The papers of H. H. Kung, a confidant of Chiang Kai-shek, his brother-in-law, and the patriarch of one of the “four big families” of Nationalist China, opened at the Hoover Institution Library and Archives today, January 19, 2010. About one-half of the full collection, which covers the period from 1917 to 1949, will be available on microfilm for research.
Richard Sousa, director of the Hoover Library and Archives, said “the Kung material adds crucially to our understanding of the politics and finances of Nationalist China. Making Mr. Kung’s papers available will provide historians an open window for analyzing how China developed and modernized in the twentieth century.”
The newly available Kung papers at the Hoover Institution suggest that Kung was modern China’s chief architect of the country’s financial, economic, and industrial sectors. He was also deeply involved in military, intelligence, politics, KMT, and domestic and foreign affairs, as well as the government’s dealings with the Chinese Communist Party.
The H. H. Kung papers are on loan to the Hoover Institution from the Kung family. The Kung collection complements Hoover’s other collections on Modern China, which include the Chiang Kai-shek diaries, the papers of T. V. Soong, and microfilm copies of the records of the KMT.
A finding aid for this collection, detailing its contents, can be found on the Online Archive of California at http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/kt967nf542/. For further information about the collection, please contact the Hoover Institution Archives at (650) 723-3563.
