Chiang Kai-shek & Chiang Ching-kuo Diaries

The Chiang diaries are among the most requested items by researchers to the Hoover Institution Library & Archives and contain decades of valuable political and foreign policy insights of these historic Taiwanese leaders. Scholars using the diaries have revised and expanded the understanding of modern China, the Cold War, and global history in ways that were not possible before they were available.

Chiang Kai-shek’s diaries span more than 50 years of his life, military service, and political career from 1917 to 1972. The diaries cover consequential events including Chiang’s rise to leadership of the Kuomintang; the Sino-Japanese War of 1937 to 1945; the civil war in Mainland China that culminated in the victory of the Chinese Communist Party over the Nationalists in 1949; the foundations of Taiwan as the epicenter of Chinese nationalism; the Taiwan Strait Crisis of 1954-55 and 1958; and the US-Taiwan alliance at the height of the Cold War.

Chiang Ching-kuo’s diaries range from 1937, when he returned home from schooling and work in the Soviet Union, to 1979, the year after he assumed the presidency of Taiwan and the United States rescinded diplomatic recognition of Taiwan and normalized relations with Beijing. These entries shed light on how Chiang Ching-kuo became the de facto ruler and decision maker in Taiwan when his father was severely ill, and offer a view into the inner-world of the man who would oversee Taiwan’s economic takeoff and its transition to democracy in the ensuing decade.

Use copies of the handwritten pages are available at the Hoover Institution Library & Archives. The copies reflect the fragility and poor condition of the originals, with some pages water damaged, stuck together, or missing entirely. In addition, some sentences were crossed out in ink on the originals.

Given the uninhibited nature of many personal comments in the diaries, family members have chosen to keep some passages private and have thus redacted these from the use copies. Although in most cases the individuals named are deceased, family members wish to protect the feelings of living descendants or other relatives. Recognizing the historical significance of the diaries in their entirety, however, family members have authorized that the redacted passages be released in 2035. Additionally, typed copies are being published by the Republic of China History and Culture Society.

Inventories of the Chiang Kai-shek Diaries and Chiang Ching-Kuo diaries are available on the Online Archive of California.