Jay Taylor’s book, The Generalissimo: Chiang Kai-shek and the Struggle for Modern China, tells the story of an important figure of this period (and until his death in 1975) – Chiang Kai-shek. Narrating Chiang’s life without getting swayed by one’s political opinions is not easy. However, Taylor has tried to keep his biases to a minimum to present a balanced view of Chiang, the events that led to the Communist victory in China, and the founding of a rebel government in Formosa, known today as Taiwan.
Born in 1887, Chiang was a product of his times. When he was growing up, China was at its weakest point in its entire history. Foreign invasions, internal rebellions, power struggle in the ruling Qing court, and a growing opium addiction among the Chinese population had enfeebled China so much so that it was known as the sick man of Asia. Young Chiang, believing that China needed to be strong militarily to regain its lost glory, enrolled in a military academy, first in China, then in Japan, where he came into contact with the Chinese republicans. In 1911, he returned to China and joined Sun Yat-sen’s party, Guomindang (Nationalist Party), and participated in the republican revolution. In 1911, China became a republic, and Sun Yat-sen its first president.
However, the republican euphoria was short-lived. China was divided among various warlords who refused to cooperate with the new regime. Just four months in the office, Sun stepped down to prepare for another revolution against them so that the whole of China would come under the central authority of Beijing. To achieve this end, Sun established a military academy with Chiang as its commandant. By this time, a group of young Chinese, with the help of the Soviet Union, had founded the Chinese Communist Party. Owing to the Soviet pressure, the newly formed Communist Party of China (CCP) was incorporated into the Nationalist Party to defeat the warlords, and to implement a radical land reform program of “land to the tillers.”Following Sun’s death in 1925, Chiang became the commander of the Nationalist Army; and with the help of the Communists, he launched the Northern Expedition to establish the Nationalist control in northern China. When the soldiers reached Shanghai in 1927, he ordered the massacre of the Communist soldiers and formed a government under his leadership. Around this time, he converted to Christianity and married Soong Mayling of the influential Soong family (for more on the Soong family, see The Soong Dynasty by Sterling Seagrave). His wife, educated in the US, was his envoy to deal with foreigners. She later played an important role in securing American support for her husband. In 1928, Chiang became the Generalissimo, i.e., Supreme Commander of all Nationalist Forces, and the Chairman of the Nationalist Government of China. By this time, he had already established his credentials as a virulent anti-Communist.
In the early 1930s, the Communists regrouped and launched a revolution against Chiang’s government, and Japan invaded China. In 1932, he resigned from his political post but kept his military post, and launched a military campaign against the Communists. His strategy was to first defeat them, and then focus on the Japanese. However, this strategy backfired: Under the leadership of Mao Zedong, the Communists grew in strength while the Japanese came further inland. The Second World War began, and China aligned with the Allied powers to fight against Japan.
The US government, which was providing military aid to Chiang, made it clear that he should work with the Communists to defeat the Japanese. An alliance was formed between the two adversaries, but neither side followed the agreement. The Communists did not actively fight the Japanese, and Chiang did not fully halt his operations against the Communists, either.
When the Second World War ended in 1945, the Chinese civil war resumed. The US government then sent a mission headed by General Marshall to China to bring the fighting parties together, but the Marshall Mission was a failure. The US government then thought of dividing China into two parts: A Nationalist-controlled part and a Communist-controlled part, which, as Taylor states, Chiang rejected outright. Instead, he retreated to Taiwan in 1949 and established the Republic of China (ROC). In the mainland, Chairman Mao founded the People’s Republic of China (PRC).
Chiang believed that the Chinese civil war was not yet over, and Taiwan was his base to fight the Communists. Mao’s China came to view Taiwan as a rebel province and aimed to bring it under Beijing’s control. In this situation, the US recognized Chiang’s government as the sole, legitimate ruler of the whole of China, but it did not abandon its Two-China policy. Taylor hints that despite the political differences, both ROC and PRC worked with each other in thwarting the US attempts at creating two Chinas, or an independent Taiwan through the secret agents of both ROC and PRC operating from Hong Kong.
In Taiwan, Chiang carried out economic reforms. At the time of his death in 1975, it was on its way to becoming a major Asian economy. In the late 70s, China also began reforming its economy under the pragmatic leadership of Deng Xiaoping. After Mao’s death in 1976, China rejected the Marxist policies of class struggle and continuing revolution, and instead pursued the path of benevolent authoritarianism preached by the ancient Chinese sage Confucius, whom Chiang greatly admired and whose teachings had a great influence on his life. Taylor states that, had Chiang lived to see today’s China, he would have felt totally at home and happy that China was now a major military and economic power.
Although on the losing side of the Chinese civil war and vilified as inept and corrupt in the Communist propaganda for long, Chiang was a patriot committed to building a strong and prosperous China. And this fact is now being recognized and accepted by his arch-nemesis, the Communist Party of China. If the textbooks published in the 1950s addressed him as “Capitalist” Chiang, by the end of the last century, he was being referred to as Mr. Chiang, the then President of China. Once loathed by Beijing, he is now emerging as a hero for his nationalism that prevented him from declaring Taiwan’s independence.
Perhaps to honor his commitment to one China, the Chinese Communist Party rebuilt his ancestral temple in Nanjing which was destroyed by its members after the founding of the People’s Republic. Furthermore, he is now evoked by the leaders in both Beijing and Taipei to stress that Taiwan should peacefully reunify with the PRC.
Taylor’s book, besides explaining the political events that shaped modern Chinese history, also draws extensively from Chiang’s diaries to provide the readers with an insight on Chiang’s personal life. Thus, it is one of the monumental works on Chiang and should be of interest to those wanting to know more about the events that shaped the modern Chinese history, US policy on China/Taiwan, and those who just want to know more about Chiang.
Work: The Generalissimo: Chiang Kai-shek and the Struggle for Modern China
Author: Jay Taylor
Publisher: Harvard Belknap Press, April, 2009
Pages: 722, with Index
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