Kung's influence on Yan's thinking from 1911 onward was significant, and was a major factor in Yan's subsequent determination to modernize Shanxi. The reforms that Yan subsequently conducted won Yan widespread acclaim, and Shanxi gained a reputation during the Warlord Era as being the "Model Province". After 1911, Kung helped to establish Ming Hsien, a complex of Christian schools in Taigu on the land Kung had acquired through the Boxer Indemnity. Kung became principal, and married Han Yu-mei, a fellow graduate of the North China Union College, who died of tuberculosis. In 1913, he met Soong Ai-ling, one of the Soong sisters, and married her the following year. Supporters in Oberlin established the Oberlin Shansi Memorial Association, to which Kung made regular and substantial contributions. In 1922, Shanxi experienced a serious famine. Kung worked closely with the American Red Cross and missionary organizations like American Mission Board and the China International Famine Relief Commission to deliver relief supplies and to improve Shanxi's infrastructure to make the delivery of relief easier. According to foreign members of the Famine Relief Commission, the collective efforts of all involved were successful in preventing what otherwise would have been an "appalling calamity", and by 1923 conditions in Shanxi returned to normal. Kung was an early supporter of Sun Yat-sen and the Kuomintang (KMT or Nationalist Party), including early leaders such as Wang Jingwei. He developed close family ties. His wife was a sister of Soong Tse-ven. Soong Ching-ling, another sister, married Sun Yat-sen in 1915 and Chiang Kai-shek became Kung's brother-in-law in 1927 when he married Soong Mei-ling. The Soong sisters and their husbands had the reputation of being one of the Four Big Families of the time. Kung began his career in the Nationalist government of the Republic of China as Minister of Industry, holding this position from 1927-1928 in the Wuhan Nationalist Government, led by Wang Jingwei during the Northern Expedition as a leftist rival to Chiang's faction. After the fall of Wang's government, Kung served as the Minister of Industry and Commerce from 1928-1931 in the Nanking Government, and later as the Minister of Finance, from 1933–1944. Kung was Governor of the Central Bank of China from 1933–1945. In 1927 one of his first acts in government was to balance the national budget.