THE SOONGS

Southland Times, Issue 21581, 19 December 1931, Page 11

THE SOONGS

A CHINESE FAMILY

(By

Ædile.)

In China to-day the most powerful family is the Soongs, three sisters and a brother, who by marriage and blood unite Chiang Kai-shek with H. H. Kung and the late Sain Yat Sen. This living group of six people are called by their opponents the “Soong Dynasty” and the greatness of their power is acknowledged. Charles Jones Soong was born in the island of Hainan right in the South of China and as a sailor on the United States cutter Colfax he crossed the Pacific 'to America in 1880. He had learned to make cord hammocks on the way across and with this as a trade he worked his way through the southern states until one, General Julian S. Carr of Durham, North Carolina, met him and saw him through what is now Duke University. He was then a Christian and in 1885 he received a Vanderbilt theological certificate. Then he returned to China as a teacher of English for the Southern Methodist Mission and married a Miss Ni a pillar of that mission in Shanghai. Soong established a printing press to publish the Bible in Chinese, built a church, taught English and was on the organizing committee of the first Y.M.C.A., in China. Eventually he joined the revolutionary movement under Sun Yat Sen, becoming secretary and treasurer to the leader, and ultimately the chief administrator of the movement. He was a short, stocky man, rather unattractive in appearance, but he was thoroughly capable, and there was no doubt about his strength. Soong had three sons and three daughters. Soong Aiding, the eldest, became the wife of Dr. Kung, a wealthy Christian leader; Soong Ching-ling, the second dalughter, married Dr. Sun Yat Sen and became the leader of militant womanhood in China; Soong Mei-ling marred Chiang Kai-shek. T. V. Soong, the eldest brother, was Minister of Finance in Chiang Kai-shek’s government and is regarded as the most competent administrative official China has had for half a century. T. L. Soong, the next in line, is managing director of the Manufacturers’ Bank and the director of the Whangpoo Conservancy Board, being one of the most important of Chinese business men in Shanghai. T. A. Soong, the youngest brother, is in the salt administration.

Every member of the Soong family was educated in the United States and all. are Christians. The family home on the Seymour road in the International Settlement at Shanghai, is thoroughly Western in every way. Mme Kung is described as a brilliant hostess and the inheritor of the hard commonsense of her mother. The family acknowledge her intellectual superiority and she is the counsellor of them all. Her husband inherited an immense business, produce-purchasing, small banks and medicine shops, in North China, Mongolia, Manchuria and South China. He is immensely rich, and in addition to his business, participates in governmental affairs, as well as in many charities. The second daughter, the widow of Sun Yat Sen, is a distinct type. Sweet, gentle and of unquestioned beauty, she radiates such warmth of personality that one sometimes wondered, in the days when Dr. Sun was an exile in Shanghai, whether the atmosphere of their home on Route Moliere was due to the presence of the great man or to the simple little woman who made one feel so much at home. While her husband was alive she kept much in the background, helping him in his studies and often acting as his secretary. After his death, however, she forged to the front of Chinese politics, for she regarded it as essential to China’s welfare that there should be a strict and literal interpretation of Dr. Sun’s wishes. She became an orator and active member of the Central Executive Committee of the Kuomintang; she led China’s women in the social revolution. When in 1927 General Chiang, then not a member of her family, split with the Communists and established a Kuomintang Government of his own at Nanking, Mme. Sun vehemently denounced him, and when Michael Borodin, the Russian adviser, left for .Moscow she went into voluntary exile in the Soviet capital as a protest against the splitting of the united front of the revolution.

When her sister Mei-ling was married to Chiang she did not go to China to attend the wedding, but when memorial services were held for Dr. Sun in Nanking in 1929 she attended them. She has made no peace, with her family and the government it controls; instead, she is the leader of the Kehmintang, an extreme left-wing party more closely allied to the Communist party than to the Koumintang as at present constituted. A woman of strong principles, capable of intense sacrifices for a cause, she has suffered privations out of respect for the memory of her husband. . Mme. Sun Yat-sen was not alone in showing her disapproval of the wedding of Mei-ling to Chiang Kai-sek. That was a love match to which most other members of the family objected at the time. Mei-ling, youthful, beautiful and entertaining, had been the centre of Shanghai’s social life for several years when, in 1924, she visited Mme. Sun in Canton and met there the rising military officer who was to become President. Their romance, a secret, commenced then, although they were not married until December 1, 1927.

Before her marriage Mei-ling was active in public and church work, and occasionally translated Chinese poetry into English. After her marriage she retired from the public eye altogether, appearing only with her husband. She has opened the Western world to General Chiang, who knows no foreign language well. In their long walks to. gether and during the evenings she tells him of the books she has read and translates to him. She often acts as his interpreter in confidential talks with foreigners.

Mme. Chiang is neither as keen nor as experienced as Mme. Kung, nor does she arouse affection as does Mme. Sun. Her shyness has often been mistaken for haughtiness. Yet a quickness at repartee enables her to enliven heavy political dinners and her adaptability has allowed her to form friendships with the old-fashioned wives of military officers and politicians upon whose support the success of her husband has depended. It is more than probable that her friendship with Mrs Hen Fu-chu kept the Tuchun of Shantung in line during the recent rebellion in the North. It was undoubtedly her influence that brought Chiang Kaishek into the Southern Methodist fold. T. V. Soong, the eldest brother, unwilling to compromise with old-fashioned methods, with corrupt practices and incompetence, he has made himself unpopular wiht a veyr large part of Chinese officialdom, although merchants, bankers and all foreigners in China swear by him. At the start he brought together under his Ministry of Finance a group of American-edu-cated Chinese, mostly Harvard graduates, to whom he entrusted the principal bureaus. He hoped they would form a nucleus of administration that would not be bound by traditions of the past. He also employed

foreigners, mostly Americans, to institute modern methods.

Mr Soong can hold out for a principle to the bitter end in the face of united opposition. Such a fight took place last year and is one of the causes for the present revolt against the Nanking Government. The Finance Minister refused to have anything to do with a proposal that America lend China 2,000,000,000 ounces of silver. He regarded the suggestion as unsound in every way. At one time practically all elements in the government, including Chiang and Kung, regarded his attitude as tantamount to treason. Soong almost lost his portfolio in the fight, but he stuck it out. Personally daring, physically powerful, tall, alert, hard-working and frank to a fault, he often upsets his fellow-officials. His personality is Western rather than Chinese, and therein lies his weakness; as his strength. For, after all, the Chinese expect to deal with a Chinese official in a Chinese way. Chiang Kai-shek’s personal background differed from that of any of the Soongs. He was born into an ordinary Chinese family in Fenghua, near Ningpo, but spent most of his life in Shanghai. Unlike the Soongs, he has had no formal education outside of China, except for a term in a military school in Japan and a year with the Red Army of Soviet Russia. He speaks no foreign tongue. Until he married Miss Soong Mei-ling, he was altogether without specific Western influences, except as he dealt with Western merchants and exchange brokers in Shanghai or with the Russian military advisers of the Whampoa Military Academy near Canton, of which he was the first president. Chiang Kai-shek is typically Chinese in his methods, except for surprising alertness in action, particularly military action, which has been the principal factor of his phenomenal success. He is undoubtedly the most competent military leader of the country. The future of the Soongs as a ruling family is now being determined by military force. Whether they continue in Chinese political life or retire altogether to privacy will be decided in the present wars. Apparently their enemies will resort to any device to remove them from the active polit-

(Continued from Last Column.) and in place of them give South A-Q of Diamonds. Now South will double East’s Three Heart bid. If North calls Three Spades, the contract will be made, while the Three Hearts could be set. North could call Three No-Trumps showing the Hearts stopped. The pqint is, however, that when vulnerable a little more strength is required for the overcall of Three in suit. When not vulnerable 6 playing tricks, with 4 in the trump suit; when vulnerable about 7 playing tricks with about 5 in the trump suit.With a more general distribution use the Takeout (Informatory) Double.