Product Description

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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #51510 in Books
• Published on: 2005-03-07
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 592 pages

SUNDAY TIMES
'Highly readable ... It is an epic tale and Fenby tells it with panache'

SPECTATOR
'Fenby has a gripping story, and tells it with great verve and insight'

HISTORY TODAY
'A magisterial account of the brave and unfulfilled life of the man who lost China to Communism'

Customer Reviews

Great story
This book tells an extraordinary story of one of the main figures of the last century who has been largely forgotten today but should not be. He wasn't a nice man - few big rulers are. But he and his times were fascinating. As well as Chiang, who came from nothing to rule China, the book tells of the huge wars and struggles that marked China before the Communist victory that settled the fate of 500 million people. Alongside the wars and politics (both very well described for the layman) the book is full of characters who could step straight out of a novel - warlords who controlled territory the size of a big European country and rode into battle sitting in coffins with their mistresses, the wide open city of Shanghai with its gangsters, tycoons and wild night life, and the strange inland city where Chiang fought his long war with Japan surrounded by a great collection of characters from the West as well as from his own country. I was afraid the book might be rather too heavy and expert for a non-specialist, but I found it a compelling read from the opening episode where Chiang is kidnapped one Christmas by one of his generals. The parallels for teh United States of what it did in China in the war with japan and what it is doing today in Iraq is interesting. to say the least. Then there was the bitter civil war which ended with Chiang's defeat and his exile to the island of Taiwan - what I hadn't tealised befroe reading this book is how near he came to wiping out the Communists.
Then there is Madame Chiang who died just the other week at an incredibly advanced age - she wooed American politicians and barged into a summit conference with Churchill and Roosevelt in a way that no other leader's wife would have dared to do. Not being a specialist on China I can't judge the academic sourecs in the book but they seem to be pretty complete. As a general reader, I thoroughly recommend this as a tremednous read which really told me something about modern history.

Understanding China.
Having spent a number of years in Taiwan and Hong Kong its pretty easy to think one knows a bit about the general area....however reading this book makes you realize how little you really understand, even can understand, about this enigmatic region and its recent and incredibly tumultuous and brutal history. A history that to a lesser or greater extent has shaped the world we all live in. I have found most histories of China far from easy reading, however Fenby's book breaks the mold. From the opening attempted kidnapping in Xian, through the chronology of the rise to almost totalitarian power of this most unlikely of dictators; to the almost blase descriptions of unimaginable losses of life of both soldiers and innocents at the hands of warlords, Nationalists, Japanese and Communists alike, the book grippingly holds the attention. The geo-political manouverings of the great powers, the colourful and mostly unsavoury characters that are painted, the shameful exploitation of the common man, all add spice, flavour and context. Most interesting are some of the "what-ifs" that Fenby explores in the latter pages. The world could have been a different place if Chiang had been a more decisive less complex character. It leaves the reader, this one at least, in some way sensing that for all his shortcomings, for all the wrath indirectly unleashed as a result of his leadership, that maybe Chiang's rule was the less bad of a number of possible alternatives for the future of a country that is now beginning to take its place at the forefront of the modern economic and political world order. Sad it had to be that way.

Fascinating and important
As a Japanese who now lives in California, I bought this book through British Amazon during my trip to the UK because it has not yet been published in the United States. I found it a fascinating and very readable story about an extraordinary man living in one of the most exciting periods of history in the 20th century, with lots of adventurous passages and some amazing characters like the warlords and the drug Godfathers and Madame Chiang who just died at a very old age. The information about Chiang's private life is really quite scandalous!
Apart from that, what made it an important book for myself was three elements:
1. The chatpters telling, for the first time in my experience in such vivid depth, just how Japan behaved in China between 1931 and 1945. The descriptions of what the Army did in China make this an important historical document.
2.In the context of the current situation in Iraq, the account of US involvement in China has major significant lessons for today - and parallels the author draws between Japan's invasion of China and the US in Vietnam (and why not in Iraq too?) is thought provoking.
3. Given China's emergence as a superpower in the next few years, this is the first book I have seen which tells readers what happened before the Communists won power - and draws parallels between the past and the present from which I drew interesting lessons.