Donald spent the first six months of 1934 in the city formerly known as ‘Red Hankow’. He had learned a tremendous amount about China’s shortcomings during his eight years at the Bureau of Economic Information. In fact, he joked that he intended to write two books, The Comic History of the Economic Develop- ment of China and The Comic History of the Political Development of China, both liberally sprinkled with his tragi-comic observations of the Chinese character.
Chang Hsueh-liang set up a new body, the Central China Economic Investigation Bureau (director: W. H. Donald), with the objective of boosting trade in the interior and developing the country’s natural resources. Donald’s first action was to urge H. H. Kung, who had replaced T. V. Soong as minister of finance, to increase the size of the customs police force to crack down on the smuggled goods that were finding their way from Manchuria to all parts of China under Japanese protection. The situation was farcical: Japanese products were openly on sale in China at prices lower than the Chinese duty that should have been collected on them. Smugglers swaggered around with pistols in their belts while the Japanese Government demanded that Chinese customs officers at frontier posts on the smugglers’ routes should be unarmed to avoid clashes with Japanese soldiers.12
Donald informed Chiang Kai-shek, through Mayling, that China’s energies should be devoted to manufacturing every item that Japan exported to her. ‘Surely China has brains enough for that; has the competent labour; has the energy,’ he wrote. ‘Of course she has, but she also has the officials who care not one iota for the country or its well-being; who regard it as a bonanza for their exploitation; who bleed it white.’
If China were to take her rightful place among nations, he told Chiang, rotten officialdom would have to be eliminated. ‘I am sure that you can help remove it,’ he said.
But you will have to be ruthless, and hard, and uncompromising. A big stick can cure a lot of ills in China. The Chinese people are oppressed beyond belief. They are waiting for someone to give just a lead in saving them. Can’t you find a big stick lying about somewhere and use it without scruple?13
Next, Donald demanded action to stamp out the opium menace. He pointed out to Mayling that the statue of Dr Sun Yat-sen in Hankow overlooked the city’s biggest opium shop. In the shop’s window was a sign: ‘cheap sale of opium – those who make extra large purchases will be given free tickets in the national government lottery.’
Within 12 hours of hearing this, the Generalissimo issued the first in a series of anti-opium edicts ordering the closure of all opium-smoking shops and the decapitation of anyone dealing in narcotics. The new laws had little effect. Donald saw a postal van loading opium in parcel-post packages in the centre of Hankow. The next day, the Hankow Herald published an unsigned article in which he noted: ‘Yesterday, I expected to see on the Bund the decapitated heads of a number of persons, including the British commissioner of customs and the French chief of the post office. But there were no heads there at all.’
Within a few months, however, no fewer than 114 Chinese had been brought to the execution block in the Shanghai area for dealing in narcotics.
As with the opium problem, Bill Donald was uncompromising in his attitude towards corrupt officials. ‘Make graft, corruption, squeeze, or whatever one might call it, a capital offence,’ he told Chiang Kai-shek, ‘and shoot a lot of people and soon there would be a change. But start high up and not among the unhappy low-salaried unfortunates.’14
Chiang’s answer to China’s social problems was to launch the ‘New Life Movement’, based on the four Confucian principles of Li (propriety), Yi (right conduct), Lian (honesty) and Qi (integrity and honour). The idea was to build up public morale through Sun Yat-sen’s Third Principle of the People – with ‘livelihood’ substituted for ‘socialism’. Goals included courtesy to neighbours, following government rules, keeping streets clean and conserving energy. Chiang urged the Chinese to accept the Confucian and Methodist notion of self-cultivation and correct living. His Blue Shirts, the Chinese equivalent of European fascists, roamed the Chinese districts of Shanghai inflicting harsh penalties on recidivists.
Smoking and drinking were strictly forbidden. Mayling, a heavy smoker, could only light up in private, while Chinese diners hid alcohol in teapots and drank it from teacups.
By now, the Young Marshal, Chang Hsueh-liang, had moved his headquarters to Sian, the provincial capital in southern Shensi, and Bill Donald was working for Chiang Kai-shek on a full-time basis. He warned ‘the Gissimo’, as he called him, that while the New Life principles were important, it was more important for him to resist Japanese aggression; otherwise, he would lose the support of many of the remaining warlords and the population at large. As usual, he talked to Chiang through Mayling, whom he had known since she was a child. She called him ‘Don’ or ‘Gran’ – short for Grandpa; he called her ‘the Missimo’.15
Donald refused to accept the title ‘adviser’, describing his mission as ‘the development by China of her natural resources. The politics do not interest me at all except where they frustrate progress.’16 Over the years, he would acquire many nicknames: ‘China’s No. 1 White Boy’ (from Herbie Elliston’s revealing portrait in the Saturday Evening Post), ‘China’s publicity-shy Richelieu’ (Ilona Ralf Sues in her memoir Shark’s Fins and Millet) and ‘Warwick II’ after Warwick the Kingmaker in Tudor England (American journalist Emily Hahn in her memoir China to Me), to name but three.
After February 1935 he had to make do without Irina. His Russian secretary had fallen in love with Englishman Joe Cassel and left China to get married. Her husband took her prospecting for gold in New Guinea and they later went farming in the Congo. As Mrs Irene Cassel, she made an interesting observation about her boss in a letter to Professor Lewis in 1969. ‘Donald was a man of historic proportions,’ she wrote. ‘Lots of things did not happen in China because of him and quite a few did happen because of him.’17
At Nanking in early November 1935, Wang Ching-wei had just posed for a press photograph with other leading Kuomintangists when a gunman posing as a news agency reporter stepped forward and shot him in the left lung, left cheek and left arm. Wang survived but the would-be assassin, Sun Fengmin, died overnight in police custody after apparently claiming that he had acted alone, although Chiang Kai-shek was probably responsible.
Mao’s Communist forces and their camp followers were isolated in northern Shensi, but Chiang was determined to pursue his punitive campaign against them. He ordered Chang Hsueh-liang to finish them off. At the beginning of 1936, however, there were reports that Chang’s troops were fraternising with the enemy, even supplying them with military materiel from the Sian arsenal. Indeed, Chang had met Mao’s chief lieutenant, Chou En-lai, in a Catholic church and after talking all night agreed in principle on the formation of a united Communist–Nationalist front to drive the Japanese from his Manchurian homeland. ‘It wasn’t that I was sympathetic with them,’ he later explained. ‘But they were Chinese, so why fight each other?’18
Meanwhile, Alan Raymond seemed to attract trouble. He worked for the commodity brokers Payne & Co but was sacked. He collected money owed to the Sydney firm, Messrs Young & Co, but somehow failed to pass it on to its rightful owner. He engaged in real estate and advertising until 1936 when he established his own marble works and set himself up as one of the city’s traders.19
His activities caught the attention of the Municipal Police who opened a file on him. A report in this file described Raymond as ‘a capable businessman but has always suffered from lack of capital to finance his ventures. This failing is partly due to his spendthrift nature and his fondness for luxuries, insofar as whenever he brought off a good business deal he would squander the money on gambling and pleasure seeking. In this respect, there have been occasions when his clients’ money became indistinguishable from his own.’20
In 1936 Raymond travelled to Japan to purchase a quantity of marble for the
Cosmopolitan Trust of Shanghai. Owing to the explosive political situation between China and Japan, he was told to hold up the final act of purchase and await further instructions. When he ran out of money, he contacted Cosmopolitan’s head office in Shanghai and asked them to send him some. ‘They failed to do so and virtually abandoned me there,’ he wrote in his postwar statement. ‘Although in debt to my hotel I received very kind treatment which added to other pleasant experiences gave me a very favourable impression of the Japanese people. I was there almost three months before I was enabled to return to Shanghai.’21
The Japanese secret police had thousands of spies, many of whom were hotel clerks, doormen or bartenders who observed Western visitors and filed lengthy reports on their behaviour, attitudes and movements. The authorities were on the lookout not only for enemy agents but also anyone who might be regarded as a potential Japanese spy.
Broke, embittered and anti-British, Alan Raymond fell into the latter category. That he was hired as a paid employee of the Japanese naval intelligence department in Shanghai is beyond question and the three months he was adrift in Japan would have been the perfect time for his recruitment.22 By the time he got back to Shanghai, China was facing a unique, self-made crisis – one that Bill Donald had no means of preventing but which he was expected to solve virtually single-handed.
On 7 December 1936 Chiang Kai-shek arrived at Sian to launch what he called ‘the last five minutes’ of his extermination campaign against the severely weakened Reds. The Young Marshal informed him that he was no longer prepared to fight them and pressed for a political settlement between the warring parties. Chiang remained intransigent. If the Manchurians would not fight the Communists, he said, they would be withdrawn to Fukien in disgrace. There was a violent argument and Chiang retired with his staff officers and bodyguard to a pavilion at a hot springs resort outside Sian.
That night Chang discussed the situation with General Yang Hu-cheng, the radical governor of Shensi who was disinclined to fight the Red Army. The two men decided that Chiang must be forced to listen to the case for forming a united front between the Nationalists and the Communists, or, as the Young Marshal’s headquarters later put it, ‘detained in order to stimulate his awakening to certain national and international problems’. A 25-year-old colonel named Sun Mingjui was ordered to take a raiding party to Chiang’s quarters and arrest him.23
At dawn on 12 December Chiang heard shooting outside his pavilion. Leaving his dentures on a bedside table, he fled over a wall in his nightshirt, injuring his back in the attempt. He was found shivering and in great pain inside a cave on a nearby hillside. His feet were bleeding and he was exhausted, so Colonel Sun carried him down the slope on his back. At General Yang’s headquarters the Generalissimo refused to recognise his captors, telling them to obey his orders or shoot him.24
Later that morning Bill Donald was at the Park Hotel in Shanghai when he received an urgent call from H. H. Kung to attend a meeting at his house. When he arrived, he found Mayling and T. V. Soong were also there. Kung explained he had received a call from Chiang’s headquarters saying there had been an attack on the Generalissimo’s quarters near Sian, his bodyguards had been murdered and he and ten members of his party had been kidnapped.
At Nanking, the government and the Nationalist high command were in turmoil. Some who were less interested in rescuing Chiang than inciting the Young Marshal to murder him wanted to bomb Sian. Others advocated sending in loyal troops garrisoned at Tungkwan, the narrow pass along the Yellow River connecting Honan with Shensi. With the blessing of H. H. Kung, Bill Donald set off from Shanghai on a rescue mission of his own making in the belief that the Young Marshal would at least speak to him on the basis of their long friendship.
Using one of Chiang’s aircraft as a taxi, his first stop was Loyang, headquarters of government troops in Honan. There, he conferred with the Nationalist commander and cabled the Young Marshal that he was on his way. Meanwhile, Chou En-lai arrived in Sian from Yenan in another of the Young Marshal’s planes to confirm the point that the Communists were indeed willing to join a united front. He found young militants in General Yang’s army calling for Chiang’s blood over the Communist massacres. They were insisting on giving him a ‘popular trial’ for his life at an enormous mass meeting.25 However much he hated Chiang Kai-shek, Chou knew he was the only military leader in the country capable of leading a united front. He argued strongly that his life be spared.
When Donald arrived in Sian the following day, he was escorted to Chang Hsueh-liang’s headquarters. There, he handed Chang a section of Chiang Kai-shek’s diary, which showed the Generalissimo was more anti-Japanese than supposed. As outlined in the diary, his plan was to defeat the Communists and then drive the Japanese out of China.
Donald found Chiang lying in bed with a blanket pulled over his head. It was bitterly cold and the room was unheated. He was also in great pain from his wrenched back. ‘At 5 pm Donald came to see me,’ Chiang wrote in his account of the kidnap. ‘I was very much moved by his loyal friendship, especially as he is a foreigner (an Australian) and yet is willing to come so far on such a dangerous mission.’26
Donald gave Chiang a letter from Mayling pleading with him to open negotiations with his captors. He then accompanied Chiang to the Young Marshal’s house, which had central heating and better security.27 Meanwhile, the rebels announced the death of one of their captives, Shao Yuan-chung, chief of the government’s publicity council, who had been wounded in the attack.
The following day Donald returned to Loyang and then made his way back to Nanking, finally arriving in a taxi after planes were grounded by bad weather. He reported to the cabinet that the Young Marshal realised he ‘had a bear by the tail’ and that Chiang had no intention of negotiating with him or anyone else. The cabinet decided Donald should return to Sian with Mayling, who might be able to break the deadlock. T. V. Soong, who was authorised to reach a financial settlement with the rebels, would accompany them. Mayling packed a pistol and a spare set of her husband’s false teeth. Aware of the torture that the Nationalists had inflicted on female Communists (including Mao Tse-tung’s wife), she handed the pistol to Donald and said, ‘Please shoot me if any soldiers touch me.’28
Chiang had specifically ordered Donald not to bring Mayling with him and was shocked to see her in this dangerous place. Mayling, however, had known the Young Marshal since her days on the Shanghai party circuit and was determined to talk him into freeing her husband. Donald and Chou En-lai had already laid the foundations for a face-saving deal and Chiang finally agreed to speak to his captors, if only to lecture them on the seriousness of their crimes.
On Christmas Day he was released on condition that he suspend the civil war and form a united front against the Japanese as part of a four-point agreement. First, the Communists agreed to discontinue distributing propaganda or forming cells outside their own area; second, they agreed to accept orders from Chiang Kai-shek as head of the armed forces of China; third, Nanking agreed to supply the Communists with a large sum in silver dollars from its revenues every month; finally, Chiang agreed to send the Communist forces monthly supplies of rifles, ammunition and food.29
Donald walked out of the compound with the dishevelled and exhausted Generalissimo on his arm. Chiang later claimed that he had given no undertakings to the Communists and in the coming months there were breaches of the truce on both sides.
Instead of joining Chou En-lai and Mao Tse-tung at Yenan, Chang Hsueh-liang insisted on flying back to Nanking with the Generalissimo to face the music.
‘I am naturally rustic, surly and unpolished,’ the Young Marshal said in a confessional letter to Chiang Kai-shek, which was released to the press to save Chiang’s face.
Because of this I have committed this impudent and criminal act. Now I have penitently followed you to Nanking in order to await a punishment befitting the crime. I shall accept even death if bene
ficial to my country. Do not let sentiment or friendship deter you from dealing with me as I deserve.30
Chang Hsueh-liang was less deferential at his court-martial. At one point he rose to his feet and denounced the court as a bunch of ‘crooks and hypocrites’. On hearing this, Mayling burst out, ‘How does the young fool expect us to help him if he won’t keep his mouth shut?’ Indeed, the court sentenced Chang to death but instead of signing the death warrant Chiang commuted the sentence to indefinite detention, initially in a house near Chiang’s own home village south of Shanghai. Incredibly, the Young Marshal was kept under house arrest for the next 55 years in various parts of mainland China and later on Taiwan.31 His followers in Sian rose up in arms against Chiang but the rebellion was crushed and they were driven north, where they joined the Red Army.
The kidnapping – and Donald’s role in ending it – made headlines around the world. Just three days after Chiang’s release, Time magazine published an intimate profile of him in which the hand of one of his former friends, possibly Rodney Gilbert who was working in New York as an editorial writer on the Herald Tribune, could be detected. ‘Many years ago the health of his wife made it best for her to return to Australia,’ the unsigned article said, ‘and in China her increasingly polished rough-diamond husband, as the years rolled on, perhaps killed more ladies (in the complimentary, Edwardian sense of “lady-killing”) than any other man in China’s swift, hard, cheap, international Shanghai–Peking set.’32
The writer claimed that on one occasion Donald was invited to a party in Peking to meet a vivacious blonde who had a letter of introduction from a United States publisher. ‘I’m afraid I must decline,’ he said. ‘That kind scratches and bites.’
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