Taiwan’s Chiang Kai-shek (1971) | 60 Minutes Archive

60 Minutes rewind safer who was the first American television newsman to report from communist China has just returned from the China of Chiang Kai-shek for two decades since his defeat on the mainland it was the policy of the United States to practice and propagate the idea that Chang's island of Taiwan was the one and only China there was a Mad Hatter's kind of logic about it all supporting Chang's pronouncements that his forces of so-called free China would invade the mainland at the same time carefully ensuring that he would not while at the same time containing communist China with a nuclear threat and at the same time not recognizing its existence and so for Generations now our China policy has been anchored to our commitment to Chang for years in the United States a barrage of propaganda portrayed Chang on the mainland as the Democratic leader of free China denying that the struggle in China between Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Zedong was a naked struggle for power between two ruthless men both bent on imposing their own personal dictatorship over millions of Chinese people so on Taiwan the myth of a republican China was perpetuated and Chang and Madame Chang were pictured as the Aging Kennedys of a Camelot That Never Was foreign little has Disturbed the calm of their Taiwan exile over the past 20 years of a mini China U.S policy of not recognizing the mainland reinforced Chang's dream of a return but last week reality intruded in a bizarre form of a ping-pong competition the old man is now 84. he is fit and in full control according to his advisors as we walked in his garden there was nothing to indicate otherwise and after a decade of almost gallest inaccessibility the generalissimo submitted to a television interview Chang refused to give a spontaneous interview he would only agree to give his views if questions were submitted in advance no follow-up questions permitted years and he proudly States it will never change Mr President with regard to the ping pong visits to communist China by the United States