How the Kuomintang Lost
WALKER, RICHARD L.
How the Kuomintang Lost A Military History of Modern China: 1924-1949. By F F. Liu. Princeton. 312 pp. $6.00. Reviewed by Richard L. Walker Author, "China Under Communism"; Assistant Professor of...
...policy toward China, could not assist it...
...But there has been a longstanding need to examine an aspect which Stalin, Mao and Chiang all agreed was crucial in China: the military...
...But although the intensity and duration of their resistance astonished the world, Liu points out the doubtful value of the "do or die" strategy which decimated the best Nationalist forces while the Communists followed a policy of "70 per cent expansion, 20 per cent dealing with the Kuomintang and 10 per cent resisting Japan...
...This is not to say that a short-sighted United States policy, corruption, Communist infiltration, social ills and all the other reasons usually given were unimportant...
...Military and Government leaders on Taiwan should ponder over this dispassionate analysis by one of their countrymen, and every U.S...
...Liu believes that, from a military standpoint, this was one of the worst decisions of the postwar Government...
...The conglomerate forces which resulted were united mainly by the powerful personality of Chiang Kai-shek, which also gets balanced treatment...
...These factors played an important role, but Liu does not forget that the Civil War tide turned on bloody battles...
...In dealing with the Nationalist defeat from 1945-1949, Liu makes two points often overlooked...
...Second, beginning in June 1946 the Nationalists launched a drastic military reorganization...
...The result is frequently as much a caricature as explaining events in China solely in terms of fellow-travelers in the State Department...
...Soviet organization and training in the United Front of 1924-1927...
...This is an important book...
...military, beginning in 1942...
...and, finally, the impact of the U.S...
...Assistant Professor of History, Yale University In the many agonizing reappraisals of events in modern China, there has been a tendency to underplay the role of the military and talk in terms of revolutionary masses and long-run historical forces...
...It allowed the Whampoa clique to shunt capable generals into obscure and unimportant positions, and, by destroying the organization which had come through the war, contributed greatly to the Nationalist defeat...
...warlord localism...
...First, like some of its allies, the Nationalist Government had to accede to war-weary demands for demobilization at the very time the Communists were building up their forces...
...There are no vivid accounts of the many important battles in the 25 years covered...
...Furthermore, it abets Peking's claim that "the Chinese people have made their choice" and encourages acceptance of theories of inevitability which breed defeatism...
...Originally intended as a prelude to military unification, it disrupted the armed forces, confused the Government, lost all the confidence of the Communists, and even failed to achieve the unqualified support of the very American advisory mission which had advocated it and which later, because of U.S...
...In 19 roughly chronological chapters, Liu brings into focus the many influences which played a role in the Nationalist military establishment: traditional Chinese concepts of war and maneuver...
...The Nationalists fought hard, and casualties were enormous, especially in Manchuria where their strategy was at its bungling worst and at a time when "the hands of MAGIC [the Military Advisory Group in China] were effectively tied by an American directive which prevented them from rendering the National Government the kind of assistance it required...
...Liu's book should help restore some balance...
...officer going to Taiwan should use it as a starting point for understanding some of the historical forces which, despite vast changes in recent years, are still at work in the Nationalist Army...
...It reminds us of the great extent to which the choice was made for the Chinese people on the battlefield and in the military organization of opposing forces...
...the work of German advisers between 1927 and 1937...
...It is a book which anyone interested in modern China can rend with immense profit...
...Liu's book tackles this need with a rare combination of exhaustive scholarly research and readability...
...The book is limited to Nationalist military history—the Communists get minor play—and the accent is primarily on problems of organization, command and training...
...the cliquishness of the first graduates of the Whampoa military academy...
...Many of the demobilized troops, as well as former puppet troops, were absorbed into the Communist armies...
...By the time the author has finished cataloguing the difficulties facing the Nationalists in World War II, the reader marvels that they resisted the Japanese at all...
...But within this framework the author handles his subject with admirable clarity and insight...
...From a military point of view, perhaps the greatest failure of the Nationalists lay in their inability to create a general staff system to overcome favoritism, disunity and weaknesses in the ranks...
...As Liu states: "It was ill-timed and ill-planned, and therefore ill-advised...
Vol. 39 • August 1956 • No. 34
