Nations At Dawn (Formerly Titled: Nations In Darkness)

Book Description

Retitled from Nations in Darkness, this classic continues its exploration of the relationship triangle of three superpowers: China, Russia, and the United States. Stoessinger frames the dynamics of these constantly-evolving linkages in terms of how each perceives the others. This edition significantly reworks material on the former Soviet Union. Stoessinger chronicles the undoing of the Soviet Union and relates its ongoing efforts at the establishing of a true democracy while also reexamining China's "Old Guard" and speculating on the emergence of new forces and new directions there.

Customer Reviews:

More Information Than You Can Handle.......2006-03-06

I read Stoessinger's book for an International Relations course at college. Though Sotessinger was less "wordy" than other authors, he certainly packed this book full of information. Though under 400 pages, this book contained more information, anecdotes, and facts than the rest of my texts combined. In fact, my only criticism of this book is that it is easy to get bogged down in the details. However, I would recommend this strongly to anyone interested in, or studying, US relations with China and Russia.

Plethora of information!.......2000-03-28

This work was a lifesaver! Stoessinger presents important information that I was unable to find in any other book located in the local university library. This book, which is used by many universities as a text book was extremely useful in my research studies of American foreign relations with China and Russia. Stoessinger I thank you!

Madame Chiang Kai-shek: China's Eternal First Lady

Average customer rating:

Amazing Person. Amazing Book
Dazzling Dame, Riveting History
No Rock Left Unturned
This book is key to a thorough understanding of not just the woman, but Chinese politics and influences in particular.

Madame Chiang Kai-shek: China's Eternal First Lady
Laura Tyson Li
Manufacturer: Atlantic Monthly Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Chiang Kai Shek: China's Generalissimo and the Nation He Lost
Soong Dynasty
The Soong Sisters
The Soong Sisters
Mao's Last Revolution

ASIN: 0871139332

Book Description

Madame Chiang Kai-shek — a Booklist Editors' Choice for 2006 — is the first biography of one of the most controversial and fascinating women of the twentieth century. Raised in a powerful Chinese family, the beautiful, brilliant, and captivating Soong Mayling married Nationalist leader Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, and went on to become his chief adviser, interpreter, and propagandist. When the Communists broke with Chiang’s Nationalist Party, Mayling and her sister, the widow of Sun Yat-Sen, found themselves on opposing sides of a civil war. A relentless crusader speaking out against Communism well into her nineties, she sparred with international leaders and impressed Westerners and Chinese alike with her acumen, charm, and glamour. But she was also decried as a manipulative “Dragon Lady” and was despised for living in Western-style splendor while Chinese citizens suffered under her husband’s brutal oppression. The result of years of extensive research in the United States and abroad and access to previously classified CIA and diplomatic files, here at last is the story of an extraordinary woman who has become a symbol of America’s long, vexed love affair with China and China’s own struggle to define itself as a world power.

Customer Reviews:

Amazing Person. Amazing Book.......2007-01-29

Laura Tyson Li has assembled a spectacular bio. It's page turner with the authority and detail of an encyclopedia. LTL has managed to keep her opinions out of the text. It isn't until the last chapter when through an informed discussion on the Madame's possible motivations that LTL becomes subjective.

While almost every aspect of this life is intriguing, certain people and episodes stand out. I had forgotten Zhang Xueliang until he emerged after a 50 year house arrest, after which he & his wife move to Hawaii. Apparently he was able to keep his pre-war fortune, or had been cared for financially; he is deemed a friend of the Madame. (Another 5 year house arrest of a physician who botches an operation of the General suggests house arrest is a common punishment for "friends" and other professionals.) Madame's war time US appeal for funds, with its cross country caravan of staff whom MCKS treats "as coolies" is certainly an episode worth a small volume. (The $800,000 she raises goes to her personal account.) While the Wendel Wilkie relationship (true or false) is intriguing, I fixed on the William H. Donald relationship, which may have been a professional friendship and refuge from her husband's authoritarianism, but her end of life treatment of him suggests something else.

There are a host of issues worthy of their own books. Perhaps these books exist but I don't know about them. One issue is the "arrival" of 2 million mainlanders to the island of Formosa, who's 7 million citizens seemed to have some degree of prosperity under the Japanese. While the Chaings arrive with resources, others huddle in makeshift places and cry at night. "Invasion" appears to be a better word for this arrival (particularly after 2/28), but it is certainly not portrayed as such (or allowed to be portrayed as such) by the Nationalists who felt entitled to rule and had the resources to make it so. Even later, Madame objects to the appointment of Taiwanese to government posts.

Another issue deserving its own book is Madame's money. Whether or not the NYC exterminators actually saw it, a closet of gold bars is not far fetched. For maybe 30 years, Madame's "charity" received a % of all imports to Taiwan. There were several "vacation" homes in Taiwan, one built at a cost of $2 million. Then, the resources brought from the mainland to Taiwan. This money provided Madame with luxury and a large staff until her death. How large was it? How was it acquired (any from the US war assistance?) and where did it go?

MCKS can be noted for her longevity alone. There must be something Guinness-worthy about her survival despite many years in a war zone, continued medical treatments, operations including several for breast cancer, nervous afflictions, a late in life automobile accident, lifelong cigarette smoking (and potential drug abuse) and at least one assassination attempt. Any one of these factors would tend to predict an early demise, not a life of 103 years.

If you read this book, it's riveting, so be prepared to give it time. Also, the level of detail might make continuity difficult if you have to make gaps in your reading time.

Dazzling Dame, Riveting History.......2006-11-15

This is a book to dive into, and lose yourself for days. Madame Chiang Kai-Shek is that good a story, and this is that good an account of her life. Madame Chiang used her political cunning and legendary drive to seduce supporters to her side of China's epic civil war during the middle part of the 20th century.

The Nationalist regime, headed by her husband, was hated by the Chinese people for its notorious brutality and corruption. But as portrayed by Madame Chiang, especially to American audiences, Chiang Kai-shek's government was a modern, educated bulwark of democracy and freedom for a country whose history had allowed little of either. Indeed, Madame Chiang personified the vaunted hopes, bitter disappointments and complex misunderstandings of the U.S.-China relationship, which vacillated wildly during her exceptional 105-year lifetime. Laura Tyson Li's incisive new biography, rises to the tall task of capturing this pivotal figure in all her splendor and humiliation, against a backdrop of war, revolution and unending political turmoil. Li, a journalist with a decade of experience in Asia, accurately portrays her as "beautiful, vain, witty, spirited, capricious, scheming, selfish, and driven."

What a character. What a tale.

The book opens in the waning days of China's second-to-last emperor in the late 1890s, when Mayling Olive Soong was born in Shanghai, the youngest daughter of a businessman who had made a fortune selling Bibles and presided over a family of savvy, idealistic and recklessly ambitious children. One married Sun Yat-sen, China's first president. Another became finance minister and acting prime minister of Nationalist China. Another became one of China's richest women. Mayling became Madame Chiang Kai-shek.

In an era when few girls learned to read and fewer traveled, Mayling was schooled in Georgia, then graduated from Wellesley College, where she excelled at French, violin and religious studies. She returned to Shanghai in 1917 just as China lurched into a bloody warlord period, and soon she was courted by the most severe warlord of all, Chiang Kai-shek. He divorced one wife and sent another off to Columbia University before Mayling agreed to marry him.

During World War II, Madame Chiang became a superb envoy to the United States, where her address to Congress in 1943 thrilled Washington, and her barnstorming across the country won renewed support and money to defeat the Japanese. In China, she was a poised partner to her husband, softening his imperiousness while sharpening his political machinations.

In Li's telling, husband and wife (who shared a bedroom with a screen separating their beds) could not have differed more. He was an early riser; she stayed up late watching movies. He was ascetic; she insisted on luxury. Still, they called each other 'Dar' (short for 'darling') and for years collaborated to cement fragile political alliances and keep a shaky hold on power.

The book has delicious tidbits, such as an affair with Republican presidential nominee Wendell Wilkie and her insistence on getting silk sheets when she stayed in President Franklin D. Roosevelt's White House.

Overall, Li delivers a thoughtful portrait of a complex woman and resists the considerable temptation to crucify her. That is a refreshing contrast to the shock-and-awe approach seen in so many recent books on prominent figures in China's recent history. Li deconstructs critical historical events with skill: the Xian Incident, when Chiang Kai-shek was kidnapped by rebellious generals; the 50-year house-arrest of the leading kidnapper, with whom Madame Chiang developed a curious friendship; Madame Chiang's mysterious disappearances for months at a time, caused, Li thinks by physical and mental illnesses, including debilitating hives, breast cancer and nervous breakdown.

More reporter than writer, Li assiduously draws on Madame Chiang's extensive personal correspondence, from archives around the world, to explain each stage of her drama. It's a spellbinding period of history. And it does not end well for the Chiangs. The Nationalist regime crumbled to the Communists in 1949. The Chiangs fled to Taiwan, admitting no fault, but blamed President Truman and vowed to retake the mainland. That dream faded gradually after Chiang Kai-shek died in 1975.

Madame Chiang's antagonistic stepson, Chiang Ching-kuo, would oversee a murderous suppression of dissidents as head of Taiwan's intelligence network. Paradoxically, as president, he later paved the way for the launch of Taiwan's democracy just before his death in 1988. That year, at age 90, she tried to rally Taiwan's Old Guard and prevent the onset of democracy she once spoke of so often. She failed.

Madame Chiang lived out her days in New York, watching China and Taiwan as one became capitalist and the other became a democracy. Despite her illnesses, she lived until 2003.

Ultimately, Madame Chiang was "a deeply flawed heroine," Li writes, "that rare creature who stuck resolutely to her beliefs, however misguided some of them may have been, through the decades and the trials."

No Rock Left Unturned.......2006-11-15

Reading "Madame Chiang Kai-shek: China's Eternal First Lady" was like going through everything in the attic and leaving nothing unexamined. Tyson-Li covers every aspect of Madame Chiang's life without ever letting us forget that life's relevance for today. The "Dragon Lady's" significance never disappears in the wealth of the personal, historical, political, psychological, medical, and religious dimensions of her complex life. Her fanatical anti-Communism calls to mind Richard Nixon's personal crusade. Her use of religion to define her and her husband's sense of destiny parallels certain leaders who employ religious language for similar ends. Her manipulation of people and events exceeds the ambitions of any demagogue who has come to believe his or her own public statements.

All this and more the author achieves with vivid prose that takes you into private parlors where Madame Chiang herself has invited you to tea, but leaves you feeling that just maybe everything you've heard is really true and that your hostess is neither monster nor statesman, but an enigmatic individual using the world as a stage to work out her insecurities.

This book is key to a thorough understanding of not just the woman, but Chinese politics and influences in particular........2006-11-06

It's surprising to note that this is the first biography of one of the most politically influential women of modern times, but MADAME CHIANG KAI-SHEK: CHINA'S ETERNAL FIRST LADY remains the only title to provide the complete story of a woman who seized unofficial and official power during China's civil war. Her position against Chinese Communism and her diplomatic relations affected decades of Chinese-American relations, so this book is key to a thorough understanding of not just the woman, but Chinese politics and influences in particular.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

Chiang Kai Shek: China's Generalissimo and the Nation He Lost

Average customer rating:

Biography of a supreme martinet
The Men Who Would Be King: The Chairman and the Generalissimo
Important, Needed Addition to the Field of China Studies
Highly Readable, Good Scholarship
Just a clarification of one (or two?) of the reviewers

Chiang Kai Shek: China's Generalissimo and the Nation He Lost
Jonathan Fenby
Manufacturer: Carroll & Graf
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Madame Chiang Kai-shek: China's Eternal First Lady
Sun Yat-sen
Mao: The Unknown Story
Mao: A Life
Soong Dynasty

ASIN: 0786714840

Book Description

With a narrative as briskly paced and vividly detailed as an international thriller, this definitive biography of Chiang Kai-shek masterfully maps the tumultuous political career of Nationalist China’s generalissimo as it reevaluates his brave but unfulfilled life. Chiang Kai-shek was one of the most influential world figures of the twentieth century. The leader of the Kuomintang, the Nationalist movement in China, by 1928 he had established himself as head of the government in Nanking. But while he managed to survive the political storms of the 1930s, Chiang’s power was continually being undermined by the Japanese on one side and the Chinese Communists on the other. Drawing extensively on original Chinese sources and accounts by contemporaneous journalists, acclaimed author Jonathan Fenby explores little-known international connections in Chiang’s story as he unfolds a story as fascinating in its conspiratorial intrigues as it is remarkable for its psychological insights. This is the definitive biography of the man who, despite his best intentions, helped create modern-day China.

Customer Reviews:

Biography of a supreme martinet.......2007-03-06

I started this book with minimal knowledge of China in the first half of the 20th century, beyond a knowledge of the key events. After reading Jonathan Fenby's magnus opus at 500 pages that gap in my knowledge has been very well filled. Using the life of Chiang Kai-Shek (CSK) up to his establishing of the National government in exile in Formosa (now Taiwanbthis book is an excellent coverage of the history of China to 1950, very well wrtitten and great command of many sources and consistent probing analysis of the issues and problems CSK and China faced.

The sub title of the book "And the China he lost" is the key - Fenby uses the life of CSK from humble beginnings to show that while he may have had a major impact in uniting post Manchu China, he consistently by personal failings and lack of realism to see himself as other than the divine national leader of China whose word was law and to delegate power, left it open to the eventual communist takeover under Mao, a man who operated a similar autocratic approach but was pragmatic enough to create the rural revolution needed.

The first half of Fenby's book is about CSK's success at overcoming the various regional warlords whose feudal approach to local power and unwillingness to accept central government reads like England in the Middle Ages. However while this may count as CSK's great success it
also showed many of the issues to come. CSK's military prowess was based on a mix of foreign military advisers (first Russian then German) and the use of bribery rather than personal military skills to often win victories. While making certain initial military reforms, CSK was unable to accept the wider need to invest in a high quality army relying on size and loyalty rather than skill and focus.

Having formed a loose regional federation, CSK then failed to seize the initiative to introduce much needed rural reform and instead aligned himself by marriage with corrupt urban wealthy families and launched a series of vicious attacks on the infant Communist party. His near success in eradicating the Communists was devastated by the Japanese invasion of China and the continual loss at great cost in lives of large and important areas of China to Japanese rule.

Even when presented with the golden opportunity of USA support post Pearl Harbour the opportunities were spurned due largely to CSK's nationalist attitude and lack of pragmatism and reality as to what was happening in China plus endless arguing with his US advisers who he saw threatening his authority. His endless meddling in military matters by issuing numerous orders when he was far from the front or executing a sound strategy plus the increasing corruption of his close followers meant that the Japanese were not pushed back and the Communists were able to survive and prosper.

With the end of WWII, CSK again took a gamble in the hope of playing off Russia and USA influences under the Cold War to survive but underestimated their lack of support based on his WWII performance - once his armies had to face down the communists his poor military skills became clear and the end was quick. Consistent to the end he ensured a retreat to exile in
Formosa with troops and gold leaving Chian to its fate but only after wreaking his final vengeance in murdering Chinese allies whohe felt had betrayed him.

One finishes the book clear that whill CSK may have had a major impact on China it came at a great cost and with little real chance of long term success given his inability to react correctly to changes in Chinese society and economy and foreign forces.

The Men Who Would Be King: The Chairman and the Generalissimo.......2007-01-31

Short, Philip (1999) Mao: A Life (Holt: New York)

Fenby, Jonathan (2003) Chiang Kai-Shek: China's Generalissimo and the Nation He Lost (Carroll & Graf: New York).

On October 1, 1949 Chairman Mao Zedong stood at the Gate of Heavenly Peace and declared the founding of the People's Republic of China. He told the assembled crowd, "We, the 475 million Chinese people have stood up and our future is infinitely bright." He further continued "The Chinese people have stood up." Two months the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) achieved later final victory. The leader of the Kuomintang (KMT), Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek, fled with his party to the Chinese provincial island of Taiwan. That day was the endgame of a battle that began twenty-two years earlier during the 1927 Autumn Harvest Uprising in Hunan.
Both Mao and Chiang are synonymous with the history of modern China. Both men came from similar backgrounds, had similar strategies and similar visions for China. Each man came from humble origins - Chiang the son of a salt merchant and Mao the son of a well off peasant. Mao and Chiang also sought to remake China as a modern nation within the world of nation-states. On more than one occasion each man was willing to use the other for their own struggle within their respective parties. To a degree, they were peas in a pod in modern China.
The capturing of these complicated men in their pod has been a complicated process for most writers. Many writers are trapped in their internal politics to capture the true person behind the images. Mao and Chiang both have had devoted followers and devote detractors who were more than willing to take a blind eye to things both good and bad done by these men.
Short and Fenby, however, do not. These two biographies are both extremely objective and sound. Mao is seen as the terrible dictator that he was. "His rule brought about the deaths of more of his own people than any other leader in history." Short admires Mao as being the man "who wrenched China from it medieval torpor and forced it into the contours of a modern nation."
Fenby, meanwhile, is equally objective in his assessment of the Generalissimo. Chiang's regime, both on the Mainland and on Taiwan, was not the thriving democracy it is even though of in the west. But in fact, it was a authoritarian one "organized on Leninist lines with a repressive internal security apparatus." Yet in the wake of three decades of horrid revolution, "Chiang and his era become less of the nightmare painted after the Communist victory."
Without Mao or Chiang China would probably still be the semi-colonial backwater it was when they were born in the late nineteenth century. Both men helped to unmake the old feudalist China ran for the betterment of Qing Dynasty and laid the groundwork for the extreme economic growth both on the Mainland and on Taiwan. Each Short and Fenby attempt to capture these two complicated men who will dominate the pages of history for centuries to come. Each is a fantastic read about the two men who would be king.

Important, Needed Addition to the Field of China Studies.......2005-11-11

This important book fills a glaring void that exists in the historical record of modern China. While historians have always provided ready attention to Mao Zedong and communist China, they never accorded the same serious examination to the role and legacy of Chiang Kai-shek. Before this book, most of the resources on Chiang dated from the 1970s and earlier, largely consisting of hagiographic accounts penned by pro-KMT Chinese living in Taiwan or abroad, or similar propaganda fluff pieces financed by the Henry Luce China Lobby. A well-reasoned, independent account of Chiang's life was thus long overdue, and Fenby comes through in a huge way.

He writes an engaging narrative of Chiang, a person of quite humble origins, who became one of the world's most famous and powerful figures. Fenby also provides detailed, careful background on the China of Chiang's time, particularly that of the 1911 Revolution and subsequent warlord period. This is important in understanding why Chiang allied with the types of people and strata of society that he did, and why this alliance alienated vast numbers of Chinese, providing moral fodder and legitimacy for the alternative offered by Mao. Much of Fenby's information regarding Chiang's early political career comes from an autobiography written by his largely-forgotten second wife, Chen Jieru (Jennie). While this relationship is common knowledge in Taiwan, she is practically unknown in the west. Her book is entitled Chiang Kai-shek's Secret Past, and what Fenby was able to glean from it has whetted my appetite to read the book myself.

Fenby is at his best when he examines the decades-long struggle for control of China between Chiang and Mao. Indeed, theirs was a clash of legendary, tragic proportions, and it is hard to find a more riveting story elsewhere in history, not just because of the mythic stature and personal auras these two men obtained during their own lifetimes, but also due to the enormous cruelty and unimaginable suffering both inflicted on the country they would rule and the populace they would win to their cause. Chapter 15, "The Long Chase" opens with a brilliant juxtaposition between the two, and proceeds to analyze the showdown during the Long March in which Mao gained primacy in the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the CCP escaped certain extinction during Chiang's Fifth Extermination Campaign in Jiangxi. He attributes the CCP's success in escaping to Yan'an, not as the result of a secret deal Chiang brokered with Moscow to guarantee the return of his son Chiang Ching-kuo, as argued by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday in their biography of Mao, but to the superior strategy of Mao and Zhu De: they planned the route through areas of the country largely held by warlords who often actively assisted the Red Army in getting through their territories, or gave passive half-hearted chase, because the last thing they wanted was Chiang coming in with his huge armies and wresting political control away from them.

The book does have two important weaknesses, one minor and one major. First, Fenby provides little insight into what I think would be one of the most important and intriguing relationships of Chiang's life, that with his son Chiang Ching-kuo. Ching-kuo, after all, publicly denounced his father after the 1927 White Terror purges in Shanghai and Guangzhou, and attempted to join the Communist Party while living in the USSR. However, Fenby spends hardly any time at all with them. Considering the role that Ching-kuo played later in the democratization of Taiwan, this is unfortunate.

Fenby devotes three chapters and 65 pages to the stormy relationship between General Joseph Stilwell and Chiang Kai-shek. It is in his negative assessment of General Stilwell where his normally astute and deft powers of analysis fail him when he needs them most. It is not my desire here to delve too deeply into Stilwell's legacy or become embroiled in the Stilwell vs. Claire Chennault debate, but as Fenby comes perilously close to maligning Stilwell's military competence, I feel I must come to his defense, because for all his faults, General Stilwell was truly a great American and a first-rate military mind. He earned the trust and respect of the highest leadership in the US military and received promotion over those much senior to him, at the insistence of no less than Marshall and Eisenhower, two of the finest generals America has ever produced.

When describing Stilwell's march of his command out of Burma into India, an epic journey of over 150 miles taken under extreme conditions and threat of imminent discovery by the Japanese imperial army, Fenby terms it a `grave dereliction of duty', because he argues that Stilwell should have stayed behind to organize the retreat of other Chinese units in the theater. It is important to realize the true situation: the Japanese had put the Allies to rout. Commands and units had completely disintegrated by this point. Indeed, Fenby notes just a few pages earlier that before the main Japanese advance had even begun, Chinese commanders refused to obey Stilwell's orders (almost certainly under instructions from Chiang) and rather than send needed supplies and materiel to units on the front lines, Chinese commanders were hoarding these and trucking them back to China to sell on the black market. Once the Japanese began their assault, there was soon no `retreat' left for Stilwell to organize. In this case, he did what duty required of him: save his personal command. This he accomplished admirably: not one of the persons in his care perished or fell into Japanese hands.

Fenby seems to have bought into Chennault's air-intensive strategy as the way to defeat the Japanese in China, yet he never does manage to explain how air power can be the decisive factor when there is no means to defend air bases with no adequate ground support, and there would be insufficient supply lines for fuel and parts without ground troops defending the major supply routes from India. These were Stilwell's main arguments as to the necessity to win back Burma. Fenby overstates the effectiveness of Chennault's air battles, not surprising since his sources on this come only from autobiographies by Chennault himself and one of his men. This is a disappointing lapse of scrutiny by Fenby.

It is also important to note that on practically every point concerning Chiang, his military ineffectiveness and strategic incompetence, his regime, the venal corruption of the KMT and its likelihood of success in a civil war against the CCP, subsequent events proved General Stilwell correct, and Chennault, Henry Luce and countless others wrong. In fact, Fenby even quotes Chennault as absurdly saying that "I think the Generalissimo is one of the two or three greatest military and political leaders in the world today."

Notwithstanding these faults, Fenby gets the big picture right. His depiction of China's domestic situation and the political machinations of the KMT and CCP is compelling, absorbing history. He is fair-handed in his treatment to both sides, and is horribly effective in revealing the brutality of the Japanese occupation. Fenby manages to present a sympathetic portrait of Chiang, at his heart a true nationalist and personally incorruptible, but a man too bound by his steeply conservative Confucian tradition, enamored with fascism, and blind to the corruption of his family and associates, to ever have a hope of realizing his ultimate ambition.

Highly Readable, Good Scholarship.......2005-11-11

Just a clarification of one (or two?) of the reviewers.......2005-10-07

I am confused by one of the reviewers, Niels De Groot (supposedly real name). The review of Niels De Groot from Switzerland gave this paperback book a 5 star. The review (dated January 24, 2005) of Niels De Groot from Key Biscayne FL for the hardcover book, (his review titled "Mainly an Assembly of Newspaper Clippings) gave the book 2 stars. Are you two different persons?

By the way, I read the hardcover book. The history of modern China, especially those written by Chinese, are somehow tainted with lack of credibility, as they tend to serve the bias of either the Communist or the Nationalist side. So one cannot know what is really the truth. Mr. Fenby's book comes out with depth and evenhandedness in detail with the attempt to get to the truth as much as possible and avoiding to serve a particular political point of view. It is refreshing to read a biography of a contemporary Chinese figure without either the hate mongering or the idolization so prevalent even until now.

The Man Who Lost China: The First Full Biography of Chiang Kai-shek

Average customer rating:

Great book !!
Mao and Chiang killed more Chinese than Japanese did.
A balanced look at the man who united China

The Man Who Lost China: The First Full Biography of Chiang Kai-shek
Brian Crozier
Manufacturer: Scribner
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Chiang Kai Shek: China's Generalissimo and the Nation He Lost

ASIN: 068414686X

Customer Reviews:

Great book !!.......2004-05-08

A very good and in-depth look at one of the most contraversial men in Modern Chinese history.
Chiang was a typical Chinese of the past generation.
He was vicious, authoritarian, inflexible and narrow-minded. He had brought a lot of miseries and sufferings to China and the Chinese people. But I am inclined to believe that the Chinese people were partly to blame. Up until recently the ideas of democracy and equality never entered the China mind depite appreciation of Western ideas and philosophy. I understand that F.D. Roosevelt considered getting rid of him but the Chinese people could not have a leader replaced unless death or convulsive revolution took place.

I do give him credit for letting his son run the country in his later years without interfering. The younger Chiang worked hard in economic development and made Taiwan one of the tigers of South East Asia.

I would urge politicians of both China and Taiwan to read this book carefully so as to make China a true modern and democratic state.

Mao and Chiang killed more Chinese than Japanese did........2004-02-23

OK, China was seriously ill. Here is the prescription, Three People's Principles of Sun Yat-sen and supplement with General Tseng Kuo-fan's Letter to His Family. It is like the snake oil, cures all and no alternative. Three People's Principles was a two-semester course in Taiwan high school. It was the same weight as math, physics in college entrance examination. One core course in all the university is Political Theory of Sun Wen. I do not think the instructors knew what they were talking about. I believe that CKS and KMT just use Three People's Principles to demonstrate that they are the legitimate rulers of China. There are many ambitious people like Mao and Chiang in China. They are like the pests. I do not know whether CKS loved China but I do know he loved himself more than China. In Taiwan he placed "Lin-show" (supreme leader) ahead of nation in slogan. I do not think he understood democracy at all (even the US educated Mme. Chiang Kei-shek, as commented by Mrs. Roosevelt). A mystery is he never set feet on the soil of western Europe or United States (may be he must have 1,500 Blue Shirt agents to protect him). He initiated the New Life Movement to improve personal moral virtues, but he was a frequenter of brothel. It is like the Confucious said to be a leader you should tell the people what to do but not to tell them the reasons. Basically the purpose of the New Life Movement was to blame the Chinese for their failure but not because of his leadership.
As it is mentioned in John Fairbank's book CKS enjoyed in reshuffling the power shares among party, military and civic government to solidify his control. Real secret of Chiang's power was his manipulation of rival groups. Besides that any of his subordinates overshadowed him will be suppressed. He dispatched the anti-Japanese resistance hero 19th Route Army to Fukien and hope they would destroy themself against the communist rebel. Young Marshal Chang Hsueh-liang was asked to fight communist and suffered a huge loss. That is why General Stilwell gave him the nickname of "Little rattlesnake". CKS's leadership is the mob or Mafia style. Assassination or "White Terror" is one of options to achieve something. He attempted to kill Wang Ching-wei by sending a police officer to Vietnam to carry out the assassination. His mob character was shown in his pursuit for his 15 year old 2nd (or 3rd) wife. He threatened to cut off his own finger if Jenny Chen did not accept him.(Jonathan Fenby book) This is more like the Japanese style mob. He said you should be punished as a communist if you did not report the authority the communist you knew. The student to be registered in the college must accompany an assurance certificate by someone who insures your loyalty to the government. Because of his mob mentality he distrusted the subordinates. Chiang desired to hold as many strings as possible in his own hands, so that his own position could not be threatened (comment by Stilwell).
In order to demonstrate that CKS is Dr. Sun Yet-sen's legitimate successor CKS changed his name to simulate Dr. Sun's name. He even pursued Dr. Sun's young widow. What a guy! Chiang had the habit to alter the name of the cities, mountains, lakes and streets. Every city and town in Taiwan the major streets are named after him since 1945. The boulevard in front of the gorgeous Japanese built presidential mansion is named "Honorable Longevity". A beautiful lake in Kaohsiung was named "Giant Clam Lake" in Taiwanese, but because it sounds like "Huge Loss Lake" in Mandarin, he had a lakeshore resort there, so the name becomes "Clean Lake".
Stalin and Roosevelt betrayed Chiang in Yalta Summit and the American failed to honor any of Roosevelt's Cairo commitment to Chiang Kai-shek. The San Francisco Treaty detached Taiwan from the Japanese Empire but left its future status undefined.
There are three major weak points or mistakes of CKS. 1. He was lacking the exposure to the other culture or civilization. Shortage of the knowledge of the western philosophy. 2. Shanghai is China in his eyes. He disliked Canton, Peking. He has no real understanding of China in culture, economy, people and geography. He never unified China at all, it was just superficial. He ignored the majority, the farmers. As it is mentioned in Fairbank's book loss of revenue because of Japanese occupation of Shanghai created a tremendous financial burden on the Chungking government. 3. His reluctant to cooperate with Russia. Russia asked him to chose sides. Russia or America? (book by Jay Taylor) Russia abandoned him after 1941. His treaty with Russia to exchange Mongolia for Manchuria was a disaster and he would be sorry for not bringing Young Marshal Chang back to Manchuria.
The success of Taiwan economy should not be credited to him. Without him Taiwan can do better. The elite Japanese educated Taiwanese were retaliated and suppressed. The surge influx of his armies, party agents and civil followers played the role as conquerors, they took the houses left by the Japanese. They took the positions of the school principles and teachers. Not to mention the government posts. Taiwanese has to feed the 2 million mainlanders despite 60% of the budget went to the military. CKS did not lose China, because he never own it.

A balanced look at the man who united China.......2003-12-27

If you believe the Chicom stooges, Chiang Kai Shek deserves to be villified. Crozier balances both KMT and CCP sources to get a balanced look at the man who attempted to bring the Sun Yat Sen's democracy to fruition. Crozier traces Chiang's life from his boyhood in Chekiang to his death on Formosa. Chiang was vain, surrounded himself with corrupt yes-men, but he did care about China and would have united it had not his American allies sold him out. No matter what your assessment of the KMT, you cannot deny that given the results of the Cultural Revolution, that Chiang is the lesser of the two evils.

Madame Chiang Kai-shek and Miss Emma Mills: China's First Lady and Her American Friend

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Madame Chiang Kai-shek and Miss Emma Mills: China's First Lady and Her American Friend
Thomas A. Delong
Manufacturer: McFarland
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0786429801
Release Date: 2007-02-28

Product Description

Mayling Soong came to America at the age of 10. Her father, Charlie Soong, a practicing Christian who had spent time in America, was convinced that China's youth would need progressive, Western educations before returning to their homeland to take their places as leaders in the fields of government, education and engineering. The youngest of three daughters, Mayling followed her older siblings to the United States in search of a Western education, eventually entering Wellesley in 1913 at age 16. Here she made numerous friends including classmate Emma DeLong Mills. This lifelong friendship lasted through Mayling's 1927 marriage to General Chiang Kai-shek and his subsequent rise to power. After the undeclared Sino-Japanese war broke out Emma began a series of letters detailing the political climate in the isolationist United States, providing Mayling with invaluable insight into American attitudes regarding China and her Asian neighbors.

Beginning with the early days of their friendship in America, the volume describes the identity struggle both women faced following their 1917 graduation from Wellesley. Following Emma's visit to China (and somewhat unwilling return to New York), the friendship continued through their correspondence. Emma's role in the newly organized American Bureau of Medical Aid to China is discussed as are Madame Chiang Kai-shek's international fund-raising efforts on behalf of Chinese war relief. While military and political history is not the focus of the work, it is portrayed as it impacts the friendship, which is the subject of this book.

Madame Chiang Kai-shek: Face of Modern China (Signature Lives)

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Madame Chiang Kai-shek: Face of Modern China (Signature Lives)
Sandra Donovan
Manufacturer: Compass Point Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Library Binding

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Madame Chiang Kai-shek and Her China
Madame Chiang Kai-shek: China's Eternal First Lady

ASIN: 0756518865

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Madame Chiang Kai-shek and Her China

Manufacturer: EastBridge
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Madame Chiang Kai-shek: Face of Modern China (Signature Lives)
Madame Chiang Kai-shek: China's Eternal First Lady

ASIN: 1891936700

Book Description

When Soong Meiling, better known to the world as Madame Chiang Kai-shek, died in October 2003, her life of over a century almost exactly paralleled America's own century of direct involvement with Asia, which began with the acquisition of the Philippines. Alone among Western Powers, the United States championed an Open Door policy toward China. The Madame's Christian family and her American education perfectly suited the American aspirations for a free and democratic China. And when Japan threatened both countries, the Madame, in perfect English, spoke directly to Americans as the heroic symbol of Chinese resistance. Never mind that she and her husband turned increasingly authoritarian and that the Guomindang was defeated by Chairman Mao Zedong's communists. And never mind that she never really connected with the vast majority of Chinese living in the countryside. Today, as China is again catching up to the West in leaps and bounds, it is almost as if Soong Meiling, ending her life after a Rip Van Winkle-like retirement in the United States, is ushering in another century, when new Open Door Americans look toward China again. Here for a new generation of general readers and scholars are thoughtful reflections on the significant impact of a major twentieth-century figure who fascinated Americans for decades and had a significant impact on American perceptions of China.

Generalissimo And Madame Chiang Kai Shek: Christian Liberators Of China

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Great Resource of Information!

Generalissimo And Madame Chiang Kai Shek: Christian Liberators Of China
Basil Miller
Manufacturer: Kessinger Publishing, LLC
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Madame Chiang Kai-shek: China's Eternal First Lady

ASIN: 1417990473

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Great Resource of Information!.......2006-07-13

I was needing a book about the Generalissimo and Madame Chiang Kai Shek in order to write a report for High School. I searched long and hard, and finally discovered this one. It thrilled me to no end to discover that it was written by one of my favorite Christian authors and that it was written from a Christian point of view--as that was what I was looking for. I have found it to be a wonderful, well written, insightful account of the lives of the Generalissimo and Madame Chiang Kai Shek and have greatly enjoyed reading it.

Mao vs. Chiang;: The battle for China, 1925-1949 (A Thistle book)

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Mao vs. Chiang;: The battle for China, 1925-1949 (A Thistle book)
Robert S Elegant
Manufacturer: Grosset & Dunlap
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

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Against All Odds: Famous and Infamous Women of China and Some Contemporary Achievers 220 BC - 1995 AD

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Against All Odds: Famous and Infamous Women of China and Some Contemporary Achievers 220 BC - 1995 AD
Molly Phillips
Manufacturer: Trafford Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1552123812
Release Date: 2006-07-06

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A study of famous Chinese women, from ancient to modern.

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