Volume 56, Number 16 · October 22, 2009
The Enigma of Chiang Kai-shek
By Jonathan D. Spence
The Generalissimo: Chiang Kai-shek and the Struggle for Modern China
by Jay Taylor
Belknap Press/Harvard University Press, 722 pp., $35.00
Back in 1975, when he died in Taiwan at the age of eighty-seven, it was easy to see Chiang Kai-shek as a failure, as a piece of Chinese flotsam left awkwardly drifting in the wake of Mao Zedong's revolutionary victories. Now it is not easy to be so sure. In today's China, the transformational political visions of Mao seem to have little resonance, as the country faces up to its new global responsibilities, including its potential financial leadership. What seems to be of far greater importance today is the vision that Chiang tenaciously espoused during his years as head of the Nationalist Party: of a China determined to keep its vast border regions firmly under centralized control, to build its military machine into one capable of preventing any repetition of its nineteenth- and twentieth-century humiliations at the hands of foreign powers, and to develop a convincing balance of nationalism tied to political stability.
Review, 3707 words
To read the full text of this piece, please choose one of the following options:
|
If you are already a subscriber to the Review's electronic edition, please sign in: |
To subscribe to the electronic edition, please press the button below. |
To purchase access to this article for $3, please press the button below. |