Chiang Ching-kuo was a politician of the Republic of China after its retreat to Taiwan. The eldest and only biological son of former president Chiang Kai-shek, he held numerous posts in the government of the Republic of China. He served as Premier of the Republic of China between 1972 and 1978, and was the President of the Republic of China from 1978 until his death in 1988.
Chiang Ching-kuo was sent as a teenager to study in the Soviet Union during the First United Front in 1925, when his father's Nationalist Party and the Chinese Communist Party were in alliance. He attended university there and spoke Russian fluently, but when the Chinese Nationalists violently broke with the Communists, Stalin sent him to work in a steel factory in the Ural Mountains. There, Chiang met and married Faina Vakhreva. When war between China and Japan was imminent in 1937, Stalin sent the couple to China. During the war Ching-kuo's father gradually came to trust him, and gave him more and more responsibilities, including administration.
After the Japanese surrender Ching-kuo was given the job of ridding Shanghai of corruption, which he attacked with ruthless efficiency.