The Hakka Soong Dynasty

["Dixie" <Dixie@singnet.com.sg>]

Soong FAMILY,

Soong also spelled SUNG, Pinyin SONG, influential Chinese family that was
heavily involved in the political fortunes of China during the 20th
century. Among its best-known members were Charlie, the founder of the
family, and his children T.V. Soong, financier and politician; Soong
Mei-ling, who became Madame Chiang Kai-shek; and Soong Ch'ing-ling (qq.v.),
who married Sun Yat-sen. 

Charlie Soong (1866-1918), also called Charles Jones Soon, was born Han
Chiao-shun and was reared until he was nine in Wen-ch'ang, a port on the
eastern coast of the island of Hainan. After a three-year apprenticeship in
the East Indies, he spent eight years in the United States. He was educated
and trained by the Methodists for missionary work among the Chinese. In
1886 he returned to China. He married in 1887; the following year he joined
a secret society dedicated to the overthrow of the Manchu dynasty. He
nevertheless continued his missionary work until 1892. About this time he
became a publisher--a career he had started with the printing of
inexpensive, vernacular Chinese Bibles--and, with the aid of Julian Carr, a
wealthy American patron, soon became a wealthy, influential industrialist
involved in a number of businesses. In 1894 Soong met Sun Yat-sen, who
helped to transform him into a revolutionary. In 1906 he was officially
appointed Treasurer of the Revolutionary Alliance and was responsible for
financing the Nationalist Party (Kuomintang) revolution. 

Soong had all of his children educated in the United States. After her
return to China, his eldest child, Ai-ling (1890-1973), acted as a
secretary to Sun until her marriage to banker and businessman H.H. K'ung in
1914. Ch'ing-ling, Soong's second child, replaced Ai-ling as secretary and
in 1914 married Sun Yat-sen, who was 26 years her senior. Both H.H. K'ung
and Charlie Soong's third child, T.V. Soong, were financially significant
forces in the advancement of Sun Yat-sen and the Nationalist cause in China
and the United States. After Sun's death in 1925, the Nationalist Party
split into factions. The group led by Sun's widow, Ch'ing-ling, was
eventually overshadowed by the faction led by Chiang Kai-shek, who in 1927
married Mei-ling Soong, Charlie Soong's fourth child. (The two youngest of
Soong's children, T.L. and T.A., became bankers.) T.V. Soong became an
influential member of Chiang's Nationalist government and, with his sister
Mei-ling, was extremely important in Chinese foreign relations. Ch'ing-ling
remained opposed to Chiang's government; when the Communists established
the People's Republic in 1949, they granted Ch'ing-ling high, though
largely symbolic, status. The power of the Soong family began to dissipate
after this period.