Reassessing Chiang Kai-shek
BOOK REVIEW: Chiang Kai-shek’s Critical Years, 1935–50
Edited by Emily M. Hill / UBC Press
Reviewed by: Jean-Thomas Nicole
The Reviewer — Jean-Thomas Nicole is a Policy Advisor with Public Safety Canada. The opinions expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official policies or positions of Public Safety Canada or the Canadian government.
REVIEW — Edited by Emily M. Hill, associate professor in the Department of History at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, Chiang Kai-Shek‘s Critical Years, 1935–50, is published as part of the Contemporary Chinese Studies collection of the University of British Colombia Press. This series provides new scholarship and perspectives on modern and contemporary China. Professor Emily Hill is a specialist on the history of China during the twentieth century. Her main area of research is China’s political and economic development during the period 1931-58.
In a similar vein, Prof. Hill’s collective new book stems from a workshop held at Queen’s University aimed at reassessing Chiang Kai-Shek, taking stock of recent research on Chiang as a political figure and person. As Hill writes in her compelling introduction, this book reflects and reports the results of a remarkable spurt of interest in Chiang Kai-Shek in recent years. He has changed from a historical figure to a knowable person through intensive study of his career and decision-making.
Furthermore, scholars’ access since 2006 to his voluminous personal diary has stimulated a welcomed and necessary investigation of many aspects of his long career. The diary that Chiang kept so conscientiously allows readers to glimpse his concerns and calculations, revealing that he engaged in shaping his own career. As the captivating chapters of this excellent book reveal, Chiang Kai-Shek was creative in politics, continuously devising responses to problems and opportunities as they arose. He also applied creativity to himself, seeking to remold his own persona.
While pursuing virtue according to Confucian standards, Chiang Kai-Shek also recreated himself as a Christian. His routine reading of serious texts, applied to the study of Christianity, thus became an important part of Chiang’s regimen of diligent self-cultivation in the Confucian style. The diary reveals that Chiang Kai-Shek was an active agent in improving his position and defending his political interests. In fact, he had few other interests.
The relevance of Confucian and Christian systems of belief to Chiang Kai-Shek’s career is that they help to explain his confidence. Chiang possessed self-confidence based on the belief that he was following a virtuous path by reading and reflecting, as well as on a deepening faith that God listened to his prayers.
Drawing from his diary and other sources, the contributors have cast new light on his actions during the years when his decisions were most consequential for China and the world. Luo Min’s opening chapter highlights the ever-shifting political maneuvers that were Chiang’s forte.
Sherman Xiaogang Lai and Emily Hill focus on Chiang’s responsibility for launching major wars in 1937 and 1946. Yang Tianshi’s account examines Chiang’s efforts during the war with Japan to reach an agreement on cooperation with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Next Steve Tsang argues that in his wartime relationship with the United States, Chiang missed a valuable opportunity for assistance in strengthening the armed forces under his command.
Finally, in their respective accounts of his actions at the time of the final defeats of his forces in mainland China, Lü Fang-shang and Chen Hongmin demonstrate that Chiang remained a wily survivor despite the setbacks of 1949.
Everyone needs a good nightcap. Ours happens to come in the form of a M-F newsletter that provides the best way to unwind while staying up to speed on national security. Sign up today.
In several of the preceding chapters, we see that his creative approach could lead to remarkable success. The contribution by Luo Min in particular shed light on the deliberate machinations through which Chiang rose to authority as China’s top leader. She reveals how agile manoeuvres to contain regional rivals during the 1930s allowed Chiang to consolidate his position at the centre of political life in China. Later, despite the setbacks of 1949, Chiang Kai-shek proved that he had not lost his improvisational touch.
Chapters 6 and 7 of this volume illustrate how he salvaged a central position during the final defeats of his forces in mainland China. Lü Fang-shang and Chen Hongmin analyze how Chiang asserted himself as the top leader of the Kuomintang after renouncing his positions as China’s president and commander-in-chief in early 1949. Lü and Chen thus address a little-known aspect of his career.
At this stage in studies of Chiang Kai-Shek, the additional qualities described here – creativity and confidence – help to explain how he tried to make the most of his talents, ambition, and capacity for hard work.
Yet renewed attention to his role has other causes as well. Since the end of the Cold War, the simplifications of historical events that its hostilities inspired have been called into question by researchers, and the implacable anti-Communist hostility long attributed to Chiang is no longer the prominent feature of his portrayals in history and popular culture.
He is now associated more closely with China’s military struggle against Japan from 1937 to 1945. This is especially true in the People’s Republic of China, where national leaders have emphasized education on the long and bitter struggle of the War of Resistance against Japan (1937–45) to strengthen citizens’ unity and patriotism. At the same time, official sympathy toward research on Chiang has aimed to further the cause of achieving the peaceful reunification of mainland China and Taiwan.
The contents of this volume span therefore the fifteen-year period during which Chiang Kai-Shek reached the peak of his political power, prestige, and popularity, faced his greatest challenges, suffered devastating defeats, and re-established his government in Taiwan. In short, the fifteen years were critical both for Chiang and for China. The selection and scope of the chapters are intended to give both general and more specialized readers a sense of how research on his decision-making as a political and military leader has succeeded in revivifying the actual Chiang Kai-Shek.
Experts are gathering at The Cipher Brief’s NatSecEDGE conference June 5-6 in Austin, TX to talk about the future of war. Be a part of the conversation.
The chapters expertly address gaps and distortions in the record of the historical events in which he took part as a central figure. Based on careful study of the documentary evidence, the contributions to the volume present new insights into Chiang as a historical actor. They reveal his policies on Japanese territorial encroachments, Chinese Communist ambitions, and wartime cooperation with the United States in sharpened focus compared with portrayals of his leadership in earlier historiography.
Moreover, they look into events in which Chiang was a central actor that remain momentous beyond China, including its defense against the Japanese invasion and the subsequent civil war between Chiang’s forces and the armies of the CCP. As well as focusing on Chiang Kai-Shek, this singular book in English is a unique window into China under the leadership of the Kuomintang-led government in which Chiang held major positions.
In support of his reanimation as an actual and significant leader, therefore, this book convincingly sets the stage upon which he acted by providing reference materials, including maps, timelines, biographical sketches of persons named in the chapters, and an overview of the institutional setting in which Chiang was a leading actor. The focus of this book on Chiang Kai-Shek’s reflections, decisions, and actions during fifteen critical years encourages close examination of his national leadership.
The scholars who contributed to this book view Chiang as a significant figure in the political history of the twentieth century and focus of an important collective venture in academic research, something long overdue. New analysis of Chiang Kai-Shek as a historical actor is based on the abundance of information that has become available on the details of his career, together with the window into his thoughts that his diary provides. It is now possible to examine more closely the leadership style and political skills that sustained his dominance of China’s political scene.
As for Chiang Kai-Shek’s failures, newly available documentation and researchers’ efforts make it possible to understand them more clearly as well. Chiang has been rescued from his role as a scapegoat, with a long-overdue correction of the injustice of heaping inordinate blame on his shoulders.
Questions about the role of military power in politics are also intriguing. Chiang Kai-Shek’s career offers valuable material for the study of connections between military and political leadership. During most of the fifteen-year scope of this book, Chiang was often referred to by military titles such as general and chairman. The studies presented here suggest the possibility that despite his military persona, Chiang was more talented in politics than in military affairs.
This collective work demonstrates the value of Chiang Kai-Shek’s voluminous diary in research. For decades, Chiang maintained a daily routine of analyzing problems in written reflections. Informed by his private reflections on key events, the preceding chapters present a sharpened understanding of how he won and maintained his position at the centre of Chinese politics. They also support a revised understanding of the event for which he is best known – the loss of mainland China in 1949.
In sum, the groundbreaking studies in this book portray Chiang Kai-Shek as an astute political actor who faced limitations and constraints, both in external circumstances and in personal capabilities. Thanks to the study of his diary and other materials, the intentions and planning that underlay his improvisational decision-making, shaping governance under the Guomindang, have come into stronger focus now than during his lifetime.
Chiang Kai-shek’s Critical Years, 1935–50 earns a prestigious 4 out of 4 trench coats
The Cipher Brief participates in the Amazon Affiliate program and may make a small commission from purchases made via links.
Interested in submitting a book review? Send an email to [email protected] with your idea.
Sign up for our free Undercover newsletter to make sure you stay on top of all of the new releases and expert reviews.
Read more expert-driven national security insights, perspective and analysis in The Cipher Brief because National Security is Everyone’s Business.