Chairman of the People First Party (PFP) in Taiwan James CY Soong left Taipei Thursday (May 5th) morning to embark on a nine-day visit to the mainland.

Soong was born in March 1942, native of Xiangtan, central China's Hunan Province. He went to an elementary school in Xiangtan at the age of six.

Soong left the Chinese mainland for Taiwan in 1949 when the Kuomintang government fled to Taiwan after losing a civil war to the Communist Party of China.

He studied foreign affairs at the Taiwan Political University from 1960 to 1964. In 1967, Soong gained his master's degree in political sciences at the University of California at Berkeley.

Gaining his doctoral degree in political sciences at Georgetown University in 1974 in Washington, D.C., Soong was recommended by his mentor to Chiang Ching-kuo as an English interpreter.

In 1977, Soong was appointed as "vice chief of the Executive Yuan Press Bureau." A year later, he was picked by Chiang Ching-kuo as "presidential secretary". In 1979, he was further promoted to "chief of the Executive Yuan Press Bureau."

In 1981, he was elected member of the Kuomintang Party Central Committee. In October 1984, he was appointed as vice secretary general of the Kuomintang Party Central Committee. In 1989, Soong served as secretary general of the Kuomintang Party Central Committee.

In December 1994, Soong was elected "governor of Taiwan."

On March 31, 2000, Soong founded the PFP and develops it into the second largest opposition party after the Kuomintang.

Soong is married and father to two children.

Editor: Wing