Stilwell and the American Experience in China, 1911-45
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The signs were certainly provocative. In 1934, in a historic statement announcing her intention to control China, Japan slammed shut the open door. Voiced by a spokesman of the Japanese Foreign Office, Eiji Amau, the statement proclaimed it to be Japan’s purpose to act as “guardian of peace and order in East Asia.” As such, Japan claimed the right to oppose loans or any other form of support by other nations to China and denied China’s right to “avail herself of the influence of any other country to resist Japan.” The Amau Doctrine startled the world; nevertheless American reaction was held to a low key. With the energies of the Roosevelt Administration strained in the tremendous effort of domestic reform, the Government was not looking for a foreign quarrel. Secretary Hull’s policy was to abate the ill feeling left by Stimson. His reply, while necessarily putting America on record as rejecting the Amau Doctrine, was issued, as he said, in a “respectful and friendly spirit.”
In practice the Japanese continued their penetration of Inner Mongolia and north China through political arrangements with puppet governors and economic flooding by organized smuggling of opium and Japanese goods. While the north eroded, Chiang continued passive to the Japanese while reorganizing and retraining his army with the help of German advisers for use against the Communists. In 1934 with a mobilization of 700,000 he launched the fifth Bandit Suppression campaign against Communist forces which numbered about 160,000. This time, with artillery, planes and German coaching, he was at last able to overcome the enemy’s guerilla tactics. A cordon of blockhouses, gradually tightened, was designed to force the Communists into positional warfare or else annihilation by siege and starvation. The policy practiced by the Nationalist forces was to exterminate the local peasantry who had amalgamated with the Communists and turn the region into a wasteland incapable of supporting the guerilla troops. Houses were burned, cattle and people driven away, fields left untilled, while piles of bodies rotted in the villages. Through execution or starvation the Nationalists wiped out countless fellow-Chinese. In October 1934 the Communist remnant of some 90,000 to 100,000 broke out to the west and, scattering to escape Chiang’s planes, set forth on the Long March through China’s outback. After 5,000 miles and a year’s duration, the trek brought them to a new revolutionary base in northern Shensi. They had been uprooted but not exterminated and the problem remained.
In December 1934 Japan gave notice of intention to terminate her adherence to the Washington Naval Treaty when it should come up for renewal two years hence. Under the constant pressure of the militarists’ demand for naval parity and an end to the yoke of 5-5-3, the last treaty tie with the West was now severed.
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On board ship for China in June 1935 Stilwell drew up his estimate of the situation under the title “Future Developments in China.” Revealing how closely he had been studying events, it was an analysis of sound strategic and political judgment. He recognized that Japan’s goal was to be “the major power in the Far East” with control of eastern Siberia, Manchuria, Korea, China, Formosa, the Philippines and Netherlands East Indies. Because of the development of air power, Japan would endeavor to make her home islands invulnerable against Russia by “pushing her front out to the Gobi desert and make Russia operate from the other side.” This required gradual encroachment on and control of Inner Mongolia and north China, which was already evident in the “demilitarizing,” that is the substituting of Japanese for Chinese force, of the Peiping-Tientsin area. The program would be extended in the northern provinces until Japan arrived at complete control north of the Yangtze with all the commerce of north China in her hands, leaving Shanghai to the “so-called Nationalists.”
“Is there any possibility that this encroachment will be stopped? No, not by the Chinese,” Stilwell wrote. Now was the vital time to resist, otherwise it would be too late, but Chiang Kai-shek showed no signs of being willing to risk an open break with Japan. “He knows that he would be defeated which would mean that revolt would break out behind him. Therefore he will sit tight, hold on to what he can and count on foreign influence to help him retain Shanghai where so much foreign business centers.”
All of Japan’s acts in China, Stilwell believed, were premised on the necessity of creating a “solid western frontier” against Russia. North China, he assumed, would be lost to the Chinese. The foreign powers would do nothing more than “fuss and fume,” the United States “would do nothing more than write notes,” and “a fait accompli will again be accepted.” Japan would not be seriously opposed by China or by the world at large.
Stilwell’s final comment showed him possessed of that unusual talent—the capacity to understand a historical process while it was happening. “Paradoxically,” he wrote, “each successful encroachment will be accepted more and more as inevitable and the foreign powers will be less and less inclined to call a halt.” This was a classic definition of the appeasement era before history gave it a name.
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Military Attaché: China’s Last Chance, 1935–37
WHEN STILWELL, promoted to full colonel, came back to Peiping on July 7, 1935, the future of China, the expansion of Japan, the implications for the United States, were spread before him to study as military observer. The capabilities and intentions of the host country are the military attaché’s subject. He serves as an intelligence officer whose function it is to keep his War Department informed of factors and developments of military significance. His sources are official and unofficial: inspection of troops, attendance at field exercises, contact with the right people and cultivation of foreign colleagues, study of the press, reports of private agents, and general circulation with open eyes and ears. Ordinarily, the aspect of his task most seriously pursued by the military attaché is the social, on the theory that parties are work. But society was not Stilwell’s forte; he avoided the Peking Club and was not felt to be “one of us” by its frequenters. But he was agreeable to a Chinese aristocrat like Mme. Dan, a Manchu princess, former lady-in-waiting to the Empress Dowager, and one of the most distinguished and educated women of the old nobility, who was often entertained by the Stilwells. He cultivated other Chinese acquaintances as diverse as Chiang Monlin, Chancellor of Peking University, and Jade Joe, a dealer in art objects. As Attaché he lived in a 100-year-old house built for a Viceroy of Canton with many courts and lacquered pillars. He commissioned a Chinese painting for one wall of the drawing room, enlarged his collection of ivory fan handles, purchased Mongolian saddle blankets, a magnificent robe of the Empress Dowager and other treasures.
The charm of life in China that for many Westerners counterbalanced the filth, the cruelty, the indifference to misery and disregard for human life was the quality of her people. It was also true that foreigners, including missionaries, enjoyed China because they lived better, with more status, servants and comfort than at home. But for people like Stilwell the added attraction was to be in contact with a highly civilized society. The Chinese had innate dignity and self-respect, humor, stamina, quickness of mind and lovely women with exquisite figures. Stilwell’s Assistant Military Attaché, Captain David D. Barrett, the most accomplished linguist among the American military, considered the Chinese “the smartest, in many ways the most civilized, in general the most charming (especially when they want to be) and certainly on the average the best looking people in the world.”
If they seemed deficient in what Westerners call loyalty, indulged in official corruption as a matter of course, did not stress honesty among their virtues, were sometimes arrogant and sometimes supersensitive, they made up for it as heirs of an old and sophisticated culture that compelled admiration. Sun Tzu, a fifth century B.C. writer on military theory and practice who anticipated much of Clausewitz and more of Napoleon, could be read by Stilwell and his professional colleagues with profit.
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Under Japanese pressure the integrity of north China was crumbling like the sand cliffs of a battered coastline. Since halting their military advance in the Tangku Truce two years befo
re, the Japanese Army had been conducting a campaign of steady intimidation with the object of detaching north China as an “autonomous” state like Manchukuo. On the day before Stilwell arrived, another portion of Chinese sovereignty fell away, in an episode recorded by history as the Ho-Umezu Agreement. On the grounds that China had violated the Tangku Truce by “lack of sincerity” in suppressing anti-Japanese activities, the Kwantang Army presented a set of demands requiring all anti-Japanese officials to be removed, puppet officials substituted and the remaining Nationalist troops in Hopei withdrawn. General Ho Ying-chin, the Generalissimo’s deputy in Peiping, signed the conditions. Bitterness accumulated against Chiang Kai-shek. The fiercely independent ruler of Shantung, General Han Fu-chu, who hated Japan and Chiang Kai-shek equally, refused to allow Nationalist troops withdrawing from Hopei to cross his borders. In Hopei the unhappy local Governor, General Sung Che-yuan, loyal to his country but required to collaborate with its invaders, was left to maintain the fiction of Chinese sovereignty under daily humiliations at the hands of the Japanese.
For the past two years Japan had beeen exerting every form of political and economic pressure to force Nanking into a “rapprochement,” meaning in effect submission to Japanese penetration and control. China’s withdrawal from the League was demanded, her efforts to obtain loans or other help from the West frustrated. She was to be cut off from outside assistance. Convinced of China’s military and industrial inferiority vis-à-vis Japan, Chiang Kai-shek believed he had no choice but to follow a policy of compliance and conciliation while hoping for time to bring a change of fortune. But time was running the other way. With Fascism on the rise in Europe and isolationism in the United States, neither Britain nor America was in a mood to court trouble with Japan by overt help to China. In March 1935 Hitler, having previously withdrawn Germany from the League, repudiated the Versailles Treaty and declared Germany’s intention to rearm. In May Italy attacked Ethiopia. In America, following public shock at the Nye Committee’s disclosures on the relation of the sale of arms to involvement in war, Congress was drafting neutrality legislation against aid to belligerents.
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With the Japanese military pervading north China, strutting the streets, knocking Chinese out of their way with blows of their rifle butts, dictating to puppet governors and officials, summoning press conferences and issuing fire-eating statements about Japan’s “divine mission” to lead the peoples of Asia, the daily reality of China’s subjugation was more apparent in Peiping than in Nanking. Although branch offices of the foreign missions had been opened in Nanking under consuls and chargés, the diplomatic corps was not eager to uproot itself and move down to the muddy city on the Yangtze where it rained all year, new premises would be hard to find and the permanence of the Government was dubious. Owning property in the Legation Quarter of Peiping, comfortable in their clubs and summer homes in the Western Hills, the foreign missions preferred to stay in the Imperial City where life was still pleasant even as its end visibly approached.
Nanking had not been used as a capital for hundreds of years and was inhabited by “those nasty Yangtze Valley people,” as Stilwell called them, who compared unfavorably with the agreeable northerners. Among residents of Peiping it was an article of faith that the farther south, the worse the inhabitants. The Kuomintang, however, pressed hard for transfer of the Legations as evidence of foreign recognition of its stability, and this much courtesy after eight years could not be indefinitely withheld. With reluctant feet the official transfer was to be accomplished in 1936. American Legation quarters in Peiping became a Consulate-General with some of the diplomatic staff remaining, including, happily for Stilwell, the Military Attaché. Given the trend of events, it was considered advisable to keep a military watch on north China.
In 1935 the only encouragement Britain and America could offer Nanking was to raise their Legations to Embassies so as not to be outranked by the Japanese who had already made the change. In September, shortly after Stilwell arrived, the American Minister Nelson T. Johnson, accompanied by his staff, presented his credentials as Ambassador in a formal ceremony in the capital. A group photograph which recorded the occasion shows Stilwell in dazzling whites and decorations looking the outward perfection of a suave attaché.
In the following month he thoroughly enjoyed the part on a visit to Siam to which he was accredited along with China. His predecessors had not troubled to visit the exotic little kingdom which owed its independence, unique in Southeast Asia, to the fact that British and French imperialisms advancing from opposite directions had met there and, after lopping off border provinces suitable to each, had allowed the kingdom to stand as a convenient buffer. Stilwell traveled on the U.S.S. Augusta, flagship of the Asiatic Squadron, which was making an official visit. To his surprise he enjoyed his contact with the Navy. “Everybody treats me as if I were visiting royalty instead of a damn Army passenger,” he wrote to Win. Bangkok, being something of a diplomatic backwater, outdid itself to entertain the party from the Augusta. Between banquets and parties and royal receptions, Stilwell managed to inspect Infantry, Cavalry and Air Defense regiments and file an exhaustive report on the training, composition and defenses of the Siamese Army.
By the time he returned to Peiping in November, a new move by the Japanese brought the situation in north China once more to a crisis. Determined to accomplish the separation of the five northern provinces (Hopei, Chahar, Suiyuan, Shansi and Shantung), the Japanese had massed troops north of the demilitarized zone in ostentatious menace and were bringing extreme pressure on General Sung Che-yuan to declare the region’s independence of Nanking. A large man of Shantung peasant stock, with the calm impressive face of a Buddha usually adorned by a fat cigar, Sung had been approved by the Japanese as chairman of the Hopei-Chahar Political Council because they thought they could manage him. He was in fact his own man who, when Japanese bribes and lures or threats became importunate, would retire to his native village to perform the customary duty of sweeping the tombs of his ancestors. Nominally he commanded the 29th Army of four divisions or more than 60,000 men, but under Japanese terms he could keep only 10,000 stationed in northern Hopei. Under the renewed pressure in November, he bent and twisted, never quite yielding, hoping for a decision from Nanking to resist. With reason to believe that the Japanese Government was again divided on how far to support the Army’s action, Chiang Kai-shek stalled.
Anxiety about the Generalissimo’s intentions was rising. Some argued that he would not risk direct confrontation with the Japanese, others that at some point he would turn and retreat no more, if only because driven by popular insistence. “This is a time for fighting,” T. V. Soong said to the Times correspondent, Hallett Abend. “If we do not resist now our chance may be lost for good and all. Even a defeat, after all, is something. It is better to fight and to lose than to give up everything without a struggle.” This was a romantic Western notion which had no appeal for Chiang Kai-shek. Although Chiang and Soong shared, according to Ambassador Johnson, the “only backbone” left in the Government, they worked at cross-purposes. American policy depended on which purpose won.
The view of China received by Washington from its observers in the Embassy and the many consular outposts was pessimistic. Since 1934 their reports had expressed increasing discouragement in the Kuomintang as the force for unifying and reforming China. One ardent Chinese shared the disillusionment. The Kuomintang, said Hu Shih to an American friend, “is dead but not buried and all unburied things cause trouble for the living.” The Kuomintang had never succeeded in filling the centralizing function of the throne. Nor was it only the monarchy that had disappeared, but also its instrument of government, the Imperial Civil Service, leaving no adequate replacement. Meanwhile Kuomintang leadership had deteriorated and the regime had hardened in the authoritarian and military stage with no progress toward the promised second and third stages of people’s welfare and democracy. China was still a country where half the people died before reachin
g the age of thirty, where 75 percent of deaths were due to preventable diseases mostly filth-borne, where a peasant could be subjected to 44 different taxes—often collected years, even decades, in advance—on everything from his land to his bedding and kettle and for everything from eleven varieties of military aid to nine varieties of public expense. When this did not suffice, a “temporary expenses tax” or an “extraordinary tax” was thrown in. As always, “Old Hundred Names” paid for the Government, whether of Emperor, warlords or Kuomintang. Chiang Kai-shek spent 80 percent of this revenue on military establishment.
Efforts of university faculties and cooperatives and reformers to improve and modernize, to abolish illegal taxes and help the peasantry to buy back lost land were valiant but frustrated by the impassive rigor of the old ways. Administration continued corrupt and inefficient. Since 1927 the province of Hupeh had suffered five changes of governor and Anhwei six, with bureau chiefs, district magistrates and all local functionaries replaced at each change because of the patronage involved and because the Central Government used these posts as rewards for favors or for loyalty. Gossip of corruption in high places was a frequent theme of foreign service reports to Washington. While her husband was Minister of Finance, Mme. H. H. Kung was “credited with receiving a moderate but invariable commission on all purchases of military planes.” She and her sister, Mme. Chiang Kai-shek, were whispered to have manipulated Government bonds and raked in huge profits from speculation in silver in the course of currency measures put through by Dr. Kung. Ambassador Johnson considered that Dr. Kung and his brother-in-law T. V. Soong could not give “unbiased consideration” to China’s problems because of their various personal financial interests.