Chiang Kai-Shek's (Invisible) Marathon To The West

Abstract

Peter Perdue's China Marches West chronicles in fascinating details how the Qing Empire expanded its frontiers into Central Eurasia. After the People's Republic of China (PRC) was established, Zhou Enlai praised the Manchus of the Qing Dynasty for creating a vast territorial legacy for the PRC. Yet, “China's far west,” economic development and political management of which have preoccupied Beijing in the past few decades, may still have been lost without the arduous efforts made by the immediate successors to the Qing Empire, the Chinese Nationalists. While ruling mainland China before 1949, Chiang Kai-shek did not get the chance to march west and to fully materialize China's sovereignty over its frontier regions such as Mongolia, Tibet, and Xinjiang. In the meantime, Chiang and his associates never stopped their marathon-like long race for converting the territorial legacy of the Qing Empire into a national state. Before they relocated to Taiwan, the Chinese Nationalists took military, political, and diplomatic measures to maintain Chinese claim of sovereignty over several alienated frontiers. As the Nationalist rule ended in China, the claim over the former Qing domain minus Outer Mongolia was not internationally challenged. It is from the Nationalists that the Chinese Communists received the relay baton for China's national conversion