I would say that English-language views of Chiang’s personal leadership are a bit better than they were 30 years ago, and views of the Nationalist government and the Nanjing period in particular are considerably more positive than they used to be. It is the stuff about Nationalist state and nation building that historians are most interested in. The whole “Chiang: Good guy or bad guy” debate is not really the type of thing academic historians go in for. It is notable that the only recent biography of Chiang is by Taylor, who is not an academic. The closest thing to an academic study of Chiang as a leader would be Worthing’s book on his right-hand man He YIngqin. Worthing has a pretty positive opinion of He, and of the Nationalist military.

Assessments of Nationalist period state-building have gotten considerably more positive, seeing China as having had considerable success in things like foreign relations and economic policy under Chiang’s watch (Craft, Zanasi). Scholars are taking republican period “fascism” more seriously as an attempt to grapple with China’s problems. (Clinton, Tsui), although not necessarily positively. The Taiwan government after about 1950 is seen pretty positively.

One question, of course, is how much any of the above has to do with Chiang personally. The answer seems to be mostly not much, although most of the people I just listed are not that interested in praising or blaming Chiang’s personal leadership. Most of them talk surprisingly little about him, given how central to the regime he was. I would not go so far as to say that all China’s successes in this period came in spite of him, but I can’t think of anything interesting or important people have worked on where Chiang’s leadership or vision were positive or even that important. When he was involved things seem to have been a mess. Even Taylor calls Chiang’s policies in 1945-49 a disaster. There was probably no good way to deal with Japan after 1927, but Coble does not really see Chiang’s personal leadership as having helped much.

To some extent Chiang’s reputation has been helped by other people’s falling. Stilwell is no longer lionized, (see Van de Ven) nor is that whole Graham Peck idea of Chiang and the nationalists as “feudal” remnants holding China back taken seriously. The idea that China’s ‘real’ problem was peasant immiseration is no longer strongly held, and thus the urban focus of so many of Chiang’s policies is not seen as a massive failing anymore. China was clearly “modernizing” under Chiang’s rule (as un-trendy as modernization theory is), but it is hard to see him personally responsible for much of this.

I guess if I were to sum up, I would say that studies of China in 1927-1937 and also 1937-1949 are much more positive than they were. It is no longer a period of feudal corruption and chaos, nor as a totally failed revolutionary effort. (China in Disintegration, Abortive Revolution) On the other hand, most of the good (or interesting) stuff going on does not have much to do with Chiang personally. To the extent historians are interested in assessing Chiang it is for his political and military leadership (still not seen very positively) rather than his moral character.

Sources

-Clinton, Maggie. Revolutionary Nativism: Fascism and Culture in China, 1925-1937. Illustrated edition. Durham: Duke University Press Books, 2017.

-Coble, Parks M. Facing Japan: Chinese Politics and Japanese Imperialism, 1931–1937. Vol. 135. Harvard East Asian Monograph. Cambridge, MA: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University, 1991.

-Craft, Stephen G. V.K. Wellington Koo and the Emergence of Modern China. 1st edition. The University Press of Kentucky, 2004.

Eastman, Lloyd. The Abortive Revolution: China Under Nationalist Rule, 1927-1937. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Asia Center, 1974.

-Peck, Graham. Two Kinds of Time. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2008.

-Sheridan, James E. China in Disintegration. New York: Free Press, 1977.

-Taylor, Jay. The Generalissimo: Chiang Kai-Shek and the Struggle for Modern China. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2011.

-Tsui, Brian. China’s Conservative Revolution: The Quest for a New Order, 1927-1949. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018.

-Worthing, Peter. General He Yingqin: The Rise and Fall of Nationalist China. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 2016.

-Van De Ven, Hans. “Stilwell in the Stocks: The Chinese Nationalists and the Allied Powers in the Second World War.” Asian Affairs 34, no. 3 (November 1, 2003): 243–59.

-Yeh, Wen-hsin. Shanghai Splendor: Economic Sentiments and the Making of Modern China, 1843–1949. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007.

-Zanasi, Margherita. Saving the Nation: Economic Modernity in Republican China. University Of Chicago Press, 2006.

UCSD Modern Chinese History Research Site. “A Warlord by Any Other Name?,” March 25, 2010. https://ucsdmodernchinesehistory.wordpress.com/2010/03/25/792/. -This is a good short summary of some of the old work on Chiang.