From the Granite Studio Archives: Mao and Chiang are walking down the street…

With the release of Jay Taylor’s new book, The Generalissimo: Chiang Kai-Shek and the Struggle for Modern China, there has been a spate of articles and reviews following Taylor’s cue and taking a new look at Chiang and his legacy.  One theme that seems to come up frequently in these essays is the question of who ultimately won out in the end, Mao or Chiang? As I wrote last year, it’s a fascinating question and one not easily answered. 

I haven’t read Taylor’s book, so I am not going to specifically address his arguments.  Unsurprisingly, given the subject, the book has inspired a fair amount of controversy.  (See the comments thread to this post on TPD by way of example.)  Part of the controversy has to do with the involvement of the Soong family in allowing access to Chiang Kai-shek’s diary and papers.   

The other part is that any revision of Chiang’s place in history has repercussions in the present, this is hardly a neutral figure.   One notable example was Lloyd Eastman’s The Abortive Revolution (1974), a work known for its in-depth research, but also for the way it pointedly detailed the corruption and ideological bankruptcy of the Nanking Decade.   If one looks at the date of publication and considers when Professor Eastman was doing his research, the political implications of this work  are hard to miss.  

There will be more in the next few years (re)examining the legacies of Chiang and the KMT and Taylor’s book is sure to be only the first of many.  Even in the PRC there seems to be a subtle reasssement at the moment on the subject, especially with the election in Taiwan of Ma Ying-jeou.  One wonders how Chiang and his minions will be portrayed in the grand epic motion picture set to be released in conjunction with the 60th anniversary of the founding of the PRC.

In any case, Here  is my post from June 2008 on the competing legacies of Mao and Chiang.  Enjoy.

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Whether or not our Google culture is making us smarter, dumber, or somewhere in between, I do get a fair bit of traffic from Google searches. Many of them a bit random, but a few are questions plugged into search engines like messages in electronic bottles floating in the Internet sea hoping for a bit of information and enlightenment. I dare not suggest that either information nor enlightenment are available in seller’s quantities from this little hobby of mine, but some of the questions do get me thinking.

Today a user followed this query to the Granite Studio: “How do Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Zedong continue to influence Taiwan and China today?”

It’s obviously a complicated question, but it does recall a comment a Beijing acquaintance of mine made the first time we went to the old South Bar Street to take in the spectacle of a Sanlitun Saturday night:

“This is what all of China would like if Chiang Kai-shek had won the war.”

Ouch.

Then I thought about it: Well, didn’t he?

If the ghosts of Mao and Chiang somehow reconciled over shots of baijiu in the afterlife, and then wandered around Beijing on a rainy afternoon, what would they be thinking? What would they talk about?

Scholars such as Merle Goldman have argued that post-Opening and Reform China is very much in keeping with the KMT vision of a strong one-party state administering a relatively open economy, and suggest that today’s China shares more in common with the Nanking Decade of 1927-1937 than with the Mao years (1949-1976). There might be something to that.

For example, today’s CCP, like the KMT of the 1930s, emphasizes modernization, a strong military, and urban development often at the expense of rural areas. Like the 1930s, today there is a fair amount of personal freedom and autonomy…so long as individuals don’t challenge the political leadership or threaten ‘social stability,’ and as is in the PRC today, the secret police under Chiang’s government were always ready to squash dissent in the name of ‘national unity’ lest that personal freedom and autonomy get a bit too bumptious.

Even the CCP’s recent ‘Harmonious Society’ campaign bears more than a passing resemblance to Chiang’s New Life Movement in that both advocate a kind of Confucian neo-traditionalism in the service of social stability/political loyalty alongside campaigns against “uncivilized/backwards” habits of hygiene and personal deportment.

Moreover, how happy would Mao be with what’s become of his revolution? He would have been pleased that 60 years later, China is a world power, independent, respected, and strong.  On the other hand, rampant corruption, staggering inequalities, and a nation riven with deep class divisions ruled by an elite of technocrats who have abandoned ideology and class struggle in favor of a “whatever works” approach to economic development seems to me the epitome of what the Chairman feared when he decided to ice the economic plans Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping proposed in the wake of the disastrous Great Leap Forward.  (Plans which Deng would revive 15 years and one Cultural Revolution later.)

As I said, it’s a complex question, but one worth considering.

From the archives

• June 14, 2008 -- Mao and Chiang Kai-shek are walking down the street, and Mao says…
• April 18, 2009 -- The Historical Record for April 18, 2009: A tale of two leaders
• July 1, 2011 -- It’s a Mad Mad 90th Anniversary