Chiang Kai-Shek

by Emily Hahn

  In spite of these disappointments the Generalissimo was not completely disgusted with the Cairo Declaration. When it had been polished and published, he wrote to Roosevelt: “The whole nation is articulate to a degree that has never been known before in unanimously hailing the Cairo Declaration as a sure sign-post leading the Far East toward post-war peace.”

  Routine stuff, the cynical reader might say to himself. But Chiang had good reason to feel a lift in spite of everything. The future beckoned with genuine reassurance. China was to be given back Formosa, the Pescadores, and Manchuria, and oddly enough Stalin had not objected.

  Chiang could not have realized to what a degree the President of the United States had been affected in his opinion of himself and the Kuomintang by the adverse comment that was now pouring into Washington from a number of sources. Most of these sources were themselves inspired from a common source, but Roosevelt didn’t know that. The President was slipping into a role that he could hardly help enjoying—the all-wise father, sitting in judgment on his children and planning a new Jerusalem. This one was a good child and must be rewarded: that one needed a smacking. And most of his entourage accepted this conception or a President’s position. His son Elliott, who was there, quoted F.D.R. in a conversation after the conference when they discussed Chiang Kai-shek:

  “He wanted very badly to get our support against the British moving into Hongkong and Shanghai and Canton with the same old extraterritorial rights they enjoyed before the war.”

  Elliott asked if the Americans were going to give this support, and his father said, “Not for nothing. Before it came up, I’d been registering a complaint about the character of Chiang’s government. I’d told him it was hardly the modern democracy that ideally it should be. I’d told him he would have to form a uniting government, while the war was still being fought, with the Communists in Yenan.”

  Fresh from Teheran, back in Cairo, talking things over with Harry Hopkins and Stilwell, Roosevelt adopted an even more godlike approach. “How long do you think Chiang can last?” he asked Stilwell.

  “The situation is serious and a repetition of last May’s attack might overthrow him,” said the general.

  “Well then,” said Roosevelt blithely, “we should look for some other man, or group of men, to carry on.”

  “They would probably be looking for us,” said Stilwell.

  “Yes,” said the President, “they would come to us. They really like us.…”

  12 VINEGAR JOE RETIRES 1943–44

  Chiang didn’t have many advantages in the bargaining game, but he was quick to recognize those he had and press them. Swiftly, while Roosevelt’s conscience was still hurting, the Generalissimo made a new set of requests: the loan of a billion U. S. dollars, a firm undertaking on America’s part to increase support of air forces in China, and an expansion of the Hump transport route to afford twice the supplies that had already been promised. He reminded Roosevelt that the Japanese were fully capable of concluding the obvious when they saw the U.N. armies busily employed in Europe. They would certainly take their chance to step up the attack in China, hoping to bring her to her knees before the Allies could get around to Chungking.

  This time the Americans were firm and refused the loan. U. S. Ambassador Gauss, backed up by the Treasury, declared that money would not settle China’s difficulties. Only hard-and-fast supplies could do that, and there could be no genuine stepping-up of supplies until a land route into the interior was opened. In other words, the Burma campaign. In yet other words, military operations which meant more help from the Chinese. (“These people are hanging back, expecting us to do everything for them,” said the Americans.)

  Chiang hesitated painfully about Burma. The Japanese might be too strong: his own troops might be inadequate on the offensive, no matter how much Stilwell reassured him. Now, or nearly a year hence? It was a question hard to answer. At last he determined to keep his cake and eat it very slowly. Stilwell, if he wished, might go ahead with his part of the proceedings, with full command of the troops he already had in India, but Chiang would not contribute more men until he saw what help might be forthcoming from Britain. (“These Americans want us to strip ourselves of all home defense,” said the Chinese.)

  Chiang asked for the American Army corps which had been spoken about in Cairo to help out in Burma. Roosevelt admitted that now things were different and he couldn’t spare any troops from Overlord, but again he made a substitute offer. America was already supplying and training sixty Chinese divisions, with the promise to do the same with thirty more as soon as possible. Roosevelt upped that promise by thirty yet more.

  Such anxious bursts of generosity on the President’s part masked his increasing distrust of the situation. Other Americans didn’t trouble to mask theirs. Ill-feeling was strengthened by a quarrel between the Chinese and the Americans over the rate of exchange; the Americans alleged that the prevailing rate, which was disadvantageous to them, was the price the Chinese extracted indirectly in return for the use of the Yunnan forces in Burma. The Chinese pointed out with mounting querulousness that their share of U. S. Lend-Lease was very small compared with that awarded to Britain and Russia. This elicited quick, angry replies. Said Mountbatten, “I do not see why we should continue to supply [Chiang] with munitions if they are to be used solely for internal purposes.”

  Stilwell, however, was satisfied. He had won the only part of the argument that interested him; he had permission to command the Ramgarh-trained men. “Can you believe it?” he wrote jubilantly. On December 20 he started off to India on the first lap of the campaign. Britain having refused to institute the amphibious landing, Chiang withdrew likewise from his half promise to contribute the Yoke Force to the operation. But Stilwell had an idea that the Generalissimo’s determination might be shaken, and his colleagues in Washington agreed.

  They appealed to Roosevelt. The President urged Chiang to reconsider and let Stilwell have the Yoke Force even though the British had failed to come up to scratch. If Chiang could see his way clear to do this, said Roosevelt, the ferry line over the Hump would soon be provided with enough transport planes to boost the monthly freight to twelve thousand tons. If he didn’t, there would be no stock-piling for Chiang’s use against whatever foreign—or domestic—enemy he might be worrying about.

  The British added their voice to the combined temptation and threat. If the Yoke Force was not to be employed in the Burma campaign, said Mountbatten, then there wasn’t any sense in going ahead with the Ledo Road, either. Long before it was finished the Japanese would have been driven out of their Pacific strongholds. The approach through Burma would be unnecessary; China itself (it was understood, though no one said it) would be unnecessary. Why not just protect that part of the country through which the ferry operated and wash out the rest of it?

  Chiang didn’t like this argument. For different reasons Stilwell didn’t like it either. “Louis welches on entire program,” he noted furiously. “G-mo’s fault of course.” He was pushing his men hard in Burma, and they reacted splendidly. Through January and February they progressed, proving triumphantly that good training could make a modern army out of Chinese, that they were ready to submit to Western-style discipline just as if they had not learned their first lessons in the school of “strength for depth.” Stilwell exulted, and his stock rose, and Roosevelt was impressed. The success of Stilwell gave the President weight when he argued with Churchill. The Chinese airfields would be vitally important when Americans should succeed in landing on the coast of South China, he insisted: therefore, air force stock piles in China must be built up well ahead of time. Myitkyina in Burma, if the Sino-American forces could get it from the Japanese, would serve as an important strategical point in the supply line. The ferry over the Hump would have a less arduous road to fly, with lower altitude and a broader corridor for additional transport planes.

  Churchill hated the whole idea of the Burma campaign; to him it seemed too long drawn out to be useful. Bu
t other events carried the day for Roosevelt’s cause. Early in March the Japanese in Burma started a diversion; they attacked the British-Indian border near Imphal, two hundred miles south of the Chinese-Japanese battleground. It looked as if they might soon cut off Assam. Thenceforth the British had as much reason as the Americans to press Chungking for more Chinese troops under Stilwell. Press they did, but the Generalissimo continued to hold out.

  This was not difficult at first, because as long as the Japanese retreated before Stilwell, Washington didn’t insist too strongly. And it wasn’t only Stilwell who was doing well: “Merrill’s Marauders,” with the Chindit Brigade, the Eastern Air Command, and the Fourteenth Air Force, all proved their value. But at the same time that the Japanese instituted their attack against Imphal they also showed new strength against Stilwell and these others. Stilwell’s advance began to sag, and he clamored for more help from Chiang. The British chimed in. Where was the Yoke Force?

  “Limeys have the wind up,” said Stilwell with grim satisfaction. He hammered the War Department to get action somehow from Chiang. He was sure that if only the Yoke Force would start pushing in from the east as had been outlined in the original plan the Japanese would crumble. Finally he stirred up the War Department to put pressure on Roosevelt. The President should use the big stick that stood ready to his hand. He must cut off supplies’ to Chungking altogether if he couldn’t get action otherwise.

  Roosevelt didn’t quite do that, but he sent an urgent message advising Chiang to reconsider. Refusing, Chiang made his usual replies—any of the participants in the argument could by that time have reeled them off for him word for word. The Japanese … The Reds … The Russians. Seven years of war and exhaustion. In short, no Yoke Force. However, to soften the refusal Chiang borrowed a leaf from Roosevelt’s book and sent out two more divisions by air from Yunnan to India to reinforce Stilwell’s troops.

  This was not enough, said Stilwell; he sent alarmed messages to Washington. He needed the Yoke Force, he insisted. Again Roosevelt telegraphed to Chungking. After all, he reminded Chiang, that was why American money had been used to equip and train the Yoke Force, for use in this same action. The moral obligation was clear. Besides, if only Chiang would send them in everything would go so well! The Japanese would be defeated.

  On April 15 the world witnessed a rare occasion: Chiang Kai-shek changed his mind. The Yoke Force would start out for Burma, he promised, before the end of the month.

  As it happened, things had already begun to quiet down. That particular emergency passed; the enemy was turned back from the border near Imphal. Stilwell was glad to have the Yoke Force nevertheless. He managed to reach Myitkyina and captured the airfield, but after that the advance was stalled again, in spite of his reinforcements, by toughened resistance and monsoon weather. His estimates had been too optimistic.

  It suddenly became alarmingly apparent that after all the Generalissimo had not merely been crying, “Wolf, wolf.” For months he had said that the Japanese would seize their chance as soon as he committed his forces to fighting outside the country, and he was right. In May the enemy encamped in China suddenly rose up and began marching. They aimed to take the air bases set up by America at Kweilin and Liuchow, and there seemed little to stop them. Chennault’s plan to hold them back with intense air activity didn’t work; he had never been permitted to build up enough supplies to make it feasible. Chiang begged Washington to hurry up with the fulfillment of their promises, but he didn’t get much reaction. Washington was nearly ready to write the whole thing off.

  It was not only the Japanese threat that made Roosevelt sure the Kuomintang’s days were numbered. Communist activity had now become so open that there was genuine doubt in his mind if the country as a whole did not want this change. The President was thinking in terms of American mentality; to him “the people” of China were politically conscious, capable of concerted opinion on such matters, and it now seemed more and more clear that what they wanted was the democracy offered in the Communist-dominated areas of the country rather than Kuomintang government.

  This was not the attitude of the State Department as a whole, but in their way they arrived at the same conclusions. With them it was a matter of expediency. Soviet Russia had lately been more forthcoming as to Moscow’s opinion of Chiang. Chiang had long made no secret of his fears of Russia. Russia, he insisted, was aiding and abetting the Chinese Reds. He wrote to Roosevelt in March about it: the Chinese Communist Party, while professing support of the government’s policy of resistance against Japan, had for some weeks been secretly assembling their guerrilla units and concentrating them in North Shensi, “evidently preparing for an opportune moment to rise in revolt and take Sian, the base of our operations in the Yellow River Valley. The indications are manifest. Considering the matter objectively, it does not seem likely that the Chinese Communist Party would dare to make such a move without some understanding having been reached between the Soviets and the Chinese.”

  The Japanese were moving immense numbers of their forces from Manchuria to China, all too evidently confident that the Russians would do nothing to hinder this action. If the Russians meant to help the Nationalists, and not hold them back, they would continue to tie down these forces north of the border. Yet hadn’t Russia, on the contrary, just signed an agreement with Japan over the fishery rights at Sakhalin? It was tantamount to an alliance against Chinese interests.

  Chiang referred to a recent incident in Sinkiang, when Russian planes attacked Chinese troops who had crossed the border into Outer Mongolia—deserting from the Kuomintang, according to Chungking; deliberately violating the border agreement on behalf of the Kuomintang, according to the Russians. Washington studied the incident worriedly and decided that Russia had not been unreasonable. Evidently China was trying to “re-extend its authority over Outer Mongolia” when Outer Mongolia was obviously autonomous and ought to be left alone. Roosevelt told Chiang that the matter should be put away and forgotten until the end of the war. American annoyance with those difficult Chinese was heightened even more very soon afterward. Stalin was noncommittal in reply to a request that the Allies be permitted to use the Turkestan route to supply air forces in China. Considering how the Kuomintang was behaving, said the Russians, the request would have to be considered carefully.…

  Altogether, Roosevelt decided, Chiang was being unreasonable.

  It was June, and Overlord had swung into action when Ambassador Averell Harriman in Moscow sounded out Stalin’s opinion of Chiang. Did the Russian leader not agree that the Chinese Reds and the Kuomintang should make it up? And oughtn’t Chiang to liberalize the government? Yes, Stalin said, he did agree, but it was easier said than done. Chiang wasn’t so bad, but he was poorly advised—surrounded by crooks and traitors. It was very foolish of him not to make it up with the Reds and fight the Japanese as a united nation. Why was he so worried about his Reds? He had no reason to be.

  “The Chinese Communists are not real Communists,” said Stalin, laughing merrily. “They are ‘margarine’ Communists. Nevertheless, they are real patriots and they want to fight Japan.”

  This was very reassuring to Washington.

  Vice-President Wallace was already on his way to Chungking via Siberia, sent out by Roosevelt to talk the matter over with Chiang, to convey in person the essence of the latest directive. This was, generally speaking, that the Generalissimo ought to be nicer to the Russians and discourage Chinese propaganda against them. Never mind the troop movements from Manchuria; it wasn’t the fault of the Russians anyway; they couldn’t hold the Japanese if the Japanese did not wish to be held. Chiang would do better, on the contrary, if he put up more of a fight himself against the enemy and threw his crack troops into the fray instead of holding them back to blockade the Communists. Why didn’t he make it up with the Reds so they could all fight the enemy together? The Chinese must also co-operate more than they were doing with Russia. America couldn’t help China much more than she was doing at the m
oment because of European claims. Unless the Chinese Government managed to effect more cordial relations with Moscow, Russia wouldn’t be inclined to help China either.

  Wallace’s journey, thanks to various subsequent developments in the States, is one of the most interesting bits of the history of Sino-American relations. He was accompanied by John Carter Vincent, Chief of the Division of Chinese Affairs, and Owen Lattimore. Whether because of the emergency of the Japanese advance or the fact that Wallace was, after all, Vice-President and sent directly by Roosevelt himself, Chiang abandoned the taciturnity that usually characterized his dealings with foreigners. He spoke volubly, and very frankly. Wallace’s conversations with him were long. It has been pointed out by several commentators during the post-mortem that the Vice-President’s state of mind was hardly likely to be sympathetic to the Generalissimo’s attitude, no matter what Chiang said. Wallace had elected to come out to the East through Siberia and Outer Mongolia. He had stopped on the way to be entertained by the Russians and was full of his success with them. In any case he was already heavily biased in favor of the Soviet state. His mind was made up in advance: that is the argument.

  In fact, however, even without Wallace’s observations and advice to Roosevelt, American action would probably have been the same. Wallace was not alone in his opinions. In China he was surrounded and advised by State Department officials, most of whom had made up their minds to encourage a policy of softness toward the Reds. What would be interesting to know, purely as a matter of human interest, is not so much Chiang’s impact on Wallace as Wallace’s upon Chiang. We can make a guess at it from a report of one conversation between them, which was sent to the State Department:

  “He [Chiang] said that the people of the United States did not understand the situation.… He said that the Communists desired a breakdown of Chinese resistance against the Japanese because this would strengthen their own position. Mr. Wallace expressed amazement at this statement. President Chiang admitted that the Communists desired the defeat of Japan, but held that they were now convinced that this could be accomplished without Chinese resistance.… Mr. Wallace referred to the patriotic attitude of the Communists in the United States and said he could not understand the attitude of the Chinese Communists as described by President Chiang. President Chiang said that the difference in the attitude of the American and Chinese Communists might be explained by the fact that there was no possibility of the American Communists seizing power, whereas the Chinese Communists definitely desired to do so.”