Chiang Kai-shek’s Chronological Event Transcripts is an important collection of primary historical documents in the modern history of China and includes a large number of extracts of Chiang Kai-shek’s letters, telegrams, dispatches, minutes of diplomatic meetings, and speeches. Many years ago, Academia Historica scanned original transcripts and published them in a collection of President Chiang Kai-shek Archives: Chronological Event Transcripts. However, for researchers and common readers, Academia Historica’s edition is not easy to use since Chiang’s handwriting is illegible and without punctuation. Besides, in that edition, transcripts covering periods from July to December of 1937 and the whole year of 1939 are missing. Therefore, the HRC decides to republish Chiang Kai-shek’s Chronological Event Transcripts in a new edition to meet user needs. After the HRC was authorized by Academia Historica, the HRC cooperates with Academia Historica, the Institute of Modern History at Academia Sinica and the Culture Communication Committee of the Chinese Kuomintang Party History Museum to initiate this publication plan. We carefully do text-recognition, add missing parts in the previous edition, and re-edit them into a new book series. The HRC believes that the new edition will be beneficial to academic research and must be easy and convenient to use. The HRC also plans to digitize these documents in the future as well.

This new edition is based on Academia Historica’s edition. The HRC invites scholars to help recognize Chiang’s handwriting and mark important figures recorded in these transcripts. The HRC also organizes an Advisory Committee consisting of scholars in the field of modern history of China in Taiwan and hires postdoctoral research fellows whose research specialty is the modern history of China to be managing editors. All documents have been carefully re-edited, punctuated, proofread and approved by distinguished historians and experts. In addition, the review process is solid. After documents are re-edited and punctuated, they would be reviewed by the Review Board first, and then be proofread for three more times before publishing. The high quality control ensures the preciseness and correctness of all documents and makes them more useful to researchers and common readers.

                  Organizational structure of the publication plan of Chiang Kai-shek’s Chronological Event Transcripts

Along with the 70th anniversary of the Republic of China’s victory in the Second Sino-Japanese War in 2015, the HRC first focused on Chiang’s transcripts written in 1937-1945, i.e. the wartime periods, and held two book launch parties to introduce their value for historical research. On November 27, 2015, the HRC held an academic conference on new materials and new perspectives regarding the Second Sino-Japanese War and a book launch party to introduce a 2-volume Mr. Chiang Kai-Shek in 1945 which reveals many key moments in the history of 1945. Later on July 7, 2016, along with the 79th anniversary of the Marco Polo Bridge Incident (the July 7th Incident), the HRC held another book launch party to officially announce the publishing of a 13-volume book series entitled Mr. Chiang Kai-shek in 1937-1945. Mr. Ma Ying-jeou, former president of Republic of China, and Ms. Hung Hsiu-chu, the chairperson of the Kuomintang, were invited to give short talks. Lots of important scholars in the field of modern history of China attended the event too. This 13-volume book series caught people’s eyes by its importance and impact. The HRC has planned a second round of the publication plan and will publish the rest of Chiang Kai-shek’s Chronological Event Transcripts in the future.