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Title: Wang Sheng papers
Dates: 1950-2000
Collection Number: 2013C5
Creator: Wang, Sheng, 1917-
Collection Size:
16 manuscript boxes
(6.6 linear feet)
Repository:
Hoover Institution Archives
Stanford, California 94305-6010
Abstract: Diaries and writings, relating to Taiwanese military policy, and to confidential relations between Taiwan and the People's
Republic of China.
Physical Location: Hoover Institution Archives
Languages: In
Chinese
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[Identification of item], Wang Sheng papers, [Box number], Hoover Institution Archives.
Acquired by the Hoover Institution Archives in 2012.
Materials may have been added to the collection since this finding aid was prepared. To determine if this has occurred, find
the collection in Stanford University's online catalog at
http://searchworks.stanford.edu/ . Materials have been added to the collection if the number of boxes listed in the online catalog is larger than the number
of boxes listed in this finding aid.
Wang Sheng (1917-2006) was a lieutenant general in the Republic of China army and director of the General Political Warfare
Department from 1975 to 1983.
Wang was born in Longnan County, Jiangxi Province. In 1939 he joined the Kuomintang (KMT) and was sent to join the Three Principles
of the People Youth Corps Training Course, run by Chiang Ching-kuo. After finishing the course, Wang was chosen to work for
Chiang, which he did for the next fifty years, including taking care of Chiang's twin sons, the result of an extramarital
affair.
In the early 1950s, Wang established the precursor to the General Political Warfare College, the elite training school for
KMT army and party cadres. Being second in command of the civil-military programs, welfare, and services section of Chiang
Ching-kuo's cadre system, Wang's main task was laying the foundation for the China Youth Corps under Chiang's leadership.
Wang thus spent most of the later 1950s and 1960s training army political cadres in the General Political Warfare College,
which allowed him to develop a mentoring relationship with rising officers throughout the armed forces. In 1953, Wang was
named assistant commandant (i.e., provost) and in January 1954 was made a major general. In 1960, Wang became deputy director
of the General Political Warfare Department at the Ministry of National Defense; in mid-1961 he was promoted to lieutenant
general and became the executive deputy director. He remained in that post until being promoted to director in April 1975,
the same month in which Chiang Kai-shek died. Wang then served as director of the General Political Warfare Department of
the Republic of China's Armed Forces from 1975 to 1983, during which time he became one of Chiang Ching-kuo's most trusted
advisers, frequently undertaking secret military and intelligence assignments on behalf of the Taiwanese government.
In 1979 Wang was assigned to lead a special unit within the KMT, the "Liu Shaokang Office," aimed at dealing with Chinese
Communist peace overtures to Taiwan and Beijing's newly proposed united front. This office was so powerful that it was described
in Taiwan's political arena as the inner court of the KMT party headquarters and Wang's position as second only to that of
President Chiang Ching-kuo. In the early 1980s, as Chiang's health failed, Wang was invited by the US government to visit
the United States and meet high officials from the Reagan administration. Wang's trip had Chiang's approval and was neither
unauthorized nor secretive, as many political rumors would have it. As Wang toured the United States, however, certain military-intelligence
quarters in Washington, DC, and mass media such as
Newsweek began describing him as Chiang's heir apparent. In August 1983, Chiang sent Wang to Paraguay as Taiwan's ambassador; Wang
did not return to Taiwan until Chiang's death in January 1988. Wang died in Taipei in 2006.
Scope and Content of Collection
The papers contain fifty-one volumes of Wang Sheng's personal diaries, ranging from the early 1950s to the 2000s, and twenty-four
volumes of official files, speeches, minutes, correspondence, and photos. They document Wang Sheng's unique position in Taiwan's
political and military-intelligence arenas and reveal the secret role Taiwan and the KMT played in the cold war's East Asian
theater.
The following terms have been used to index the description of this collection in the library's online public access catalog.
Taiwan--Military policy.
Taiwan--Politics and government.
Taiwan--Foreign relations--China.
China--Foreign relations--Taiwan.