Chiang Ch'ang-ch'uan (December 1884-23 August 1958), known by his Western name, Z. T. Kaung, a Methodist bishop, was a worldknown Protestant leader in China. As pastor of Allen Memorial Church and later of Moore Memorial Church—the two largest congregations in Shanghai—he exerted much influence, and as a bishop in north China he was a wise leader during the period of the Japanese occupation.

As the eldest child in a prosperous family, Z. T. Kaung began life in economic comfort. His father, a wealthy contractor in Shanghai, provided generously for his four sons and two daughters. Despite the strongly traditionalist values of his family, young Kaung was sent, at 14, to a Methodist middle school in Shanghai where he developed his first close friendships with Westerners. Through the influence of American missionary teachers, notably Clara E. Steger, he was persuaded by the time he was 19 to accept Christianity and to join the Christian church. Kaung's family, wholly unsympathetic, tried strenuously to dissuade him from taking this step. When these efforts proved useless, they disinherited him.

To support himself and to continue his education, Z. T. Kaung taught and studied at Anglo-Chinese College (Methodist) in Shanghai for four years (1905-9). In addition, he began work at Moore Memorial Church, the largest Protestant congregation in Shanghai, directing the church school and frequently serving as preacher in local neighborhood meetings sponsored by the church. On completing the course at the Anglo-Chinese College, he entered Soochow University's newly established and still experimental theological department, which had only three students and three teachers. After two years, Z. T. Kaung was the sole remaining student and became, in 1912, the first and last recipient of the B.D. degree from Soochow University. The following year the department merged with the Nanking Theological Seminary. During this time, his family relented and reinstated their son. They also accepted his friend and teacher Miss Steger in the family circle. Later, a room in their large home in Shanghai was reserved for her exclusive use. During their close and continuous association, Miss Steger influenced others in the family to join their eldest son in accepting the Christian faith. In 1911 Z. T. Kaung joined the Methodist Conference, later known as the East China Conference. After his graduation from Soochow University and his ordination in 1912, he became assistant minister at Moore Memorial Church. A year later he was made pastor and was given full responsibility for the church. Overwork during the next few years, however, impaired his health. To ease his work, he was transferred in 1917 to a smaller church at Huchow in Chekiang. Three years in this smaller community served both to restore his health and to revitalize the Huchow church. During the next two decades, Z. T. Kaung assumed increasing pastoral and administrative responsibilities for the work of the Methodist church at Soochow and Shanghai. In 1921 he was made presiding elder of the Soochow District and, concurrently, chaplain at Soochow University. In 1923 he was appointed to the pastorate of Allen Memorial Church in Shanghai, which during the next few years became one of the most active Protestant congregations there. The church included in its membership several members of the prominent Soong family {see Charles Jones Soong), including Soong Meiling (q.v.), who married Chiang Kai-shek in December 1927. It was at Allen Memorial Church that Z. T. Kaung baptized Chiang Kai-shek on 23 October 1930. During the early 1930's, Kaung returned to Soochow for work, chiefly among university students, at St. John's Church. Toward the end of 1936 he returned to Shanghai to resume the pastorate of Moore Memorial Church, then generally considered the largest Protestant congregation in the Far East. There he became known for his help to the poor and for his work with refugees. Between 1919 and 1940, Z. T. Kaung made five trips to the United States on missions related primarily to Methodist affairs. In 1926 he was awarded an honorary D.D. degree by Asbury College at Wilmore, Kentucky. In China, however, his activities were never limited solely to denominational interests. For ten years, from 1920 to 1930, he was chairman of the Student Volunteer Movement. From 1923 to 1941 he was chairman of the Chinese Home Mission Society, the group founded by Ch'eng Ching-yi (q.v.) which sought to spread Christian influence among non-Chinese ethnic groups in the hinterland, especially in the southwest, of China. Z. T. Kaung was also head of the Executive Council of the Methodist Episcopal Church (South) from 1934 to 1941; and in 1937 he became the director of the China Sunday School Union. He was a trustee of Soochow University from 1927 to 1931 and a member of the Board of Managers of Nanking Theological Seminary from 1936 to 1940.

In March 1941, at the first convocation of the Central Conference of United Methodism in China, Z. T. Kaung was elected bishop on the first ballot. Ch'en Wen-yuan was elected on the second. Thus they were elevated simultaneously to the only two Chinese bishoprics in the denomination. (Wang Chih-p'ing had been the first Chinese Methodist bishop, serving from 1930 to 1934, but then had asked to be relieved of his responsibilities.) By volunteering to accept the assignment in north China in August 1941, Bishop Kaung resolved an awkward problem. Since neither Chinese bishop was from the north, one of them faced appointment to an unfamiliar area. As a native of Shanghai, Z. T. Kaung had only indifferent command of the Peking dialect. In addition, he had been trained and had worked entirely in the south.

More serious were the political problems posed by the Japanese military occupation of north China and by the presence of a Japanesesponsored regime there. As a man whose personal connections with the Soong family and with Chiang Kai-shek were well known, Bishop Kaung was under close and constant scrutiny. Cooperation with the Japanese and the puppet regime would suggest disloyalty to Nationalist China, while overt signs of anti-Japanese partisanship might arouse suspicion in the eyes of the Japanese authorities. In a situation where a false step might jeopardize both the work of the church and his personal safety, Bishop Kaung succeeded in demonstrating his allegiance to the Christian cause and in gaining acceptance of the apolitical nature of his central task. He won the affection and confidence of the people among whom he worked and did much to dispel the uncertainties which many felt during that period of alien occupation. Many Chinese students, bewildered by the problems of an uneasy present and an uncertain future, looked to him for counsel. Bishop Kaung also was able, with great difficulty, to resist Japanese attempts to encroach upon important areas of church administration and religious activity. He erected complex and subtle defenses against persistent appeals of Japanese churchmen for union with the Chinese church within the Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere.

Bishop Kaung was once described as a "tower of strength to churches of all denominations during the war" in China. His cordiality, warm but dignified, endeared him to the many people with whom he came into contact. He was conservative theologically and fervently evangelistic in his ministry. His preaching appealed to liberal university students and illiterate laborers alike. One of his greatest desires was to see the development of a genuinely united and thoroughly indigenous Protestant Christian Church in China.

When the Communist regime came to power in 1949, Bishop Kaung remained on the mainland, where he died on 23 August 1958.