295. Chiang Kai-shek
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Hello and welcome to Battleground with me, Saul David. Today, in the latest episode of our Warlord series, we're discussing the Chinese nationalist leader, Chiang Kai-shek, with Alexander V. Pantsov, professor of history at Capital University in Columbus, Ohio. Alexander is the author of more than 10 books on Chinese history, including The Bolsheviks and the Chinese Revolution, 1919 to 1927, Mao, The Real Story, and Victorious in Defeat, The Life and Times of Chiang Kai-shek,

1887-1975

Alexander, welcome to the podcast. Thank you for inviting me. It's my pleasure. So let's talk a little bit about the backstory of our main character today, Chiang Kai-shek. He's born in East China in 1887 to, I think, a prosperous family of salt merchants, but also apparently descended from the rulers of ancient China. So he comes from quite a well-born family. Tell me a little bit about his childhood and how he joined and eventually rose to prominence in China.

Sun Yat-sen's Kuomintang Revolutionary Movement.

Actually, Chiang Kai-shek's family was not as rich as we think about it because he was raised by his mother and his mother couldn't actually handle the economic situation. And in addition, Chiang Kai-shek, they suffered a lot economically and they were humiliated by their neighbors because his mother was alone and couldn't protect the family pretty well.

By the way, his unfortunate childhood had a tremendous impact on his character and on his views. I mean, he was growing up as a rebel. He understood very early that he could survive in this life only if he resists.

And the second one, he was growing up being very leftist. And after the October Revolution in 1917, he was deeply impressed by the Marxist idea. Under the impact of one of his teachers, in order to help the revolution in China, he had to join the army. That's why he traveled to Japan. Japan at that time was the leading Eastern Asian country,

And many Chinese travel to Japan in order to learn from the Japanese how to strengthen themselves. And so he joined the military school in Japan. He didn't manage to graduate because in 1911, the revolution took place in China. It was not a socialist revolution. It was a nationalist revolution against the Manchu. And he moved to China and joined the revolution.

A few years before this, he's joined the organization headed by Sun Yat-sen, the famous leader of China. But Sun Yat-sen was impressed with Chiang Kai-shek for the simple reason, Chiang...

was a military man and he looked very orderly and he was precise. He was not a theorist. He didn't try to argue with Sun Yat-sen. He didn't want to talk about the doctrines of the national revolution. He looked up to Sun Yat-sen as the leader of

all the movement and Sun Yat-sen liked it. You know, we like people who do not argue with us and Sun Yat-sen needed such people to rely on.

And Chiang Kai-shek was one of them. Sun Yat-sen dies in 1925. And there is then, of course, a power struggle. Who's going to take control of the nationalist movement? And Chiang ultimately wins that battle. Tell me a little bit about the sort of qualities he brought. Because this is really the early stage, I suppose, of his reputation as a military commander or the generalissimo, as he was known. Sun Yat-sen died March 12, 1925.

Immediately after his death, the party leadership split into a number of factions and groups. Shortly after this, the leftists came to power.

But these people had no army. These people were quite well-known in the party. They were great speakers and great organizers. So the great advantage of Chiang Kai-shek was that he had been the principal of the military case. Chiang Kai-shek, as the principal of the school, or the majority of these offices, looked like the chieftain, like the father of the big family.

The Chinese are clan family-oriented people. And the relationship between the members of organization, of a group, alumni, and clans, ethnic groups, are much stronger than the ones in the West. So for them, Sun Yat-sen was a leader of their own clan, of their own group.

That's why the other leaders of the Gomingdan, they could not stand against Chiang Kai-shek. He was doomed to seize power, and he established his dictatorship in the Gomingdan. In 1926, he became the generalissimo, the commander-in-chief of the National Revolutionary Army, and started the Norman Expedition.

So the Northern Expedition was a great success, and it also strengthened his position in the Kuomintang. Still, he faced opposition. So the National Revolutionary Army, by 1927, looked like a conglomerate of warlords. And after the Kuomintang carried the day and united China, we still have the conglomerate of warlords instead of the highly centralized National Revolutionary Army.

In addition, we had still political opposition in the party, so it was extremely difficult for Chiang Kai-shek to maneuver. Many Western people believe that Chiang Kai-shek in the 1930s, 40s, was the bloody dictator who established the pro-fascist dictatorship in China, but this is not correct.

Chiang Kai-shek wanted to be a dictator. Chiang Kai-shek wanted to imitate Mussolini, Hitler. Before that, he tried to imitate the Bolsheviks, Stalin, but he failed to do so. He failed to establish his personal dictatorship. He still had the opposition. From time to time, former warlords revolted against him, and at the end of the 20s, early 30s, we had a series of civil wars between Chiang Kai-shek and warlords.

At the same time, the communists revolted, another opposition to Chiang Kai-shek, and some military generals united with political opposition in the party. The most famous group of reorganization is led by Wang Jingwei. Again, they revolted against Chiang Kai-shek. Chiang Kai-shek would expel them from the party, but the invasion of Japan to China exacerbated all the problems, and Chiang Kai-shek needed to reestablish unification.

in the face of Japan. So he granted them forgiveness, accepted them back to the party. So if you compare him with Hitler and Stalin, you definitely see that Chiang Kai-shek was weak. Stalin would never tolerate any opposition. The rest, real oppositions or even imaginary oppositions, and would torture them just physically. Chiang Kai-shek didn't do so.

I mean, he finally managed to establish his dictatorship and become a real dictator all the time. But before 1949, he failed. That was, by the way, one of the reasons why he lost. Because China is different from the West. China never had democracy. All the majority of people, they didn't know how to elect, how to control the government.

Democracy is the system in which society controls the government. Elections is only part of democracy. You know, we had elections in the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany and in Iraq under Sadat Hussein. But it doesn't mean these countries were democratic. The most important is that the society dominates the state. The society controls the state. That never happened in China.

And so China was not ready for democracy. China needed an iron hand. An iron hand, but there are two basically types of dictators in world history. One dictator who would lead the society to prosperity, to the development of capitalism, ultimately would help the society transform into a democratic state.

Look at South Korea or Singapore or Taiwan now. But there is another type of dictator who would lead the society back to the past, who would enrich himself. Usually it's a man who would form oligarchy and block the development of the middle class. Look at Russia today. So this is a different type of democracy.

So Chiang Kai-shek definitely belonged to the first type of dictatorship in Taiwan. But in China, he, instead of fighting against oligarchs, he collaborated with the oligarchs and his own family became oligarchs. He even couldn't control his own family.

His wife, his brother-in-law, his sister-in-law were greatly corrupted. They became new oligarchs in China that blocked the development of capitalism in China. But, you know, he learned from the past. That's why the title of the book, Victorious in Defeat. Yeah, so obviously that is at the tail end of the story. And we want to concentrate mainly on the Second World War, if possible, Alexander. But I do want to understand who he was before we get there.

The start of the Second World War, at least as far as the Chinese and the Japanese are concerned, is really in 1937, isn't it? And so he not only is struggling to control his competition within China, he's now got an external enemy to deal with and a very formidable one at that. But was it also a benefit for him in his attempt to unify China under his own control to have this rallying force, which was the Japanese? Yeah, we can say so. But definitely that

could help him unite China, and he finally signed an agreement with the Chinese communists. They stopped the civil war, and they formed the Second United Front, the anti-Japanese United Front,

And many former opponents, many of them, particularly in the beginning, the first year, 1937-38, rallied around Chiang Kai-shek. And even Wang Jinwei definitely supported Chiang Kai-shek's efforts to fight against the Japanese. But then the situation changed. When the Japanese conquered a huge part of China, not only the most fertile land in China,

and that greatly reduced the revenues and the agricultural supply. But very important that they block the ports and harbors on the eastern coast

and China could not receive the sufficient aid from allies, particularly when the Japanese attacked Southeast Asia and Burma and basically imposed the blockade of China. Under these circumstances, the Kuomintang again split, and a group of politicians led by Wang Jingwei betrayed Chiang Kai-shek and betrayed China,

and moved to first to Hanoi and then to Shanghai in 1919 and for the puppet government under the Japanese against Western imperialism. And the army still looked like a conglomerate of various warlords who did not actually want to fight the Japanese, but they wanted to preserve their own troops.

Because in China, the troops look like a source of power and income for the commanders, the generals. So if you have your own troops, then you have power. And you have not only political, but economic power. So there are some strange things when, for example, during the fight in Shanghai, Chiang Kai-shek would give orders to

to some troops to go to Shanghai and help the army in Shanghai, but the commanders simply refused to follow the order. So it's quite interesting when Chinese delegation visited the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union at that time was an ally of China.

And they talked to the Minister of Defense in Russia, Voroshilov. Voroshilov said to the head of the delegation, I ask you to tell Chiang Kai-shek that he must arrest a number of generals and cut their heads. Otherwise, he had no

a way out and he wouldn't defeat the Japanese. So the situation was not that ideal. Then the communists, after the first period of the war, 1937-38, became more and more independent. And the Second United Front indeed was a fiction. The communists didn't follow the orders of the Generalissimo, the commander-in-chief of the army. And they had their own Generalissimo

in quotation marks. They had Mao Zedong. So they followed Mao Zedong's orders and crossed the front line and infiltrated the Japanese rear and began to build their own so-called liberated areas. We should put quotation marks because they didn't liberate anyone. The Japanese were not there. They were not in the rear, not in the countryside. They controlled only railroads and lines of transportation in cities. But still they spread...

across the Japanese rear. And then Chiang Kai-shek realized that he began to serve his own troops in the Japanese rear. And during most of the time, we had fighting between the communist troops and the Gomindar in the Japanese rear. So the civil war continued. So the situation was still critical and China was not united. Okay, we'll just take a quick break. Do join us in a moment when we'll hear more from Alexander Pantsov about Chiang Kai-shek.

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The lifeline that was eventually provided to the Kuomintang and Chiang was from the Americans, of course. And this was particularly necessary after Soviet military aid had been cut off. And yet the U.S. President Roosevelt, FDR, never entirely trusts Chiang, does he? I mean, why not? What was his sort of suspicion? This is absolutely true. Roosevelt didn't trust Chiang Kai-shek for many reasons. Actually, if we speak about Roosevelt, Roosevelt

love China and he tried to help China. I mean, indeed, because Truman was different. But he loved Chinese people, he loved China, he was probably, it was like a sense of guilt because his grandfather made the first million dollars in China by selling tobacco and opium and poisoning Chinese. Anyway,

about Chiang Kai-shek. Roosevelt received information about terrible corruption in the Kuomintang government. Actually, Chiang Kai-shek was probably the only one who was not corrupt, but everybody else around him were corrupt. Chiang Kai-shek played his own game with Roosevelt. He needed American help. He needed money and he needed arms and weapons. He demanded corruption.

as much as possible from Roosevelt, from time to time threatening that if he doesn't receive enough, he would surrender and China would stop fighting the Japanese. So Roosevelt finally lost his nerve because his intelligence series reported that Goming Dan members pocketed money that the Americans sent to China.

So finally, Roosevelt began to think that Chiang Kai-shek was not reliable. Second, he had his own agents in China. The most famous was General Stilwell, who was basically the right-hand man of Chiang Kai-shek, but he hated Chiang Kai-shek. He believed that Chiang Kai-shek was incompetent and the government was corrupt, authoritarian and stuff like this. He even called him a peanut.

He sent information to his friend, George Marshall, and Marshall provided this information to Roosevelt, received also information how bad Chiang Kai-shek was from his own ambassador to China, Mr. Gauss, who also hated Chiang Kai-shek. In addition, the American government received information from American journalists.

in China. Most of them hated Chiang Kai-shek and they were liberal and pro-Maoist. At the same time, Roosevelt received information that Chinese communists are no longer communists. They abandoned their communist ideas, they abandoned the theory of dictatorship or the proletariat, and in 1939-1940 they switched to new democracy. So they claimed that after the war they built a multi-party system in China,

as they built a democratic society and they would welcome American investment and they're basically pro-American. Roosevelt sent his bodyguard, Carlson, to China to investigate. Carlson visited Mao Zedong and reported back to Roosevelt, I quote, Mao Zedong is genius. Mao Zedong is pro-American. Mao Zedong is great and we should switch sides.

We should support Mao Zedong because he is liberal and democratic and pro-American, but Chiang Kai-shek is a bloody dictator.

Then Roosevelt sent the OSS, it's a predecessor of CIA, headed by David Barrett to China. They also reported to Roosevelt that there was no longer communism and we need to support him. And so they investigated Roosevelt, ambassador in Russia, Harriman. They visited Stalin and Molotov in Moscow and talked about Mao Zedong and Stalinism.

Stalin and Molotov answered, but who is Mao Zedong? We don't know Mao Zedong. We never had any relations with the Chinese colonists. They're just a bunch of nationalists and stuff like that. Now we know, because I found documents in the Russian archives, that it was the policy directed by Stalin. It was deception. Stalin wanted to keep America off China.

He wanted to make Americans and the West believe that there was no communist revolution in China. That would help Stalin and Mao Zedong to establish a broad anti-Zhankai-Sheikh coalition and would seize power not under the communist banner, but under the banner of the new democracy, creating an illusion that was a democratic revolution in China. It was not only in China, it was everywhere. Everywhere. Everywhere.

You know that after World War II, we had the socialist countries in Eastern Europe, in Vietnam, Korea. But if you remember, no one had the name socialists.

We had Democratic Republic of Vietnam, not the Socialist Republic. We had Democratic Republic in Korea. We had People's Republic in Poland and stuff like this. Then an Albanian leader, a communist, then Hoxha visited Stalin.

Stalin said to him, why do you need the name Communist Party? And he suggested the Party of Labor. He gave the same advice to Yugoslavian Communist Party. And Stalin said to Jews, why do you have red stars on your cats? Pretend that you're no longer the communists to keep British off. Britain played a major role in the Balkans. So that's why he said British.

So that was a total deception. Total deception. Roosevelt bought it. Roosevelt began to believe that they are no longer communists. In 1943, he even planned the assassination of Chiang Kai-shek, and he gave an order to Stilwell to prepare the assassination. Never been implemented, but still. From my perspective, I think that

Americans played a very negative role at the end of World War II. They betrayed Chiang Kai-shek during the Yalta Conference. Roosevelt invited Stalin to China. The Soviet Union was not at war with Japan. The Soviet Union had the pact of neutralities. But Roosevelt in Yalta secretly conducted negotiations with Stalin behind Chiang Kai-shek's back. Chiang Kai-shek didn't know anything about it.

And they achieved an agreement. They got a deal. Roosevelt needed the Soviet Union in the war against Japan. So he asked Stalin to join the war. Instead, he allowed China to conquer Manchuria, a part of China. Say nothing to Chiang Kai-shek. When you read the diaries of Chiang Kai-shek, Chiang Kai-shek would learn about it shortly after this. He was so furious. And he blamed Americans and stuff like that. Just imagine.

if Roosevelt did not do this, would we have communist China? Yeah.

Yeah, it's fascinating. Before we get to that point, and you're right, it's the absolutely key moment, isn't it? Certainly in terms of the relationship between the Americans and Cangguo Shack, and also the malign influence that America seemed to have on the course of politics in China. But before that, there is still military support flowing in for the Kuomintang, isn't there? I mean, this so-called Operation Matterhorn, the attempt to, you know, get the bomber bases up and running. Tell me a little bit about that. I mean,

How successful was that? Because it does provoke the Japanese to respond, doesn't it? This is absolutely right. The American help to Chiang Kai-shek was quite limited because all the harbors and ports were closed by the Japanese. So they could organize an airlift across Tibet, but it was not enough.

That's the point. That's why Stilwell developed a plan to fight the Japanese in India and Burma because they were interested in the Burmese road in the mountains and even built the road later named after Stilwell. But

Actually, it was not enough. The American policy during the Civil War was not consistent. From my perspective, the major mistake of Truman, who, unlike Roosevelt, understood clearly the Chinese Communist art commune. He didn't trust them. At the same time, if you get back, for example, for Truman Doctrine, he declared the policy of containment in the name of democracy, to spread democracy around the world.

That was the major goal. After World War II, his major obsession was to democratize China, to build a democratic coalition government in China. That was a ridiculous idea because neither Mao Zedong nor Chiang Kai-shek want any democracy. China was not ready for democracy. But if you take into account that Mao Zedong tried to present himself

as a liberal Democrat, then you can see that Truman, with his democracy, played in the hands of Stalin. When he talked about democracy, we need democracy, democracy, who is the leader of democracy? Mao Zedong. So he played in the hands of Mao Zedong and Stalin. So that was the major mistake.

But they began to understand that the communists would definitely win the civil war of China. Because, again, the army of Chiang Kai-shek looked like a conglomerate of warlords. It was the major Achilles heel. The Americans provided Chiang Kai-shek with weapons.

But some generals during the civil war preferred to surrender to communists because the communists promised that they will not undermine the political positions of the generals. And they gave them very high positions in the communist administration. So they simply surrendered and they would give all the American weapons to Chinese communists.

One of the eyewitnesses in Shanghai was greatly surprised when he saw the communist troops entering Shanghai. He was in an apartment and looked outside and saw how the communists were entering the city. All of them had American guns. That's amazing. So just to sum up, Alexander, you've said that history has really seen...

Chiang in two ways. And you write this in the introduction to your book, on the one hand, a perfidious ruler who thirsted after unlimited power and responsible for the death of huge numbers of people, 1.5 million innocent people. But on the other hand, a great revolutionary, a fighter for the national liberation of his people, a patriot, a leading political and military figure of the 20th century, which is really what we're talking about, the

the generalissimo aspect, but also someone who, even in his dictatorship of Taiwan, it was a benevolent dictatorship, as you pointed out, and it turned it into a flourishing state, you know, based on principles that some of us would recognize living in the West today. So on balance, really, I mean, I'm just asking you for a summary. Where did you come down on whether or not he was a great leader? Yeah, he was the great leader. But, you

You cannot find an ideal person in world history. I know only one, Jesus Christ. But all other great leaders, not great leaders, minor leaders, all of us, we're a mixture. We all have our advantages and the weak points and stuff like this because we are human beings. And what I try to show in Chiang Kai-shek's book, first of all, that he was a human being

And he, like any human being, he made mistakes. And sometimes he even, as the leader of China, committed crimes. Indeed, according to my calculation, 1.5 million innocent people lost their lives. Of course, this is a terrible crime. But at the same time, he laid economic and social foundations for Taiwan's prosperity and democracy.

I mean, democracy is a society of the middle class. If you do not develop, if you do not establish a strong middle class as the social foundation of the society, your society will never come to democracy.

This is the major goal. Many great leaders in world history understood it, like Meiji, for example, in Japan, or Lee Kuan Yew in Singapore. Many. He started privatization on Taiwan. He gave land to the killers. He gave industrial enterprises to the private owners and laid foundation for the future democratic transformation. In the wake of his death, his son promoted democracy.

But look at Russia, it's absolutely different. It's absolutely different. It's a group of oligarchs who control the Russian society. And this kind of society will never come to democracy and we see what's going on. It's an authoritarian regime, totalitarian regime. So you cannot find the ideal. Yeah, yeah. You know, Mao Zedong also killed lots of people, but his policy led China...

to the deadlock. The final point, though, Alexander, is that history has probably underestimated Chiang Kai-shek. I think so. And I will tell you that in February, this year in February, I was in Taiwan. I presented my books, also came out in Taiwan, three books, Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping, and Chiang Kai-shek at the International Book Fair in Taiwan. And not all the Taiwanese people

were ready to accept my ideas. In particular, Chiang Kai-shek still seems to be a dictator to the young generation, the young generation of Taiwanese. But I'm very...

Glad that some of the young people who attended my lecture after that, they would come to me with my book and keep saying that before your presentation, I had hated Chiang Kai-shek, but now I just got interested. I want to read the book and learn more.

We don't know much about Chiang Kai-shek because for us he was a dictator and that's it. But it looks like that not everything is so easy. He was a multifaceted figure. Of course, we should keep in mind that he killed lots of people. Of course. But by the way, you can also say that Peter the Great was a bloody dictator. Peter the Great built St. Petersburg, killing lots of people. Right.

St. Petersburg, a magnificent city, is built on the bones of Russian serfs. Just give me an example of an ideal great leader in world history. And by the way, talking about England, how about Cromwell? And say Irish and Scots that Oliver Cromwell is a great leader.

They will say, he's a criminal. Yeah, thank you, Alexander. It's absolutely fascinating. And I, for one, have learned a lot more about Chiang, both from reading your book and hearing you talk about it today. It's absolutely brilliant. Thank you so much. I hope everyone goes out and learns a little bit more about Chinese history, actually, because I think in the West, we need much more of an understanding of their mindset. Yeah, thank you so much. Well, that was great. Do join us on Friday for the latest from Ukraine. Goodbye.