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Chiang has no taste for the recreations, hobbies or frivolous interests that make for intimate friends, and he has none. He lives the life of an ascetic. He drinks only water (boiled and lukewarm) and sometimes tea. He never smokes. He eats sparingly. On the mainland his regime was always a coalition of old enemies, jealous friends and potential defectors, and Chiang always rated personal loyalty to himself above efficiency. With an armed opposition party in the land, he had to. He still does.
Chief among those who have his confidence, and often summoned to his official residence at Shihlin, is Vice President Chen Cheng, 57, whom he has designated as his successor. A small man whose delicacy of talk and manner conceals a capacity for decisive, even ruthless action, Chen is a smaller, less commanding version of Chiang himself in appearance—a circumstance that led to a historic blunder when General MacArthur flew to Formosa in 1950, stepped from his airplane, seized then-Premier Chen and kissed him on both cheeks, exclaiming: "I have been waiting all my life for this moment." Generalissimo Chiang, standing near by, was not pleased.
Closest of all Chiang's advisers is still Wellesley-educated Madame Chiang. She is not as influential as she once was, and her patronage is no longer regarded as the sure road to preference. She repairs every day to her office of her "Chinese Women's Anti-Aggression League," to which she can and does summon ministers at will. "My role is very simple," she explains. "I assist my husband."
And there is his son, Chiang Ching-kuo, by an earlier marriage. The son's formal title is Deputy Secretary-General of the National Defense Council, but his real duties are as his father's troubleshooter. As head of the secret police and boss of the political officers in the armed forces, the son is chief guardian of the island's political security. As such, he is the most widely feared man on the island. A burly man of 46, Ching-kuo explains : "You must always remember that we have an enemy."
The danger is real: the Communists have tried hard to subvert Formosan loyalty. Three years ago a vice chief of staff was discovered to be a Communist spy. A few months ago two student pilots flew off to the Chinese mainland with an air-force trainer. But Chiang Ching-kuo insists that security cases are now down to two or three a month.
Formosa is not as politically free as the Philippines or Japan, but it is freer than South Korea. The press can and does criticize, so long as it does not appear to Chiang Kai-shek as obstructing the national effort or damaging the prestige of the government. After all, Chiang reminds critics, "we are at war."
The Armed Strength. The biggest immediate question mark is Chiang's armed forces. His army of 20-plus divisions has been brought up to full strength by energetic Defense Minister David Yu. It has 300,000 well-trained men. Most of them are, in a very real sense, picked men—picked by themselves when they made the decision to follow Chiang to Formosa rather than remain under the Communists. But the U.S. has not yet delivered equipment to the levels projected in 1951, although arms are now pouring in faster than the Chinese soldiers can be trained to use them.