Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016. viii, 316 pp. (Maps.) US$99.99, cloth. ISBN 978-1-107-14463-7.
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. 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 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 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 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 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.
Colin Green
Kwantlen Polytechnic University, Surrey, Canada
pp. 564-566