About the Book
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 unexcelled 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 relationship with Taiwan.
About the Author :
Jay Taylor is a Research Associate at the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard University.
Review :
[An] important book...Coming closer to Chiang than previous biographers, Taylor provides new insight on his character--a combination of unwavering physical bravery and discipline with a sense of martyrdom and shame...Taylor's long section on Chiang's years in Taiwan is one of the most masterful parts of his book, opening up a subject that no one else had seriously investigated.--Andrew J. Nathan"New Republic online" (03/31/2011)
A new and apparently exhaustive biography...This could well be one of the more important non-fiction books of the year.--Tyler Cowen"marginalrevolution.com" (07/23/2009)
Even in the rapidly widening field of modern Chinese history, it is unusual and gratifying to read a book that upsets not only the reader's previous views but even those of the author himself...Now a different Chiang stands before us. Drawing on new material, years of interviews with the dwindling number of those with first-hand memories of the Chiang family, and scrutiny of Chiang's voluminous diaries, Taylor reveals a much more interesting and despite his stiff exterior, frequently adaptable Chiang...The book is a huge advance on our knowledge of what happened in China from the early twentieth century to the present day, when an updated version of Chiang's Kuomintang is again in power in Taipei...There will be no oblivion [for Chiang]. Jay Taylor has seen to that...A substantial and comprehensive contribution to our knowledge of China.--Jonathan Mirsky"Literary Review" (06/01/2009)
Jay Taylor's new biography, "The Generalissimo: Chiang Kai-shek and the Struggle for Modern China", 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... Chiang emerges as a flesh-and-blood man rather than the buffoonish cardboard-cutout figure he has generally been portrayed as.--Laura Tyson Li"Washington Post Book World" (04/26/2009)
Master of his material, [Taylor] provides excellent in-depth accounts of episodes such as Chiang's kidnapping by Zhang Xueliang, the Manchurian exiled warlord, at Christmas 1936, the negotiations over the years between Nationalists and Communists and the old man's later years in Taiwan...This is the most thorough inquest on the Generalissimo so far.--Jonathan Fenby"Times Higher Education" (07/30/2009)
More than three decades after his death, Chiang is still the most controversial and polarizing figure in Taiwanese politics. In his new biography, Jay Taylor attempts to weave a life out of historical fact and rescue one of the central figures of modern Chinese history from the emotional effervescence of both supporters and detractors...Taylor does much to overturn the popular reading of [Chiang] and to illustrate Chiang's contributions to the Allied war effort. While his scholarship presents a more nuanced view of Chiang, it also uncovers a darker narrative for the Allies, who repeatedly failed to honor their commitments to Chiang...Judging by his stated goal of challenging assumptions and rounding out cardboard characterizations of Chiang, Taylor succeeds admirably. He uncovers a man devoted to reversing a century of humiliation in China.--Robert Green"Far Eastern Economic Review" (05/01/2009)
Now that Jay Taylor has written his comprehensive book "The Generalissimo: Chiang Kai-shek and the Struggle for Modern China", we are able to see Chiang as a man of considerable cunning, brutality and patience who skillfully played a weak hand against the Japanese and Mao's forces while extracting huge sums from the Americans.--Jonathan Mirsky"New York Times Book Review" (11/29/2009)
Reading [Taylor's] excellent, scholarly work, the fruit of five years' research, one does not warm to Chiang but comes to appreciate the emotional complexity of his character, and to admire his fortitude in the face of colossal odds.--Simon Scott Plummer "The Tablet "
Taylor shows in great detail that Chiang and his often-maligned troops fought more effectively against Japan's heavily armed and well trained war machine than is generally realized. He also depicts in a mostly positive light Chiang's performance during a quarter of a century in exile at the head of the Nationalist government on Taiwan, where he set the stage for the island's shift from dictatorship to democracy..."Generalissimo"is well-written, and takes on an epic quality as Taylor guides us through many turning points in modern Chinese history. He draws on new materials, but his greatest strength is the fairness of his approach.--Dan Southerland"Christian Science Monitor" (08/06/2009)
Taylor succeeds in recovering a complicated man who was responsible for military and economic success as well as stunning failures..."The Generalissimo" is now the best English--language biography available. Taylor has considerable narrative skills, and is the first Western biographer to have drawn on Chiang Kai--shek's handwritten diaries.--Jeremy Brown"Times Literary Supplement" (01/29/2010)
The traditional view of "General Cash-My-Check" as a corrupt and incompetent bit-part player in the story of modern Chinese history is overturned here. Taylor suggests that far from being an incompetent dictator he was actually a shrewd and even noble man, making the best out of a bad hand.--George Pendle"Financial Times" (11/28/2009)
This careful culling and quoting of Chiang's diaries is a device Taylor uses effectively to show Chiang's personal qualities. Taylor rejects the commonly held notion that these diaries deserve to be ignored, as being devoid of historical interest; instead, by juxtaposing quotations from Chiang's diaries with vivid and detailed descriptions of the major political and military events unfolding in the wider world, he gives a kind of intimacy to what otherwise might be merely inchoate reflections. Thus, to some extent, Taylor has been able to construct a series of more emotional linkages between Chiang and the world within which he worked.--Jonathan D. Spence"New York Review of Books" (10/22/2009)
Through using newly available archival materials dating back some 40 years, including Chiang's daily diaries, Kuomintang and ROC government documents, Russian records and interviews with key figures, the [Taylor] has produced a deeply researched book that follows the generalissimo from his days on the mainland until his death in Taiwan. But what makes Taylor's work so special are the numerous in-depth and eminently readable accounts of Chiang's life. For the first time, the grandiose layers of appearance and reality that the generalissimo built up around him are stripped back to reveal the man behind the myth. Taylor's epic book is a landmark tome in Chinese studies because it shows that the generalissimo, far from being a sham Caesar who lost the mainland to Mao Zedong and communism in a surprisingly short period of time, gave the nation its best government in the 20th century. This revisionist take, which is told with a flair befitting the subject, shows Chiang to be an honorable and
What makes Taylor's biography unique is his use of documents from the Guomindang Party's archive and Chiang's recently released diaries, which span the entirety of Chiang's adult life and offer intimate insight into his inner world, particularly his relationships with his sons and his struggle to reconcile Confucianism and Christianity...In describing each period, Taylor is always careful to situate Chiang in the context of domestic and international politics, thus making this book an accessible introduction to modern Chinese politics.--L. Teh"Choice" (02/01/2010)
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...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...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.
