Financier And Industrialist: Hakka Soong Tze-wen

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

Soong, T.V.,

in full SOONG TZU-WEN, Soong also spelled SUNG (b. Dec. 4, 1894, Shanghai,
China--d. April 24, 1971, San Francisco, Calif., U.S.), financier and
official of the Chinese Nationalist government between 1927 and 1949, once
reputed to have been the richest man in the world. 

The son of a prominent industrialist, Soong was educated in the United
States at Harvard University. He returned to China in 1917 and soon became
active in banking and financial circles. After 1923 he began to fill the
role his father had had, that of financing the Nationalist Party
(Kuomintang). At the request of Sun Yat-sen, to whom his sister Ch'ing-ling
was married, T.V. established at Canton in 1924 the Central Bank of China,
reorganized four years later as a central bank of issue and a government
treasury. 

In 1925 Soong became finance minister in the new Nationalist government.
After 1927 he cooperated with Chiang Kai-shek, who had become head of the
Nationalists, and to whom another of the Soong sisters, Mei-ling, was
married. As finance minister Soong reformed the taxation system, abolished
the likin, or internal transit tariff, and readjusted foreign and domestic
debts. Moreover, between 1928 and 1930 he returned tariff autonomy to China
by negotiating a series of agreements with foreign powers, thus restoring
China's right to set tariff rates and supervise their collection, a
privilege that had been forcibly taken from China in the 19th century by
the Western nations. He resigned as finance minister in 1931 though his
influence--largely due to his wealth and his growing international
prestige--remained great. In 1936 he rejoined the government, and, during
the Sino-Japanese War, he served China in its negotiations with the foreign
powers. He became minister of foreign affairs in 1942. 

The following year Soong negotiated the end of extraterritoriality rights;
i.e., the end of the rights of foreigners to govern themselves while on
Chinese soil. In 1945 he negotiated a treaty of friendship between the
Nationalist government and the Soviet Union. When the Communists captured
the mainland in 1949, however, Soong moved to the United States, where he
was active in business and banking.