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ResearchNote Who Lost China? Chiang Kai-shek Testifies LloydE. Eastman
" To tell the truth, never, in China or abroad, has there been a revolutionary party as decrepit (tuitang) and degenerate (fubai) as we [the Guomindang] are today; nor one as lacking spirit, lacking discipline, and even more, lacking standards of right and wrong as we are today. This kind of party should long ago have been destroyed and swept away! "'
The time was January 1948; the speaker was Chiang Kai-shek. Frequently during 1947-50, the climactic years of struggle with the Communists for control of the Chinese mainland, Chiang addressed his military commanders and civilian cadres in similarly scathing, forthright language. His purpose, he asserted, was to identify the causes of Nationalist errors and weakness so that he could " turn defeat into victory." Chiang's speeches from that period - readily available in published form for years, but until now ignored by all - shed light from an