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title: Chiang Kai-Shek
author: Hollington K. Tong
publisher: China Publishing Company
year of publication: 1953
reviewed June 3, 2008
hardcover 562 pages

I bought a used copy of Tong's Chiang Kai-shek in order to do research for my own work-in-progress, The U.S. War Against Asia. I found it to be well-written, detailed, and insightful. Hollington Tong was a supporter of Chiang Kai-Shek and was ambassador to Japan from Taiwan when he wrote the book. Since most of what I had read about Chiang Kai-Shek prior to this was quite negative, it was interesting to see him shown in his best light.

In many ways Chiang was like his rival Mao Tse-tung. Both were part of a nationalist movement that sought to make China a free and sovereign nation after decades of interference by European nations and the United States, followed by the indignity of an invasion by Japan. Chiang saw Mao and the communists as puppets of the Soviet Union. The communists saw Chiang and his Nationalist Party as a front for the United States and Great Britain. Both Chiang and Mao were children of farmers; it took a while for each of them to work their way up from the ranks into the leadership of their respective parties.

Chiang married well, but only after he had shown his remarkable military talents. His wife Mayling Song was the daughter of an American educated, Christian, wealthy businessman. One of her sisters was married to Sun Yat-sen, considered to be the founder of the modern Chinese democracy and independence movement. In 1928 he converted to Christianity. This, of course, elevated him in European eyes, but caused problems in China.

Though he was later accused of corruption, or at least of allowing corruption in the ranks of the Nationalist Party, Chiang himself seems to have focussed on keeping a unified Chinese government capable of asserting the nation's sovereignty. China had many factions, including regional war-lords, that made governance difficult at best. As much as he distrusted the communists, in 1936 when invited to join Japan, Germany and Italy in the anti-communist, Anti-Comintern pact, Chiang refused.

The way leftists write the story of China in World War II, the communists had to fight both the Japanese and the Nationalists. Hollington shows that the bulk of the Nationalist military effort went into fighting the Japanese. The Nationalists fought full-scale battles with the Japanese military, often credibly. The Maoists fought a guerilla style of warfare, which, while brave in its own way, tended to preserve their strength for the future battle with the Nationalists once the Japanese withdrew.

After World War II ended the civil war worked its way to a fury. Right or wrong, it is clear that the communists did a better job motivating people to fight for them than the Nationalists did. But it is also clear that the Soviet Union did a better job supporting the Red Army than the U.S. did supply the Nationalist Army.

Since the U.S. enterred World War II to force Japan out of China, and Japan wanted to force the U.S. and European powers out of Asia, the U.S. refusal to give anything more than token aid to the Chinese army is quite telling. Compare it, for instance, with U.S. aid to the "Free French," and the Soviet Union.

In late 1948 sizable sections of the Nationalist Party (Kuomintang) decided they wanted peace, not civil war. Chiang and the Nationalists still controlled much of south China, but the communist armies were becoming increasingly effective. As part of the peace agreement Chiang Kai-shek retired on January 21, 1948. But when the communists called Chiang and 45 other Nationalists leaders war criminals and demanded that they be turned over for punishment, and that peace meant a total takeover by the communists, the civil war restarted. Chiang Kai-shek and much of his army retreated to Taiwan, and from their watched the communists run over all remaining nationalist opposition.

In a brief review it is not possible to convey how interesting this story is. Despite trying to leave the communists out of the picture except as another mysterious enemy, this story is effectively the story of China throwing off its foreign overlords, including the United States.

I think enough time has passed for the Chinese authorities to revise their official stance on Chiang Kai-shek. Sure, they had to fight him. But he lost, right? And at one time he was in the same organization as them. And he fought the Japanese and other imperialists. And if he was a dictator who favorered business interests at times, and socialist reforms at other times, how does that differ from the current communist party stance? Rehabilitate the guy. It might make it easier to get back Taiwan from the U.S. imperialists.