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蔣介石：失敗的勝利者
蔣介石終其一生都在戰鬥中，先是與滿族，然後是軍閥、共產黨與日本人。即使撤退到臺灣後，他也永遠在備戰中，時刻心懷反攻大陸之夢。他犯了許多可怕血腥的罪行和錯誤，但也為國家付出了諸多心力；我們可以從各方面來評判他，同時觀照他的時代和社會背景。
本書是作者經過長期深入研究後，對於20世紀最有權勢、最具爭議性的人物之一──中國國民革命領袖蔣介石的一部全面性傳記。自1926年開始，蔣介石（1887–1975）領導中華民國將近五十年。他是一個愛國者、共和新中國的創建者、二戰的英雄，既是儒家的信奉者，也是一個基督徒；雖然他夢想著普世的平等，卻變成一個背信狡獪的獨裁者，也必須為超過一百五十萬無辜民眾的死亡負責。無論對蔣介石的評價是褒或貶，但不容否認的是，他對兩岸近代史和遠東歷史發展有深刻而巨大的影響。
這本批判性傳記所根據的，是蔣介石未發表的日記、他在俄羅斯檔案中的大量個人案卷，以及俄羅斯收藏的、他的親友和敵人的檔案。潘佐夫揭示了蔣介石在1920年代掌權和整個中國革命運動過程中，俄羅斯人所扮演的角色，還有蔣介石與美國一些高官的複雜關係，同時也揭露了蔣氏家族不為人知的祕辛、播遷來臺後的生活等，期待幫助讀者為蔣介石在歷史中找到適切而客觀的地位。
本書是作者經過長期深入研究後，對於20世紀最有權勢、最具爭議性的人物之一──中國國民革命領袖蔣介石的一部全面性傳記。自1926年開始，蔣介石（1887–1975）領導中華民國將近五十年。他是一個愛國者、共和新中國的創建者、二戰的英雄，既是儒家的信奉者，也是一個基督徒；雖然他夢想著普世的平等，卻變成一個背信狡獪的獨裁者，也必須為超過一百五十萬無辜民眾的死亡負責。無論對蔣介石的評價是褒或貶，但不容否認的是，他對兩岸近代史和遠東歷史發展有深刻而巨大的影響。
這本批判性傳記所根據的，是蔣介石未發表的日記、他在俄羅斯檔案中的大量個人案卷，以及俄羅斯收藏的、他的親友和敵人的檔案。潘佐夫揭示了蔣介石在1920年代掌權和整個中國革命運動過程中，俄羅斯人所扮演的角色，還有蔣介石與美國一些高官的複雜關係，同時也揭露了蔣氏家族不為人知的祕辛、播遷來臺後的生活等，期待幫助讀者為蔣介石在歷史中找到適切而客觀的地位。
1030 pages, Kindle Edition
First published February 2, 2023
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About the author
Alexander V. Pantsov
6 books22 followersAlexander V. Pantsov is Professor of History and holds the Edward and Mary Catherine Gerhold Chair in the Humanities at Capital University in Columbus, Ohio. Born in Moscow, Pantsov graduated from Moscow State University Institute of Asian and African Studies in 1978. He has published more than ten books, among them The Bolsheviks and the Chinese Revolution, 1919-1927 (2000), Mao: The Real Story (2007), Deng Xiaoping: A Revolutionary Life (2015), and Victorious in Defeat: The Life and Times of Chiang Kai-shek, China, 1887-1975 (2023).
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March 15, 2024
Another Dictator
If I die as a dictator, I will go down in history like all dictators…
Thus Mr. Chiang documented in his journal, and so history recalls him.
We perceive China as a dominant power today, yet this was far from the truth in the early 20th century. Chiang, in his attempt to protect a fragmented and weakening China against Japan, was engaged in power politics without any real power. After experiencing betrayals by nearly every international ally and numerous trusted lieutenants, by the 1930s, he had grown distrustful of everyone.
China indeed required a leader capable of maneuvering among foreign powers to avoid being overwhelmed by Japan. However, this positioned Chiang as the wrong person at the right place and right time. He managed just enough to keep the Japanese at bay, even though the Japanese nearly overran the nation: *The Japanese had seized half the territories of China … China had lost up to 90% of industrial capacity, as well as 80% of tax revenues.*
Nevertheless, in pursuing this strategy, he estranged all his allies, including his lieutenants, the domestic communists, the USSR, and the Americans. For him, victory was synonymous with survival, and he clung to this approach until the final confrontation. This book adopts a less favorable view of Chiang compared to Forgotten Ally, yet it is more sympathetic than Tuchman’s Stillwell-centered narrative. Among the three, it offers the most comprehensive insight into World War II from the Chinese perspective, if only because it situates China and Chiang within the chaos that ensued post-Qing China. After completing Assad or We Burn the Country, I was struck by the parallels between Jiang and Assad, each with a pure belief in their own indispensibility.
Regrettably, Pantsov glosses over what could have been a captivating account of Taiwan's establishment and its subsequent evolution. He dedicates a cursory paragraph attempting to vindicate Chiang: *In the end he broke with Oligarchy and implemented agrarian and other reforms.* Yet overall, Pantsov seems ambivalent towards Chiang’s legacy.
If I die as a dictator, I will go down in history like all dictators…
Thus Mr. Chiang documented in his journal, and so history recalls him.
We perceive China as a dominant power today, yet this was far from the truth in the early 20th century. Chiang, in his attempt to protect a fragmented and weakening China against Japan, was engaged in power politics without any real power. After experiencing betrayals by nearly every international ally and numerous trusted lieutenants, by the 1930s, he had grown distrustful of everyone.
China indeed required a leader capable of maneuvering among foreign powers to avoid being overwhelmed by Japan. However, this positioned Chiang as the wrong person at the right place and right time. He managed just enough to keep the Japanese at bay, even though the Japanese nearly overran the nation: *The Japanese had seized half the territories of China … China had lost up to 90% of industrial capacity, as well as 80% of tax revenues.*
Nevertheless, in pursuing this strategy, he estranged all his allies, including his lieutenants, the domestic communists, the USSR, and the Americans. For him, victory was synonymous with survival, and he clung to this approach until the final confrontation. This book adopts a less favorable view of Chiang compared to Forgotten Ally, yet it is more sympathetic than Tuchman’s Stillwell-centered narrative. Among the three, it offers the most comprehensive insight into World War II from the Chinese perspective, if only because it situates China and Chiang within the chaos that ensued post-Qing China. After completing Assad or We Burn the Country, I was struck by the parallels between Jiang and Assad, each with a pure belief in their own indispensibility.
Regrettably, Pantsov glosses over what could have been a captivating account of Taiwan's establishment and its subsequent evolution. He dedicates a cursory paragraph attempting to vindicate Chiang: *In the end he broke with Oligarchy and implemented agrarian and other reforms.* Yet overall, Pantsov seems ambivalent towards Chiang’s legacy.
May 6, 2024
轉型正義在台灣一直緩緩的執行中，其中一項就是移除全島上的蔣介石雕像，這個遍佈在學校、營區等地方的威權殘餘，是很多人的眼中釘，肉中刺。但不管那些反對他的人如何厭惡，都無法改變的一個事實是，蔣介石對歷史的影響，左右了多少人的命運。也因此，關於這位獨裁者的研究著作、傳記等也是多如過江之鯽。個人幾年前讀過陶涵的作品，具體內容忘的差不多了，印象中這位作者對蔣的評價是比較「寬容」的。聯經出的這本《蔣介石》傳記，作者是俄國人潘佐夫，他之前也寫了毛澤東跟鄧小平，標榜的特色就是用了很多蘇聯過去的檔案資料，而就是這點吸引我買來拜讀。
不過，坦白說，看完之後覺得這個賣點也還好。蘇方觀點除了一些人物評論的歧異，還有給的援助資料上的補充外，也沒別的創見。這也不太意外，關於蔣介石的研究，華人自己做的也夠多了，他的日記最近也大多都已出版上市，還有什麼遺漏的嗎？
比較困難的是怎麼給予評價吧。
前幾章我看到潘佐夫在那邊感嘆說蔣介石治國多麼辛苦又不易，還要被自己的二姨子(宋慶齡)扯後腿之類的，原以為又買了一本親蔣的傳記。孰料，到了抗戰之後畫風又是一變。作者直斥蔣在上海開戰是無視市民生死與城市安危的魯莽之舉，對於黃河決堤更是痛批「比毛澤東跟希特勒尤甚之」。
但對於蔣介石的一生功過總結，潘佐夫倒是又收斂了一些，比較像是個中立的史學家。他引用了一段：1945年的時候，蔣介石對美國大使赫爾利說：「如果我作為一個獨裁者死去，那麼我就會像其他人一樣在歷史上只留下惡名；但如果我能夠建立一個和平、民主並統一的國家，我死後就會成為一個偉大的領袖。」從這段話看來，蔣介石倒是很清楚認識自己。
不過，世事豈能盡如人意呢？
中國近代史確實無法忽略蔣介石的影響，少了這個人，整個歷史都會不一樣，就算是毛澤東的一生也可能完全是另外個面向，這是再怎麼痛恨他的人都無法否認的事實。但另一方面，黃河堤旁的死難者跟二二八與白色恐怖的受害者對他的憎恨也是完全有道理的。這類「偉人」總認為自己是「歷史所必需」的，「沒了我地球就不轉了」，而辦起大事也都是「不惜一切代價」，除了「他自己跟在意的人之外」。可是少了這個人把這些憎恨與罪惡挑起了，歷史又會是怎麼個樣貌呢？就像佛朗哥確實終結了西班牙那場撕裂的內戰，他也做出了一些正確的決定比如沒有捲入二戰，他的統治最終讓這個國家走向了民主的道路，不論這是否是其主觀意志還是只是歷史客觀的偶然，但就馬基維利主義者來說，「結果是正確的，手段就無關緊要了」。可是對那些被佛朗哥所傷害的人而言呢？
個人覺得啊，權利、義務；犧牲、補償，都是相對的，站在道德制高點只談一個面向的都是自私的偽善者。用這個標準來看，「偉人」們經得起考驗是不多的。
總而言之，潘佐夫這本書算是給蔣介石眾多的傳記或研究又添上了一本，說很重要倒也還好，不過勝在可讀性高，對傳主的了解不多或研究不深的可以考慮。至於對他已經熟門熟路的朋友就算了。
說句題外話，潘佐夫對於現任台北市長蔣萬安及其家族的身世倒是採取了肯定的態度，而且是傾向是蔣介石就是暗殺章亞若的背後主使者。每個人都可以有自己的判斷，所以我也只是覺得有趣，沒批判的意思。
不過，坦白說，看完之後覺得這個賣點也還好。蘇方觀點除了一些人物評論的歧異，還有給的援助資料上的補充外，也沒別的創見。這也不太意外，關於蔣介石的研究，華人自己做的也夠多了，他的日記最近也大多都已出版上市，還有什麼遺漏的嗎？
比較困難的是怎麼給予評價吧。
前幾章我看到潘佐夫在那邊感嘆說蔣介石治國多麼辛苦又不易，還要被自己的二姨子(宋慶齡)扯後腿之類的，原以為又買了一本親蔣的傳記。孰料，到了抗戰之後畫風又是一變。作者直斥蔣在上海開戰是無視市民生死與城市安危的魯莽之舉，對於黃河決堤更是痛批「比毛澤東跟希特勒尤甚之」。
但對於蔣介石的一生功過總結，潘佐夫倒是又收斂了一些，比較像是個中立的史學家。他引用了一段：1945年的時候，蔣介石對美國大使赫爾利說：「如果我作為一個獨裁者死去，那麼我就會像其他人一樣在歷史上只留下惡名；但如果我能夠建立一個和平、民主並統一的國家，我死後就會成為一個偉大的領袖。」從這段話看來，蔣介石倒是很清楚認識自己。
不過，世事豈能盡如人意呢？
中國近代史確實無法忽略蔣介石的影響，少了這個人，整個歷史都會不一樣，就算是毛澤東的一生也可能完全是另外個面向，這是再怎麼痛恨他的人都無法否認的事實。但另一方面，黃河堤旁的死難者跟二二八與白色恐怖的受害者對他的憎恨也是完全有道理的。這類「偉人」總認為自己是「歷史所必需」的，「沒了我地球就不轉了」，而辦起大事也都是「不惜一切代價」，除了「他自己跟在意的人之外」。可是少了這個人把這些憎恨與罪惡挑起了，歷史又會是怎麼個樣貌呢？就像佛朗哥確實終結了西班牙那場撕裂的內戰，他也做出了一些正確的決定比如沒有捲入二戰，他的統治最終讓這個國家走向了民主的道路，不論這是否是其主觀意志還是只是歷史客觀的偶然，但就馬基維利主義者來說，「結果是正確的，手段就無關緊要了」。可是對那些被佛朗哥所傷害的人而言呢？
個人覺得啊，權利、義務；犧牲、補償，都是相對的，站在道德制高點只談一個面向的都是自私的偽善者。用這個標準來看，「偉人」們經得起考驗是不多的。
總而言之，潘佐夫這本書算是給蔣介石眾多的傳記或研究又添上了一本，說很重要倒也還好，不過勝在可讀性高，對傳主的了解不多或研究不深的可以考慮。至於對他已經熟門熟路的朋友就算了。
說句題外話，潘佐夫對於現任台北市長蔣萬安及其家族的身世倒是採取了肯定的態度，而且是傾向是蔣介石就是暗殺章亞若的背後主使者。每個人都可以有自己的判斷，所以我也只是覺得有趣，沒批判的意思。
June 7, 2023
Victorious in Defeat starts off very strong. It correctly introduces the troubled historiography of Chiang and commits itself to finding a balance between the old negative judgments of his character, and the more recent lionization of him in the 2000s. The first 266 pages are about Chiang's youth to the Japanese invasion of 1937. These chapters are mostly excellent in interweaving a thorough analysis of Chiang's psychological character and the important early history of the Chinese nationalists.
Pages 266 to 392 cover the entirety of WW2, and this is where a lot of problems with Pantsov's ''neutrality'' play out. On one page he lauds Chiang for his daily sacrifices and selfless attitude, blaming many problems of his government on the highly corrupt warlords and backstabbing communists. Then in the next, he claims Chiang is a selfish stupid dictator responsible for much suffering. Instead of giving a well-balanced overview of the negatives and positives he takes both and incoherently places them next to each other without any interaction. This even becomes frustrating when at the end of many chapters he cites a quote from Confucius so as to berate Chiang for his behavior. This same mocking attitude is provided by Panstov not considering Chiang a real Christian because he is not a pacifist, a strange modern reading of faith not at all fitting for Chiang's time.
Pages 392 to 435 cover the 1945-1949 civil war and the flight to Taiwan. Problems with America sabotaging Chiang are written well but suffer from the same strange balance in writing. There is also barely any military analysis provided about the civil war and written as if all of it was the logical outcome of a failing regime. The only thing that differs from the old negative historiography here is the description of the Soviet Union's crimes in Manchuria and the naivety of the Americans not caring about China falling to communism. Thus later having to fight in Korea and Vietnam because of it.
Pages 435 to 486 cover Chiang's entire reign over Taiwan up until his death in 1975. Most of this small chapter reads like an epilogue of Chiang preparing to exit the stage, despite the background of his described peaceful mountain walks and family life, he's transforming the country and is heavily involved in international politics of the cold war. The title of the book is supposed to refer to this period but despite that, it barely covers any of it at all. There's also zero writing on the 'White terror' besides just mentioning the term and leaving it at that.
The epilogue from 487-492 also has barely any commentary at all, just providing a small sightseeing tour of Taipei, the sarcophagus of Chiang, and where some of his family went. The rest of the book 493-708 are all footnotes and bibliography, which might have been impressive were it not for the bad way of interpreting the sources.
Sadly this ambitious new project to bridge the gap between negative and positive historiography failed to deliver. It is however another new step towards a proper appreciation of such a giant of recent Chinese and world history. For this I can recommend it, it reads well if you can look past the aforementioned frustrating analysis. My favorite part of the whole book was at the end of the Northern Expedition when Chiang lays his hand on the tomb of his master and friend Sun Yat-sen and sobs so bitterly that he had to be removed by his generals. Parts like this are where the book can truly shine despite all the flaws.
Pages 266 to 392 cover the entirety of WW2, and this is where a lot of problems with Pantsov's ''neutrality'' play out. On one page he lauds Chiang for his daily sacrifices and selfless attitude, blaming many problems of his government on the highly corrupt warlords and backstabbing communists. Then in the next, he claims Chiang is a selfish stupid dictator responsible for much suffering. Instead of giving a well-balanced overview of the negatives and positives he takes both and incoherently places them next to each other without any interaction. This even becomes frustrating when at the end of many chapters he cites a quote from Confucius so as to berate Chiang for his behavior. This same mocking attitude is provided by Panstov not considering Chiang a real Christian because he is not a pacifist, a strange modern reading of faith not at all fitting for Chiang's time.
Pages 392 to 435 cover the 1945-1949 civil war and the flight to Taiwan. Problems with America sabotaging Chiang are written well but suffer from the same strange balance in writing. There is also barely any military analysis provided about the civil war and written as if all of it was the logical outcome of a failing regime. The only thing that differs from the old negative historiography here is the description of the Soviet Union's crimes in Manchuria and the naivety of the Americans not caring about China falling to communism. Thus later having to fight in Korea and Vietnam because of it.
Pages 435 to 486 cover Chiang's entire reign over Taiwan up until his death in 1975. Most of this small chapter reads like an epilogue of Chiang preparing to exit the stage, despite the background of his described peaceful mountain walks and family life, he's transforming the country and is heavily involved in international politics of the cold war. The title of the book is supposed to refer to this period but despite that, it barely covers any of it at all. There's also zero writing on the 'White terror' besides just mentioning the term and leaving it at that.
The epilogue from 487-492 also has barely any commentary at all, just providing a small sightseeing tour of Taipei, the sarcophagus of Chiang, and where some of his family went. The rest of the book 493-708 are all footnotes and bibliography, which might have been impressive were it not for the bad way of interpreting the sources.
Sadly this ambitious new project to bridge the gap between negative and positive historiography failed to deliver. It is however another new step towards a proper appreciation of such a giant of recent Chinese and world history. For this I can recommend it, it reads well if you can look past the aforementioned frustrating analysis. My favorite part of the whole book was at the end of the Northern Expedition when Chiang lays his hand on the tomb of his master and friend Sun Yat-sen and sobs so bitterly that he had to be removed by his generals. Parts like this are where the book can truly shine despite all the flaws.
November 5, 2024
This was honestly more than I wanted or needed to know about Chiang.
My interest in the man mostly derives from the American military establishment's expectation that China may make a play for Taiwan in the near future. The "Great Generalissimo" CKS was the leader of the Nationalist side of China's 20th Century Civil War. Mao got the continent, Chiang got Taiwan. This book spent 80-90% of its time analyzing the Civil War on the mainland. While that was a little disappointing due to the specificity of my interest in Taiwan, it did help put things in context. Taiwan did not loom very large in CKS's plans, and by Pantsov's telling, was almost an accident.
Beyond the emphasis of this narrative being otherwise than I had hoped, the book is frustrating for other reasons. The story is inherently infuriating because there are no "good guys." Chiang was a deeply flawed, impulsive, dissolute (self-proclaimed) dictator. Despite all of that, the author does his best to make Chiang "sympathetic," which honestly, I appreciated. Though I do not ultimately have much sympathy for the man, it is always helpful to try to understand a man as he sought to understand himself.
American General "Vinegar Joe" Stillwell, who was made Chiang's Chief of Staff for a time, provides an impossible to forget image for CKS "the peanut." Stillwell overheard his men calling CKS by that term and when asking why they referred to him that way they said he was the parfait peanut atop the steaming pile of poop that was the situation in China. And they're not wrong in describing the situation as a mess. Timeline below:
1911 Chiang played a large role in the military aspects of Sun Yat-sen's revolutionary overthrow of the Qing Dynasty.
1928 Chiang "re-unifies" China in a military action (the "Northern Expedition") and takes the top role in the ROC (Republic of China) through the organ of the KMT (Kuomintang) party. Begins civil war with the CCP.
1948 Loses Civil War against the Communists
1949-1975 Relocates the seat of Republic of China government to Taiwan. Finally having a sphere of influence that his political prowess was equal to govern, he ruled Taiwan with an iron fist.
To just list a number of the facts that stood out to me along the way:
+CKS was initially disposed very positively towards the Soviets. Long after he became disillusioned with them he continued to pursue military support from them; first to carry on the fight with Japan and later when the USSR and CCP's relationship frayed.
+His (third?) wife Soong Mei-ling got him to convert to Christianity. He seemed to have a quite tenuous grasp on the actual teachings of Christ and treated the Bible much more like the I-Ching, flipping through it randomly for portents rather than conforming his mind to its teachings. He made various "wagers" with the Christian God, promising that he would, for example, baptize an entire numbered army if only he was able to kill all the Communists.
+He carried out a number of really heinous atrocities, to include destroying levees of the Yellow River in an attempt to kill as many Japanese troops as possible, while knowingly killing somewhere between 30,000 and 89,000 Chinese civilians.
+After he was soundly beaten by Mao and marooned on Taiwan, he actually tried to copy the CCP (imitation is the greatest form of flatter) even to the point of terror purges of his own political ranks. The compliment was then returned in the 80's when Deng Xiaoping copied the "Special Economic Zone" approach he'd seen CKS pull off in Taiwan.
+Seeing WWII and the early stages of the Cold War through an eastern lens was very helpful. The author makes the claim that the Soviet takeover of East Berlin was a diversionary tactic to allow them a freer hand in China, which they believed would be more determinant of the balance of power in the long run. Seems very plausible and I'm surprised I've never heard that-- probably just because the histories I read tend to be so EuroCentric.
In Summary:
Chiang was a terrible leader and a terrible man. He was every bit as much a petty dictator as Mao and actually shared many of the same authoritarian, command economy aims with him. Chiang's nominal Christianity and tack towards the west seem to be the main determining factor's in the economic and social miracle that has occurred in Taiwan (mostly after his death). Basically, the "Victory" mentioned in the book's title seems mostly to be a historical accident that happened in spite of Chiang's aims and character. Thankfully, in God's economy, there are many such cases.
Additionally, he believed, as do many dictators, that his own fate was identical to that of his country "I AM CHINA." And yet, he does not seem to have had much notion of what was actually going on in his country on the ground, nor to care very much. His family lived lavishly while others starved. One of the main mechanisms that led to the comparative success of Taiwan over the mainland was the emphasis on the worth and rights of the individual.
My interest in the man mostly derives from the American military establishment's expectation that China may make a play for Taiwan in the near future. The "Great Generalissimo" CKS was the leader of the Nationalist side of China's 20th Century Civil War. Mao got the continent, Chiang got Taiwan. This book spent 80-90% of its time analyzing the Civil War on the mainland. While that was a little disappointing due to the specificity of my interest in Taiwan, it did help put things in context. Taiwan did not loom very large in CKS's plans, and by Pantsov's telling, was almost an accident.
Beyond the emphasis of this narrative being otherwise than I had hoped, the book is frustrating for other reasons. The story is inherently infuriating because there are no "good guys." Chiang was a deeply flawed, impulsive, dissolute (self-proclaimed) dictator. Despite all of that, the author does his best to make Chiang "sympathetic," which honestly, I appreciated. Though I do not ultimately have much sympathy for the man, it is always helpful to try to understand a man as he sought to understand himself.
American General "Vinegar Joe" Stillwell, who was made Chiang's Chief of Staff for a time, provides an impossible to forget image for CKS "the peanut." Stillwell overheard his men calling CKS by that term and when asking why they referred to him that way they said he was the parfait peanut atop the steaming pile of poop that was the situation in China. And they're not wrong in describing the situation as a mess. Timeline below:
1911 Chiang played a large role in the military aspects of Sun Yat-sen's revolutionary overthrow of the Qing Dynasty.
1928 Chiang "re-unifies" China in a military action (the "Northern Expedition") and takes the top role in the ROC (Republic of China) through the organ of the KMT (Kuomintang) party. Begins civil war with the CCP.
1948 Loses Civil War against the Communists
1949-1975 Relocates the seat of Republic of China government to Taiwan. Finally having a sphere of influence that his political prowess was equal to govern, he ruled Taiwan with an iron fist.
To just list a number of the facts that stood out to me along the way:
+CKS was initially disposed very positively towards the Soviets. Long after he became disillusioned with them he continued to pursue military support from them; first to carry on the fight with Japan and later when the USSR and CCP's relationship frayed.
+His (third?) wife Soong Mei-ling got him to convert to Christianity. He seemed to have a quite tenuous grasp on the actual teachings of Christ and treated the Bible much more like the I-Ching, flipping through it randomly for portents rather than conforming his mind to its teachings. He made various "wagers" with the Christian God, promising that he would, for example, baptize an entire numbered army if only he was able to kill all the Communists.
+He carried out a number of really heinous atrocities, to include destroying levees of the Yellow River in an attempt to kill as many Japanese troops as possible, while knowingly killing somewhere between 30,000 and 89,000 Chinese civilians.
+After he was soundly beaten by Mao and marooned on Taiwan, he actually tried to copy the CCP (imitation is the greatest form of flatter) even to the point of terror purges of his own political ranks. The compliment was then returned in the 80's when Deng Xiaoping copied the "Special Economic Zone" approach he'd seen CKS pull off in Taiwan.
+Seeing WWII and the early stages of the Cold War through an eastern lens was very helpful. The author makes the claim that the Soviet takeover of East Berlin was a diversionary tactic to allow them a freer hand in China, which they believed would be more determinant of the balance of power in the long run. Seems very plausible and I'm surprised I've never heard that-- probably just because the histories I read tend to be so EuroCentric.
In Summary:
Chiang was a terrible leader and a terrible man. He was every bit as much a petty dictator as Mao and actually shared many of the same authoritarian, command economy aims with him. Chiang's nominal Christianity and tack towards the west seem to be the main determining factor's in the economic and social miracle that has occurred in Taiwan (mostly after his death). Basically, the "Victory" mentioned in the book's title seems mostly to be a historical accident that happened in spite of Chiang's aims and character. Thankfully, in God's economy, there are many such cases.
Additionally, he believed, as do many dictators, that his own fate was identical to that of his country "I AM CHINA." And yet, he does not seem to have had much notion of what was actually going on in his country on the ground, nor to care very much. His family lived lavishly while others starved. One of the main mechanisms that led to the comparative success of Taiwan over the mainland was the emphasis on the worth and rights of the individual.
February 16, 2024
I felt at some points it was too sympathetic towards Chiang and very biased against the communist or "anti-Chiang" characters. Despite this, enjoyable to read. I feel the part after he goes to Taiwan is weaker. If Goodreads allowed scores over 10 it would be a 7 (or 3.5 stars).
August 31, 2023
2023-08-08
He has so many names!
2023-08-11
Despite all the meditation, self-disciplinary writings, and a "firm as a rock" name chosen by himself, Chiang Kai-shek in the 1910s-1920s was anything BUT firm as a rock. Hysterical, unable to work with others who held higher ranks than him, thinking of himself better than the rest (except for the five people he respected as authorities), he cycled through alright I will work with him -> I can't stand this guy (Chen Jiongming, Xu Chongzhi, etc.) -> 老子不干了 -> I must sulk at home so many times. This is probably one of the reasons why he failed eventually against the CCP, even with the assistance from the US. Subconsciously, he probably was well aware of his own short-comings, hence all the meditation and the meaningful names he chose for himself. A talented man of course, yet none of his meditation and self-discipline could help with his temper and obstinate personality.
2023-08-13
The USSR wanted to turn GMD into a communist party and they believed that Chiang was a leftist, playing a central role in achieving such goal. However, that was a vast miscalculation of Chiang. To me, Chiang believed in neither the left nor the right; he believed in POWER. When Sun Yat-sen was in power, he followed Sun Wenism because it helped him secure power (maybe he did believe in it, but that might just be a lie he tried to convince himself). When the USSR was a convenient source of money, weapon, and advisors, he welcomed them and acted as a leftist because it helped him grow his army and remove opponents. He wanted to be in power, which meant more to him than the leftism or rightism ideology. The USSR was merely a tool to Chiang, and he played the Russians very well (e.g., took advantage of the assassination of Liao Zhongkai to oust Hu Hanmin, or the USSR's too aggressive taking-over attempt of GMD to get rid of Wang Jingwei).
2023-08-14
In 1926, the break of GMD was imminent and Chiang voluntarily stepped down. The Wuhan government, headed by the Communists opposed him mainly because the USSR was worried that they would no longer be able to control Chiang -- make no mistake about it, the USSR never really believed in Chiang or the GMD. All they wanted was to take advantage of the GMD and turned it into the leftist force when the opportunity was ripe. Chiang was but a tool to them. Ironically, Chiang had been doing the same with regard to the USSR. As mentioned before, I never believe that Chiang was seriously a leftist, or rightist for that matter. He coveted power and whoever could assist him to clinch power, he would ally with them. Now that the USSR became impatient and showed their colors, it worked to Chiang's advantage to temporarily retreat and maintained a good image that he was NOT the one causing the split of the GMD. Rather, he was the honorable man taking a defeat to preserve the unity of the revolution.
The Wuhan government had financial support from the USSR and military support from Li Zongren and Bai Chongxi. Chiang at the time also had an army and support from Feng Yuxiang and his Huangpu cadets, yet he financially depended on the Wuhan government. So an open conflict was not advisable to him. However, things changed when Chiang acquired financial support from Shanghai (e.g., the Green Gang). It was negotiated by T. V. Song, but obviously the reason he gained trust from the businessmen in Shanghai was the White Terror. The pauper, lumpen, and worker uprising in Shanghai, in the name of Communism, must have casted the city into chaos. Chiang's White Terror, however cruel and unusual it was, restored order for the city, and hence the business. I don't think the business tycoons at that time cared much about the life or death of the "lowlifes". To them, Chiang was the "savior" and it would do them good supporting his ambition financially. The marriage to Song Meiling, sister of T. V. Song, was the final nail on the coffin of the Wuhan government. Chiang now had his war chest solidified.
One needs both money and army to clinch power. Chiang was given both by the USSR initially. While money could be stripped easily, the relations with the army, or specifically the Huangpu cadets, were not easily severed. Ironically, while easily stripped, money is also easy to acquire, as long as one does the right favor for the right people.
2023-08-16
What a mess, mess, mess towards the end of the 1920s! Militarists, communists, foreign powers, every force was seeming to pull China apart, yet Chiang was trying to hold it together. But his desire to control everything, to rule over everyone, definitely did not help the unification cause. Yet on the other hand, had he not been dictating with authority, would China have been united, even just on the surface? That period of time was very difficult, and it is unfair for people today to judge what the historical figures did back then. And all these chaos happened BEFORE Japanese invasion and the WWII! Chiang really could not take a single break.
2023-08-18
P1: Is a democratically elected misogynist better than a dictator ordering gender equality?
P2: Under democracy, the misogynist can be replaced after a few years, but if your benevolent dictator goes mad, you are stuck with him forever.
P1: That depends on the voters not being misogynists themselves. If the majority of them think just like the one they have elected (that's probably why the misogynist gets elected in the first place), you will be stuck with the idea of misogyny for a long time, regardless of who gets elected.
P2: Yeah, but the chance of a lot of people being misogynists for an election cycle is so much smaller than one dictator going haywire for one moment. Democracy has a self-healing mechanism built-in, but dictatorship does not.
I agree with Chiang's analysis that democracy would not work in China in the 1930s. (Can it even work in China NOW if given the chance?) The country was too big and its population too under-educated (extremely high illiteracy rate, was that 90%?). Combined with the threat from the Western countries, the USSR, and Japan, the only reasonable way to unite the country is through dictatorship, or more precisely, cult following. One can call it different names, Fascism, Nazism, but the core idea remains the same: unite the country under one person, and only one person is allowed to think.
Did the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) act any differently from GMD? Of course not! All CCP wanted was power, the same as GMD. The two parties might fly different ideologies and have different supporters, yet they were in their core the same. Chiang required loyalty and cult following, so did Mao. They both knew dictatorship was the only way to unite a country with hundreds of millions of illiterate peasants. Unfortunately, Mao was much less a benevolent dictator compared to Chiang (it is actually hard to say whether Chiang would have acted differently from Mao had he been victorious against the CCP and taken control of the mainland). But also fortunately, after the relatively short chaos after Mao's death (compared to the chaos instigated directly by Mao himself), China received its own benevolent dictator in Deng. If not for him, China would be North Koreanized much faster than its current pace.
Taiwan was also lucky for this matter because Chiang's son was benevolent as well.
Yet, that is exactly the problem with dictatorship. High risk high reward. One hits a jackpot like Deng, the economy skyrockets in 30 years. Yet one can also be dealt a terrible hand and everything goes to tatters (what is Constitution but a piece of paper). Dictatorship is like stock, whereas democracy is like bond. No matter how much problem democracy has, it is nevertheless the lesser of the two evils.
China in the 1930s was really in a terrible spot. The ideal path should be to use dictatorship to unite the country, fight back invasions, annul all the unequal treaties, and then gradually transition to democracy. It does not matter if GMD or CCP was on top, if they stick to this path, China can become a democracy. Yet, they did not. And probably they never will.
2023-08-20
Chiang did not want an open conflict with Japan despite the latter's aggression because he was counting on a potential war between the USSR and Japan. He wanted to leave the possibility of China and Japan united on the table, whose result would cause a major threat to the USSR, such that Stalin would agree to enter war with Japan as a preemptive measure, or at worst, supply Chiang with resources to fight the war. Meanwhile, by delaying an open conflict with Japan, Chiang was buying time to eliminate the CCP once and for all.
The USSR obviously did not want an open war with Japan. They saw the threat posed by Japan, but they also did not want to strengthen Chiang because that would essentially kill the young CCP and the Red Army. Stalin was hoping for a weakened Chiang by the Japanese, a continually growing CCP influence, a united front of the CCP and GMD, a failure of Japan's complete invasion of China, and the eventual win of CCP over GMD. Thus, he had been very coil with all the players, helping all of them yet not showing clear favor.
The incident from Zhang Xueliang was a catalyst for the events to happen. Chiang was too egotistic to see the flaws in his own strategy: while maintaining peace with Japan appeared logical with regards to drawing the USSR to war with Japan, his people did not think so. As stated in the book, Chiang was not a dictator in reality. He appeared to be the Generalissimo, yet there were so many militarist cliques in his own army; there were the communists; and there were the thousand-year old tradition of localism. His will simply could not be implemented as the will of the country, even if he naively believed so. The weakness of his army did not help him either.
His defeat in the early years of Sino-Japanese war, in particular the fight in Shanghai, was but destined. China was, probably still is, a conglomerate of sands, not capable of being wrung together for a common cause.
2023-08-22
I used to have sympathy for Chiang a few days back, but these three events completely robbed me of any sympathy.
1. With full knowledge of the indefensibility of Nanjing, Chiang insisted on defending it because otherwise he would lose face. What a stupid, stupid decision it was! And the result? Tens of thousands of soldiers died and Nanjing was lost all the same.
2. Chiang intentionally bombed a dam on the Yellow River, hoping that the ensuing flood would slow down Japanese troops. It probably did slow them down a little bit, but the casualty and damage inflicted on the innocent Chinese people living in the flooded region was immeasurable. He did not even notify the flooded region and later blamed his own blunder on the Japanese.
3. Chiang preemptively burned down Changsha in case the Japanese took it. That stupid decision also caused tremendous life and financial loss. The Japanese never took Changsha, and to save face, he blamed the decision on local officials.
Each time he made such decision, he rarely thought about the consequences on the regular people. He acted as if he were the chosen one, the main character in history. He had the belief that his decisions were the absolute best. He believed that he decided for the bigger picture, so that he was not bound by the small stuff (such as the livelihood of regular people). He definitely learned about that from Stalin. While his decisions left hundreds of thousands people in dire situation, he himself, along with his wife and close allies, was living in big houses surrounded by mountains and fresh air. No wonder he lost to the communists (we are not even talking about the corruption of his wife's family)!
刚愎自用, that is probably the most appropriate description of Chiang I can think of.
2023-08-27
As a leader and self-claimed revolutionary, Chiang made the most significant mistake in NOT distancing from nepotism. The wide use of his own family in important positions, including his own sons, wife, and wife's family indicates that his idea of governing was not that much different from the era he vowed to change. His inability to rein in his wife's family's corruption built terrible first impression of himself when dealing with the Americans. He constantly lamented about the weakness of his army. Yet since he only used people deemed loyal to him, not deemed actually capable for the job, it was no wonder he could not organize the country well. It was emphasized repeatedly that Chiang himself was not corrupt at all, which I fully believed. Yet it meant NOTHING if his underlings were corrupt. It appears to me that Chiang was applying the ancient Chinese wisdom of leadership that a leader must be the moral example of his country in order to lead. He did that, but was too naive to realize that this way of leading was outdated by about a thousand years.
Chiang did not win the anti-Japanese war. The U.S.A did. He basically failed for eight years. He thought he was playing games with Stalin and Roosevelt, but he himself was but a pawn by the actual players.
2023-08-30
Chiang did well in Taiwan, despite still being a dictator. He was finally able to get rid of all the factions and not be burdened with the Communists, the Japanese, the Imperialism, or the regionalism on the small island. Fully executing his political and economical wishes, he was able to bring a better life to both the farmers and the city-dwellers, grow the middle class, and nurture a capitalist economy under his own dictatorship. He seemed to have been transformed (the defeat might have taught him something), at least on his view on the economy (he was a support of Sun Yatsen's rather socialism view of the economy in the past).
2023-08-31 & Final Thoughts
I am surprised to learn that Deng copied the the Special Economic Zone (经济特别行政区) from Chiang. Chiang died a dictator, but more or less a benevolent one to Taiwan. His policies, along with the economic and military support from the U.S., secured the miracle in Taiwan in the 1950s and 60s. The comments from the author towards the end of the book about Chiang are decent. There is no need to hate him or love him. Chiang was an extremely important figure in modern Chinese history. His errors and successes shaped the fate of both the mainland and Taiwan. As all historical figures, he had flaws, yet these flaws should be placed side-by-side his genuine devotion to bettering China and her people's lives. I do not agree with many of his decisions, especially his old way of ruling (filling the government with family members and loyalists while disregarding the massive corruption among these people). Yet, I respect his unyielding will. The majority of his life, Chiang was living between a rock and a hard place. Not everyone can make it through that in a better shape than he did.
Finally, a few words about the book itself. This is the first pure historic book I have read, and it has left a good impression on me. From my earlier education in PRC, some historic events are familiar, yet many more are not mentioned in history class from PRC. Thus, I have gained a lot more perspective of the most unsettling period of modern China. The book is thick but not hard to read. It is clearly well researched, judging by the 200+ pages of references. However, I do wish that the book could include the original Chinese characters of important names, locations, poems, etc. in addition to the pinyin and/or translation, as that would give me an easier time making connection to what I have known previously.
He has so many names!
2023-08-11
Despite all the meditation, self-disciplinary writings, and a "firm as a rock" name chosen by himself, Chiang Kai-shek in the 1910s-1920s was anything BUT firm as a rock. Hysterical, unable to work with others who held higher ranks than him, thinking of himself better than the rest (except for the five people he respected as authorities), he cycled through alright I will work with him -> I can't stand this guy (Chen Jiongming, Xu Chongzhi, etc.) -> 老子不干了 -> I must sulk at home so many times. This is probably one of the reasons why he failed eventually against the CCP, even with the assistance from the US. Subconsciously, he probably was well aware of his own short-comings, hence all the meditation and the meaningful names he chose for himself. A talented man of course, yet none of his meditation and self-discipline could help with his temper and obstinate personality.
2023-08-13
The USSR wanted to turn GMD into a communist party and they believed that Chiang was a leftist, playing a central role in achieving such goal. However, that was a vast miscalculation of Chiang. To me, Chiang believed in neither the left nor the right; he believed in POWER. When Sun Yat-sen was in power, he followed Sun Wenism because it helped him secure power (maybe he did believe in it, but that might just be a lie he tried to convince himself). When the USSR was a convenient source of money, weapon, and advisors, he welcomed them and acted as a leftist because it helped him grow his army and remove opponents. He wanted to be in power, which meant more to him than the leftism or rightism ideology. The USSR was merely a tool to Chiang, and he played the Russians very well (e.g., took advantage of the assassination of Liao Zhongkai to oust Hu Hanmin, or the USSR's too aggressive taking-over attempt of GMD to get rid of Wang Jingwei).
2023-08-14
In 1926, the break of GMD was imminent and Chiang voluntarily stepped down. The Wuhan government, headed by the Communists opposed him mainly because the USSR was worried that they would no longer be able to control Chiang -- make no mistake about it, the USSR never really believed in Chiang or the GMD. All they wanted was to take advantage of the GMD and turned it into the leftist force when the opportunity was ripe. Chiang was but a tool to them. Ironically, Chiang had been doing the same with regard to the USSR. As mentioned before, I never believe that Chiang was seriously a leftist, or rightist for that matter. He coveted power and whoever could assist him to clinch power, he would ally with them. Now that the USSR became impatient and showed their colors, it worked to Chiang's advantage to temporarily retreat and maintained a good image that he was NOT the one causing the split of the GMD. Rather, he was the honorable man taking a defeat to preserve the unity of the revolution.
The Wuhan government had financial support from the USSR and military support from Li Zongren and Bai Chongxi. Chiang at the time also had an army and support from Feng Yuxiang and his Huangpu cadets, yet he financially depended on the Wuhan government. So an open conflict was not advisable to him. However, things changed when Chiang acquired financial support from Shanghai (e.g., the Green Gang). It was negotiated by T. V. Song, but obviously the reason he gained trust from the businessmen in Shanghai was the White Terror. The pauper, lumpen, and worker uprising in Shanghai, in the name of Communism, must have casted the city into chaos. Chiang's White Terror, however cruel and unusual it was, restored order for the city, and hence the business. I don't think the business tycoons at that time cared much about the life or death of the "lowlifes". To them, Chiang was the "savior" and it would do them good supporting his ambition financially. The marriage to Song Meiling, sister of T. V. Song, was the final nail on the coffin of the Wuhan government. Chiang now had his war chest solidified.
One needs both money and army to clinch power. Chiang was given both by the USSR initially. While money could be stripped easily, the relations with the army, or specifically the Huangpu cadets, were not easily severed. Ironically, while easily stripped, money is also easy to acquire, as long as one does the right favor for the right people.
2023-08-16
What a mess, mess, mess towards the end of the 1920s! Militarists, communists, foreign powers, every force was seeming to pull China apart, yet Chiang was trying to hold it together. But his desire to control everything, to rule over everyone, definitely did not help the unification cause. Yet on the other hand, had he not been dictating with authority, would China have been united, even just on the surface? That period of time was very difficult, and it is unfair for people today to judge what the historical figures did back then. And all these chaos happened BEFORE Japanese invasion and the WWII! Chiang really could not take a single break.
2023-08-18
P1: Is a democratically elected misogynist better than a dictator ordering gender equality?
P2: Under democracy, the misogynist can be replaced after a few years, but if your benevolent dictator goes mad, you are stuck with him forever.
P1: That depends on the voters not being misogynists themselves. If the majority of them think just like the one they have elected (that's probably why the misogynist gets elected in the first place), you will be stuck with the idea of misogyny for a long time, regardless of who gets elected.
P2: Yeah, but the chance of a lot of people being misogynists for an election cycle is so much smaller than one dictator going haywire for one moment. Democracy has a self-healing mechanism built-in, but dictatorship does not.
I agree with Chiang's analysis that democracy would not work in China in the 1930s. (Can it even work in China NOW if given the chance?) The country was too big and its population too under-educated (extremely high illiteracy rate, was that 90%?). Combined with the threat from the Western countries, the USSR, and Japan, the only reasonable way to unite the country is through dictatorship, or more precisely, cult following. One can call it different names, Fascism, Nazism, but the core idea remains the same: unite the country under one person, and only one person is allowed to think.
Did the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) act any differently from GMD? Of course not! All CCP wanted was power, the same as GMD. The two parties might fly different ideologies and have different supporters, yet they were in their core the same. Chiang required loyalty and cult following, so did Mao. They both knew dictatorship was the only way to unite a country with hundreds of millions of illiterate peasants. Unfortunately, Mao was much less a benevolent dictator compared to Chiang (it is actually hard to say whether Chiang would have acted differently from Mao had he been victorious against the CCP and taken control of the mainland). But also fortunately, after the relatively short chaos after Mao's death (compared to the chaos instigated directly by Mao himself), China received its own benevolent dictator in Deng. If not for him, China would be North Koreanized much faster than its current pace.
Taiwan was also lucky for this matter because Chiang's son was benevolent as well.
Yet, that is exactly the problem with dictatorship. High risk high reward. One hits a jackpot like Deng, the economy skyrockets in 30 years. Yet one can also be dealt a terrible hand and everything goes to tatters (what is Constitution but a piece of paper). Dictatorship is like stock, whereas democracy is like bond. No matter how much problem democracy has, it is nevertheless the lesser of the two evils.
China in the 1930s was really in a terrible spot. The ideal path should be to use dictatorship to unite the country, fight back invasions, annul all the unequal treaties, and then gradually transition to democracy. It does not matter if GMD or CCP was on top, if they stick to this path, China can become a democracy. Yet, they did not. And probably they never will.
2023-08-20
Chiang did not want an open conflict with Japan despite the latter's aggression because he was counting on a potential war between the USSR and Japan. He wanted to leave the possibility of China and Japan united on the table, whose result would cause a major threat to the USSR, such that Stalin would agree to enter war with Japan as a preemptive measure, or at worst, supply Chiang with resources to fight the war. Meanwhile, by delaying an open conflict with Japan, Chiang was buying time to eliminate the CCP once and for all.
The USSR obviously did not want an open war with Japan. They saw the threat posed by Japan, but they also did not want to strengthen Chiang because that would essentially kill the young CCP and the Red Army. Stalin was hoping for a weakened Chiang by the Japanese, a continually growing CCP influence, a united front of the CCP and GMD, a failure of Japan's complete invasion of China, and the eventual win of CCP over GMD. Thus, he had been very coil with all the players, helping all of them yet not showing clear favor.
The incident from Zhang Xueliang was a catalyst for the events to happen. Chiang was too egotistic to see the flaws in his own strategy: while maintaining peace with Japan appeared logical with regards to drawing the USSR to war with Japan, his people did not think so. As stated in the book, Chiang was not a dictator in reality. He appeared to be the Generalissimo, yet there were so many militarist cliques in his own army; there were the communists; and there were the thousand-year old tradition of localism. His will simply could not be implemented as the will of the country, even if he naively believed so. The weakness of his army did not help him either.
His defeat in the early years of Sino-Japanese war, in particular the fight in Shanghai, was but destined. China was, probably still is, a conglomerate of sands, not capable of being wrung together for a common cause.
2023-08-22
I used to have sympathy for Chiang a few days back, but these three events completely robbed me of any sympathy.
1. With full knowledge of the indefensibility of Nanjing, Chiang insisted on defending it because otherwise he would lose face. What a stupid, stupid decision it was! And the result? Tens of thousands of soldiers died and Nanjing was lost all the same.
2. Chiang intentionally bombed a dam on the Yellow River, hoping that the ensuing flood would slow down Japanese troops. It probably did slow them down a little bit, but the casualty and damage inflicted on the innocent Chinese people living in the flooded region was immeasurable. He did not even notify the flooded region and later blamed his own blunder on the Japanese.
3. Chiang preemptively burned down Changsha in case the Japanese took it. That stupid decision also caused tremendous life and financial loss. The Japanese never took Changsha, and to save face, he blamed the decision on local officials.
Each time he made such decision, he rarely thought about the consequences on the regular people. He acted as if he were the chosen one, the main character in history. He had the belief that his decisions were the absolute best. He believed that he decided for the bigger picture, so that he was not bound by the small stuff (such as the livelihood of regular people). He definitely learned about that from Stalin. While his decisions left hundreds of thousands people in dire situation, he himself, along with his wife and close allies, was living in big houses surrounded by mountains and fresh air. No wonder he lost to the communists (we are not even talking about the corruption of his wife's family)!
刚愎自用, that is probably the most appropriate description of Chiang I can think of.
2023-08-27
As a leader and self-claimed revolutionary, Chiang made the most significant mistake in NOT distancing from nepotism. The wide use of his own family in important positions, including his own sons, wife, and wife's family indicates that his idea of governing was not that much different from the era he vowed to change. His inability to rein in his wife's family's corruption built terrible first impression of himself when dealing with the Americans. He constantly lamented about the weakness of his army. Yet since he only used people deemed loyal to him, not deemed actually capable for the job, it was no wonder he could not organize the country well. It was emphasized repeatedly that Chiang himself was not corrupt at all, which I fully believed. Yet it meant NOTHING if his underlings were corrupt. It appears to me that Chiang was applying the ancient Chinese wisdom of leadership that a leader must be the moral example of his country in order to lead. He did that, but was too naive to realize that this way of leading was outdated by about a thousand years.
Chiang did not win the anti-Japanese war. The U.S.A did. He basically failed for eight years. He thought he was playing games with Stalin and Roosevelt, but he himself was but a pawn by the actual players.
2023-08-30
Chiang did well in Taiwan, despite still being a dictator. He was finally able to get rid of all the factions and not be burdened with the Communists, the Japanese, the Imperialism, or the regionalism on the small island. Fully executing his political and economical wishes, he was able to bring a better life to both the farmers and the city-dwellers, grow the middle class, and nurture a capitalist economy under his own dictatorship. He seemed to have been transformed (the defeat might have taught him something), at least on his view on the economy (he was a support of Sun Yatsen's rather socialism view of the economy in the past).
2023-08-31 & Final Thoughts
I am surprised to learn that Deng copied the the Special Economic Zone (经济特别行政区) from Chiang. Chiang died a dictator, but more or less a benevolent one to Taiwan. His policies, along with the economic and military support from the U.S., secured the miracle in Taiwan in the 1950s and 60s. The comments from the author towards the end of the book about Chiang are decent. There is no need to hate him or love him. Chiang was an extremely important figure in modern Chinese history. His errors and successes shaped the fate of both the mainland and Taiwan. As all historical figures, he had flaws, yet these flaws should be placed side-by-side his genuine devotion to bettering China and her people's lives. I do not agree with many of his decisions, especially his old way of ruling (filling the government with family members and loyalists while disregarding the massive corruption among these people). Yet, I respect his unyielding will. The majority of his life, Chiang was living between a rock and a hard place. Not everyone can make it through that in a better shape than he did.
Finally, a few words about the book itself. This is the first pure historic book I have read, and it has left a good impression on me. From my earlier education in PRC, some historic events are familiar, yet many more are not mentioned in history class from PRC. Thus, I have gained a lot more perspective of the most unsettling period of modern China. The book is thick but not hard to read. It is clearly well researched, judging by the 200+ pages of references. However, I do wish that the book could include the original Chinese characters of important names, locations, poems, etc. in addition to the pinyin and/or translation, as that would give me an easier time making connection to what I have known previously.
May 18, 2025
An attempted intervention into the Historeography of Republican China this book ends up coming a bit short of its stated aims I think. While great care is taken in making us understand Chiang the man, I don't think we get a great picture of the Generalissimo as a political and historical force. The story avoids some pitfalls of Chinese history in this period and doesn't bog down the reader with too much information about each and every military campaign conducted by Chiang but also doesn't really give us alternative narratives about these events unless forced to by the turn of events. Was Chiang a fabulously corrupt tyrant or a strong family man and father figure to China? The book doesn't seem able to come down strongly anywhere on this question, and in attempting to portray the latter often ignores the former. Was the movement against Chiang, spearheaded by the CCP a Soviet incursion into Chinese politics or an organic movement against the Nationalist's foibles? Another question this book has to confront but then fails to deal with fully. We're left to make our own conclusions, which seems less than ideal in a book so clearly trying to change the narrative4.
July 3, 2024
I come away feeling like I’ve only begun to sort of understand the life and times of Chiang Kai-shek, but that is specifically what I wanted from this book; a vague outline. The book has helped to clarify the trajectory and problems of the nationalist camp in the Chinese civil war, which has been a massive gap in my knowledge.
My problems with it range from salacious anecdotes which collapsed after a brief attempt at fact-checking to the fact that the period of Chiang Kai-Shek’s time in power in Taiwan is left for the tail end and honestly isn’t explored in half as much depth as I would have liked.
Good starter book but I come away feeling like I need to read much more to have a real informed opinion on the man.
My problems with it range from salacious anecdotes which collapsed after a brief attempt at fact-checking to the fact that the period of Chiang Kai-Shek’s time in power in Taiwan is left for the tail end and honestly isn’t explored in half as much depth as I would have liked.
Good starter book but I come away feeling like I need to read much more to have a real informed opinion on the man.
February 29, 2024
The book may be good for readers who want to in general know something about Chiang and the China and Taiwan ruled by him. I would like to say the content of this book is too shallow. It is like a plate of all kinds of materials, presented to authors and looked - only looked - deliecious. I am particularly interested in how Chiang rised up to become the successor of Yat-sen Sun and how he lost the war to CCP, which the author failed to give me an answer, even a deep analysis. Overall, the reading experiecen is boring and unsatisfying.
May 1, 2023
Having spent part of my childhood in Taiwan, I can attest that growing up, Chiang was indeed presented as a god like leader to the islanders. While this book help put perspective to Chiang's brutality, ignorance and ruthlessness, it also helped me to understand sometimes having a "strong" leader becomes the greatest deficit a country or people can create. Unfortunately, people will need at least a few generations to get over the period (with all its pluses and minuses), before being able to step out of the "leader's" shadow and finding their own way forward.
I'm sure China will be a different China if Chiang was to remain her ruler, instead of Mao. But I must say if I compare Chiang to Lincoln (in terms of the complexity and treacherous times they were living in), Chiang's greatness and victories would not be as transformational to the people under his leadership.
Does China need such transformational leadership or what would be the price to pay to bring about these changes ....... Chaing's victories in his defeat does give us some clues.
I read the Chinese translation as I came across it on the library shelf, so I'm curious how some of the Chinese proverbs and idioms would be presented in English, so will look out for the English version.
I'm sure China will be a different China if Chiang was to remain her ruler, instead of Mao. But I must say if I compare Chiang to Lincoln (in terms of the complexity and treacherous times they were living in), Chiang's greatness and victories would not be as transformational to the people under his leadership.
Does China need such transformational leadership or what would be the price to pay to bring about these changes ....... Chaing's victories in his defeat does give us some clues.
I read the Chinese translation as I came across it on the library shelf, so I'm curious how some of the Chinese proverbs and idioms would be presented in English, so will look out for the English version.
July 13, 2025
A great book. Unfortunately, the title is misleading. Almost no attention is given to Chiang’s rule of Taiwan. That was deeply disappointing- but the history you do get more than makes up for it. Chiang Kai-Shek is one of the most important figures of the 20th century, and of Chinese history. He is ignored in part because he is so hard to narrativize. He is not a man easily admired. He cannot be easily demonized either. His story is not simply inspiring, or tragic. It is a life. Endlessly complex.
He ruled China for fifty years. Presided over almost endless conflict. Failed, erred, committed evil acts. And also unified the country, defeated the warlords. Survived the imperial Japanese. Improved conditions within the means he had available to him. And set the stage for Taiwans growth into a beautiful and democratic country. This book captures it all well. Breaks free of previous narratives, and gets closer to the real, hard, truth than previous works I am aware of.
He ruled China for fifty years. Presided over almost endless conflict. Failed, erred, committed evil acts. And also unified the country, defeated the warlords. Survived the imperial Japanese. Improved conditions within the means he had available to him. And set the stage for Taiwans growth into a beautiful and democratic country. This book captures it all well. Breaks free of previous narratives, and gets closer to the real, hard, truth than previous works I am aware of.
September 5, 2023
The amount of primary sources, some of them previously inaccessible, that Professor Pantsov has consulted is astonishing. He also possesses an admirable skill in being objective. He repudiates propagandist demonisation without giving us a hagiography. His incisive assessments and commentaries that accompany the biographical narrative are truly sobering. Those who sincerely want to understand modern China will benefit enormously from reading this fast moving yet intimate study. Pantsov even manages to find space to explore the religiosity, albeit with some gentle whiff of sarcasm, of Chiang Kai-shek. In any case, this comprehensive book at the very least complements the already excellent account by Jay Taylor. They do have slightly different perspectives and I strongly recommend reading both of them. Five stars.
March 20, 2024
Really solid biography. No real complaints about this one. It's dense and, I personally think, overly detailed, but that's both a positive and a negative with biographies. I'm never going to remember all these details, but I also think in a larger sense reading about Chiang Kai-shek gives a good grasp on the pivotal moments in early 20th century China; his life and his actions are good parallels for the politics and world power moves that were going on. Reading this alongside Ballard's "Empire of the Sun" was especially useful.
December 14, 2024
The amount of research and details in this book is incredible. It gives us a more comprehensive understanding of its main subject with newly released information from the Soviet and Russian archives.
But beyond Chiang Kai Shek, this book gives any fan of Chinese history a solid primer into the warlords period, a time that is bafflingly confusing, complex, and frustrating for many in the modern age to understand.
But beyond Chiang Kai Shek, this book gives any fan of Chinese history a solid primer into the warlords period, a time that is bafflingly confusing, complex, and frustrating for many in the modern age to understand.
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November 24, 2023This was chosen by Sheila Miyosh Jager, Professor of East Asian History at Oberlin College, Ohio and author of The Other Great Game: The Opening of Korea and the Birth of Modern East Asia (Belknap Press, 2023), as one of History Today’s Books of the Year 2023.
Find out why at HistoryToday.com.
Find out why at HistoryToday.com.
April 15, 2024
This was a really nice book about the leader of the KMT. It sided a lot of information from the diaries and the information of the time I wish I could have gone into a little bit more historical military details like how some of the battles were lost and so forth, but it did not do that however there was a lot of detail what was happening on it almost a day by day basis for the important times
January 19, 2025
The Background of the Big Guy 4.6 Stars
I lived for years in Taiwan and also on mainland China near Chiang's hometown of Xikou, so all this history was quite meaningful to me. I am not sure if I would have found it as interesting otherwise as it often gets bogged down in historical minutiae.
Rick Adamson does a fairly good job but the narration would have been even better if a native Chinese speaker had done it.
I lived for years in Taiwan and also on mainland China near Chiang's hometown of Xikou, so all this history was quite meaningful to me. I am not sure if I would have found it as interesting otherwise as it often gets bogged down in historical minutiae.
Rick Adamson does a fairly good job but the narration would have been even better if a native Chinese speaker had done it.
April 5, 2023
a great book! Nice translation into Chinese. I will buy a hardcover copy.
May 7, 2023
7/10
December 9, 2023
Dramatic, fastmoving, full of historical and political insights.
April 6, 2024
剛好在他離世的4月5日讀完，感覺詭異
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August 19, 2024This was not particularly well-written and would not recommend, but I learned a lot having not read much Chinese history previously
December 3, 2024
有趣的一本书，补全了那段被大陆删除的历史，很好的解释了为何国共两党会形成这么扭曲的关系。
January 2, 2025
沒感覺到有什麼特別的
August 24, 2025
A thorough biography, drawing on many relevant and interesting sources.
January 8, 2026
Good, albeit very long. Quite sympathetic, but descriptive about Chiang’s flaws and controversial. Chiang’s life covers a huge expanse of modern Chinese history, which gives a good overview.
March 24, 2023
读完感觉将对共的失败和罗斯福有巨大的关系
February 28, 2023
A man with serious narcissistic issues. Chiang Kai-shek hoped he could be remembered as a great leader, but throughout this book, I only saw a man with obvious flaws — he didn’t have enough knowledge in neither economy or military yet he held firmly to his power and unwilling to delegate. He’s like Napoleon but less charming and more corrupted.
Moreover, I’m appalled by how corrupted the Soong or Kong families are. Hope one day when China finally establishes democracy, their families will be sued to return the wealth they gathered through the blood and deaths of the Chinese people. 100 years? 200 years? Who knows. But people need to remember them for what they did to a nation.
Moreover, I’m appalled by how corrupted the Soong or Kong families are. Hope one day when China finally establishes democracy, their families will be sued to return the wealth they gathered through the blood and deaths of the Chinese people. 100 years? 200 years? Who knows. But people need to remember them for what they did to a nation.
October 16, 2025
蒋介石，一个失败的胜利者，一个胜利的失败者。如此的多面与复杂，进步又保守，专制独裁却追求宪政，既冷酷残忍又柔软温情——在西山碧云寺，敬瞻孙中山遗体，扶棺痛啜，「花了很长一段时间才停止悲泣」。「一方面，他確實是一個背信又狡獪的統治者，他渴望全盤掌控大權，也必須為一百五十萬⺠眾的死亡負責；另一方面，他是一個偉大的革命家、一個解放中國⺠族的鬥士、一個愛國者、一個二十世紀的政治與軍事領袖人物、一個共和新中國的建築師、一個二戰的英雄、一個反希特勒聯盟國家的忠實盟友。」
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