By Robert Payne
Weybright & Talley, New York
1969, 338 pp., US$10
Reviewed by Wu Lin-yung
This is the first biography of President Chiang Kai-shek in some years. The first inclination is to condemn it as a hatchet job, which it certainly is. But on second thought, a more damning criticism may be on the wholly unforgivable grounds of dullness plagued with inaccuracies.
Payne was born in England and educated there, on the continent and in South Africa. The jacket notes say he was a foreign correspondent in the Spanish Civil War, was attached to the British Embassy in wartime Chungking and taught at Chinese universities. He has lived in the United States since 1946.
The jacket notes also say that Payne is a biographer of Lenin and Stalin. Yet no list of Payne's other books is contained in the volume itself. Stranger still is the failure to mention that Payne's biography of Mao Tse-tung was published in 1950 and was revised as recently as last year. In the two latest editions, at least, the Chiang and Mao book jacket designs are identical.
The publisher, author or both have not discriminated in one sense, It the Chiang work does not make mention of the Mao biography neither does the latter call attention to the existence of the former. Could it be that Payne is ashamed of having written of both?
Aside from some recollections of Chungking, Payne has relied entirely on secondary sources and not all c those are reliable. Readers familiar with the other biographies of Chiang Kai-shek and the President's own works will find nothing new excel a poisonous point of view that couldn't be justified by anything less than malice.
He says that he has divorce President Chiang from legend "to see him as he was and not as his propagandists saw him". Nevertheless, his heaviest reliance is on what he would call the principal work of propaganda-the so-called "authorized" biography by Hollington Tong.
Fewer than 30 works are listed in the bibliography. One of them is George Kerr's Formosa Betrayed. It is shocking that Payne should have relied principally upon this scurrilous collection of lies, rumors and half-truths for the two chapters devoted to the nearly 20 years that Chiang Kai-shek has spent on Taiwan.
Amazingly, in a biographer who makes a pretense of objectivity, Payne has not one word to say about Taiwan progress that even enemies of the Republic of China admit.
To him, the island province is a police state, the bureaucracy is corrupt, the people are in jailor in chains, intellectuals are trying to roll away and the only incidents of importance have been the Lei Chen case and the sacking of the U.S. Embassy. Anyone with the slightest knowledge of the Taiwan of today will attest that Payne is writing about an island that does not exist.
He has nothing to say of the economic, political, social and cultural developments that have taken place on Taiwan under President Chiang's policy of making it a "model province" where the policies to be implemented in a liberated China can be tested.
How would Payne dismiss the fact that Taiwan has Asia's second highest standard of living?
If President Chiang is an authoritarian, how is it that local government has been developed to a point never known in China before? And how is it possible that elections of additional members of such national representative bodies as the National Assembly, Legislative Yuan and Control Yuan could be scheduled for this year?
Payne pictures President Chiang is an unchanging Confucianist. How to explain, then, Taiwan's modernization and the President's ceaseless emphasis on the development of science, an area of human knowledge that was unknown to Confucius?
If the President's thinking about mainland recovery is entirely in military terms, as Payne maintains, how is it that Chiang Kai-shek is the originator of the "70 per cent politics and 30 per cent military" formula for the liberation of the Chinese mainland?
Because Payne is confused, he often confuses the reader. When he has something good to say about President Chiang, he invariably seeks to attribute this to external causality. If there is something good in one of the President's books, his secretaries must have been responsible.
When at Sian Chiang Kai-shek showed great courage and refused to compromise with wrong even to save his own life, Payne suggests that he was playing a "psychological game". In Payne's version, it is the Young Marshal who is wronged rather than Chiang Kai-shek.
Errors appear in some personal details about Chiang Kai-shek's life. Payne dismisses Madame Chiang as not having been influential, thereby ignoring her role in the President's conversion to Christianity, her service as translator and interpreter, and her very great role in Sino-American relations.
It is unfortunate that a book such as Payne's should come along at a time when there is demand for an up-to-date, objective biography of President Chiang.
Hollington Tong's study is still the best and most detailed but much has happened since 1953. The same is true of the lesser biographies. Nor has there been a comprehensive and fair study of Taiwan for the period of post-Japanese years.
Even a new authorized" biography would be welcome. But with all the interest in China studies, a competent scholar-biographer should be able to wrangle a foundation grant for the book on Chiang Kai-shek that is yet to be written.
Assessments of Chiang Kai-shek differ and will continue to, even as do those of Churchill, Roosevelt and De Gaulle. Few will deny, however, that President Chiang ranks among the half dozen top free world leaders of the 20th century.
Actors cannot remain on the stage of history forever. This is the moment for the definitive biography that will stand up into the 21st century. Payne misses that target by a thousand miles.
CHINA:
YELLOW PERIL?
RED HOPE?
By C. R. Hensman
Westminster Press, Philadelphia
1968, US$2.65.
Reviewed by Charles C. Clayton
As the title of this paperback suggests, Communist China remains an enigma to the free world. It is interesting that most of the Western writers who have attempted to resolve the engima have been British. It is significant that their studies do not take into account Peiping's current confrontation with Moscow, nor events on the Chinese mainland in the last two years, including Mao Tse-tung's apparent designation of his successor. A great deal of what has been written about the Red Chinese regime by British authors seems to be wishful thinking.
A number of Englishmen assume that Mao has mellowed and that Communist China is no longer the "Yellow Peril". Hensman wants to accept this premise but almost, it seems, against his better judgment. Born in Ceylon, he has written extensively on international affairs and has been a producer of current affairs programs for the BBC. He admits in his foreword that relations between Red China and what he calls "Euramerica", meaning Europe and North America, "could be worse than they are, and it is only wishful thinking that makes some of us act as though they cannot get any worse."
While the final chapters tend to discount the Peiping threat, the greater part of the book is devoted to a discussion of reasons why the free world continues to fear Red China's "aggressive intentions" and to be concerned lest the Chinese Communists "will be able to flex their muscles more ominiously within a decade".
Hensman concedes that Peiping's isolation from the rest of the world is of her own choosing. He writes that "In her attitude to the United Nations, too, China has manifested the same kind of un-cooperative intransigent attitude. Though United Nations' membership is normal for all states, China is not even interested in joining this valuable, international and peace-keeping organization ... China mentions the United Nations only to attack it."
The author points out the "aggression and expansionism with which (Red) China is charged. Towards the Americans in Taiwan and Southeast Asia, towards the Russians, towards India, towards their neighbors in adjoining territories, towards Ceylon, towards Indonesia, towards Australia, towards Africa and towards Western Europe and North America the intentions of the Chinese are reported to be hostile. It is no exaggeration to say that no country's security appears to be assured as long as China continues on her present way".
Like other British writers and despite all the evidence to the contrary, Hensman is inclined to accept the word of the Red Chinese that great progress has been made on the mainland in recent years. A clue to his thinking is this statement:
"The best guides to what is happening in (Red) China is the Chinese themselves ... The best single guide to contemporary China is the writings of Mao Tse-tung." This statement was made, of course, before the rise of the Red Guard, but it indicates the author's obvious wish to give Red China the benefit of every doubt.
Hensman is on sounder ground when he suggests that the West, and the United States particularly, have not fully understood the rising tide of nationalism in Asia and have not accepted the fact that the Western form of democracy and way of life may not be best for Asia. The author quotes this significant statement from an address by Dr. Sun Yat-sen:
"In comparison with other nations we have the greatest population and the oldest culture, of four thousand years duration. We ought to be advancing in line with the nations of Europe and America. But the Chinese people have only family and clan groups; there is no national unity. Consequently, in spite of four hundred million people gathered together in one China, we are in fact but a loose sheet of sand. We are the poorest and weakest state in the world, occupying the lowest position in international affairs ... 1f we do not earnestly promote nationalism and weld together our four hundred million into a strong nation we face tragedy, the loss of our nation and the destruction of our race."
These words were spoken many years ago. Hensman makes the mistake of ignoring what has happened in Taiwan since 1949. There is no mention of the Republic of China and the development of Taiwan province since Mao usurped power on the mainland. In essence, he is saying that the free world's involvement in Asia must be evaluated solely on a basis of what has taken place under Communism. Whether this myopic approach is motivated by ignorance or intent, it is a fatal shortcoming. There cannot be any real appraisal of Asia without taking into account the progress of Taiwan as compared with the mistakes and failures on the mainland.
In his final chapter, the author admits that Maoist China poses a "problem" for the world and that "we need to know more than we are now allowed to know" about Communist China. However, his thesis that the United States and Europe want to "destroy Red China" is sheer nonsense. More than that, it is in lines with propaganda from Peiping. The free world's primary concern is to make certain that the Maoists are not permitted to extend their sphere of influence by aggression. There is reason to believe that the security of Asia and the world lies in Taiwan and not in Peiping.
The value of this book lies primarily in what it reveals of some of the current thinking in England. Realists will not agree with either the author's appraisal of Red China or with his conclusions.