Retrospect and prospect of overseas studies on Chiang Kai-shek and related topics

Abstract

Mr Chiang Kai-shek is a key historical figure of twentieth century China. The studies of his life and thought have attracted many scholars' attention during his lifetime as well as after his death in 1975. In recent years, along with the opening of the archives of Academia Historica, the Chronological Events (Shilue gaoben), and the Diary of Chiang Kai-shek, once again the topic of Chiang has become a focus among China scholars who study the Republican period. Besides numerous conferences and workshops recently held in Taipei, Beijing, Hangzhou, and other cities in both mainland China and Taiwan, academic circles in America, Europe, and Japan have also held some seminars regarding Chiang Kai-shek. The current overseas studies on Chiang Kai-shek can be divided into two groupings geographically: the Euro–American group and the Japanese group. These two groups, plus those from Taiwan and Mainland China, have formed the four most important academic traditions. In spite of their different views and ideologies, these four are able to influence each other and even to come to similar conclusions. These can be summarized as a more positive image of Chiang whose major achievements include fighting the Japanese in WWII and building a modern China in various ways. This paper, relying on overseas research results, will try to help researchers understand the current situation of studies on Chiang Kai-shek in the world so as to lay a better academic foundation for their own further studies. However, because of all kinds of limitations, this paper will rely mostly on the research achievements of English and Japanese works. Research works in other languages and from other regions will have to wait for later efforts.

Keywords:

• Chiang Kai-shek
• Soong May-ling
• diary
• Japan
• United States

Notes

¹Guy S. Alitto, Xifang shixue lunzhu zhong de Jiang Zhongzheng [Chiang Kai-shek in Western Historiography] (Taipei: Gufeng Press, 1987).

²Jonathan D. Spence, To Change China: Western Advisers in China, 1620-1960 (New York: Penguin, 1980), 195–202.

³James E. Sheridan, China in Disintegration. The Republican Era in Chinese History 1912-1949 (New York: Free Press, 1975).

⁴Guy S. Allito, Xifang shixue lunzhu zhong de Jiang Zhongzheng, 49–50, 53–54.

⁵Nikka Shina jijyosha, ed., Shina kakumei no sōsui Shō Kaiseki (Tokyo: Nikka Shina jijyosha, 1927).

⁶See Noriko Kamachi, John K. Fairbank, and Chuzo Ichiko, Japanese Studies of Modern China Since 1953: A Bibliographical Guide to the Historical and Social Science Research on the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: Supplementary Volume for 1953-1969 (Cambridge, MA, East Asian Research Center, Harvard University, 1975) 197, 232–237.

⁷Ray Huang, Cong dalishi de jiaodu jiedu Jiang Jieshi riji [Reading Chiang Kai-shek's Diary from a Macro-History Perspective] (Taipei: Times Publishing Company, 1993).

⁸Hsiao-ting Lin, Modern China's Ethnic Frontiers: A Journey to the West (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2010).

⁹Ten books have been published since then. Here is a list of them along with authors' information for your reference. 1) Ding Qiujie and Song Ping, eds., A Collection of Chiang Kai-shek's Letters (1912–1946), trans. Suzuki Hiroshi (Tokyo: Misuzu Books, 2000–2001); 2) Lu Xijun, Chinese Nationalist Government Policy toward Japan, 1931–1933 (Tokyo: Tokyo University Press, 2001); 3) Iechika Ryoko, Chiang Kai-shek and the Nanjing National Government: An Analysis of the Power Penetration by the Chinese Nationalist Party (Tokyo: Keio University Press, 2002); 4) Matsuda Yasuhiro, Establishment of a One-party Regime in Taiwan (Tokyo: Keio University Press, 2006); 5) Huang Wenxiong, The Myth of Chiang Kai-shek: The Virtual and Real Images of the Dictator Who Ruled China and Taiwan (Tokyo: Meiseisha, 2008); 6) Duan Ruicong, Chiang Kai-shek and the New Life Movement (Tokyo: Keio University Press, 2006); 7) Tsuchiya Mitsuyoshi, Wang Jingwei Regime and Chiang-Wang Cooperation (Tokyo: Nigen No Kagaku Sinsha, 2004); 8) Nakata Tamio, The Confidential Memorandum of President Chiang Kai-shek on the Showa War and the Yasukuni Shrine Issue (Tokyo: Soei Publishing, 2003); 9) Yoshida Sōjin, Secret Talks of Chiang Kai-shek (Kyoto: Kamogawa Press, 2001); and 10) Ikemi Takeshi, The Second World War Could Not Have Occurred Because of Prime Minister Ugaki Kazushige: General Ugaki Kazushige and General Chiang Kai-shek (Tokyo: Ikemi Gakuen, 2002). There are also 62 individual papers covering three subtopics: Chiang Kai-shek and pre-war Chinese–Japanese conflicts, 25 papers; the establishment and ideological control of Chiang Kai-shek's government, 20 papers; and post-war Chiang Kai-shek, 17 papers.

¹⁰Yamada Tatsuo's research on the Republican era is based on views of the left wing of the Chinese Nationalist Party. At first Yamada suggested that research on Republican China should expand its range horizontally. Provoked by the Tian'anmen Incident in 1989, he later raised the question of the continuity of China's political history. That is to say, Yamada thinks it impossible to truly understand Chinese history if we only focus on horizontal studies and fail to vertically study China's past, present, and future, as well as the linkage between the Republic of China and the People's Republic of China. Under such circumstances, Yamada Tatsuo turned to Chiang Kai-shek studies, with the major purpose of promoting China studies through studies of Chiang Kai-shek covering three directions: first, expanding horizontally the range of China studies; second, extending studies on Chinese history vertically, and finally combining both the horizontal and vertical studies to have a better understanding of China and to better predict its future development.

¹¹Wang Wenlong's interview with Iechika Ryoko, 4 May, 2009.

¹²Ibid.

¹³Darui Long, “An Interfaith Dialogue between the Chinese Buddhist Leader Taixu and Christians”, Buddhist-Christian Studies 20 (2000): 167–89.

¹⁴Paul R. Katz, “The Alliance between the Religious Groups and Political Power during the Republican Era: The Case of Relations between Wang Yiting and Chiang Kai-shek”, conference paper presented at the conference on ‘Chiang Kai-shek's Power Network and Political Maneuvers’ held at the Institute of Modern History, Academia Sinica, Sept. 14–16, 2009.

¹⁵Philip C.C. Huang, “Biculturality in Modern China and in Chinese Studies”, Modern China 26, no. 1 (January 2000): 3–31.

¹⁶Kimberly Marten, “Warlordism in Comparative Perspective”, International Security 31, no. 3 (2006): 41–73.

¹⁷Wai Chor So, “The Making of the Guomindang's Japan Policy, 1932–1937: The Roles of Chiang Kai-Shek and Wang Jingwei”, Modern China 28, no. 2 (April 2002): 213–52.

¹⁸Guangqiu Xu, “The Issue of US Air Support for China During the Second World War 1942–45”, Journal of Contemporary History 36, no. 3 (July 2001): 459–84.

¹⁹Murashima Eiji, “The Commemorative Character of Thai Historiography: The 1942–1943 Thai Military Campaign in the Shan States Depicted as a Story of National Salvation and Restoration of Thai Independence”, Modern Asian Studies 40, no. 4 (2006): 1053–96.

²⁰Guido Samarani, Shaping the Future of Asia: Chiang Kai-shek, Nehru and China–India Relations During the Second World War Period (Lund: Centre for East and South-East Asian Studies, Lund University, 2005), http://www.lu.se/images/Syd_och_sydostasienstudier/working_papers/Samarani.pdf (accessed October 25, 2010).

²¹Hsiao-ting Lin, “Between Rhetoric and Reality: Nationalist China's Tibetan Agenda during the Second World War”, Canadian Journal of History 37, no. 3 (2002): 485.

²²Peter Chen-Main Wang, “Revisiting US–China Wartime Relations: A Study of Wedemeyer's China Mission”, Journal of Contemporary China 18, no. 59 (2009): 233.

²³Harold M. Tanner, “Guerrilla, Mobile, and Base Warfare in Communist Military Operations in Manchuria, 1945–1947”, The Journal of Military History 67, no. 4 (2003): 1177–1222.

²⁴Ronald H. Spector, “After Hiroshima: Allied Military Occupations and the Fate of Japan's Empire, 1945–1947”, The Journal of Military History 69, no. 4 (2005): 1121–36.

²⁵Peter Worthin, “The Road through Whampoa: The Early Career of He Yingqin”, The Journal of Military History 69, no. 4 (2005): 953–85.

²⁶Shao-Kang Chu, “On Chiang Kai-shek's Position on Resisting Japan: An Analysis of the ‘Domestic Stability Takes Precedence over Resisting Foreign Invasion’ Policy, 1928–1936” (PhD diss., The University of British Columbia, Canada, 2000). The author's major points are that Chiang took the country's stability as his priority in his preparation for war, followed by economic construction. Facing two opponents, the communists and the Japanese, Chiang decided to focus on dealing with the communists first while trying his best to postpone the confrontations with Japan.

²⁷Brenda A. Ericson, “The Making of an Ally: Chiang Kai-shek and American Foreign Policy, 1936 to 1941” (PhD diss., The University of New Mexico, 2004).

²⁸Grace C. Huang, “Chiang Kai-Shek's Uses of Shame: An Interpretive Study of Agency in Chinese Leadership” (PhD diss., The University of Chicago, 2005).

²⁹Daniel Paul Lintin “From First Lady to Dragonlady: A Rhetorical Study of Madame Chiang's Public Personae before and during her 1943 United States Tour” (PhD diss., University of Minnesota, 2001).

³⁰Amy Giovanetti, “Image-making in United States–China Relations: Images of Chiang Kai-Shek in American Newsmagazines” (PhD diss., St. John's University, NY, 2007).

³¹Jonathan Fenby, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek and the China He Lost (London: Free Press, 2005).

³²Laura Lyson Li, Madame Chiang Kai-shek: China's Eternal First Lady (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2006). This is the first biography of Soong May-ling after her death in 2003. The author follows the traditional approach by referring to the marriage between Chiang and Soong as a “political marriage” in which power took the leading role while love was only secondary. But such a view has become questionable after Chiang Kai-shek's personal diary became public. There seems to have been profound love between Chiang and Soong.

³³Jay Taylor, The Generalissimo: Chiang Kai-Shek and the Struggle for Modern China (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2009). Differing from traditional interpretations, this book by Jay Taylor raises many new points that are worthy of our attention and further studies. For the first time, he exposes the decades of secret, unusual, friend–enemy relationship between Chiang Kai-shek and Zhou Enlai. During the Taiwan Strait crisis in the 1950s, Zhou and Chiang used their secret channels to communicate. In the late 1960s when the Nixon Administration prepared to change American policy toward China, Zhou also employed these secret channels to inform Chiang Kai-shek about this change. Such points indeed challenge our understanding of Nationalist–Communist relations and contemporary Chinese history. They also point to a possible new direction in our future studies. Also see Jay Taylor, The Generalissimo: Chiang Kai-shek and the Struggle for Modern China, trans. Lin Tiangui (Taipei: Times Culture Publishing House, 2010), vol. 1, 117; vol. 2, 679.