoyan and Jiang Xiaoci.
However, in order to maintain the face of the Chiang family and the stability of the family, Chiang Ching-kuo did not consider choosing a successor from them, nor did he ever recognize him.
The Chiang family gave up continuing to rule Taiwan
Therefore, although Chiang Ching-kuo has many heirs, none of them can be of great use, so in desperation, Chiang Ching-kuo can only give up and let the Chiang family continue to rule Taiwan.
After the Chiang family stepped down from power, the most regrettable point is that the later leaders of Taiwan Province did not seem to inherit the "one-China" principle that the Chiang family had always adhered to.