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'''Soong Ching-ling''' the Chinese political figure and philanthropist (1893-1981) who was the widow of Sun Yat-sen and who served after 1949 as a vice-president and later honorary president of the People's Republic of China. A member of one of modern China's most prominent families, she devoted her life to social welfare, women's advancement and the unity of the country.

== Family and Education ==
Soong Ching-ling was born on 27 January 1893 in Shanghai, the second of the three daughters of Charles Soong, a wealthy businessman and Methodist minister, and his wife Ni Guizhen. The family was Christian and Western-educated, and the Soong sisters became famous for their marriages and their influence; Ching-ling would be a lifelong advocate of social reform and of Chinese nationalism.

She was educated at the Shanghai school founded for Chinese girls and then went to the United States, where she studied at Wesleyan College in Macon, Georgia. She graduated in 1913 with a lively interest in politics and in the cause of the Chinese revolution, and on returning home she took a position as secretary to Sun Yat-sen, the leader of the movement to overthrow the monarchy and establish a republic.

Her father had been an early supporter of Sun, and the connection brought her into the heart of the revolutionary movement. Her sisters married a future finance minister and the Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek, so that the family came to occupy a central place in the politics of twentieth-century China, often on opposing sides.

== Marriage to Sun Yat-sen ==
In 1915 Soong Ching-ling married Sun Yat-sen, who was more than twenty years her senior and recently divorced. The marriage was opposed by her parents, and the couple moved to Japan and later to southern China, where Sun struggled to build a republican government and to reunite a country divided among warlords. She served as his secretary, confidante and political ally.

She shared Sun's programme of national reconstruction and supported his decision to cooperate with the Soviet Union and with the young Chinese Communist Party in the early 1920s. This policy of alliance with the communists brought Sun, and after his death his widow, into conflict with more conservative elements of the Nationalist movement, including her own family.

Sun Yat-sen died in Beijing in March 1925, and Soong Ching-ling was at his bedside as he signed the will that charged his followers to continue the revolution. Her devotion to his memory and to the principles of the Three Principles of the People became the guiding thread of her public life, and she emerged as an authoritative interpreter of his legacy.

== Politics and Social Causes ==
After Sun's death Soong Ching-ling became a leading figure in Chinese public life in her own right. She was elected to the central executive committee of the Nationalist party and held a number of official positions, and she used her standing to press for social legislation and for the emancipation of women. She founded journals and organisations devoted to the welfare of women and children.

She broke openly with the right wing of the Nationalists after the suppression of the communist-led labour movement in 1927, and she moved to the Soviet Union and then to Europe, where she worked for international understanding of the Chinese revolution and took part in anti-fascist activities. She returned to China during the war against Japan and devoted herself to relief work and to the defence of civil liberties.

In 1938 she founded the China Defence League, which raised money and medical supplies for the resistance and for the base areas controlled by the communists. Her humanitarian work and her criticism of the Nationalist government's authoritarian methods made her a symbol of independent conscience, admired by many intellectuals and by foreign sympathisers with the Chinese revolution.

== Vice-President of the People's Republic ==
When the People's Republic was founded in 1949, Soong Ching-ling chose to remain in China and to take part in the new government. She was elected a vice-chairman of the central government and later became a vice-president of the republic, and she served on the standing committee of the National People's Congress. She was one of the very few figures acceptable to both the communists and well-disposed opinion abroad.

In these offices she focused on social welfare, international friendship and the cause of peace. She was active in organisations for the welfare of children and women, in bodies devoted to friendship between peoples, and in international peace movements, and she made a number of foreign journeys in which she presented the case for the new China.

She maintained a dignified and largely non-partisan public character, and she preserved close ties with members of her family who had taken very different political paths. Her long service and her personal integrity gave her a standing that transcended the factions of the period, and she was deeply respected by wide sections of Chinese society.

== Death and Legacy ==
In 1981 Soong Ching-ling was elected honorary president of the People's Republic, shortly before her death. She died in Beijing on 29 May 1981, and a state funeral was held for her. Her home in Beijing was preserved as a memorial, and her papers and photographs remain an important record of the revolutionary era and of the Soong family.

She is remembered as the conscience of the Sun Yat-sen legacy and as a bridge between the republican and socialist periods of Chinese history. Her commitment to the welfare of children and to the equality of women, and her refusal to abandon the principles she had shared with her husband, gave her a reputation for independence that few public figures of her time possessed.

Her life illuminates the extraordinary role played by the Soong family in modern China and the choices faced by Chinese women of her generation. She remains honoured for her humanitarian work and for her efforts to promote goodwill between China and the rest of the world.

== See also ==
* Sun Yat-sen
* Three Principles of the People
* China Defence League
* Republic of China

== References ==

<ref name="r1">Emily Hahn, The Soong Sisters, Doubleday, 1941.</ref>
<ref name="r2">Sterling Seagrave, The Soong Dynasty, Harper and Row, 1985.</ref>
<ref name="r3">Jung Chang and Jon Halliday, Madame Sun Yat-sen, Penguin Books, 1986.</ref>
<ref name="r4">Israel Epstein, Woman in World History: Soong Ching-ling, New World Press, 1993.</ref>

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[[Category:Politics]]
[[Category:History]]
[[Category:Contemporary China]]

Soong Ching-ling - Revision history

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