Mao was furious. But a master of tactical agility, he quickly set a new course. “Neither the Soviet Union nor the United States favors a civil war in China,” a directive instructed. “The party therefore has to make concessions.” Its rallying cry became “peace, democracy, and unity.” Its avowed path to revolution became political—“the way of France, which means a government led by the capitalist class in which the proletarian class participates.” The Soviets had decreed it a time of peace, and so the CCP deemed itself the party of peace. “We want to bore our way in and give Chiang Kai-shek’s face a good washing,” Mao said, “but we don’t want to cut off his head.”
To comrades, he rushed to justify his reversal, and Stalin’s betrayal. In a contorted analysis, he reasoned that China fell in America’s sphere of influence: the most Moscow could do was to preserve space for the CCP’s survival. He pointed out that overt Soviet support for Yenan would spur increased American support for Chongqing. “Third world war should be avoided,” he explained. Still, in late August, when he boarded his first airplane for six weeks of Moscow-mandated negotiations in Chongqing, he looked, some thought, like a man traveling to his own execution.
Soviet support continued, but with limits. Communist infiltration into Manchuria could proceed, a Kremlin envoy told Yenan, but cadres should travel on back roads and avoid major cities. They could take caches of Japanese arms—but sometimes after a staged firefight, so Moscow could claim the weapons were seized by force. “We must not make this public,” a CCP directive emphasized. “We must avoid causing the Red Army diplomatic embarrassment.” The Soviets also blocked American ships from depositing Nationalist troops at Manchuria’s main port, to the Communists’ considerable benefit, and stood by as Communists blocked landings elsewhere.
The CCP took advantage of the opportunity to build a secure presence in Manchuria, a source of leverage with Chiang. The Soviets might demand peace, but it could be peace through strength. “The greater the current victory,” Mao said, “the sooner peace will come.”
In the weeks before Marshall’s arrival, however, Mao was reminded once again how suddenly Moscow could take away what it had given. Stalin was in talks with the Nationalists, and when expedient, he did not hesitate to undercut the Communists. He recalled Soviet representatives from Yenan, so they could not be blamed for CCP behavior. In Manchuria, Soviet officers threatened to use tanks to expel CCP troops from a city where they were not wanted and refused to hand over Japanese weapons to some who had arrived unarmed. An American reporter noted that the Chinese Communists seemed “puzzled and disappointed by Soviet policy.” One angrily pointed to his hammer-and-sickle tattoo—how could comrades treat one another this way? In late November, the Soviets stood by as Chiang’s troops drove the Communists out of an important gateway to Manchuria, at the point where the Great Wall meets the sea. American advisers were there to help.
After ten days in China, Marshall voiced an opinion. He had listened, solicited ideas, and pressed for details. He had considered those details and distilled common elements from contrary positions. Out of those elements, he had fashioned a plan—the Committee of Three, a roadmap for negotiations, an agenda for keeping peace. When he voiced his opinion, it was to make the case for this plan.
First he made his case to the Nationalists. They had struck him as resistant, but hearing him out, they started to bend. Then he made it to Zhou, who was quickly amenable. The next day, the government issued a public call for Marshall to lead peace talks. The day after that, the Communists said they would take part.
“The prospects of domestic peace in China grow daily fairer,” said a radio announcement. Even naysayers were encouraged. “Practically everyone now admits that there is little or no hope for unity,” the caustic John Melby had observed weeks earlier. “Unity means suicide for whichever side compromises the most.” Now he was expressing cautious optimism about “a sort of truce which will permit the solution over the years to be worked out politically rather [than] militarily.”
What had changed, of course, was Marshall. The Communists were persuaded by his reassurance that Committee of Three decisions would be unanimous—a sign he was serious about compromise, not conspiring against them. The Nationalists were won over by his understanding of their security needs. “He holds that the Communist army should be mixed with our army,” Chiang wrote in his diary. “If that’s truthful, then he can be trusted to join the three-person conference and take charge.”
In assuming “the role of referee in China’s civil war,” as a correspondent put it, Marshall was aware of the long, sorry record of peacemaking and long, bitter history between the two sides. “I was here when the present situation got under way,” he would say of his earlier China sojourn. They had effectively been at war for the better part of the previous two decades. The first attempt at unity, in the 1920s, had ended with Communist subterfuge and Nationalist crackdown. Their united front against the Japanese had collapsed into fratricidal battles, including an infamous clash known as the New Fourth Army Incident. Recent negotiations had deadlocked over questions of local governance. “The Communist Party is perfidious, base, and worse than beasts,” Chiang fumed afterward. Mao called him “a gangster,” “a turtle’s egg,” “China’s Fascist Chieftain.” Communists sang, “Chiang Kai-shek has a stubborn heart.”
All sides, however, had imperatives pointing toward a negotiated solution, at least for the time being. Chiang needed to neutralize Moscow, placate Washington, and persuade a war-weary populace that he was no enemy of peace. Stalin had explicitly warned that a full-fledged assault on the Communists, especially in Manchuria, would provoke a strong Soviet reaction. Even with American help, facing a Communist army with full Soviet backing would be “bleak,” Chiang thought, perhaps worse than facing Japan. With a military solution unlikely—“we cannot use military measures to solve the Communist problem in the postwar era,” he told his generals—he had to at least attempt a political one. “We are striving sincerely to reach an equitable and reasonable arrangement,” he assured Truman. On New Year’s Eve, he gave a radio broadcast hailing unity and cooperation.
The Communists, for their part, needed to placate Moscow and do whatever possible to neutralize Washington, while projecting the same public image of nonaggression. (“The people are fed up with war,” Zhou noted.) Stalin told them to consider Marshall’s mission a US-Soviet effort to avert civil war—a war, he warned repeatedly, they were too weak to win. Better to negotiate a coalition government and build influence by political means.
Disappointing as such restraint might be, it held a silver lining for Yenan. If Moscow and Washington were together “looking for a peaceful way out,” as Zhou put it, a renewed diplomatic offensive—this time conveying readiness to make peace with Chiang rather than war with Japan—would have an effect on the Americans. By demonstrating an interest in compromise, in joining a democratic government on fair terms, the CCP could limit the risk of a major U.S. intervention, Zhou assessed, while winning “the sympathy of international public opinion and of domestic centrist forces.” It was even possible, many in Yenan granted, that the path of negotiation would succeed. Mao had spoken of a phase of “new democracy” that would precede full-fledged Communism. “This is a big chance,” he had said, “and one not anticipated in Marxist writings.” In a coalition government, the CCP would be positioned to expand its base and “raise the Chinese people’s consciousness.” In a long-term political fight, party leaders thought their prospects good.
Yet for Mao, diplomacy was ultimately a continuation of war by other means, part of a “two-sided policy of unity and struggle.” He saw the value of negotiation, but the Communists could not let themselves be tricked by Chiang into giving up weapons or territory until their political place was assured. They must remain ready to fight. “Every single rifle and bullet of the people’s armed forces must be preserved,” Mao directed. If peace talks failed, they would at least give the Communists valuable time to prepa
re for war. “The strategy of peace is our spear,” Zhou explained, “and strengthened resistance is our shield.”
At the start of Marshall’s mission, the logic of Yenan’s approach was reinforced by the proclamations from Washington and Moscow. Communist spokesmen started praising U.S. policy. Cadres were told to focus their energies on pressing for reform, not overthrowing Chiang. “Ideas of friendship,” Mao told Zhou as Marshall approached, are “worthwhile to consider.”
A few weeks later, the joint communiqué from the Moscow summit pledged support for a “unified and democratic China” and the speedy withdrawal of foreign troops—“the most hopeful document that has been presented to the world since Germany and Japan signed the instruments of their surrender,” proclaimed the New York Times. Stalin followed it with a message to Yenan reminding them of the need for cooperation. (Although Chiang was livid that decisions about China were yet again made without him, “an unforgettable insult to the Chinese people,” even for him the upshot was clear.) Mao had asked the Soviets to join the mediation—it was an old stratagem, using barbarian to check barbarian—but Stalin declined. He would leave it to the Americans.
The Americans, of course, had their own reasons for advocating a negotiated solution. Chiang could not win a civil war—they were sure of that. The CCP might not be able to win either, but in a warring, divided China, the Nationalist government’s position would likely erode over time, even with substantial U.S. assistance. Ivan Yeaton, the staunch anti-Communist heading up the Dixie Mission, submitted an analysis ahead of Marshall’s arrival: “The Generalissimo’s military strength if not constantly revitalized will slowly crumble when forced into a long drawn-out civil war of attrition while the Communists’ deep-rooted political strength in their stabilized bases will best develop and spread under military and civil suppression together.”
Yeaton shared the view of other military observers: Chiang must attempt a deal. Claire Chennault, dashing commander of the Flying Tigers and a Chiang favorite, advocated US-sponsored “political reconstruction at Chongqing, followed by true unification between Chongqing and Yenan.” The War Department’s intelligence report (“The Chinese Communists are Communists”) concluded that “unity between the Chinese political parties is the key to a solution of China’s problems.” At worst, the thinking went, a negotiation would give Chiang time to strengthen his own government and initiate badly needed reforms—a valuable delay even if war came. At best, with American help, it might bring the Communists into government and contain them there.
Yeaton thought it could be done. “Both parties,” he advised, “have presently greatly overplayed their hands, both are exhausted, both want to save face and both greatly desire peace. All of which leads up to the fact that the time is ripe to bring them together.” He urged withholding all assistance until they complied. “We held the cards before but were bluffed out. We still hold the hand, we should play them adroitly this time.”
On January 6, a day before the Committee of Three was set to convene, American troops around the world rose up in protest against their own government. From Paris and London to Manila and Shanghai, enlisted men massed by the thousands and heckled officers, shouted profanities at generals, and waved signs for the cameras—SERVICE YES, BUT SERFDOM NEVER. They did not particularly care about America’s global responsibilities. The war was over, and they wanted to go home.
Marshall had long worried about such an eruption. “In a widespread emotional crisis of the American people,” he said in his final weeks as chief of staff, “demobilization has become, in effect, disintegration not only of the armed forces but apparently of all conception of world responsibility and what it demands of us.” Truman, fretting about the “old isolation fever,” was using every ship available to bring the boys home. Fifteen thousand a day were turning in their uniforms, and he was still savaged for not doing it fast enough. Americans had never supported a large peacetime military. As Marshall left for China, the president reiterated the need to withdraw troops “as soon as possible.” He had been reminding Chiang as well.
“The invasion of a foreign shore, generally is a pretty grim experience,” an orientation pamphlet had explained to U.S. personnel arriving in China. “However no group has ever been so welcome!” To the extent that was ever true, it did not last long. Boisterous greeting and attentive hospitality—one mayor offered marines an “inventory of White Russian girls”—gave way to what felt disconcertingly like occupation for residents and troops alike.
The Pocket Guide to China urged GIs “to show the Chinese . . . that we respect them as human beings.” But as a Life correspondent put it, “discipline dissolved like starch in rain,” and locals suffered most from the dissolution. “If I were Chinese,” Hart Caughey said, “I’d politely but firmly ask all the U.S. forces to get the hell out as soon as possible.” Americans mocked the “chinks” and “slopies” they were supposed to be advising. Pedestrians lived in mortal terror of careening American jeeps. When Marshall arrived, an editor of the War Department daily, Stars & Stripes, sent a personal report on the American presence. Troops looked upon the Chinese with “disgust, contempt, and despair,” it related, and “have little hope that China may become a strong, unified nation or a worthwhile ally.”
That second point was especially troubling. While most American servicemen were luxuriating in triumphant homecoming, those in China found themselves patrolling railways and guarding ports for purposes few understood and fewer believed in. When the Stars & Stripes editor asked a senior Marine officer what his mission was, the officer answered, “It beats me. I’m told what to do and I do it.” One GI commented to a reporter, “If anybody had meddled in our civil war we’d shot the hell out of him. That’s what the Chinese ought to do to us.”
The furor at home was equally intense. Mothers accused Truman of sacrificing their children for political gain. Citizens wrote their representatives in Congress: “Why should my son’s life, and those of thousands of other American boys, be placed in jeopardy, in order to force any particular form of government, down the throats of the Chinese people?” One day in early January, the White House received 2,000 postcards: “Our troops must leave China at once!” The AFL and CIO labor unions sponsored a “mass meeting” to denounce “American intervention.” Truman bristled at the attacks. “Chiang Kai-shek supported us wholeheartedly in the war and I am inclined to be patient with the situation in China,” he replied to a critic. “Generalissimo Stalin says the so-called Chinese Communists are nothing but bandits and he has nothing whatsoever to do with them.” Whatever the president said, the reaction persisted.
In Chongqing, Marshall also felt the pressure. Transporting additional Nationalist armies required delaying the return of the more than 100,000 troops still in China; upon getting the order, Wedemeyer had immediately canceled two homeward-bound ships. Parents wrote Marshall to beg for their sons’ release from service. (In the case of an older couple who had one son killed and a second wounded in the war, he was persuaded to find their third son and send him home.) He got updates on the rough treatment of Eisenhower, his successor as chief of staff, who had been cornered and berated by dozens of army wives. “You got out at the right time,” a friend wrote. Yet Marshall knew from years of waging war in a democracy that, even on his new mission, such sentiments could not be ignored or wished away. Without public support, no military effort could be sustained for long.
The height of strategy, says an aphorism in Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, is “defeating the enemy without ever fighting.” It was widely known that Mao was a disciple of Sun’s ancient text. But Marshall had also studied it; there was a well-thumbed translation on his bookshelf back in Leesburg. He, too, was thinking about how to win without fighting.
By Monday morning, January 7, Happiness Gardens had taken on the feel of a full-fledged headquarters. Marshall’s newly expanded staff was crowded into bedrooms on the second floor. Downstairs, maps of troop positions and railway lines were pinned
on a board, a meeting table set in front of the fireplace. At 10 a.m., when Zhou Enlai and Chang Chun came up the front stairs for the first session of the Committee of Three, Marshall and his team were prepared for what they hoped would be a significant step toward a sustained peace—and a successful mission. Above the peaked roof, under a gray sky, an American flag waved gently in the wind.
Marshall’s house was considered neutral ground. Top Nationalist officials lived nearby in mansions along Sun Yat-sen Avenue; the day before, they had convened with Chiang to determine strategy for the talks. Communist headquarters was farther away, down a crowded alleyway toward the confluence of the rivers. Mao had told Zhou to be friendly; a directive on diplomacy enjoined, “We must be punctual, and we must keep any promises we make.” Zhou hardly needed the guidance. “For the sake of our revolution, we can play the role of concubine, even of a prostitute, if need be,” he once said. And he was quickly coming to respect Marshall of his own accord. “Marshall is plain, does not exaggerate things, considers issues calmly, doesn’t jump to conclusions,” Zhou reported. “He is a rather plain capitalist.” For the Communists, it was marked praise.
Marshall had a clear vision for the Committee of Three. He understood that there were formidable obstacles standing in the way of progress toward a long-term solution. The Nationalists demanded an end to Communist armies, the Communists an end to Nationalist one-party rule, and whether either could be achieved on mutually acceptable terms, and in a mutually reassuring sequence, was an open question. An agreement to stop the fighting might provide the time, space, and good faith necessary to find an answer.
As soon as Zhou and Chang sat down at the table, Marshall started driving toward an agreement. He had claimed to have no interest in the exact terms of a deal, only in the fact of a deal getting done. Yet minutes into this first meeting, he produced his own draft order for a cessation of hostilities. He had decided it was the only way to make progress. If they started with a blank page, they would get nowhere. So he would make proposals and let the others react. He would control the negotiating text, and the notes taken by his aides, in English, would serve as the transcript of record. Otherwise, the two sides might end up in protracted arguments about what exactly had been said.
The China Mission Page 10