World War II Wartime China’s First Lady: A Lesson in Resolving Today’s Tension with Taiwan?
Boston University scholar’s new biography probes forgotten life of Soong Mayling, aka Madame Chiang Kai-Shek
Soong Mayling, the late first lady of China and Taiwan and subject of a new biography by BU’s Esther Hu, receiving an honorary degree in 1989 from BU President John Silber (Hon.’95). Photo by BU Photography
World War II Wartime China’s First Lady: A Lesson in Resolving Today’s Tension with Taiwan?
Boston University scholar’s new biography probes forgotten life of Soong Mayling, aka Madame Chiang Kai-shek
Chinese President Xi Jinping has ordered his military to be ready to invade Taiwan, viewed by the People’s Republic as a breakaway province, by 2027. As leaders seek to defuse the tension, they can find guidance from a person Life magazine in 1937 called “probably the most powerful woman in the world.”
So says the Boston University biographer of Soong Mayling (Hon.’89)—known to much of the world as Madame Chiang Kai-shek. Her husband, Chiang Kai-shek, led the Republic of China on the mainland until he was defeated by the Chinese Communist Party in 1949. He and his wife fled to Taiwan, which he presided over until his death in 1975.
In Soong Mayling and Wartime China, 1937-1945 (Bloomsbury, 2024), Esther Hu writes that as China’s first lady, Soong Mayling helped lead the nation’s desperate fight in World War II. She died in 2003 and today is “almost completely forgotten,” writes Hu, a senior fellow at the Pardee School of Global Studies International History Institute.
Her book seeks to cure that amnesia, chronicling Soong Mayling’s exhaustive, and exhausting, efforts as China battled Japanese invaders from 1937 through the end of World War II. Far from taking a ceremonial role, she was the Chinese air force’s secretary-general for three years, gave speeches and wrote articles—published at home and abroad—to rally support for China’s efforts, and conducted diplomacy. That diplomacy included visiting the United States in 1942-43, where she addressed Congress and prepared for her husband’s later meeting with President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
War and overwork took their toll on the woman Hu calls the “Chinese Winston Churchill.” She almost died in 1937 when a Japanese plane strafed her car on a tour of hospitals, and in 1944, she needed rest for exhaustion.
There’s a personal angle to Hu’s scholarship: her grandfather, awarded a Legion of Merit by President Harry Truman, was a four-star Chinese general during World War II, and her mother volunteered as a trustee for Taiwan’s children’s home and its school system. Soong Mayling interviewed her for the position.
The United States endorses a peaceful resolution to the current China-Taiwan standoff, while supplying military aid to Taiwan. Hu, a Taiwan native, will give a talk on her book on Wednesday, February 12 (details below). She spoke with BU Today about why Soong Mayling should be remembered and what lessons her life offers for resolving today’s strife.
Q&A
with Esther Hu
BU Today: What should readers today know about Soong Mayling?
Hu: Some years ago, I was attending an academic conference in Taiwan on the Chinese Expeditionary Forces [that fought in World War II], and we were discussing the first Burma campaign, which had ended in failure for the Allied forces. In the archives, I had noticed Soong Mayling in the historical records. She was translating, interjecting, facilitating the briefing during the first Burma campaign between her husband, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, and the American officer. As a feminist literary scholar and historian who recovers women’s voices, I’m delighted to showcase her.
Her work was critical during wartime, during China’s national survival. She mobilized Chinese women, and she was secretary of the Chinese Air Force and helped procure airplanes and staff on the diplomatic front. She actively nurtured the relationships that were critical to China’s success, such as with the Roosevelts.
BU Today: What made her such an effective leader?
Hu: She grew up in the United States. At the age of eight, she came here with her sisters—her father was a wealthy Shanghai Methodist businessman and wanted his six children to have an American education. She went to Georgia, where she was privately tutored. She ended up graduating from Wellesley College, where she concentrated in English literature and philosophy, at the age of 18. She returned to China and hired a tutor to help her with her Chinese. She bridged linguistic and cultural worlds, and she particularly appealed to Americans at the time because she also originated from a Christian family.
She was definitely someone who was very gifted. My subtitle says, “Deploying Words as Weapons,” because she had a rhetorical flourish; she was a gifted orator. She wanted to comfort her people. She wanted to make sure her country didn’t get annihilated. She rebuked the democracies for their inaction at the very beginning of the war. In that sense, she was very much like Winston Churchill in the way she could deploy words.
Soong Mayling (Hon.’89) “knew that human beings ultimately value dignity, respect, and life.”
BU Today: Was she as influential in leading Taiwan?
Her influence and work on Taiwan are actually the subject of my next book. This role primarily involved leading women’s groups in philanthropy, which she had a lot of practice doing, helping orphans, impoverished children. There was a lot of fundraising that she would do regularly for hospitals, educational institutions.
And it was, again, helping the military, [ensuring] a lot of military housing. If we go to the Grand Hotel Taipei, where they would house foreign dignitaries and presidents and so on, you will see photographs of her welcoming many heads of state to Taiwan.
BU Today: Given her influential role, how much blame should she have for the regime’s corruption, which fueled its postwar ejection by the communists?
We’re still thinking about it, even to this day. My answer is: she tried her very best to do what was good and right at the time. She could not control the behavior of other people—her older sister, for example, who actually was involved in some of the corruption. She was also politically unable to control [another sister] who was very left-wing and who actually gave Mao Zedong $50,000 of her own money in 1936 to fund the Chinese Communists—so, an act of treason.
There was also the fact that China was barely unified [under] the national regime, [which] hardly had a chance to start their economic and reconstruction programs.
BU Today: With Xi at least discussing a possible invasion of Taiwan, does Soong Mayling’s life have any lessons for our own tense times?
Absolutely. I think diplomacy and dialogue are things that she advocated, aside from buying planes. At the beginning of the [Second World] war, she did mobilize and train women leaders from across the political spectrum for her own Women’s Advisory Council, and these [included] the wives of Zhou Enlai and other high-ranking Communist leaders. And they worked together for four years to help China. Women usually do not want their children involved in battles. So bring more women to the negotiation table.
There was also her spirit of boldness. FDR was bold about the Four Freedoms. She thought along the same lines, and her speech in Congress actually said, Just like your president, we are fighting for the Four Freedoms. The spirit of boldness [caused her] to say that, and [her spirit] of optimism and hope. She knew that human beings ultimately value dignity, respect, and life.
Esther Hu will give a talk on her book, Soong Mayling and Wartime China, 1937-1945, on Wednesday, February 12, from 5 to 6:30 pm at the Pardee School, Bay State and Riverside Rooms, 121 Bay State Road.
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