Chiang was born in a Catholic family in Haining, Zhejiang, China, towards the end of the Qing dynasty.
In 1933, Chiang started the National Central Library in Nanjing and oversaw its move to Chongqing during the Second Sino-Japanese War.
Between 1940 and 1941, he organised funding for the purchase of rare manuscripts and books collection preservation from collectors in Shanghai to protect them from looting by the Japanese during the war.
In 1948, the Nationalist government moved the library, along with its core collection of about 130,000 volumes of rare manuscript books, to Taiwan following its defeat by the Communists in the Chinese Civil War.
On 23 April 1949, when Communist forces occupied Nanjing towards the end of the Chinese Civil War, Chiang left mainland China and went to Hong Kong before eventually settling down in Taipei, Taiwan.