Spanning 60 years of modern Chinese history from the non-communist perspective, this work concentrates on Wan Sheng's career in relation to Chiang Kai-Shek's son Chiang Ching-Kuo. It shows that the Kuomintang were perfecting the methods that were to make Taiwan an East Asian tiger economy at the very point that they lost the mainland. It also provides an insight into Taiwan's efforts to aid South Vietnam and Cambodia from 1960 as the Indochina war unfolded.