This lively history of China's Nationalist revolution tells the story of a small group of Chinese patriots headed by Sun Yat-sen until his death in 1925. They mobilised men, money, and propaganda to create a provincial base from which they launched a revolutionary military campaign to unify the country, end imperialist privilege, and bring the Kuomintang to power. Soviet Russia induced the fledgling Chinese Communist Party to join the effort, and sent money, arms, military and political experts to guide the revolution. But there was a fatal flaw in this co-operation, and when the fighting was over, the remnant Communist Party had been driven underground, the Russian experts had been expelled, and a faction-riven Nationalist Party led by Chiang Kai-shek could claim to be China's new government. This study of a key period in China's history, reprinted from Volume 12 of The Cambridge History of China, is solidly based in Chinese, Russian, and Western languages sources.

"Issued under the auspices of the East Asian Institute, Columbia University." Bibliography: p. 432-436.

The Chinese state of the 1920s was one of disunified parts, ruled by warlords too strong for civilians to oust and too weak to resist the demands and bribes of foreign powers. China's treaty ports were crucibles of change in which congregated the educated elite, exposed to modern ways, who felt the need for a national revolution to revitalize their country and to provide her with a new, more integrated political system. Nationwide in their origins and representing varying political ideologies, this elite formed a loose coalition to achieve a common goal. In 1926 the first step in the military campaign known as the Northern Expedition was launched to conquer the armed forces of the warlords, the greatest obstacle in the path toward reunification of China. Until now, historians have ascribed much of the success of the Northern Expedition, culminating in the capture of Peking, to the Communist-led mass organizations who were reported to have won over the populace in the territory ahead of the National Revolutionary Army. Dr. Jordan's research, especially in Communist materials, has uncovered evidence indicating that, although the mass organizations did aid the army at particular points in 1925 and 1926, there had also been a side to the mass movement that was disruptive to the goal of reunification. Of additional import, some of the key participants in the later governments of Taiwan and Peking—among them Chiang Kai-shek, Mao Tse-tung, Chou En-lai, and Lin Piao—received their basic political training in the National Revolution.

With a narrative as briskly paced and vividly detailed as an international thriller, this definitive biography of Chiang Kai-shek masterfully maps the tumultuous political career of Nationalist China's generalissimo as it reevaluates his brave but unfulfilled life. Chiang Kai-shek was one of the most influential world figures of the twentieth century. The leader of the Kuomintang, the Nationalist movement in China, by 1928 he had established himself as head of the government in Nanking. But while he managed to survive the political storms of the 1930s, Chiang's power was continually being undermined by the Japanese on one side and the Chinese Communists on the other. Drawing extensively on original Chinese sources and accounts by contemporaneous journalists, acclaimed author Jonathan Fenby explores little-known international connections in Chiang's story as he unfolds a story as fascinating in its conspiratorial intrigues as it is remarkable for its psychological insights. This is the definitive biography of the man who, despite his best intentions, helped create modern-day China.

A ground-breaking analysis of how the Malayan Communist Party helped forge a Malayan national identity, while promoting Chinese nationalism.