Shrewd, But Small

I think Chiang Kai Shek’s career is well known, at least in outline. The last Chinese emperor abdicated in 1912. China fell into utter chaos until, in 1926, Chiang marched an army northward and achieved a semblance of national unification. From 1928 China was under Chiang’s dictatorship, with Nanking as the capital. However, Japan seized Manchuria in 1931. Four years later, Chiang’s grand effort to stamp out the Chinese Communist party failed when Mao Tse-tung took his followers on the Long March to a remote region. In 1937 the Japanese invaded metropolitan China in force and a general war commenced, with the U.S. joining in on China’s side after Pearl Harbor. Chiang and Mao maintained a wary alliance until Japan’s defeat. Then there was civil war. The Communists won, establishing the People’s Republic in 1949. Chiang fled to Taiwan, where he maintained an authoritarian dictatorship until his death in 1975.

The conventional wisdom, naturally much encouraged by the Communists and their Western shills, is that Chiang lost China because he was inflexibly incompetent, cared nothing for the common people, and alienated his U.S. ally by permitting his wife’s family to loot the country for their own enrichment. One of the things one hopes to learn from a book about Chiang is the degree to which this conventional wisdom is correct. Jonathan Fenby’s new biography leaves one believing that it is, with some minor qualifications. To borrow a rhetorical figure from Orwell: Some things are true even though the Chinese Communist party says they are true.

About the Author

John Derbyshire

Mr. Derbyshire is a former contributing editor of National Review.

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I think Chiang Kai Shek’s career is well known, at least in outline. The last Chinese emperor abdicated in 1912. China fell into utter chaos until, in 1926, Chiang marched an army northward and achieved a semblance of national unification. From 1928 China was under Chiang’s dictatorship, with Nanking as the capital. However, Japan seized Manchuria in 1931. Four years later, Chiang’s grand effort to stamp out the Chinese Communist party failed when Mao Tse-tung took his followers on the Long March to a remote region. In 1937 the Japanese invaded metropolitan China in force and a general war commenced, with the U.S. joining in on China’s side after Pearl Harbor. Chiang and Mao maintained a wary alliance until Japan’s defeat. Then there was civil war. The Communists won, establishing the People’s Republic in 1949. Chiang fled to Taiwan, where he maintained an authoritarian dictatorship until his death in 1975.

The conventional wisdom, naturally much encouraged by the Communists and their Western shills, is that Chiang lost China because he was inflexibly incompetent, cared nothing for the common people, and alienated his U.S. ally by permitting his wife’s family to loot the country for their own enrichment. One of the things one hopes to learn from a book about Chiang is the degree to which this conventional wisdom is correct. Jonathan Fenby’s new biography leaves one believing that it is, with some minor qualifications. To borrow a rhetorical figure from Orwell: Some things are true even though the Chinese Communist party says they are true.