General He Yingqin: the Rise and Fall of Nationalist China. <I>By Peter Worthing</I>
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Pacific Affairs: Volume 90, No. 3 – September 2017 The chapters that frame this volume make clear the different approaches that China and the United States have towards energy security. Ideologically, US and Chinese pursuit of energy security reflect radically differing embedded assumptions. As the authors note, while the US has long advocated markets over mercantilism and institutions that help avoid zero-sum approaches in crisis, China has emphasized securing external supply and developing long- term state-to-state relationships. The cases presented here suggest that the US has not used energy to constrain China’s rise, but neither has it focused on safeguarding the US market vision for energy. This volume strongly illustrates China’s long-term commitment to ensuring its access to adequate energy for the future. Meanwhile, the United States, through the development of its resources at home (and radical shifts in price), has become less engaged in energy development and in the concerns of resource-rich states. How China’s participation will change markets and relations in the long term remains to be seen, but this volume offers rare insight into how China’s participation is progressing to date. National War College/National Defense University Theresa Sabonis-Helf Washington, DC, USA *Views expressed in this review are solely the author’s and do not represent the official position of the US Government, Department of Defense, or the National Defense University. GENERAL HE YINGQIN: The Rise and Fall of Nationalist China. By Peter Worthing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016. viii, 316 pp. (Maps.) US$99.99, cloth. ISBN 978-1-107-14463-7. Copyright (c) Pacific Affairs. All rights reserved. For more than a half century conventional wisdom has attributed the defeat of the Nationalists and the triumph of the Chinese Communist Party to the corruption and incompetence of Chiang Kai-shek and his inner circle. Delivered by Ingenta to IP: 192.168.39.151 on: Thu, 30 Sep 2021 20:20:37 Ever since Mao and the Communists swept to power in 1949, the prevailing view has been that Chiang and his cronies were the authors of their own misfortune, reaping the predictable harvest of years of corruption, incompetence, and unwillingness to heed the advice of their American advisers. But in recent years this narrative has started to unravel at the edges, and General He Yingqin: The Rise and Fall of Nationalist China is an important contribution to this process. Peter Worthing, an associate professor of history at Texas Christian University, is well known in military history circles for his earlier work, A Military History of Modern China: From the Manchu Conquest to Tian’anmen Square (Praeger, 2007). His latest work focuses on General He Yingqin, one of the most influential figures in the Nationalist regime and a stalwart supporter of Chiang Kai-shek. In his introduction Worthing provides a concise summary of He’s treatment in standard English-language secondary sources, noting that 564 Book Reviews there are few references to the general despite his having been an important participant in every critical episode of Chiang’s career. Indeed, He’s résumé reads like a chronology of key events in the Nationalist era, making his absence from scholarship on the period puzzling. There are passing references to He in some classic works, such as Lloyd Eastman’s influential book Seeds of Destruction: Nationalist China in War and Revolution (Stanford, 1984), but Worthing notes that these texts dismiss He as incompetent and corrupt, portraying him as a pernicious influence in Chiang’s inner circle. While this view had its origins in wartime criticism directed at He by General Joseph Stilwell and others, the same charges continue to appear in scholarly treatments of the Nationalist era as recently as 2011. To Worthing, this negative portrayal seems difficult to reconcile with He’s long career. While it is conceivable that Chiang might tolerate a certain level of incompetence in exchange for unquestioning loyalty, it strains credulity to assert that he would consistently rely on such a person to handle tasks critical to the survival of his regime. General He was certainly no sinecurist, for he served in important posts throughout the Nationalist era. He clearly enjoyed Chiang’s confidence and exerted a great deal of influence at critical junctures, which in Worthing’s opinion makes him long overdue for further study. General He Yingqin presents a revisionist examination of He’s life, starting with his childhood in Guizhou and ending with his relocation to Taiwan in 1949. Worthing takes full advantage of Chinese-language primary and secondary sources from both sides of the Taiwan Strait in order to situate He in the context of his times. While Worthing is hardly an apologist for Nationalist shortcomings, and does not hesitate to criticize He’s actions where justified, he makes a point of acknowledging the enormous difficulties He faced and the constraints Copyright (c) Pacific Affairs. All rights reserved. under which he operated, factors other scholars have seemed reluctant to consider when passing judgment on him. Worthing’s study starts with a brief overview of He’s early life, with a Delivered by Ingenta to IP: 192.168.39.151 on: Thu, 30 Sep 2021 20:20:37 focus on his education at military academies in China and Japan. Worthing stresses the importance of He’s time in Japan, arguing that it provided him with valuable contacts (including Chiang, who was one year ahead) and a first-class military education. Unlike Chiang, who only attended a military preparatory school in Japan, He went on to graduate from the Imperial Army Academy (Rikugun Shikan Gakkō), receiving what was at the time the very best military education available to both Chinese and Japanese officers. Only a handful of Chinese cadets completed the rigorous program, making He part of a very select company. Worthing does an excellent job of piecing together the details of He’s activities between the 1911 Revolution and his eventual employment at the Whampoa Military Academy as chief instructor in 1924, where he quickly became Chiang’s close collaborator. At Whampoa, Chiang found a kindred spirit in He: both men were sober, fastidious, disciplined, and patriotic, and both had taken away from their time in Japan a faith 565 Pacific Affairs: Volume 90, No. 3 – September 2017 in the military as a vanguard institution in the struggle to build a modern China. As Worthing argues, Chiang and He would become collaborators not because the latter was a reliable yes-man, but because the two soldiers shared a common vision for China. The remaining chapters of the book present a careful analysis of He’s role in the defining events of the Nationalist era. He served, inter alia, as a regimental, divisional, and army commander in the Eastern and Northern Expeditions, director of demobilization and military restructuring, senior commander during the rebellions of 1929 and 1930, commander of the anti-Communist Encirclement campaigns, chief negotiator with the Japanese between the Manchurian and Marco Polo Bridge incidents, minister of war, wartime chief of staff, and even premier for a brief period in 1949. As Worthing reveals, He was no passive bystander in these roles, nor was he simply the executor of others’ policies, but his reserved demeanour and avoidance of the limelight meant that many contemporary observers overlooked his contributions. Worthing’s account of He’s role in the Anti- Japanese War is especially revealing, and provides a long overdue corrective to Stilwell’s harsh criticism. Overall General He Yingqin presents a balanced account of one of the key figures in the Nationalist era, and shines new light on some of the most important events of that period. Worthing succeeds in demonstrating that He was not the incompetent sycophant or reactionary militarist others have made him out to be, and this book should be required reading for anyone seeking a better understanding of the challenges faced by the Nationalist regime. Kwantlen Polytechnic University, Surrey, Canada Colin Green Copyright (c) Pacific Affairs. All rights reserved. KNOWING CHINA: A Twenty-First-Century Guide. By Frank N. Pieke. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016. x, 226 pp. US$26.99, paper. Delivered by Ingenta to IP: 192.168.39.151 on: Thu, 30 Sep 2021 20:20:37 ISBN 978-1-107-58761-8. Frank Pieke adopts a China-centric perspective to move beyond Western preoccupations, desires, or fears. Knowing China is not aimed at determining whether China is or will become capitalist, or remain socialist. Instead, Pieke explores twenty-first-century China as a unique kind of neo-socialist society, combing features of state socialism, neo-liberal governance, capitalism, and rapid globalization. Pieke argues that delineating the distinctive features of this neo-socialist society not only helps us to know contemporary China better but takes us beyond the old dichotomies of West versus East, developed versus developing, traditional versus modernity, democracy versus dictatorship, and capitalism versus socialism. Chapter 1 introduces the concept of neo-socialism. Pieke explains that from the perspective of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), market reform 566.