Generalissimo [Hardcover]

Jonathan Fenby (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 3, 2003

Following his acclaimed studies of the state of modern France and how Hong Kong has changed since the 1997 handover, Jonathan Fenby now turns his attention to one of the most interesting yet under-reported figures of twentieth-century history. Chiang Kai-shek was the man who lost China to the Communists. As leader of the nationalist movement, the Kuomintang, Chiang established himself as head of the government in Nanking in 1928. Yet although he laid claim to power throughout the 1930s and was the only Chinese figure of sufficient stature to attend a conference with Churchill and Roosevelt during the Second World War, his desire for unity was always thwarted by threats on two fronts. Between them, the Japanese and the Communists succeeded in undermining Chiang's power-plays, and after Hiroshima it was Mao Zedong who ended up victorious. Brilliantly re-creating pre-Communist China in all its colour, danger and complexity, Jonathan Fenby's magisterial survey of this brave but unfulfilled life is destined to become the definitive account in the English language.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Jonathan Fenby is a former editor of the OBSERVER and of the SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST. He is the author of several books including the acclaimed ON THE BRINK: THE TROUBLE WITH FRANCE and DEALING WITH THE DRAGON: A YEAR IN THE NEW HONG KONG.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 736 pages
• Publisher: Free Press (November 3, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743231449
• ISBN-13: 978-0743231442
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.3 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,712,307 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Much Needed and a Welcome Addition to China Studies, November 11, 2005

By 

Prince Roy "edgar_snow" (los angeles, ca United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Generalissimo (Paperback)

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.

2 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Another great biography, December 25, 2007

By 

Steve Purcell (Seattle) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Generalissimo (Paperback)

I like this book very much. Fenby creates a rich tapestry of the times and people that surrounded Chiang. As a result the book is much more than a time line of a historical figures life.

As usual I'm in no position to judge the scholarship of the work, I'm simply a person with a casual interest in Chinese history that likes to read biography's. Some are better than others for readability and balance and this one is one of the best I've read in that regard.

0 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An excellent chronicle of the rise, wobbly rule and then fall of Chiang Kai-Shek, April 29, 2009

By 

Charles Ashbacher (Marion, Iowa United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Generalissimo (Hardcover)

If you are to make any credible attempt to understand modern China, you must be aware of two things. The first is the long history of the country, where at times it was the most powerful empire on Earth and it is the longest continuous civilization. The second is the incredible weakness of the country until very recently. Dominated first by western colonial powers and then by the Eastern colonial power of Japan, China was a secondary power both economically and militarily until quite recently.
The time from after the First World War until the Communists under Mao took control was a time of massive and particular troubles in the country, as there was a near continuous state of war, either an internal civil war or against the invading Japanese. For years, both were taking place simultaneously. The Japanese were particularly savage against the Chinese; some of the estimates are that over 50 million Chinese were either directly or indirectly killed in the war between China and Japan. To the Japanese, the Chinese were sub-humans, as one Japanese soldier pointed out, "The Chinese women were human when we wanted to rape them, after that they were no better than pigs to be killed."
As China began to emerge from the long period of weakness under the last Emperors, three men of destiny arose. The first to emerge was Sun Yat-sen, who started the tortuous trek of modernization. Revered by both the Nationalist and the Communist side, he was the first president of the China Republic that was created after the last emperor was dethroned. After Sun, two men vied for the position of being the man to lead China to a new position of power. Chiang Kai-Shek was a military man and became the leader of the Koumintang party and was the leader of the nation, although given the fragmented political nature with local warlords, much of his power was only figurative. Chiang's rival was Mao Zedong, the leader of the Communist faction. Their struggle for power encompassed over a decade and was carried out during the duration of the Japanese invasion. In this book, Fenby does an excellent job in describing this ongoing struggle for power.
Given the international support that Chiang had from sources all the way from the United States to the Soviet Union under Stalin, it is clear that Chiang should have emerged victorious over Mao. However, the internal contradictions of Chiang's rule and his mistakes when he tried to consolidate his power and in fighting the Japanese led to his being forced to flee the mainland and establish his rule over the island of Formosa.
This book is a definitive history of Chiang, from his early years, through his political marriage to Meiling Soong, to his rapid fall and exile after losing the civil war to the communists. From the descriptions, it seems clear that Chiang had plenty of opportunities, but overall he was both overwhelmed by the circumstances and lacked the political skills to maintain his position. Ruthless in his own way, he was never able to chart and stay on an effective course to victory.