Dai Jitao


Dai Jitao or Tai Chi-t'ao was a Chinese journalist, an early Kuomintang member, and the first head of the Examination Yuan of the Republic of China. He is often referred to as Dai Chuanxian or by his other courtesy name, Dai Xuantang.

Early life and education

Dai was born Dai Liangbi in Guanghan, Sichuan to a family of potters. He went to Japan in 1905 to study in a normal school and entered Nihon University's law program in 1907. He graduated and returned to China in 1909.

Writings

Dai started to write for the Shanghaiese China Foreign Daily and Tianduo Newspaper at 19. At this time, his sobriquet for himself was Dai Tianchou, or Heaven-Revenge Dai, to signify his dissatisfaction for the Qing Empire. The Qing officials threatened him with imprisonment for his writings, so in 1911 he fled to Japan, and then to Penang, where he joined Tongmenghui and wrote for its Guanghua Newspaper. Later that year, he returned to Shanghai after the Wuchang Uprising and founded the Democracy Newspaper.

Political career

Dai's fluency in Japanese, unusual for a Chinese young man, attracted the attention of Sun Yat-sen. He became Sun's translator and then his confidential secretary. After the Kuomintang failed to overthrow Yuan Shikai, he went to Tokyo to join the Chinese Revolutionary Party in 1914.
He attended the first national congress of the Chinese Kuomintang in 1924, where he was elected a member of the Central Executive Committee, then later a member of the Standing Committee, and the Minister of Propaganda. Soon after Sun's death in 1925, he published a controversial book that reinterpreted Sun's legacy. He claimed Sun derived his ideology chiefly from Confucianism instead of Western philosophies and that Sun was a traditionalist. This was praised by the KMT's right-wing but condemned by leftists and communists. After the right's triumph, Dai's interpretation became the dominant one within the KMT. In 1926, he served as principal of the Sun Yat-sen University, and the chief of politics at Whampoa Academy, with Zhou Enlai as his deputy. From 1928 until 1948, he served as head of the Examination Yuan.
From October 1928 to June 1948, his official positions consisted of:
  • State Councillor
  • Director-General of Sun Yat-sen University
  • Member of Kuomintang Central Executive Committee : 1924
  • *Member of Standing Committee : 1924
  • Minister of Information : 1924
  • President of the Academia Historica : unable to attend due to illness
Dai was one of the lyricists of "National Anthem of the Republic of China". He also wrote:
  • The Fundamentals of the Principles of Sun Yat-sen
  • The People's Revolution and Kuomintang
  • The Complete Book of Sun Yat-sen
  • ''National Flag Anthem of the Republic of China''

    Later years and death

After Sun Yat-sen's death in 1925, Dai changed his name to Chuanxian, Continuing-Virtue. He jumped into a river and was rescued by a fisherman. After this suicide experience, he converted to Buddhism and was accused by many of being superstitious. His works about Buddhism are published in The Collection of Mr. Dai Jitao's Discussions on Buddhism. He was widely known to be the birth father of Chiang Wei-kuo, the adoptive second son of Chiang Kai-shek. According to popular speculation, Dai believed knowledge of his extramarital affairs with the Japanese woman Shigematsu Kaneko would destroy his marriage and his career, so he entrusted Wei-kuo to Chiang Kai-shek, after the Japanese Yamada Juntaro brought the infant to Shanghai. Yao Yecheng, Chiang's wife at the time, raised Wei-kuo as her own. The boy called Dai his "Dear Uncle". Dai had also fathered a son, , whom Dai later sent to Germany, to be educated at the Technische Hochschule in Charlottenburg. An-kuo and Chiang Wei-kuo were half brothers.
In 1949, with the Kuomintang losing the Chinese Civil War to the Chinese Communist Party, Dai committed suicide by swallowing over 70 sleeping pills in Guangzhou.