Victorious in Defeat: The Life and Times of Chiang Kai-shek, China, 1887–1975

Pantsov draws on Chiang Kai-shek’s diaries and Russian archives not used by previous researchers to provide the most intimate account yet of the Chinese Nationalist Party leader’s personality, relationships, and dramatic career, which was second in its importance for twentieth-century China only to that of his communist rival, Mao Zedong. The author charts a sure path through the twisting byways of that history, maintaining a focus on Chiang’s emotional swings and his ruthless treatment of family members, colleagues, soldiers, and citizens. Chiang emerges as neither the corrupt fascist of standard historiography nor the tragic patriot of recent more favorable reassessments but as an authoritarian nationalist and revolutionary who suffered successive betrayals by ally after ally, including warlords, Kuomintang politicians, the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, Mao, and U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt. It was not until Chiang fled to Taiwan in 1949 that he gained a secure grip on power, albeit over a much smaller territory. There, his dictatorial regime pushed through social and economic reforms that ironically laid the foundation for today’s flourishing Taiwanese democracy.