Chiang Kai-Shek

by Emily Hahn

  The war was over: so too was Kai-shek’s self-imposed period of tutelage in Christianity. As soon as he returned to Nanking he told Pastor Kiang that he had decided he was ready for the Church. For one thing, he said, Christian officers seemed to fight better than others: he had been impressed by the old scalawag Feng. Moreover, Chiang had undergone a crisis during a crucial battle near Kaifeng when he found himself in danger of being cut off from his troops.

  “In this desperate situation, he prayed to God for deliverance, pledging that he would publicly acknowledge Jesus Christ as his Lord after the Lord had delivered him,” the pastor reported. “God did answer his prayer by sending a very heavy snowstorm, which was unusual at this time of year, so that his enemies could not advance any nearer. In the meantime his reinforcements came from Nanking by rail, thereby not only sparing his own life, but turning a certain defeat into a victory.”

  One side of the bargain having been fulfilled, Chiang in the approved Old Testament manner kept his word too, and Pastor Kiang duly baptized him.

  Whatever one may think of this conception of God as military strategist, it is hard to conceive of any branch of the Christian religion better fitted to Chiang’s starkly uncompromising character than the Methodist.

  The Communists could not have gone so far as to capture Changsha without having gained immensely in strength and technique since the days of 1927 and the Canton Commune. While Chiang Kai-shek was polishing off the Northern Expedition and dealing with the Kwangsi revolt and fighting the Yen-Feng combine and trying to watch the Japanese, the wanderers in the wilderness of Kiangsi and Honan found their feet. They carried on as guerrillas, fighting when necessary, teaching and enlisting where possible, and setting up Soviets wherever they halted. Mao Tse-tung and Chu Teh soon established themselves as the leaders of the Army. “Our main tasks, as we saw them,” said Mao, “were two: to divide the land and to establish Soviets.” In this they were first opposed by the Central Committee, which “had grandiose ideas of rapid expansion,” but they carried their point.

  The Comintern Sixth Congress, held in Moscow in 1928, had drawn up plans for the C.C.P.’s future and delegated over-all power to Li Li-san and Chou En-lai, the man who founded the Paris branch of the C.C.P. In general outline the program was much the same as before—organizing peasants, fomenting strikes, and educational preparation of Soviets—and it continued to place emphasis on “the working class,” that proletariat upon which European revolution so much depended. In Moscow, where Stalin had got rid of Trotzky and was now in complete control, it was decided, again and again, that the time was ripe for revolution in China. Chiang’s troubles in 1929 and 1930 gave plenty of opportunity, it was felt, to enroll the workers of the cities in the cause, so that the blow was imminent. But in actual fact, what the war afforded was opportunity for Mao and Chu to bring over more and more peasants to the cause, the dissatisfied, dispossessed, and hungry of the countryside. The urban workers remained apathetic. Rigid Marxism was not equipped to exploit this unorthodox situation, and Li Li-san could not explain satisfactorily, in the only language it was permitted to use, why he did not follow the directives. For months Moscow waited in vain for “the great upsurge of the masses.” Li Li-san didn’t hold with the surge idea; he was in favor of picking off cities and provinces one by one in local floods rather than with one all-over tide.

  Told that the moment had come, Mao and his army obediently set forth to conquer the cities. Their peasants and soldiers would encircle these headlands of reaction and engulf them, just as Moscow directed: there would be an answering upsurge within the city walls, and thus the proletariat would fulfill its function.

  But at Nanchang, the scene of their first attempt, the magic formula did not work, and they made another attempt on Changsha. Here, as I have said, they actually captured the city on July 28, and there was rejoicing throughout the Party. Yet somehow the great upsurge of the masses was either missing completely or did not suffice. The brunt of the battle was borne by the Army; the proletariat of Changsha lacked enthusiasm, and it was only five days before the Reds, wary of the approaching Nationalists, had to leave the city again, after experiencing the first air raid many of them had ever encountered. The disappointment called forth a burst of angry scolding from headquarters in Moscow, and soon afterward Li Li-san was removed from his high position and sent to Russia for “more schooling.”

  There was bitterness in China about this injustice, but Chinese Communists were to learn it was no use arguing with Moscow. Li Li-san was subjected to an inquisition and quickly reduced to the babbling, breast-beating, apologetic figure that has since become so familiar a part of Communist trials.

  To take his place the Comintern sent into China a number of specially trained young Chinese who had attended Sun Yat-sen University in Moscow, those same students who had once heckled Chiang Kai-shek. They were the elect, and from now on they were to be the only trusted political leaders of the Party until Mao managed to assert himself. Russia herself moved in with these missionaries. The C.C.P. was now a genuinely satellite group.

  Jubilantly the Nationalist Army came back to Nanking in time for the Double Tenth celebration, and the Generalissimo took the occasion to announce that the People’s Congress would definitely be held on May 5, 1931. He had already proposed an amnesty for Wang Ching-wei and all other political offenders. The irrepressible Christian general was soon back in Nanking’s circle of acquaintance on the old terms of cautious cordiality.

  A few weeks later there was a Plenary Session of the C.E.C., and Chiang outlined his plans for the near future. He came out in favor of an autonomy system for districts and provinces, which had been one of the bones of contention before the northern war, when he was on the other side of the argument. He also declared that it was his intention to eradicate “Communism and banditry”; this task, he figured, could be accomplished within the following six months. Already the campaign was under way, for Chiang had sent three divisions from Honan to fight the Reds in Kiangsi and Hunan, as soon as the Young Marshal began to support him in the northwest war.

  Unfortunately for the timetable, Chiang’s soldiers weren’t used to dealing with guerrilla warfare. When they went into Kiangsi they were entering strange territory and were greeted as the traditional enemies of the countryfolk. The Reds, on the other hand, were at home among the villages. For years they had lived among the people and befriended them; it was an important part of Communist strategy to make friends. Whenever Chiang’s men got uncomfortably close, the guerrillas simply merged with the population. They formed their Soviets, proselyted at their leisure, and melted away when troops approached. They were a quicksilver army.

  The Chinese public after a time grew not so much worried about the continued existence of the Red Army as tired of the subject. Those who didn’t live in Communist-infiltrated country couldn’t see the urgency of this perpetual grinding conflict, and they began to wonder if it wasn’t costing more than it was worth. Very little news was published about it, and that little was the conventional government handout; this battle was won by the Nationalists, that had ended in splendid victory for the Nationalists; the Kuomintang troops now had the Reds definitely on the run.… A few days later there would be another dispatch from the same front posts saying it all over again, as if the first battles hadn’t been fought at all. The frontier never seemed to move very much.

  The alliance between Chiang and Hu Han-min had never been easy. There was too much jealousy inherent in their common history, and in February 1931 they came to another parting of the ways. At a Kuomintang conference, Hu disputed the provisionary constitution sponsored by Chiang on the ground that it was laying down the law prematurely on a lot of points concerning the functions of government departments. He said Chiang was arrogating too much power to himself. Chiang retorted that Hu was only worrying, really, about party authority.

  It was quite like the old days in Canton, when the young men had squabbled over theory in Sun Yat-sen’s shad
ow, but now they had more power behind their words and the squabbles didn’t end in mere argument. Hu’s temper carried him off his feet and he resigned from the presidency of the Legislative Yuan, a post which in those days was a powerful one. Chiang, similarly stirred, had him placed under house arrest, or as the Chinese more prettily called it, “in soft detainment.” The fact was not at first announced; Hu simply disappeared.

  This was going pretty far for a man who spoke well of democratic procedure, and Chiang was besieged with questions by curious Europeans. What had happened? Where was Hu? Why had the harmless, negative Lin Sen been put into the presidency of the Legislative Yuan?

  For a long time the Generalissimo was silent, but at last he reluctantly uttered. Hu was all right, he said, quite all right; it was merely that his personal liberty was for the moment being restrained. It was all for his own good and that of the Kuomintang. Without this restraint, the misguided man might well flee to Shanghai, and that would only stir up dissident elements and incite disorder. He was quite all right.

  The affair was added as yet another item to the rapidly lengthening catalogue of what his opponents claimed were Chiang’s misdemeanors. He was turning into a dictator. Just to keep his army mobilized he was wasting the country’s wealth chasing Communists who didn’t matter, who in fact would probably be very good citizens if only they were left alone. He was building up a corps of young bullies, said the rumors, like the strong-arm men in Italy—the “Blue Shirts.” And what about the sinister Chen brothers? Moreover, they said, Chiang was in close touch with Gangleader Tu Yueh-sen in Shanghai, and was pocketing vast sums from the opium trade by means of this connection. (Chiang had indeed recently announced that opium was thenceforth to be a government monopoly, like that maintained by the British in Hongkong. He needed the revenue.) And now, this! Everywhere, especially among the students, the Generalissimo was criticized.

  April came and went, and the Hu Han-min flurry subsided into sullen mutters, for the People’s Congress was close at hand and arguments about the provisional constitution could then be aired freely. But by May 5 people had other things than the constitution to worry about. The South was kicking up a fuss again, with Wang Ching-wei to lead them. Eugene Chen was in on it too.

  It started with the usual manifesto, or circular telegram, signed by Wang Ching-wei and the Kwangsi generals: they “impeached” Chiang for his sins. Another telegram followed from the war lord who governed Canton, accusing the Generalissimo of having assumed dictatorship. Chiang called a hasty conference of Kuomintang leaders and said that the charges must be openly discussed and investigated.

  He should have been able to depend on the Party’s support in such a crisis, but the times were extraordinary because of Hu Han-min’s detention. Some of his own camp took the opportunity to turn on him. Sun Fo and Wang Chung-hui withdrew to Shanghai, and later went to Canton. Then the Canton war lord announced that Kwangsi and Kwangtung were friends, shoulder to shoulder in the fight. On May 25 the southerners sent an ultimatum: Chiang must retire within forty-eight hours or bear the consequences. A few days later they proclaimed a new national government in Canton.

  The foreigners in the treaty ports were in a turmoil. It was war again, they were sure. Really, these Chinese!

  Chiang announced that he must suppress the rebels, but he didn’t rush into the task. There were talks, and then more talks, in the neutral surroundings of Shanghai. Through June and most of July the discussions dragged on, with Chiang hoping to avert the clash the country could so ill afford. The southerners pressed on with their demands. The fact that they applied to Japan for support was remembered against them for a long time to come.

  Their eagerness carried the day, and on July 21 it was announced in Canton that the punitive expedition was on its way. By the middle of August, Pai Chung-hsi’s army was marching through Hunan on the old road to Nanking. Chiang got ready. The capital bristled. And in the North, when nobody was looking, Japan suddenly moved into Mukden.

  Later the Young Marshal claimed that the invasion was not a surprise to him and should not have surprised the rest of China, either. But in fact he too was taken unawares, with most of his army garrisoned south of the Great Wall. Japan had indeed been behaving in a bullying manner for some months, but the country had got used to living with the danger. After all, for years Japan had been just as provocative. That month Chang Hsueh-liang had attended the People’s Congress in Nanking, as befitted the deputy commander. On his way back to Mukden he was smitten with typhoid, which is a long, tedious illness, and took to his bed in a Peking hospital. September 18, exactly a year after he signed up with Chiang, he got out of bed for the first time. That was the day the Japanese came into Mukden. There was little he could do about it, now that they were there; they were well armed and far more modernly equipped than the Manchurian army. Helplessly, the Young Marshal watched from Peking as the invaders moved at will through the countryside and took over and settled in.

  In the South the generals and their colleagues stayed their hand and waited, expecting war to be declared at any minute. But Chiang and his advisers knew that he was even less capable than the Young Marshal of initiating an offensive war against a strong foreign country. There was the League of Nations, formed presumably for just such crises as this; there was also the Kellogg Pact. Chiang referred the question to the League. His prospects of satisfaction weren’t bright: America, who might otherwise have been interested, was wrapped up in the depression at home, and Britain was indifferent.

  The hotheads of China felt that this was not enough, and the dissidents of the South clamored for something better. But it was the students who were angriest. On September 28 hundreds of these youngsters in Shanghai decided to take a hand in the matter. They went down to the railway station, took command forcibly of a train, and rode to Nanking. There they teamed up with colleagues from the capital’s university and marched in a shouting body, five thousand strong, to the Ministry for Foreign Affairs. They pushed past the guards and stormed the Minister’s office, and pulled him out of doors and beat him up. The Minister, when he got out of hospital, retired. The students then staged a sit-down strike and announced they would remain in Nanking until they got action instead of mere diplomacy. Nobody knew what to do about them and there were more important matters claiming government attention.

  It was obvious that the South and Nanking must make up their differences. The public demanded this. And so although impolite noises kept resounding from Canton, where Eugene Chen was virtuously condemning Chiang Kai-shek for being weak in his diplomacy, Nanking offered to come to terms. In October, Chiang released Hu Han-min from his soft detainment, none the worse, apparently, for the involuntary holiday. Together with three others they went to Shanghai for a peace conference with the southern leaders. Hu Han-min urged the southerners to be reasonable and stop shouting for Chiang’s resignation. Chiang added, “Whatever may have been the right or wrong, the whole blame may, if desired, be placed entirely at my door.”

  But this edifying spectacle didn’t last long. As the Canton contingent continued to demand Chiang’s resignation, Hu suddenly about-faced and improved on the suggestion. Chiang should not only resign, he said, he should be banished from China altogether. The conference closed in disorder.

  Other suggestions were made and abandoned. The South was adamant; Chiang must go.

  The sit-strike students, tired of merely sitting, began stirring up more trouble. Their numbers had been growing steadily since the first demonstration; boys hurried into Nanking from far afield, until at the end of November there were twelve thousand of them. Again they marched to the new government buildings, and this time they shouted for Chiang himself to come out and argue. “War on Japan!” they cried.

  Chiang let them wait in the cold winter weather a full twenty-four hours before he appeared. Then he scolded them severely and told them to go back to school, and the meeting dispersed in a chastened calm.

  On December 15, Chiang ga
ve in to popular demand and resigned. The rest of the officials threw in their hands as well, but none of their resignations was accepted save T. V. Soong’s and one other. Lin Sen was appointed Acting Chairman of the government. He was always the one man who could be guaranteed harmless. The new government could hardly be called rash: they stationed a crack Cantonese unit, the Nineteenth Route Army, along the railway line from Nanking to Shanghai. One never knows when protected retreat might be advisable.

  The change-over was celebrated in a manner the government could have dispensed with. After the snub administered to the students by Chiang Kai-shek they began building up to a bigger, better effort. More and more young men flooded into the town until seventy thousand of them crowded into the dormitory buildings and the surrounding houses of Central University. Just after Chiang’s resignation they sallied out to see what they could do. They swarmed into the Foreign Affairs building again and destroyed it. They attacked the Central Kuomintang Headquarters and beat up an old man there. He was rescued by the guard, who fired over the heads of the crowd and scared them off. Then some of the boys, still light-hearted, attacked and pulled down the building that housed the party paper, the Central Daily News, and completely smashed its printing press. Next morning, bright and early, the Army took over, rounding the students up and escorting them out of Nanking.

  Once Chiang had given way, his opponents relented a little. They elected him to the C.E.C. standing committee of three, with Hu Han-min and Wang Ching-wei the other two, but he refused the honor. (So did Hu and Wang.) Other offers were likewise turned down by the Generalissimo. As always, he went home to the mountains.

  The excuse offered by Japan for her actions was that Chinese soldiers had sabotaged the South Manchurian Railway. In the presence of the flood of trumped-up accusations issuing from the Japanese Foreign Office, dealing with first one imaginary “incident” and then another, or alleging that China and Russia were in league against her, only an imbecile could have doubted that Japan was not yet satisfied with her conquest and that Fate was closing in on Nanking. Sitting uneasily in his presidential chair, Sun Fo looked around for veteran statesmen who could help him with expert advice. He found none. Hu Han-min had cannily gone to Hongkong before the dust settled. Wang Ching-wei, who was morally responsible for the whole shake-up, had retired to a Shanghai hospital. Wang was really ill; he was a diabetic.