Kong Xiangxi
(1881–1967), Chinese politician. Better known to Westerners as H. H. Kong, Kong Xiangxi was born in 1881 in Taigu, Shanxi Province, China, and claimed to be a direct descendant (seventyfifth generation) of Confucius (551–479 BCE). Educated at Oberlin College (Ohio), he also received a master's degree in economics from Yale. Kong was a loyal supporter of the Guomindang (Nationalist) government of Sun Yat-sen (1866–1925) and Chiang Kai-shek (1887–1975), who were his brothers-in-law. After 1928, he held various high positions in the Nationalist government, including prime minister (president of the Executive Yuan) from January 1938 to November 1939. In his long tenures as minister of finance (1933–1944) and president of the Central Bank of China, he made major reforms in China's monetary, financial, and fiscal systems. These reforms greatly benefited China's war against Japanese invasion, although they were also partially responsible for China's later hyperinflation. Criticized as the patron of widespread corruption among government officials and his family members (including his wife and children), he was removed from the Ministry of Finance in 1944 and the Central Bank of China in 1945. After the fall of the Nationalist government in 1949, Kong went to live in the United States, where he remained active in the China lobby until his death in 1967.
Further Reading
Coble, Parks M., Jr. (1986) The Shanghai Capitalists and the Nationalist Government, 1927–1937. Harvard East Asian Monographs, no. 94. 2d ed. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Howard, Richard C., ed. (1971) Biographical Dictionary of Republican China. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
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