Spymaster: Dai Li and Chinese secret Service, by Frederick Wakeman Jr. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003. xxii + 650 pp. US$75.00/£49.95 (hardcover). This work is an important contribution to political history of Republican China. It analyses in great detail hidden side of Chiang Kai-shek's system of power. In a weakly institutionalised regime like that of Kuomintang government, security services played a disproportionately important role, and Wakeman draws on a rich variety of sources, including memoirs and archival sources, to paint a complex portrait of Chiang's sinister security tsar of 1930s and 1940s. The key to Dai Li's influence was his personal relationship with Chiang, to whom he remained doggedly loyal. Dai Li jealously guarded this relationship and never allowed any of his subordinates to communicate directly with Chiang. Dai Li also carefully cultivated anonymity, which helped form popular view of him as a hidden, baleful power whose reach extended throughout China and into all levels of society. Western contemporaries referred to him as China's Himmler, although this was wide of mark. As Wakeman shows, Dai Li's loyalty to Chiang and his control over his security organization were based on traditional particularistic ties. His hero was Zhuge Liang, great strategist of Three Kingdoms period, and he viewed his relationship with Chiang as similar to that of Zhuge Liang's faithful service to Liu Bei. Three key elements secured Dai Li's rise by 1940s to a dominant position in security services. The first was his membership of highly secret for Vigorous Practice (Lixingshe). Founded in 1932, Lixingshe, according to Wakeman, constituted a military freemasonry among Whampoa Military Academy graduates that combined nativist elements with foreign fascist influences. Its members, for example, took a personal oath of loyalty to Chiang as the Leader. Membership of Lixingshe gave Dai Li access to key military figures in Chiang's entourage, and he used its front organizations such as Renaissance Society (also known as Blueshirts) as a cover to extend his security service operations. A major watershed in Dai Li's career was Xi'an Incident of December 1936. As Wakeman notes, Chiang's capture by Zhang Xueliang and Yang Hucheng in Xi'an while on an inspection tour of Northwest constituted a major intelligence failure for which Dai Li held himself personally responsible. seeking redemption, he deliberately put himself in harm's way by accompanying Madame Chiang and others to Xi'an. Chiang was impressed by this act of loyalty, and in wake of crisis Chiang considered Dai Li as his personal protector. Finally, during Sino-Japanese War Dai Li gained assistance of US intelligence (the ONI and OSS), through jointly administered Sino-American Co-operative Organization (SACO), for his own intelligence operations against Japanese and puppet forces. This agreement was something of a coup, from which Dai Li obtained modern weapons, supplies and professional training for his agents. It also enhanced his standing among Chiang's coterie and strengthened his influence within wartime regime. Despite his stormy relations with head of OSS, agreement endured until end of war. Wakeman discusses in some detail Dai Li's involvement in underground war against Communists in Shanghai's foreign settlements. Dai Li cut his teeth spying on Communist cadets at Whampoa Academy in 1920s, and eliminating Communists and other dissidents remained a major aspect of his work throughout 1930s. …