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From Mme Sun Yat-sen (Soong Ching-ling) , Jung Chang with Jon Halliday, 1986

At the end of 1947 some dissidents in the Kuomintang drew up a plan to set up a �Kuomintang Revolutionary Committee� in Hong Kong. They wrote a long letter to Ching-ling, asking her to head the Committee. She agreed to be the honorary president.

Chiang was by now fighting a losing war against the Communists. The Kuomintang�s performance was animatedly described by ex-President Truman;

[The statements seem to terribly inaccurate that one guesses either (a) they are not by Truman, possibly planted on some authors unawares or (b) Truman was terribly misinformed himself (it seems certain that he was in fact misinformed on some vital security matters) or (c) — which I would doubt (since he had no apparent necessity to do so) that he had knowingly made false statement. I do not know at this stage.

Some of the key problems in the Pacific were (a) General Stilwell, an honest �old soldier� who had no taste for politics but who could not get along with Chiang Kai-shek and had a generally low opinion on �the Chinese�, (p) the firing of General McArthur. (But then, I do not know it all.) WPT

The Communist victory came with a speed that surprised even themselves. This was largely to do with the enthusiastic support of the people, one demonstration of which was the collapse of morale in the Kuomintang armies. Increasing numbers of Kuomintang soldiers began to surrender or let themselves be captured. By the end of the civil war, casualties amounted to less than 20 per cent of total Kuomintang losses. In the climactic moment, according to O. Edmund Clubb, then US. Consul General in Peking, when a large force of crack Kuomintang troops was surrounded, �the proposal was put forward [at Nanking headquarters[ to destroy the valuable heavy equipment of the fated force by air bombardment — in situ, regardless of the consequences for the Nationalist troops.� The doomed force learned of the proposal and surrendered forthwith. Immediately after this battle, on 21 January 1949, on thieve of the surrender of Peking, Chiang �retired� and was succeeded by Vice-President Li Tsung-jen. Li (who went over to the mainland in the 1960s) solicited Ching-ling�s �leadership n the Party and national affairs.�. She turned the request down flat. With her summary refusal came the landslide collapse of the Kuomintang. In May 1949 Chiang fled to Taiwan.

Penguin Books, 1986, pages 105-6.