There are times when I am reading Jay Taylor’s The Generalissimo that I do wonder about the author’s bias. Chiang Kai-Shek was a flawed man. I think his biggest detractors and supporters would say as much. But there are times where I think Taylor tries too hard to make excuses for the moments when he failed, whether we speak politically, militarily, or morally.

But what is most striking, having finished about half of the book and reaching the resumption of the Chinese Civil War after World War II, are the Americans and their continued, constant naivety about the Chinese Communist Party. Time and again, Taylor details how throughout World War II and even afterwards, the Americans consistently thought that the Chinese Communist Party were not, well, Communist. They were just an agrarian democratic party who wanted best for the people. Nothing more.

It was not just American leftists who talked about how wonderful Stalinist Russia was and now transferred that same love to Mao, though such individuals pop up every now and then in Taylor’s narrative. But plenty of people like George Marshall or Joseph Stilwell seemed to think that while the Russian Communists were bad, the Chinese Communists would be different and were not really Communists. And the Communists did everything in their power to make sure that the Americans thought that, even while Mao all but laughed behind their backs.

But why were the Americans so eager to believe? Taylor does not talk too much about this. His narrative focuses more on China, not America. But if I had to give an idea: Americans, and by extension American foreign policy, is constantly struggling with a desire for a better world not matching up to reality.

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