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H.H. Kāungwas a banker and businessman who was a major figure in the Chinese Nationalist government between 1928 and 1945.
The son of an old merchant family, Kāung was educated in missionary schools in China and completed his education in the United States, where he received an M.A. in economics at Yale (1907). After returning to China, he became a friend of the Nationalist revolutionary leader Sun Yat-sen, who was married to Soong Chāing-ling (Song Qingling)āa sister of Kāungās wife, Soong Ai-ling (Song Ailing). When Sun Yat-sen died in 1925, Kāung helped promote Chiang Kai-shek (Jiang Jieshi) to be leader of Sunās Nationalist Party, even arranging Chiangās marriage to Soong Mei-ling (Song Meiling), another sister of Soong Ai-ling.
In 1928 Kāung became minister of industry and commerce in the new Nationalist government. Five years later he succeeded his brother-in-law T.V. Soong as minister of finance and soon took Chinaās money off the silver standard and thus tied the Chinese economy to the international monetary system. That reform enabled China to survive the initial phase of the Sino-Japanese War (1937ā45) without serious economic consequences.
Kāung succeeded Chiang Kai-shek briefly as president of the government in 1938, when Chiang resigned to devote all his time to prosecuting the war with Japan. Chiang resumed the presidency the following year, but Kāung continued as vice president and finance minister throughout the war. In autumn 1947, with communist victory on the Chinese mainland imminent, he moved to the United States and remained there, except for a brief period (1962ā66) when he lived in Taiwan.
