The Generalissimo: Chiang Kai-shek and the Struggle for Modern China by Jay Taylor

From the Publisher

One of the most momentous stories of the last century is China’s rise from a self-satisfied, anti-modern, decaying society into a global power that promises to one day rival the United States. Chiang Kai-shek, an autocratic, larger-than-life figure, dominates this story. A modernist as well as a neo-Confucianist, Chiang was a man of war who led the most ancient and populous country in the world through a quarter century of bloody revolutions, civil conflict, and wars of resistance against Japanese aggression.

In 1949, when he was defeated by Mao Zedong—his archrival for leadership of China—he fled to Taiwan, where he ruled for another twenty-five years. Playing a key role in the cold war with China, Chiang suppressed opposition with his “white terror,” controlled inflation and corruption, carried out land reform, and raised personal income, health, and educational levels on the island. Consciously or not, he set the stage for Taiwan’s evolution of a Chinese model of democratic modernization.

Drawing heavily on Chinese sources including Chiang’s diaries, The Generalissimo provides the most lively, sweeping, and objective biography yet of a man whose length of uninterrupted, active engagement at the highest levels in the march of history is excelled by few, if any, in modern history. Jay Taylor shows a man who was exceedingly ruthless and temperamental but who was also courageous and conscientious in matters of state. Revealing fascinating aspects of Chiang’s life, Taylor provides penetrating insight into the dynamics of the past that lie behind the struggle for modernity of mainland China and its relationshipwith Taiwan.

The Washington Post - Laura Tyson Li

Jay Taylor's new biography…challenges the catechism on which generations of Americans have been weaned. Marshaling archival materials made newly available to researchers, including about four decades' worth of Chiang's daily diaries and documents from the Soviet era, it torpedoes many of that catechism's cherished tenets. This is an important, controversial book…Taylor carefully reconsiders the received wisdom, yet his book is no polemic. Having begun with stereotyped preconceptions, he evidently grew sympathetic to his subject in the telling. But he does not shrink from detailing the worst abuses of Chiang's oppressive rule both on the mainland and on Taiwan.

Publishers Weekly

American historians tend to portray Chiang Kai-Shek (1887--1975) as an inept dictator who mismanaged China until Mao Zedong expelled him in 1945 and he finished his life ruling Taiwan under the protection of the U.S. military. But this thick, heavily researched but lucid biography by Taylor, a research associate at Harvard's Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, describes an impressive figure who left China a greater legacy than he has been given credit for. An ambitious officer, Chiang took power when Sun Yat-sen died in 1925. Attempting to unify a chaotic nation, he fought warlords and rival Communists and then spent nine even bloodier years fighting the Japanese. Those expecting the traditional account of how Chiang hoarded American military aid in preparation for a postwar showdown with the Communists will read instead of the massive losses his troops suffered fighting the Japanese while Mao husbanded his forces. Taylor does not conceal Chiang's brutality and diplomatic failures, but he is an admirer who makes a good case that Chiang governed an almost ungovernable country with reasonable skill and understood his enemies better than American advisers did. 41 b&w illus., 4 maps. (Apr.)

Allan Cho - Library Journal

Taylor (research assoc., Fairbank Ctr. for Chinese Studies, Harvard), best known for his biography of President Chiang Kai-shek's son, Ching-kuo, follows up with an equally engaging biography of Chiang Kai-shek himself, founder of the Republic of China (ROC) on Taiwan. Indeed, this book is arguably less a biography than a modern history of China. Drawing heavily on Chiang's personal diaries, the text reveals a soldier who was curiously self-contradictory in both actions and personality. Although an ill-tempered and ruthless politician, Chiang was a courageous intellectual who loved and sacrificed for his country. Taylor reveals the complex relationship among Republican China on Taiwan, Communist China, and the United States and shows that while Chiang was an archrival of Mao, he nonetheless secretly consulted with his mainland counterparts on most policy developments. Although he ran a tightly regulated police state with brutal suppression of dissidents, Chiang's rule ultimately raised personal income, health, and education levels on the island, setting the stage for Taiwan's evolution of a Chinese model of democratic modernization. An excellent addition to the field of modern Chinese history; recommended for academic audiences.

Product Details

• Table of Contents

Table of Contents