Taiwan archive sheds light on key events in Chiang Ching-kuo's presidency

Taiwan has launched an online archive of written records on the late Chiang Ching-kuo, who was the self-ruled island's president during the volatile era when Washington switched diplomatic ties to Beijing.

Chiang - the eldest son of the late former Kuomintang leader Chiang Kai-shek - was Taiwan's president from 1978 until his death in 1988 at the age of 77.

His father had fled with his KMT troops to Taiwan in 1949, setting up a government there after losing a civil war to Mao Zedong's communists in mainland China.

Do you have questions about the biggest topics and trends from around the world? Get the answers with SCMP Knowledge, our new platform of curated content with explainers, FAQs, analyses and infographics brought to you by our award-winning team.

Chiang Ching-kuo's presidency marked a transition from his father's authoritarian rule to the vibrant democracy of today's Taiwan.

The digital archive was launched on Wednesday by government-funded Academia Historica and provides free public access to thousands of records related to Chiang.

"It curates more than 50,000 original documents ... from Academia Historica and archives inside and outside Taiwan," according to the institution, which manages the official presidential and vice-presidential archives.

Records in the archive include Chiang's personal correspondence, diary entries, notes, works and government documents.

Academia Historica said it was more than a collection of primary source material and offered "insights into a captivating period of modern China and Taiwan".

The mysterious Russian wife of former Taiwan leader

Chen Yi-shen, head of Academia Historica, said the information released in the archive showed the loosening of the authoritarian regime under Chiang Ching-kuo.

"President Lee Teng-hui is known as the initiator of a 'quiet revolution' that brought forth Taiwan's democracy during his 12-year presidency," Chen said.

"But before him, there were clashes over democracy between the government and the opposition - including the 1979 Kaohsiung Incident," he said.

The crackdown on pro-democracy protests in the southern city that year is seen as a watershed for the movement and a seminal event in Taiwan's post-war history. It led to Chiang lifting bans on forming new political parties and media organisations in 1986 and declaring an end to nearly four decades of martial law the following year.

Strained relations across the Taiwan Strait also improved when he allowed Taiwanese to visit relatives in mainland China in 1987.

A 2008 concert in Taipei marked the 20th anniversary of Chiang Ching-kuo's death. Photo: AFP alt=A 2008 concert in Taipei marked the 20th anniversary of Chiang Ching-kuo's death. Photo: AFP>

"The database also reveals how a major incident for Taiwan played out - the normalisation of US-China relations," said Hsueh Hua-yuan, a professor of Taiwanese history at the National Chengchi University in Taipei.

Hsueh said documents including Chiang's diary entries, records from the foreign ministry and media reports showed that the president was aware that Washington was likely to switch diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing sooner or later.

The archive contains letters and official documents as well as newspaper clippings detailing the period from 1971, when then US secretary of state Henry Kissinger made a secret trip to China, to Richard Nixon's visit the following year as president, which led to the US changing allegiance in 1979.

Chiang called it "an affront" in a handwritten document from late 1978.

"Since the Republic of China [Taiwan's official title] and the United States signed an alliance treaty, their relations have remained close and friendly, but now - with just seven hours' notice - the US government has notified us of the termination of relations," the document reads.

"This is not only a shock but also an affront to our people."

Lin Hsiao-ting, director of the Centre for East Asian Studies at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, said the archive also reveals Chiang's changing view of cross-strait ties.

"In the 1970s, he was not only nationalistic but also anti-Chinese communists, but towards the 1980s, he gradually adopted a relatively more open cross-strait policy as evidenced by his permission for locals to visit their relatives on the mainland," Lin said.

The Hoover Institution supported the archive project, along with the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange in Taipei.

This article originally appeared in the South China Morning Post (SCMP), the most authoritative voice reporting on China and Asia for more than a century. For more SCMP stories, please explore the SCMP app or visit the SCMP's Facebook and Twitter pages. Copyright © 2022 South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.

Copyright (c) 2022. South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.