There's a persistent myth among KMTers and resentful PRC trollbots alike that the KMT stabilized the economy of Taiwan with the gold looted from China's treasury (I discuss why it is nonsense here). WSJ featured a letter yesterday that sheds light on the gold issue:NOVEMBER 19, 2009Where did it go?
Those Golden Days Flying Out of China
Regarding Melanie Kirkpatrick's review of "The Last Empress" by Hannah Pakula ("China's Mystery Lady," Bookshelf, Nov. 4): When Chiang Kai-shek decamped to Taiwan in 1949, he took the gold with him. Trans Ocean Airlines picked up the gold in Taiwan and transported it to Oakland Airport, home base, where it was transloaded to a Slick Airways C-46 to be delivered to Chase National Bank in New York. The plane was grossed out with a payload of seven tons of gold.
I was the pilot of this flight and have often wondered who ended up with the gold.
William P. Willoughby
Retired Captain, Slick Airways
Palo Alto, Calif.
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Madame Chiang bought privte estate in Lattingtown, and Long Island in NY?
ReplyDeleteMaybe it is all buried in a booby-trapped mountain in the Phillipines?
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptonomicon
Also, I love that picture, but what does it have to do with the article?
7 tons of gold at prevailing prices was about $5.6m. For comparative purposes, US post-WWII aid to the Kuomintang was $750m.
ReplyDeleteThis article, http://www.newyorksocialdiary.com/listpopup.php?tid=265 , published after the death of Soong Mei-ling, describes a closet in her Gracie Square townhouse that was full of gold bars. Doubt she managed to fit seven whole tons in the cupboard (all loaded by herself, no doubt), but I'd bet that's probably where some of it went.
ReplyDelete