Chiang Kai-shek's Politics of Shame: Leadership, Legacy, and National Identity in China by Grace Huang (review)

Abstract

Grace Huang. Chiang Kai-shek’s Politics of Shame: Leadership, Legacy, and National Identity in China. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, . xiv,  pp. Hardcover $., ISBN . Paperback $., ISBN . As Xi Jinping regularly invokes the “century of humiliation” trope to mobilize support for the Communist Party-State’s domestic and international goals, it is instructive to understand the historical context of how Chiang Kai-shek deployed chi—“humiliation” or “shame”—to legitimize his authoritarian rule in China’s Nationalist era (–). It is, in fact, difficult to think of another leader who invoked shame more often than the Generalissimo. Grace Huang’s monograph Chiang Kai-shek’s Politics of Shame provides a grounded explanation of the historical resonances of his use of chi, revealing how Chiang was a more effective leader than scholars have typically acknowledged. Chiang Kai-shek has generally been derided as brutal dictator who prioritized his own power over the well-being of the people and then “failed” in  because of his lack of progressive vision. Huang offers a more nuanced understanding of Chiang’s motivations and accomplishments. She reveals that while he lacked sufficient material and institutional resources to challenge encorachments of the Japanese militarily, Chiang mobilized humiliation as a cultural resource to create a national narrative that had broad emotive appeal that could, at times, be parlayed into helping him achieve his domestic and foreign-policy goals. The first three chapters focus on “agency” as a category for analyzing leadership. Huang reveals much about Chiang’s agency through her extensive use of shilüe, compilations of Chiang’s diary entries, speeches, telegrams, and other records of his own words. Inspired by the imperial-era creation of “Veritable Records,” or dynastic histories, Chiang commissioned the shilüe in order to later construct an “official” history of himself as leader. Unlike the final published history, shilüe served as raw material for internal Kuomintang (KMT) use and were not intended for public consumption. As part of the democratization process in Taiwan, however, the shilüe were published from  to , with monthly volumes covering the years from  to . While Chiang clearly wrote his diary with an eye for posterity, it and the shilüe offer extensive personal reflections that provide real insights into Chiang’s worldview, motivations, and how his perceptions changed over time. Reviews©  by University of Hawai‘i Press Through her reading of the shilüe, Huang discovered that the Jinan Incident of May  was far more important in shaping Chiang’s attitudes as a leader than previously understood. This violent confrontation between Japanese forces and Chiang’s National Revolutionary Army took place at a key moment in the Northern Expedition to unify China. Chiang’s forces took heavy losses, his representatives were tortured, and he ultimately had to issue an apology and agree to suppress anti-Japanese sentiment in order to resume his Northern Expedition. The shilüe extensively record his righteous indignation. His humiliation, reportedly, ran deep. After the Jinan Incident, he included a daily entry in his diary noting at least one thing he would do to “avenge humiliation.” Because their foes were superior in strength, in his public pronouncements Chiang called on himself and the nation to emulate the ancient King of Wu, Goujian (r. – B.C.E.) whose state was defeated by the more powerful Yue. Goujian passively endured humiliating insults, biding his time until he could help his people gradually rebuild their strength to overcome the Yue. Chiang could successfully invoke this story because it was widely known and people in early twentieth-century China could relate to its familiar lessons of sacrifice and perseverance while anticipating the ultimate victory attainable through moral rectitude. In promoting his version of the “avenging humiliation” narrative to justify the avoidance of direct military engagement while unifying and training the population, Chiang showed in subsequent years that he could still take reasonable action within this framework and make progress on his goals. He worked to resist foreign imperialism and win back sovereign rights lost under the unequal treaty system (such as tariff autonomy). He was not simply focused on furthering his own power, as his detractors claim. He...