The thought driving Grace Huang's refreshing, abundantly evidenced and clearly written analysis of Chiang Kai-shek's approach to leadership is that he weaponized shame. In explaining her argument, Huang turns to the legend of Goujian, the king of the state of Yue during the Spring and Autumn period. Taken prisoner by the king of the state of Wu, Goujian suffered humiliation after humiliation without complaint, gained his freedom through a display of feigned loyalty, patiently strengthened Yue, and in the end avenged his disgrace. The Goujian story was well known during the late Qing and the Republic. Chiang Kai-shek made use of it: he had the proverb woxin changdan (“to sleep on brushwood and taste gall”), which is a reference to it, painted on the walls of the Whampoa Academy. After the humiliating defeat of his forces at Ji'nan in Shandong province during the 1926–1928 Northern Expedition, he stated in front of troops that if he would be able to endure humiliation like Goujian, he too would avenge his defeat. His diary had a standard entrance under the heading “wiping out shame.” Undoubtedly, and unsurprisingly given China's position in the world and the state of the country economically, overcoming humiliation was on Chiang's mind.
According to Huang, Chiang Kai-shek embodied a narrative of shame to induce deep change in Chinese culture and society. Like Goujian, he decided to bide his time, adopting a policy of “first unification, then resistance” when confronted with Japan's occupation of Manchuria in 1931. He used that time to strengthen the military, promote economic development, improve communications, build schools and universities, and overcome his domestic enemies. By launching the New Life Movement in the mid-1930s, which promoted the virtues of propriety, justice, integrity and shamefulness (li, yi, lian, chi) derived from the Guanzi, he fought the ways in which he judged the China of his day embarrassingly fell below Western standards, ranging from unhygienic habits, slovenliness and bureaucratic slackness to an absence of national pride, a lack of civic mindedness and a dearth of patriotism. These strategies paid off during the 1937–1945 War of Resistance, Huang suggests, when they helped China defeat Japan.
Huang bases her analyses on the diaries of Chiang Kai-shek which are now available in their original at the Hoover Library of Stanford University as well as the 84-volume Draft Notes for Chiang Kai-shek's Biography (Jiang gong shilüe gaoben). The latter, covering Chiang's life from 1927 to 1949, consist of diary entries, excerpts from speeches and articles, letters, telegrams and official documents that, like the Veritable Records of dynastic days, were meant to form the basis of a later official biography of Chiang. By using these materials and by elucidating Chiang from within a Chinese cultural frame, Huang makes a genuine contribution to studies of Chiang Kai-shek available in English, surpassing both Jay Taylor's biography, which is overly defensive, and that of Jonathan Fenby, which puts the boot in once more.
Huang writes as a political scientist interested in political leadership rather than the history of China. A fascinating chapter in the book compares Chiang Kai-shek with Gandhi in India. This is not an obvious thing to do, given that Gandhi stood for non-violence while the battlefield was judge and jury for Chiang. Gandhi embraced weakness; Chiang abhorred it. Huang is careful to note the differences of the situations in which these two men found themselves. Chiang was in office and carried myriad burdens. Gandhi was a free agent. She argues that both were able, through the narratives of humiliation and suffering which they embodied by their actions, their speeches and their self-presentations, to move their societies to overcome far stronger enemies.
In making the case for Chiang, I believe that Huang overstates her case. It may well be true that without Chiang, who was nothing if not stubborn and did not shy away from compelling his country to absorb enormous sacrifices, China would have given up the fight against Japan. However, in the same way that it was more the Soviet Union and the United States than the UK that defeated the Germans, it was the United States rather than China that defeated Japan. Both Churchill and Chiang refused to give in. The UK was protected by the North Sea and the Channel, and it had a strong navy. Chiang did not have that nor a strong army, but he could retreat ever further west. The real weapon of the weak was the ability to refuse to come to the negotiation table and sign a document of surrender.
Huang's study of Chiang nonetheless is informative and thought-provoking. It decisively moves away from the question of whether Chiang failed to stand up to Japan or in fact saved China – the question that has dominated studies of Chiang for nearly eight decades now. She is no doubt right that Chiang sustained and amplified a narrative of humiliation that faded under Mao but which Beijing once again finds useful to promote its agenda. Let us hope that many will follow Huang in the new paths she has opened up.
