Seeds of Destruction: Nationalist China in War and Revolution (1937–1949)

Why did the Kuomintang fail? This was a question that sparked long-running debate among international historians after the Kuomintang regime fell in 1949, and it remains an issue well worth reflecting on in the development of modern China. Drawing on a wide range of Kuomintang sources, Professor Lloyd Eastman applied a method akin to that used by geologists to study the formation of the Earth, selecting several representative cases to offer a penetrating analysis of the reasons. The author argues that the Kuomintang did not fail for lack of American aid, but because of its own flaws and divisions, including corruption, incompetence, and lax discipline.

The value of Seeds of Destruction: Nationalist China in War and Revolution, 1937–1949, in the China Studies Abroad series, can be summed up in the words of Riley Sunderland: “Recent scholarship on the question of the Kuomintang’s failure will be opened up by Seeds of Destruction: Nationalist China in War and Revolution, 1937–1949, in the China Studies Abroad series.”