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Kuomintang Aviation

Following the break of the first cooperation between the Kuomintang and the Chinese Communist Party, the Kuomintang government established aircraft repair factories in Hangzhou, Shanghai, Nanjing and Wuchang. These factories were in different sizes and capabilities, some of which could produce aircraft by copying and repairing aircraft parts and the others could only carry out parts repair and replacement. After the January 28 Incident of 1932 in Shanghai the cry of rescuing China by developing aviation was ever louder. In 1934 and 1935 the Kuomintang government, by using foreign investment, material, equipment and technology, set up three factories which were basically for copy production and assembly of aircraft. One of them, the Central Nanchang Aircraft Factory, was set up jointly with four Italian companies for licence production of Italian aircraft. It was destroyed by Japanese bombing after it produced some aircraft in 1937. It was re-set up in Nanchuan, Sichuan province, and was renamed as the Air Force No.2 Aircraft Factory in 1939. Another one, called Central Hangzhou Aircraft Factory, was run as a joint venture with the United Continental Inc. of the United States. The official China Aviation Museum, which is based in Beijing's northern suburb of Changping, makes no mention of a Chinese aviation pioneer who later moved to Taiwan after the Communist victory in 1949. Wong Tsu, born in Beijing in 1893, was only 12 years old when he was selected for theManchu government's Yang-Tai naval academy. The Chinese government then sent him to the United States andthe Massachusetts Institute of Technology to study the new science of aviation. Wong graduated from MIT in June 1916 and had learned tofly at the Flying Boat School of the Curtiss Co., Buffalo, NY. Wong designed Boeing's firstmass-produced product - the Model C training seaplane. On May 22, 1917, a month after President Woodrow Wilson declared war on Germany, Boeing issued Wong a check for $50.77 for "payment in full for services rendered."

Wong went back to China where he started the first Chinese airplane factory in an old engineering works at Foo Chow. By 1918, Wong was building the first Chinese floatplanes at a shipyard in Mah-Wei, including the Sea Eagle and the River Bird. During the last years of the Great War, more than two hundred skilled workers at the Fuzhou Shipyard manufactured the first Chinese airplane. During the next decade, Wong produced dozens of aircraft there, helping to establish China's aircraft manufacturing business.

By 1934, Wong, now a Lieutenant Colonel, became the first general manager of the Central Hang Zhou Aircraft Company, building Curtiss Hawk pursuit planes and Douglas observation planes. The factory with a staff of 1,700 was moved to Leiyong, Yunnan province during the War of Resistance Against Japanese Invasion, and it repaired, assembled and copied about 300 U.S. aircraft in eight years. In 1938, when the Japanese invaded the Chinese coastline, Wong's factory moved inland - first to Wuhan and then to Kun-ming. In 1942, the Japanese heavy bombing near the frontier of Yunnan forced the factory to move, but all equipment and facilities were destroyed. In 1940, Wong established the Chinese Bureau of Aeronautical Research (later the Aviation Industry Development Center). During World War II, it was hard to get materials to Chinese airplanes built inland, so Wong designed and built a unique troop-carrying glider made out of bamboo. By the war's end in 1945, Wong headed the Aviation Research Academy in China. He spent his last decade teaching aviation engineering at the National Cheng-Kung University. He died on March 4, 1965 in Tainan, Taiwan.

In addition to the copy production of some Russian pursuit planes and basic gliders it also successfully designed and manufactured transports Zhong Yun-1 and Zhong Yun-2, but none of them was put into batch production. There was another one which was called Shaoguan Aircraft Factory run jointly with the Curtis Wright Inc. of the United States. After the break of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Invasion the factory was also forced to move to Kunming and to Guiyang and renamed as the Air Force No.1 Aircraft Factory, where the American and Russian pursuit planes and American basic and advanced trainers were copy-manufactured. The Air Force No.3 Aircraft Factory was set up in Chengdu, which was dedicated to training technical personnel for aircraft design and manufacture.

An engine manufacture factory producing American piston engines was set up in Dading of Guizhou. Both of the Air Force No.3 Aircraft Manufacturing Factory and the engine manufacture factory were later moved to Taiwan. In addition tens of thousands of parachutes of various types were made by Hangzhou Parachute factory.