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.Īs a young wire service reporter visiting Taiwan in the early 1960s, I shared the standard view of Chiang as a rigid dictator who harbored delusional dreams of retaking the mainland. 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. The author provides a fair and comprehensive assessment of the man who led China through a war of resistance against Japan and then a civil war that ended with his defeat at the hands of Mao Zedong in 1949. In a new biography, The Generalissimo, Jay Taylor sets the record straight. Chinese Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek stands condemned by many historians and journalists as a dictator lacking ideals and significant achievements.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |