Seeds of Destruction – Nationalist China in War and Revolution, 1937–1949

Seeds of DestructionNationalist China in War and Revolution, 1937-1949\nAuthor(s): Lloyd E. Eastman\nFormat: Paperback\nPublisher: Stanford University Press, United States\nImprint: Stanford University Press\nISBN-13: 9780804741866, 978-0804741866\nSynopsis\nThe question \""Who lost China?\"" has provoked political vituperation and academic controversy ever since the Chinese Communists drove the Nationalist regime of Chiang Kai-shek off the mainland in 1949. In this study based on a wide array of hitherto unused documentary sources, the author delves deeply into the inner workings of the Nationalist regime and concludes that the Nationalists collapsed largely as a result of their own failings. Most strikingly, he uses the records and memoirs of the Nationalists themselves to document the weaknesses of the Nationalist rule. For even Chiang Kai-shek said of the Kuomintang on the eve of its final defeat in 1949, \""This kind of party should long ago have been destroyed and swept away!\""\n\.