Fires of the Dragon: Politics, Murder, and the Kuomintang

by David E. Kaplan

Book Overview

Through the murder of Henry Liu, an American citizen, journalist, father, and spy, investigative reporter David E. Kaplan delivers dramatically shocking and newsworthy details on the conflict between... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0689120664
• ISBN13: 9780689120664
• Release Date: October 1992
• Publisher: Atheneum Books
• Length: 559 Pages
• Weight: 0.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.7" x 6.4" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

Compelling Historical Storytelling

Kaplan's book skillfully balances biographical reconstruction with that of the historical and political currents that shaped the lives of the individuals he looks at. Among other things, this is as suspenseful a page turner as any of Eric Ambler's or John Le Carre's best works of fiction. It is also superbly paced and has very few of the redundancies that so often haunt books of this genre. Kaplan does a superb job at mingling the lives of the principal characters - Henry Liu, the Chiang family back in Taipei, and a wide-ranging cast which includes Taiwanese, Mainland and American spies, government officials, and the criminal underworld - with the laden events of the Nationalists' "loss" of China to the Communists in 1949 and their exile to neighboring Taiwan. The author's portrayal of Taiwan under Chiang Kai-shek and his son, Ching-kuo, and of the repressive security apparatus they relied upon to sustain their power over the island, is thorough and altogether informative. The regime's aggressive intelligence activities overseas, which included influencing foreign governments (namely that in Washington), stealing weapons technology, spying on the Chinese diaspora and dissident groups, and - the backbone of the book - a direct role in the assassination of Henry Liu, a journalist who played all three countries' intelligence services to his advantage, are brought to light with a commendable attention to detail. Buttressing the events so deftly described by Kaplan are the shifting grounds of politics of the period, as Washington switches its recognition from the Republic of China on Taiwan to that of the People's Republic of China. There, too, Kaplan excels at providing just the right amount of information to understand the history of the Washington-Beijing-Taipei triumvirate. Above all, his book demonstrates how the interplay of history and politics can affect the lives of those who choose to be participating citizens, as Henry Liu certainly was. Even though the book wraps up around 1992, at which point both Chiang father and son had left the scene and been replaced by the reformist Lee Teng-hui, Kaplan's book still manages to retain its immediacy. More than fifty years after Mao's military victory on the Mainland, the Taiwan Strait issue remains unresolved. Not far behind that lingering diplomatic tension lurk old reflexes that, given the right circumstances, could undoubtedly give rise to reprehensible behavior of the kind that is so vividly exposed in this book. Taiwan's transformation, in so little time, from a state ruled by fear into an overwhelmingly vibrant democracy is nothing less than miraculous. Fires of the Dragon provides all the information one needs to fully realize why such a result indeed is the stuff of miracles.

The Taiwan Intelegence Service's Murder of Henry Liu

This is the thoroughly documented story of the 1984 murder of Henry Liu at his Daly City, CA, home, by the Taiwan intelligence service. The book contains impressive documentation of KMT intelligence operations in the USA, especially in California. For those interested in San Francisco's Chinatown, the book has lots of information about the long struggle between the pro-KMT and pro-PRC partisans. The KMT had all the advantages, including basic criminal immuninity thanks to the cooperation of the FBI. They blew it though, when they overreached by murdering the journalist Henry Liu for his pro China views. The PRC, rightly, is ascendent now.