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After the U.S. entered the war in 1941, however, the "Gimo" rarely took the offensive, even when his armies were numerically superior to the Japanese. General "Vinegar Joe" Stilwell kept pressing Chiang to reorganize his army and be more aggressive. But Chiang had different priorities than his impatient American advisers; he felt it necessary to conserve his men and his Lend-Lease arms for use against the Communists after the Japanese surrender when, he foresaw, there would be an inescapable struggle for control.
Meanwhile the U.S., deeply moved by China's suffering under the Japanese onslaught, came to idolize Chiang and especially his wife. An enrapt Wendell Willkie spoke of her combination of "brains, persuasiveness and moral force ... with wit and charm, a generous and understanding heart, a gracious and beautiful manner, and a burning conviction." Others resented her imperious will and her attempts to influence U.S. wartime strategy on Chiang's behalf. At that time the generalissimo wanted the U.S. to place less emphasis on the war against Germany and more on the fight against Japan; he sought more arms and supplies without convincing Stilwell and others that he would really take the offensive.
By the war's end, the Communists had a poorly armed though well-trained and disciplined army of 1 million, recruited largely from the peasantry. The Nationalists, with 3 million combat troops and ready access to U.S. ships and aircraft, easily won the postwar race to reoccupy the one-third of China that had been under Japanese control. Yet, three years after the start of the civil war, Chiang was a refugee on Taiwan —vowing to recover the mainland with the help of 2 million Nationalist followers who had joined him on the island.
What had happened? After launching a classic, successful guerrilla war, the Communists had consolidated their base areas in the countryside while Chiang's troops remained isolated in the cities. Meanwhile, as inflation soared and long-delayed reforms did not materialize, popular support of the Nationalists vanished. Basically, Chiang and his Kuomintang had failed to address themselves to the essential problems of China: rural poverty, illiteracy, unjust taxation, usury and excessive land rents. His idea of revolution was a conservative one: the New Life Movement, which sought to revive filial piety and other Confucian virtues, appealed only to the established minority. Mao's revolution, promising land reform and a total upheaval of the old system, attracted millions.
Chiang's supporters in the U.S. blamed his defeat on the Truman Administration, which had rejected the Gimo's appeals for a massive increase in U.S. aid after the war and cut off support entirely after the Nationalists' flight to Taiwan. The flow resumed six months later at the outbreak of the Korean War, reaching a total of $4 billion before it was finally ended in 1965; Washington regarded Chiang as an important ally in the U.S. efforts to contain Communism in Asia.
On Taiwan, the fleeing Nationalists did a better job economically than politically. They thwarted Taiwanese aspirations for self-rule. But land reform, followed by a successful drive to attract foreign capital, has transformed Taiwan into Asia's second fastest growing state, after Japan.