China in Disintegration (Transformation of Modern China Series)

After the 1911 fall of the Manchus came the most hideous breakdown in Chinese history. Sheridan, a Northwestern University scholar, concentrates on the Kuomintang movement of Chiang Kaishek, insisting that we judge a political force by whether it solves the problems posed to it, not, as Chiangs partisans prefer, by means of whatifs. Sheridans focus on the KMT brings more to light than do many surveys of Maos revolutionaries. The KMT failed either to create an effective dictatorship or to mobilize fascist passions which could ensure willingness to sacrifice. Thus the difficulty in squeezing enough wealth out of the peasantry to meet a foreign debt which totaled half the national revenue. The KMT did ensure that forced opium production took up at least a fifth of Chinese cropland by the 19291933 period, and they consolidated a soldier recruitment system that approximated Nazi roundups. However, the book underlines Chiangs failure to give the masses a Strength through Joy spirit; and, as wartime inflation of 300% gave way to postwar collapse, the antiCommunist pitch became emptier and emptier. The Kuomintang turned into a mere holding operation and faded into chaos. Sheridan gives a strong sense of the rapine of the warlords who were Chiangs offandon allies, and of the feeble heritage of Sun Yatsens patriotic platitudes. He leaves out explicit investigation of the international context while underlining, more than most writers, Chiangs commitment to repay external debt at the expense of the Chinese people. A sound and striking approach to these decades of desperation in the lives of a quarter of the human populationif not bypassed in the glut of China books, it may encourage students and academics to go further. Kirkus Reviews