Fervent anticommunist KMT elder Chen Li-fu dies at 100

Asian Political News, Feb 12, 2001

TAIPEI, Feb. 9 Kyodo

Nationalist Party (KMT) elder Chen Li-fu, a fervent anticommunist and influential figure during the Chinese civil war, died of heart failure at a Taipei hospital Thursday, his family said Friday. He was 100.

Chen and his older brother Chen Kuo-fu were nephews of Chen Chi-mei, who until his assassination by Chinese warlord Yuan Shih-kai in 1916 was the mentor of upcoming Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek.

Because of those personal and emotional ties, the Chen brothers came to direct the organizational operations of the Chiang-dominated KMT when it was still based in China, founding their own secret organization known as the ''CC clique.''

The CC clique strategically placed loyal followers throughout the party and the government machinery, ensuring a dominating influence in the bureaucracy, educational agencies, youth organization and labor unions.

The brothers also controlled the KMT's Central Bureau of Investigation and Statistics, one of Chiang's two main secret police bodies.

Chen, who studied mining in the United States but never worked in the field, became Chiang's personal secretary and confidante at 27 and two years later KMT secretary general.

He served as education minister during most of the Chinese civil war, using the secret police to impose rigid controls and KMT ideology on intellectuals and students.

On various occasions Chen pressured Chiang for a final extermination campaign against the communists, which he saw as the only solution to the civil war, and fervently opposed U.S. efforts at mediation.

Chen is said to have arranged the return of the general's son Chiang Ching-kuo, who studied in the then Soviet Union, to China in 1937 and made him join the KMT.

Chen was close to Chiang Ching-kuo, who was 10 years junior, from childhood on when the younger Chiang lived at the home of Chen's older brother while attending school in Shanghai.

Chen's overriding influence on Chiang Kai-shek and his son started to wane with the Nationalists' retreat to Taiwan after the communist victory in China in 1949.

He remained a member of the KMT's evaluation commission, which is stacked with ultra-conservatives born in China, until his death but did not hold any high-ranking posts in the Taiwan-based government.

Chen, who along with other party conservatives had tried to prevent reformist Lee Teng-hui from succeeding Chiang Ching-kuo as president and KMT leader, nonetheless, continued to serve as a presidential advisor until 1996.

He published his memoirs in that year in which he recounted numerous episodes from his stellar years at the side of Chiang Kai-shek.