Many Western authors, having caught the China fever, have produced numerous books on all sorts of relevant topics, ranging from Chinese food to Oriental philosophy.
The Soong Dynasty is in the same trend, but with a big difference in focus: it deals with contemporary Chinese history via sketchy biographies of the major personalities who had such tremendous impact on the society and people of China during the past half century.
Sterling Seagrave, a journalist who grew up on the China-Burma border has put together a seemingly-comprehensive and very controversial version of the activities of the ambitious Soong family, and assigned it all the trappings of dynastic rule in China except in name.
Beginning with Charlie Soong (nee Chiao-shun Han), who as a young stowaway grew up under the protection and care of a Methodist Church organization and Julian Carr, a wealthy industrialist in North Carolina, the "dynasty" endured from the Chinese Republican Revolution through the death of Soon Ching-ling, widow of Dr. Sun Yat-sen, founding father of the Republic of China, and in her later years, a vice chairman of the Communist "People's Republic."
Members of the Soong extended family included President Chiang Kai-shek, who married May-ling Soong (now living in the United States); H.H. Kung, husband of Ai-ling Soong; T.V. Soong, T.L. Soong, and T.A. Soong—all played important roles in modern Chinese history between the 1920s and the 1960s.
With the exception of Soong Ching-ling, whose sympathy for the Chinese Communist Party brought her prominence after 1949, all the rest of the above-mentioned historical personalities are subjected to severe critical judgments by the author for, among others, what he alleges to be financial and criminal ties with the Shanghai Green Gang led by the notorious Tu Yue-sheng (referred to in the book as Big Eared Tu).
In fact, the author quite clearly states in his Prologue that he deliberately chose not to include in his manuscript, observations and insights from the most obvious sources, such as Soong family allies. Instead, he said, he chose a way of revealing the Soongs that he feels is less subject to interpretation by friends or foes: Our translation—The author relied on obscure sources that were most damaging to the Soongs in order that the family's plumage might cease to dazzle.
For a reader used to Chinese sources and familiar with Chinese contemporary history from the Republican Revolution of 1911 to the Communist takeover in 1949, The Soong Dynasty may bring shocks and surprises in its treatment of many of the historical figures. For example, the author characterizes Dr. Sun as a sly, wary, ever-shifting adversary—replete with mercurial changes of personality. Worse, the author alleges that Dr. Sun lied frequently and flamboyantly, shifting blithely from one set of principles to another as the occasion required—a political chameleon.
Central to the author's degrading characterizations of Dr. Sun (and the late President Chiang Kai-shek and others) is the fact that Seagrave did not bother to support his allegations with facts or documentation. Even less did he acknowledge what others said about these historical figures.
When Seagrave does give sources to support his conclusions, he offers the most biased and unreliable, who are often without any standing among Chinese intellectuals.
Such "sources" are use to create the author's portraits of the late President Chiang Kai-shek and members of the Soong family. There was no attempt on the author's part to treat these people according to accepted standards of objectivity or to demonstrate factual accuracy.
Granted, Seagrave never said that he was writing a book of history about contemporary China; nor did he ever hide his personal preference for biographical and other sources instead of the official or authoritative ones. Yet he would have better served his own reputation as a journalist-author and done more justice to the people he wrote about if he had tried to give a balanced account—offered contrasting views on controversial facts—and left the judgment to the readers.
As the book stands, with this reviewer at least, Seagrave appears to be more a self-appointed propagandist for a cause to defame Nationalist Chinese leaders than a "journalist" who, by professional definition, should be objective and impartial about the people or events he reports on. It is for this reason that this reviewer believes that Seagrave has done a disservice to himself and to the profession he claims, even though the book may have brought him notoriety and fortune, in the short term, following its publication.
This may sound a little harsh, but Seagrave has really sought this kind of reaction and criticism by not being fair to so many people in the first place. It does not mean that The Soong Dynasty is not a readable or fascinating book. In fact, it is both. It only means that readers can be gravely misled and fooled if they have no other sources of information regarding the lives and times of Dr. Sun Yat-sen, the late President Chiang Kai-shek, and the members of the Soong family.
It is this reviewer's hope that Chinese authorities and the members of the Soong family will make more information available to the public, and that historians, whether they are Chinese or not, will bring out more reliable, objective, and comprehensive accounts of contemporary Chinese history than that which Seagrave offers.—(Dr. Chiang is a senior researcher-reporter with Time magazine, specializing in Asian affairs).