“DEEP CHANGES IN INTERPRETIVE CURRENTS”? CHIANG KAI-SHEK STUDIES IN THE POST-COLD WAR ERA

Abstract

This essay explores the nature of the changing scholarship on Chiang Kai-shek, reviewing some of the established assessments which dominated writing about Chiang for much of the latter half of the twentieth century, but contrasting these with new assessments which are now emerging in both Chinese- and English-language scholarship. The authors examine the ways in which new access to the Chiang Kai-shek diaries, a changing cross-Strait relationship and new attempts to rehabilitate the Republican past in the People's Republic of China have all had major ramifications for scholarship on Chiang. They tease out some of the exciting new threads that such scholarship is leading to, but also ask questions about the limitations and shortcomings of some of the approaches that are now dominant in the field.