Overview

In 1927, Chiang Kai-shek - the head of China's military academy and leader of the Kuomintang (KMT) - began the `northern expeditions' to bring China's northern territories back under the control of the state. It was during this period that the KMT purged communist activities, fractured the army and sparked the Chinese Civil War - which would rage for over twenty years. The communists, led by General Mao Tse-Tsung, were for much of the period forced underground and concentrated in the Chinese countryside. As the author argues, this resulted in China's war featuring unusually high levels of espionage and sabotage, and increased the military importance of information gathering. Based on newly declassified material, Panagiotis Dimitrakis charts the double-crossings, secret meetings and bloody assassinations which would come to define China's future. Uniquely, The Secret War for China gives equal weighting to the role of foreign actors: the role of British intelligence in unmasking Communist International (Comintern) agents in China, for example, and the allies' attempts to turn nationalist China against the Japanese. The Secret War for China also documents the clandestine confrontation between Mao and Chiang and the secret negotiations between Chiang and the Axis Powers, whose forces he employed against the CCP once the Second World War was over. In his turn, Mao employed nationalist forces who had defected - during the last three years of the civil war about 105 out of 869 KMT generals defected to the CCP. This book is an urgent and necessary guide to the intricacies of the Chinese Civil War, a war which decisively shaped the modern Asian world.

Full Product Details

9781784539030

Table of Contents

Reviews

`A remarkable portrait of intelligence, espionage and covert action. This highly readable account illuminates an important new aspect of both Chinese history and international history.' -Professor Richard J Aldrich, University of Warwick, `The author draws on a wide range of sources to paint a fascinating picture of the shadowy activities and colorful characters that competing Chinese factions, Western powers, and Japan undertook in their attempts to control China over the first half of the twentieth century.' - Professor Harold Tanner, University of North Texas, `In his new book, Panagiotis Dimitrakis provides us with a remarkable piece of research into the shadowy world of espionage and intelligence in China for almost the whole of the twentieth century. He has brought to light a kind of parallel history, one that fills in many of the blanks of the more conventional accounts of China, beginning with the Revolution of 1911 and continuing to the rise of Mao and his seizure of power.' - Richard Bernstein, The first Beijing bureau chief for Time and author of China 1945: Mao's Revolution and America's Fateful Choice

Author Information

Panagiotis Dimitrakis holds a doctorate in War Studies from King's College London, and is an expert on intelligence and military history. He is the author of The Secret War in Afghanistan (I.B.Tauris, 2013), and Military Intelligence in Cyprus: From the Great War to Middle East Crises (I.B.Tauris, 2010) amongst others.

Tab Content 6

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

Countries Available