Anna Chennault was one of the most influential power brokers in the world ....
... yet, you, like me will likely never have heard of her.
However her death in April 2018 at the age of 94 was marked in Washington DC and the capitols of some of the worlds leading powers.
She was born Chen Xiangmei in 1923 in then Peking ('Beijing' after the People's Republic of China was established in 1949), to a wealthy family, and she attended university in Hong Kong. Later she became a reporter for a Chinese news agency, where an assignment to Kunming introduced her to the leader of the Flying Tigers, a volunteer group of US pilots who battled against Japanese planes over the skies of China.
Maj Gen Claire Chennault and Madame Xiangmei married after he divorced his wife in the US, despite a 30 year age difference - they remained married until his death in 1958 from cancer. She then moved to Washington with their two daughters, where she ran her late husbands air transport companies. However, it was here that she also took on jobs as a journalist, and translator .... this gave her a wide number of connections in the political circles.
She held parties in her penthouse apartment at the Watergate complex .... where the good and the powerful would attend. Richard Nixon, who she supported as a Republican activist, attended these parties and he called her the "Dragon Lady". Over the decades she met and interacted with US presidents George Bush, Ronald Reagan, John F Kennedy and Richard Nixon, secretary of state Henry Kissinger, as well as Chinese leaders Deng Xiaoping, and Xi Jinping and Taiwan's Chiang Kai-shek.
But these connections didn't make her immune to some controversies ... she sold one of her late husband's companies to a CIA cover company and it was reportedly used for anti-communist activities ... although whether she would have known it was a CIA cover, is doubtful.
However, when she was caught by the FBI telling the South Vietnamese government to boycott the Paris peace talks, in order apparently to boost Nixon's chances in the US presidential election (“If there’s war, people will vote for me to end it,” he told his aides. “If there’s peace, they’ll vote their pocketbooks – Democratic prosperity.”), she was accused of treason by outgoing President Lyndon B Johnson. But Nixon won the election, and she was never prosecuted in what became known as the "Chennault affair"..... however, if those peace talks had succeeded in 1969, it may have saved thousands of Vietnamese lives, as well as US soldiers lives between then and 1973.
Originally she was an anti-communist supporter of Chiang Kai-shek. But when the US recognised the Chinese Communist government in 1979, she moved with the wind and in 1981, she was sent by Ronald Reagan to China as an unofficial US emissary. She claimed that although she hadn't changed her views, she was "humble enough to learn", and "courageous enough" to "sometimes to change" her "positions".
In 2015, she received a medal from Chinese President Xi Jinping for her 'patriotic role' as a go-between for the US and China when the latter began opening up after the Cultural Revolution .... they also admire her as the "first Chinese to have entered the White House" after she received a presidential appointment from John F Kennedy. Perhaps uniquely, she was also feted by the Taiwanese after her death for her earlier anti-communist efforts. She led one of the first groups of Taiwanese business executives to visit mainland China in 1990, as well as US trade missions to China and other parts of Asia.
Summing up her political life she said, "Under eight US presidents, I have taken on many important but unpaid jobs. This road I've travelled on has been very interesting - so I have not lived for nothing."
But perhaps her epithet is really "There can only be one Chen Xiangmei in the world, let alone the US," declared Deng Xiaoping in 1981.
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| Anna Chennault |
... yet, you, like me will likely never have heard of her.
However her death in April 2018 at the age of 94 was marked in Washington DC and the capitols of some of the worlds leading powers.
She was born Chen Xiangmei in 1923 in then Peking ('Beijing' after the People's Republic of China was established in 1949), to a wealthy family, and she attended university in Hong Kong. Later she became a reporter for a Chinese news agency, where an assignment to Kunming introduced her to the leader of the Flying Tigers, a volunteer group of US pilots who battled against Japanese planes over the skies of China.
Maj Gen Claire Chennault and Madame Xiangmei married after he divorced his wife in the US, despite a 30 year age difference - they remained married until his death in 1958 from cancer. She then moved to Washington with their two daughters, where she ran her late husbands air transport companies. However, it was here that she also took on jobs as a journalist, and translator .... this gave her a wide number of connections in the political circles.
 |
| "The Dragon Lady" To Both Friends And Foes. |
She held parties in her penthouse apartment at the Watergate complex .... where the good and the powerful would attend. Richard Nixon, who she supported as a Republican activist, attended these parties and he called her the "Dragon Lady". Over the decades she met and interacted with US presidents George Bush, Ronald Reagan, John F Kennedy and Richard Nixon, secretary of state Henry Kissinger, as well as Chinese leaders Deng Xiaoping, and Xi Jinping and Taiwan's Chiang Kai-shek.
 |
| Hostess With The Mostest - Connections |
But these connections didn't make her immune to some controversies ... she sold one of her late husband's companies to a CIA cover company and it was reportedly used for anti-communist activities ... although whether she would have known it was a CIA cover, is doubtful.
However, when she was caught by the FBI telling the South Vietnamese government to boycott the Paris peace talks, in order apparently to boost Nixon's chances in the US presidential election (“If there’s war, people will vote for me to end it,” he told his aides. “If there’s peace, they’ll vote their pocketbooks – Democratic prosperity.”), she was accused of treason by outgoing President Lyndon B Johnson. But Nixon won the election, and she was never prosecuted in what became known as the "Chennault affair"..... however, if those peace talks had succeeded in 1969, it may have saved thousands of Vietnamese lives, as well as US soldiers lives between then and 1973.
 |
| Presidents Trusted Confidant .... |
Originally she was an anti-communist supporter of Chiang Kai-shek. But when the US recognised the Chinese Communist government in 1979, she moved with the wind and in 1981, she was sent by Ronald Reagan to China as an unofficial US emissary. She claimed that although she hadn't changed her views, she was "humble enough to learn", and "courageous enough" to "sometimes to change" her "positions".
In 2015, she received a medal from Chinese President Xi Jinping for her 'patriotic role' as a go-between for the US and China when the latter began opening up after the Cultural Revolution .... they also admire her as the "first Chinese to have entered the White House" after she received a presidential appointment from John F Kennedy. Perhaps uniquely, she was also feted by the Taiwanese after her death for her earlier anti-communist efforts. She led one of the first groups of Taiwanese business executives to visit mainland China in 1990, as well as US trade missions to China and other parts of Asia.
Summing up her political life she said, "Under eight US presidents, I have taken on many important but unpaid jobs. This road I've travelled on has been very interesting - so I have not lived for nothing."
But perhaps her epithet is really "There can only be one Chen Xiangmei in the world, let alone the US," declared Deng Xiaoping in 1981.
Fascinating, I had no idea.
ReplyDeleteWhat we see is rarely the whole truth .... there is always something going on under the surface of apparently still waters.
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