Charlie Soong

Charlie Soong, born Han Jiaozhun, was one of the most powerful businessmen in China during end of the Qing Dynasty and throughout the Warlord Era. He was a major supporter and trustee of the Kuomintang under Sun Yat-sen, and then his successor Chiang Kai-shek to whom Charlie married one of his famous and powerful daughters, Soong Meiling.

Early Life
Han Jiaozhun was born in Wenchang City of Hainan Province in 1863 to an extended family of workers. At age 15 he went with his uncle to the United States of America as a migrant worker looking for opportunities. He spent some time working for his uncle in Boston before going off on his own to explore the United States and build a future.

He soon met a group of Christian missionaries from the United Methodist Church and became intrigued with the religion, deciding to convert. He was baptized as Charles Jones Soon (Soon eventually became Soong), and became known as Charlie Soong for which he remained known throughout his life. The name most likely came from his given name in Hainan; Chiao-shun.

The missionaries soon found he was an intelligent and capable young man, and set up for him to live with and be apprenticed by a major American businessman of the time; Julian Carr, an industrialist and philantrophist from North Carolina.

After some time of apprenticeship Julian Carr soon sent Charlie to become a student at a university of which he was a trustee; the forerunner of Duke University then known as Trinity College. The Methodist ministers who ran the school were fascinated with the fact a Chinaman had come to the United States and converted hoping to learn more of the West and achieve a higher education so he could return home as a missionary himself, and thus set out on making him extremely educated and poised through studies of the English Language and the Christian Bible.

Soon thereafter he transferred to Vanderbilt University and in 1885 he had not only become fluent in English but achieved a Degree of Theology, making him prime to return to China as a missionary. In 1886 they sent him overseas to the foreign concession in Shanghai to begin his duties.

Return to China
Charlie Soong returned to Shanghai to join and help lead the local Methodist mission to convert the Chinese, and continued to do so throughout the 1880s. Eventually, however, he concluded he could do more to convert and educate his countrymen by leaving the mission and it's more-cloistered style.

He soon became an entrepreneur and opened a printing business, and temporarily resigned from preaching due to the chaos of the time politically. He had become intrigued by the movement against the corrupt Qing Dynasty and had decided to join the Red Gang, known in China as the Hung P'ang, whom were a large anti-Manchu resistance group.

The Red Gang was a pro-republican force which had at it's beginnings originally wanted to reinstate a Chinese Ming Dynasty instead of the Manchu Qing, however, it had reformed it's ideals. In this society, he had gained his revolutionary roots.

While attending church in Shanghai he had met another Chinese intellectual and Christian convert; Doctor Sun Yat-sen, who would become the revolutionary leader and founder of the Kuomintang. They were both from the same area and became great friends, with Charlie being a financier for Sun Yat-sen's political movements.

Prominence in China
Shortly before the beginning of the revolution in 1911, Charlie had began his family which would become famous and prominent throughout China. He had multiple daughters and sons, all of which would become the power-players of China in the next few half a century. The one who would eventually marry Sun Yat-sen's successor Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek would be Soong Meiling.

Charlie had all of his children educated in the United States of America and raised Christian, teaching them all to join him in being business tycoons. He had established a business dynasty backing the Kuomintang and it's predecessors, helping lead it's financial institutions and setting him his sons and daughters as capable successors. However, he would soon have a falling-out with Sun Yat-sen as he became in love with one of his daughters.

Charlie died in 1918 of stomach cancer, leaving behind a rich and powerful family which controlled multiple financial and political institutions as well as many businesses. He died still at odds with his best friend Sun Yat-sen, however, his daughter would eventually marry him.

Powerful Legacy
Charlie Soong left a powerful legacy in China after his death. All of his daughters married individuals who would become the most powerful men in China prior to the Chinese Civil War. One daughter married H.H. Kung, a powerful banker, while the other two became Madame Chiang Kai-shek and Madame Sun Yat-sen by marriage.

His sons would become great businessmen who helped Chiang Kai-shek help banks and financial situations throughout China, while his daughters became the wives and powerful speakers and diplomats for their husbands; the founders of the Republic of China Chiang Kai-shek and Sun Yat-sen.