Chiang Kai-shek’s Politics of Shame
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Abstract:
Based on her book, Chiang Kai-shek’s Politics of Shame: Leadership, Legacy, and National Identity in China (Harvard East Asian Monograph, 2021), Grace Huang will revisit Chiang’s leadership and legacy through his politics of shame (恥) to confront Japanese incursion into China and urge unity among his people. She examines three key historical moments: the Ji’nan Incident of 1928, the Mukden Incident of 1931, and the New Life Movement in 1934. She then turns to Chiang’s complex relationship with Mao Zedong, examining why Chiang was obsessed with Mao and the communists, why he called them bandits (匪) all his life, and how Mao and the Chinese communists countered Chiang’s shame narrative during the Second Sino-Japanese war by advancing their own alternative shame narrative. Lastly, she will explore whether Chiang continued to use shame after the abolition of all unequal treaties in 1943 and investigate what lasting impact his shame narrative may have in contemporary Taiwan and the People’s Republic of China.
Based on her book, Chiang Kai-shek’s Politics of Shame: Leadership, Legacy, and National Identity in China (Harvard East Asian Monograph, 2021), Grace Huang will revisit Chiang’s leadership and legacy through his politics of shame (恥) to confront Japanese incursion into China and urge unity among his people. She examines three key historical moments: the Ji’nan Incident of 1928, the Mukden Incident of 1931, and the New Life Movement in 1934. She then turns to Chiang’s complex relationship with Mao Zedong, examining why Chiang was obsessed with Mao and the communists, why he called them bandits (匪) all his life, and how Mao and the Chinese communists countered Chiang’s shame narrative during the Second Sino-Japanese war by advancing their own alternative shame narrative. Lastly, she will explore whether Chiang continued to use shame after the abolition of all unequal treaties in 1943 and investigate what lasting impact his shame narrative may have in contemporary Taiwan and the People’s Republic of China.