Eleanor Roosevelt said, 'Madame Chiang can talk about democracy, but she doesn't quite know how to live it.'

Soong May-ling—a.k.a. Madame Chiang Kai-shek, China's wartime first lady—was, says biographer Hannah Pakula, "China's face to the world." In 1943, she addressed the U.S. Congress to great acclaim. But she and her family were deeply entwined in the corruption within China's Nationalist regime. Pakula, the acclaimed author (An Uncommon Woman) and widow of director Alan Pakula (All the President's Men), spent 10 years researching The Last Empress: Madame Chiang Kai-shek and the Birth of Modern China, her rich portrait of China's wartime power couple and the culture that shaped them.

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What drew you to Madame Chiang?
Alan told me this story: when Madame Chiang stayed at the White House, she'd clap her hands for the servants to come. Imagine how that went over in the Roosevelt White House! I thought, "Why would an obviously intelligent woman educated in the United States and trying to get money do anything so counterproductive?" So I started reading. Her family was fascinating.

How so?
May-ling was sent to the States when she was 10. She went to Wesleyan in Macon, Georgia, then Wellesley. Her older sisters went to Wesleyan; her brother T. V. went to Harvard. When she graduated from Wellesley, she'd been here half her life. When she went back, she was so Americanized she had to study all things Chinese, including the language.

Why did she marry Chiang?
Marriage in China was about family position. Ai-ling, her oldest, most manipulative sister, married H. H. Kung, the 75th lineal descendent of Confucius. This carried immense weight in China. Kung was an aristocrat but not terribly bright. Ai-ling ran their financial empire. The second sister, Ching-ling, married Sun Yat-sen, who cofounded the Nationalist Party. Ai-ling arranged May-ling's marriage to Chiang, who was a military hero, because the Soong family had Confucius and China's George Washington already.

Was Chiang a good military leader?
He was a Chinese warlord. He manipulated people below him so nobody ever got too much power. Then he wouldn't have to worry about them. This had terrible effects on how he ran the country and the war. He was not particularly efficient. He took care of people in favor whether or not they were talented, so promotions never had much to do with merit. And his generals followed the tradition of skimming off the top.

For example?
They would say, "I have 10,000 men," and demand enough arms and money for them. But they never had as many men as they claimed, and pocketed the difference. That was a general's prerogative.

Why didn't Chiang change that?
He kept putting off the time when the people would be educated enough to take over the government; for him that explained why China couldn't be democratic yet. China never had a civil society: there was the court, the mandarins, and the peasants. So there was a lot of preparatory work to do. But nobody ever seemed to be doing it.

What was May-ling doing?
Whenever the Chiangs needed money, she'd hop on a plane to America. Roosevelt was sympathetic: the Delano family traded in China. He gave her what he felt was necessary to keep his dream of a free, unified China alive. He felt very strongly that the Allies could not lose China; that was the one thing Chiang had to dangle. They started rumors about negotiating with the Japanese to keep the pressure up. So she got plenty of aid.

Where did the money go?
The Chinese army never had enough armaments, but there were warehouses full of ammunition Chiang was storing to use against the Communists. They had to blow it all up when the Japanese moved in. The aid stopped with Truman: he had no use for the Chiangs. But May-ling had many friends here, some quite powerful.

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