The Nationalist Era in China, 1927-1949 by Lloyd E. Eastman

Originally published on Amazon.com.

Firstly, I want to endorse the excellent review by Matthew G. Reinert. I have a bit stronger feeling about the imperfection of this book.

Let's start with the title The Nationalist Era in China 1927-1949. Though it is technically accurate, but it may be slightly misleading because it has more contents about the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) than the Chinese Nationalist Party (Kuomintang or KMT). For example, the part covering the period 1937-1945 has 55 pages on the KMT vs. 114 pages on the CCP. I think a more appropriate tile would simply be China 1927-1949 or The Rise of the CCP and fall of the KMT 1927-1949.

Though this book is by no means an endorsement of the CCP, and it actually has many comments or facts unfavorable to the CCP, its contents are largely consistent with the history books published in Mainland China that are heavily censored by the CCP. The fact that the book by Lloyd Eastman Seeds of Destruction: Nationalist China in War and Revolution, 1937-1949 is allowed to be translated and published in Mainland China makes me wonder how fair and objective Eastman's works on China are. Even some longtime loyal CCP members have difficulty publishing their works that happen to tell the truth and the whole truth in Mainland China.

For Chinese people, the period 1937-1949 is the most important and fascinating one of Modern China because, during this period, the nation's survival was challenged, 20 million or much more people died, national heroes arose in mass while cowardly traitors were plenty. The overwhelming impression that the book gives about the Nationalists in this period is that they are incompetent, corrupted, divided, unpopular, weak. This perception would support the invasion plan of the Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) in 1937 - conquering China in 3 months. However, this jibes extremely poorly with historical facts - IJA tried for 8 years, and had never effectively occupied more than 1/3 of China. The Nationalist government officially and effectively lead and governed a country that had been exploited and abused by foreign powers, and torn by civil wars for almost a century. In WWII, some fully modernized countries collapsed in days or weeks even with foreign aid.  To the contrary, the Nationalist government led China fighting the invaders for 8 years with very limited foreign aid (about 1% to 2% of what Europe received), and its will to survive and defeat the enemy never wavered despite relocating the capital twice (almost thrice). The Nationalist army fought about 30 thousand battles including 22 major campaigns involving more than 100,000 troops each. More than 200 Nationalist generals gave their lives in the battle fields. When one examines all the facts in that period, a much more favorable view of the Nationalists would arise.

As Matthew G. Reinert alludes to in his review, there is no better alternative to this book for discussions on the Nanjing era despite its shortcomings.  This is sad in some sense.