[KS] Qing–Chosŏn royal exchanges or marriages?

[Frank Hoffmann]

Wonderful! Thank you, Adam, Kirk, and Gene, for sharing your detailed 
insights and also for suggesting Evelyn Rawsk's book.

My question was just a search light pointing into the darkness, 
attempting to grasp the fact that Chiang Kai-shek had sent his older 
son to Stalin and, subsequently, as soon as his elder son returned, 
dispatched his younger one to Herr Hitler. That strategy worked out 
just wonderfully in both cases ... both of these truly pampered 
individuals were parroting the respective ideologies in no time. Stalin 
being Stalin, of course, he later sent the older son to work in a heavy 
machinery plant for a few years, where he met his future Russian wife. 
The Nazis, on the other hand, took excellent care of the younger one, 
allowing him to ride German tanks in the Wehrmacht. (You can even look 
that up on Wikipedia.) He much enjoyed that and later married a German 
and continued to champion key points of fascist ideology and Nazi 
military tactics, even hired old Nazis as advisors for the Taiwanese 
army for as long as they were still 'available.' 

Now, Chiang Kai-shek was not quite the absolute dictator that someone 
like Mussolini or Hitler could be, and he did not hold the same role as 
the former Chinese emperors, at least as long as he was in mainland 
China. The political situation was more complex. Nevertheless, he came 
close to that role. He had studied in Japan himself and conversed with 
his military advisor von Falkenhausen in Japanese (and Chiang's younger 
son had a Japanese mother), while his wife, who played a crucial role 
in his administration, was educated in the United States. 

Despite Chiang's pseudo-traditionalist rhetoric, his very own make, a 
kind of Confucian grassroots fascism, which was pivotal to his relative 
success in maintaining power, I wondered if these diplomatic moves to 
send his sons to his political allies (the younger one was in the 1940s 
when the Americans had replaced the Germans sent to the U.S. for 
further military training) had any parallels in traditional politics. 
Chiang, born in 1887, is often referred to as a 19th-century man for 
good reason. In a sense, he never fully adapted to the 20th century, 
which, according to his biographers, is one of the main reasons that 
his cruel and corrupt regime finally lost all credibility in the 1940s.

Yuan Shikai--as Kirk knows much better than me--regarded as the 
'Übervater' of the New China by Chiang and all others, had earlier in 
his career spent years in Korea. Many others in Chiang's government had 
studied in Japan, Russia, France, or Germany. There is no doubt about 
the break with tradition—numerous books have been written on this 
topic. Yet, these family politics did remind me of royal European 
politics. It seems, however, that the Chinese did not have a need to 
employ this tool in traditional times. I believe your responses clarify 
this. 

Your replies are certainly very interesting in their own right ... 
without considering the above context. 


Thank you!
Frank

_______________________________
Frank Hoffmann
https://koreanstudies.com