Want to create an interactive transcript for this episode?
Podcast: Exchanges: A Cambridge UP Podcast
Episode: Parks M. Coble, "The Collapse of Nationalist China: How Chiang Kai-shek Lost China's Civil War" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
Description: Parks M. Coble's book The Collapse of Nationalist China: How Chiang Kai-shek Lost China's Civil War (Cambridge UP, 2023) revisits one of the most stunning political collapses of the twentieth century. When Japan surrendered in September 1945, Chiang Kai-shek seemed triumphant—one of the Big Four Allied leaders of the war and head of a government firmly allied with the United States. Yet less than four years later he would be forced into a humiliating exile in Taiwan. It has long been recognized that hyperinflation was a critical factor in this collapse. As revenues plummeted during the war against Japan, Chiang’s gove...