On April 5, 1975, Chiang Kai-shek, then president of the Kuomintang, died of a heart attack caused by a heart attack caused by the Yangmingshan car accident at the Shilin official residence on the outskirts of Taipei, and the news was undoubtedly a major earthquake for Taiwan, and the Taiwan Executive Yuan announced that a month-long "national funeral" would be held.
There was an undercurrent within the Kuomintang, and the various forces launched a war without smoke of gunfire over the struggle for supreme power, and Chiang's widow, Song Meiling, began to expose her ambitions at this time.
<h1 class = "pgc-h-arrow-right" > attack cc department and Chen Cheng, paving the way for Chiang Ching-kuo</h1>
No matter how much Chiang Kai-shek emphasized the democratic nature of the Kuomintang, the Chiang family could not change the feudal nature of their own family. After Chiang Kai-shek's death, there was a vacuum in the core power of the Kuomintang, and although Taiwan had been defeated, Chiang was still a thief, and before his death, Chiang was already paving the way for his son Chiang Ching-kuo to take over and gain political capital.
In 1948, Chiang Ching-kuo went to Shanghai to investigate the corruption problem at the top of the Kuomintang, that is, the famous "Shanghai Tiger Fighting" incident, but the corruption of the Kuomintang had penetrated deep into the marrow, and the Chiang family itself was inextricably linked to the three major families of Song Kong and Chen.
The effect of "fighting the tiger" can be imagined, but Chiang Kai-shek knew in his heart that his purpose was not to eliminate the rule of officials at all, but to accumulate prestige for his son, but his plot became a joke with the hasty end of the "fighting the tiger" operation.
The accumulation of prestige did not succeed, and Chiang Kai-shek turned to establishing a team for his son. In 1954, in order to recruit talents, he established the "Chinese Youth Anti-Communist National Salvation League", proposing that "the country needs revolutionary youth, and young people need revolutionary education." "Seduce the young people of Taiwan into saddle up for the Jiang family."
He personally served as the head of the regiment and arranged for Chiang Ching-kuo to serve as the "director of the General League Department," with the intention of infiltrating Chiang Ching-kuo's influence into various departments in Taiwan through this organization.
Succession cannot rely solely on accumulating prestige and factions, but also on destroying political enemies. There are two main factors that prevent Chiang Ching-kuo from sitting on the throne of power.
First of all, the Chen family, represented by Chen Lifu and Chen Guofu, during the Republic of China period, there was a saying that was widely circulated: The Chen Family Party under the Jiang family. The Chen family was in charge of the Kuomintang's party affairs and had great influence in the "Central Political School" that specialized in training high-ranking officials, and many of the later high-ranking Kuomintang officials were born in this school, and they also had their own organizations and factions: the Central Political Department, that is, the CC Department.
Chen Lifu once served as Chiang Kai-shek's confidential secretary, and also single-handedly established the secret service organization "Central Unification", which controlled a large number of Chiang Kai-shek's secrets; and Chen Guofu was also the deputy director of the Central Organization Department and held personnel power. They were both an important force in maintaining Chiang Kai-shek's reactionary rule and a stumbling block to Chiang Kai-shek's succession plan.
Then there was the real power faction in the military represented by Chen Cheng, just as Chiang Kai-shek followed Sun Yat-sen all the way, and so did Chen Cheng. He was a general of the first rank in the army, commanded the Battle of Songhu and the Battle of Wuhan, and also served as the commander of the Chinese Expeditionary Force, with outstanding military achievements and a very high reputation in the party.
In March 1950, he became the chief executive of the Kuomintang government, and also served as the "vice president" and the "vice president" of the Kuomintang, known as the "small chairman" and was recognized by many people as his successor.
In 1950, Chiang Kai-shek demanded that Chen Lifu's family leave Taiwan on the charge of abandoning the mainland, and for the details of this history, former CC legislator Liang Surong once disclosed:
"The old gentleman (Chiang Kai-shek) just thinks that there are still many people who treat Chen Lifu as an organization minister on the mainland and that he bears the main responsibility for throwing away the mainland, so after coming to Taiwan, he will reform himself, and the Kuomintang Central Committee will say that I will reorganize party discipline. Chen Guofu also died in the same year.
For Chen Cheng, Jiang directly expressed his attitude and broke his illusions. In 1960, the Kuomintang would hold a presidential election, and in 1959, Chiang Kai-shek amended the "Provisional Clauses" to give The Taiwan leader an indefinite re-election during the "war-torn period", which was tantamount to telling Chen Cheng that the next president would still be Chiang Kai-shek. The depressed Chen Cheng also died five years later.
<h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" > Soong Mei-ling led the "pro-American faction" to wrestle with Chiang Kai-shek</h1>
And Song Meiling, who has the Song family as the background, is the most inconspicuous one, after all, she is a woman, in the inherent concept of many people, no matter how high the status of a woman, the distance from the vortex of power is very far.
But in fact, after coming to Taiwan, Song Meiling relied on the identity of the "first lady" and began to cultivate her own henchmen, and she wanted to emulate the historical Lü Hou and Wu Zetian and become a female emperor, so she established the "Chinese Women's Anti-Communist Anti-Russian Federation", referred to as the "Women's Federation", and gradually expanded her influence.
On the contrary, he knew very well that the real hidden danger was not external, but on his side, but the time had not yet come, and if he rushed to attack Soong Mei-ling, he would break the balance of the various factions of the Kuomintang and even lose the support of the United States.
Chiang Kai-shek is also known as Chiang Kai-shek, so his combination with Soong Mei-ling should be "Sino-US cooperation," but Chiang Kai-shek is not willing to become a puppet of the United States, and he has no way to do anything about the US government, but he can knead the "pro-US faction" at will.
At the same time, Song Meiling secretly accumulated strength and gradually revealed her fangs, and this fangs refers to the "pro-American faction".
The so-called "pro-American faction" refers to important Kuomintang officials who have studied in the United States and have contacts with the US military and political circles; they uphold the will of the United States, and the US Government exerts influence on the Kuomintang through them.
The three sisters of the Song family themselves have extremely large political power, and Soong Ching Ling is the wife of sun Yat-sen, the "father of the nation", the former "first lady", and the right to speak in the Kuomintang can be seen;
Song Meiling, now the "First Lady" and "mother of the Chinese Air Force," also played an important role in winning the support of the United States; Song and Kong Xiangxi were husband and wife, who held the financial power of the Kuomintang.
In addition, there are a large number of high-ranking generals who rely on them to ascend to the throne.
In addition to the well-known "fox of the jungle" Sun Liren, there were also Taiwan Provincial Chairman Wu Guozhen, Xu Baiyuan, then vice president of the Central Bank, Huang Shaogu, then director of the Central Propaganda Department, and Ye Gongchao, then foreign minister.
Although Chiang Kai-shek maintained relations with the U.S. government through Soong Mei Ling to gain the support of the United States, he was also guarding against the United States. In order to cut off Soong Mei-ling's wings, Chiang Kai-shek began to take action against the real power figures of the "pro-American faction" very early on, of which the Sun Liren incident and the Wu Guozhen incident had the greatest impact.
Sun Liren studied at Tsinghua University and the Virginia Military Academy, which itself was funded by the United States, and the Virginia Military Academy is known as "Southern West Point".
In Chiang Kai-shek's eyes, Sun Liren was not the Huangpu faction who called him "the headmaster" and was loyal to him, and Sun was a "pro-American faction" with close ties to Soong Mei-ling.
Letting a person who is not his own person control a large number of troops will undoubtedly make Jiang Ruyu in his throat, like a man on his back, and difficult to sleep and eat.
Sun Liren himself did not make his stand clear to Chiang Kai-shek, but on the contrary repeatedly propagated the American concept, openly opposed Chiang Kai-shek's thinking on the party, government, and army, stirred the nerves of the father and son of the Chiang family, aroused Chiang Kai-shek's hatred, and wanted to get rid of it quickly. Chiang Kai-shek successively dismissed Sun from his posts as commander-in-chief of the army and chief of staff, and later ordered Sun Liren to be placed under house arrest on the pretext that Sun Liren's old subordinates were involved in the "Soldier Counseling Case."
After disarming the forces supporting Soong Mei-ling, Chiang set his sights on Wu Guozhen, who, like Sun Liren, went to the United States to study after graduating from Tsinghua University and received a doctorate in political science from Princeton University. Wu's wife, Huang Zhuoqun, and Song Meiling have a very close relationship, in today's terms, "girlfriend".
At the time of the defeat of Taiwan, due to the critical situation, Chiang Kai-shek urgently needed the support of the United States, so he constantly made overtures to Wu Guozhen, and there was a brief honeymoon period on both sides. Jiang even arranged for Wu Guozhen to succeed Chen Cheng as chairman of Taiwan Province.
But with the stabilization of the situation, Wu Guozhen was no longer so important to Chiang. In addition, due to the defeat of the Kuomintang on the mainland, the US Government has gradually become disillusioned with Chiang Kai-shek and turned to seeking another agent, and Wu Guozhen, the representative of the "pro-American faction", is the only choice, and all of this will push each other to the opposite side.
The contradiction between Wu and the Jiang family was very fierce, and as early as 1948, when he was the mayor of Shanghai, he had an unpleasant affair with Chiang Ching-kuo. The two men had a serious conflict over how to clean up the economy.
In Chiang Ching-kuo's view, serious illnesses should be treated with a fierce medicine, and the economic system of the Nationalist government is on the verge of collapse, and political means must be used to deal a stormy blow to illegal businessmen.
Wu Guozhen, on the other hand, held the complete opposite view, believing that economic problems should be economic means, and Chiang Ching-kuo's behavior would only be counterproductive.
Chiang Ching-kuo's "fighting the tiger" operation ultimately failed, and the angry and corrupt Chiang Ching-kuo attributed all this to Wu Guozhen's non-cooperation, and the two men became resentful. Since then, for various reasons, Chiang Kai-shek has become more and more intolerant of Wu Guozhen, and even the news of Chiang's assassination of Wu has come out.
In April 1953, Wu Guozhen was afraid of retaliation by the Chiang family's father and son, so on the grounds of poor health, he resigned from the post of provincial chairman and took his wife to the United States, expiring a leisurely life.
The support of the military and government is gone, and the chances of Song Meiling's plan being realized have been greatly reduced, and it can be said that the "pro-American faction" at this time has become a toothless tiger.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > figure poor dagger, Song Meiling and the Jiang family showdown</h1>
In 1972, Chiang Kai-shek was re-elected as Taiwan's fifth "president," and as soon as he took office, he immediately began to arrange for Chiang Ching-kuo to become the "president of the Executive Yuan.", the so-called Executive Yuan, that is, Taiwan's highest administrative organ, the president of the Executive Yuan, is the head of government. But what people did not expect was that the road to the transition of power, which has been smooth, has gone wrong here.
His wife, Soong Mei-ling, came to Chiang Kai-shek's study, and she said to Chiang Kai-shek straight away: "Since you want to rearrange the cabinet members, it is better to let Kong Lingkan become the 'president of the Executive Yuan.'" Kong Lingkan is Song Meiling's nephew, who has just been urgently summoned back from the United States.
Obviously, Chiang Kai-shek could not accept such a proposal, he had been preparing for his son's succession for a long time, becoming the "president of the Executive Yuan" was a key step, and anyone who tried to step in at this time would touch Chiang's bottom line, even his wife with deep feelings.
Although Soong Mei-ling made concessions again, Chiang Kai-shek remained tough and refused to give her any possibility of interfering in the supreme power, and Soong Mei-ling had no choice but to endure first.
Although Chiang Kai-shek had always planned to directly transfer power to his son, in order not to implement the truth, he did not directly hand over power to Chiang Ching-kuo, but arranged in advance a person named Yan Jiagan, who played a buffer role in the transition of power in this storm.
Yan Jiagan entered the vision of chiang's family in the 1940s, and due to the great success of the currency reform, the Kuomintang's economic system did not completely collapse, and it was paid attention to by Chiang Kai-shek and gradually became his confidant.
The reason why Chiang Kai-shek was assured to make him a key figure in the transition of power was because Yan Jiagan was capable and ambitious. Some people commented on him: no sectarianism, no private, no political enemies, no grudges.
In April 1975, Yan Jiagan quickly became president after Chiang Kai-shek's death, much to Soong Mei-ling's surprise, but his "president" was in name only, and the actual power was firmly in the hands of Chiang Ching-kuo.
As soon as he took office, Yan Jiagan specially dispatched Ni Wenya, Tian Jiongjin, Yang Lianggong, and twenty-one others to set up a "funeral committee." The members of this committee were all aides of the Chiang family, and the purpose of this committee was ostensibly to deal with Chiang Kai-shek's funeral affairs, but in fact to seize the initiative, avoid turmoil over Chiang Kai-shek's death, and give political enemies an opportunity.
At this time, Song Meiling could not hold back, and at her behest, Kong Lingkan united with the "pro-American faction" to elect Song Meiling as the "president of the Kuomintang" and frantically created momentum in the hope of gaining more support, but as mentioned above, after Sun Li and Wu Guozhen lost power, it was difficult for the "pro-American faction" to collide with Chiang Ching-kuo.
After hearing Kong Lingkan's proposal, Zhang Baoli, then secretary general of the Central Committee, jumped out of the horse to express his opposition, saying:
"The president must be a person with outstanding merit to be competent, Jiang Gongxin is newly mourned, and no one has been found to be able to take on this responsibility." In my opinion, it is better to retain the position of president for the time being to express my respect for Jiang Gong and eternal remembrance. As for the leader of the Party, he must not be left alone, and he intends to immediately elect a single person. ”
Zhang Baoshu made a lot of efforts in arranging for Chiang Ching-kuo to serve as the "president of the Executive Yuan," and this crucial statement was even more decisive, completely blocking Song Meiling's attempt to seize power.
In this way, the drama of the superiority painstakingly designed by Soong Mei-ling and the "pro-American faction" was easily resolved, and the helpless Soong Mei-ling could only leave Taiwan and spend the rest of her life in the United States, and Chiang Ching-kuo began to take sole power.