Ever since the Japanese occupation of Manchuria, Chiang had put unification before resistance. When the Marco Polo Bridge Incident, triggered by a Japanese soldier going missing near Beijing, erupted in July 1937, Chiang Kaishek’s suddenly enhanced status and his judgement that the Japanese did not want a serious war in China at this time led him to see the incident as an opportunity to push back against Japanese encroachment in north China. Even if some Japanese leaders, including members of the top military brass in Tokyo, were hesitant about going to war with the Nationalists at the time, they would not give in. Thus began the Second World War in east Asia.
On a Collision Course: Chinese and Japanese Policies before the Xi’an Incident
In 1936, China’s northern provinces hosted a large number of armies: General Yan Xishan in Shanxi province commanded 43,000 troops; General Han Fuju had as many in Shandong province; 28,000 troops served under General Song Zheyuan in the provinces of Hebei and Chahar; and General Yang Hucheng’s North-west Army also had 28,000 troops. With 85,000 men in Shaanxi province alone, the Fengtian Army of General Zhang Xueliang was the largest force in the region. In addition, there were the Communists. Following the Long March, they had set up a new base at the town of Yan’an in northern Shaanxi province. The prospects were grim for all: bitterly cold in the winter, the area could not support this many soldiers, and if China came to blows with Japan, then these forces were in the front line, a heroic but risky place to be.
Following on from its occupation of Manchuria, Japan’s aim had been to create a series of autonomous authorities all along the Soviet Union’s southern flank, from the Gulf of Bohai in the Yellow Sea, through northern China and the Inner Mongolian provinces of Rehe, Chahar and Suiyuan, all the way to Xinjiang province in the far west.4 Japan’s first push came in January 1933, at a time when Nanjing’s forces were battling the Chinese Communists in central China. When a skirmish took place at the Shanhaiguan Pass, where the Great Wall of China plunges into the Gulf of Bohai, fighting between Chinese and Japanese units spread to most passes on the Great Wall in northern China. Unwilling, and unable, to mount any sort of campaign against the Japanese, Nanjing decided that its best option was to negotiate. The Tanggu Truce, signed on 31 May 1933, in the city of Tianjin, provided for a demilitarised zone south of the Great Wall and implied a de facto Nationalist recognition of Japanese control of Manchuria and Rehe, which the Japanese now occupied.
Contrary to common Western perceptions, Inner Mongolia was not an empty no-man’s land. In the 1930s Prince Demchugdongrub was able to bring the Mongolian tribes in Suiyuan province together under his leadership. According to the historian and journalist Owen Lattimore, who had travelled widely through Mongolia, Prince Demchugdongrub was a Mongolian nationalist, who, frustrated by Nanjing’s refusal to meet him halfway, had been ‘unable to resist the assertion of Japanese control’.5 In 1933, he established a Mongol federation, which agreed an alliance with the Japanese puppet state of Manzhouguo in Manchuria, triggering a flood of Japanese funds, arms and advisors. In December 1935, Prince Demchugdongrub moved his forces into northern Chahar, annihilating the modestly armed Peace Preservation Force of the Nationalists who were based there. In the following spring, he occupied southern and eastern Chahar, severing the strategically significant Beijing– Suiyuan railway and establishing a Mongolian government at Huade county in south-east Chahar, some 175 kilometres north-west of Beijing.
After the Tanggu Truce, Nanjing and Tokyo both signalled a desire for improved relations. In early 1935, Japan’s foreign minister announced that Japan would follow a policy of non-aggression. Wang Jingwei, then China’s premier and Minister of Foreign Affairs, assured Japan’s ambassador to China, Akira Ariyoshi, that China, too, hoped for ‘a relaxation of the present tension’.6 Wang announced an end to China’s boycott of Japanese goods, a boycott that had stymied Japan’s economic recovery from the Great Depression. However, in May the chief of staff of Japan’s China Garrison Army in north China, Major Hashimoto Guma, took the initiative into his own hands.
After the murder of two Japanese journalists, Guma demanded a KMT withdrawal from Hebei province, including from the cities of Tianjin and Beijing. Units of the Kuantung Army moved south from Manchuria, demands were ramped up and an ultimatum for their acceptance was set for 12 June. As had happened in Manchuria, Tokyo followed where its field commanders led. Still unready and unwilling to fight back against Japanese inroads, Chiang Kaishek again opted to negotiate. The result was the withdrawal of the Nationalists from Hebei province and the creation of the East Hebei Anti-Communist Autonomous Council.
At this time, Chiang’s priority was to strengthen Nanjing’s position in south China. His success in driving the Communists from central China, which had allowed him to implant his forces in all the provinces through which the Communists had fled, caused the authorities in Guangdong and Guangxi provinces to fear that he was now aiming to surround them. Their attempt to mount a rebellion collapsed as a result of Chiang’s growing military strength; the adept use of bribes, which induced several infantry divisions and Guangdong’s air force to declare loyalty to Nanjing; and the failure of other provinces to rise up in support. By July, Guangdong’s Chen Jitang had retired to Hong Kong, leaving Guangxi isolated. Following several months of negotiations, the leaders of the Guangxi Clique, Generals Li Zongren and Bai Chongxi, accepted appointments as determined by Nanjing and professed their loyalty in return for the promise that any further Japanese inroads would be resisted. The Guangxi Clique had sought to foment support for their rebellion by loudly calling for resistance to Japan – at a very safe distance from any front lines. By avoiding civil war and facing down the Guangdong and Guangxi rebels, Chiang enhanced his prestige considerably.
With the situation in south China much improved, in 1936 Chiang Kaishek turned his attention to the north, focusing initially on Prince Demchugdongrub’s Mongolian federation, a move that meant challenging Japan by proxy. In the autumn Chiang travelled to Xi’an and Loyang for parleys with Generals Fu Zuoyi and Yan Xishan about a counter-offensive into Chahar and Suiyuan involving central forces under General Tang Enbo’s command disguised in the uniforms of Yan’s Shaanxi Army. These combined central–local forces were to ‘undertake an offensive to Bailingmiao with a feint toward Shangdu’ – key cities under Prince Demchugdongrub’s control.7 They succeeded in capturing both, in victories hailed by Chiang Kaishek as ‘the beginning of China’s rejuvenation’.8 US military intelligence agreed, stating that ‘Chinese resistance is stiffening and public opinion is rallying behind the resistance’.9
Chiang then wanted to push ahead with a follow-up offensive, supported by his air force of seventy aeroplanes. However, he was forced to call off the operation when General Zhang Xueliang refused to implement his order to press ahead with a campaign against the Communists, whose new base at Yan’an, according to Chiang, threatened the rear of the forces fighting Prince Demchugdongrub.10 He also feared that Prince Demchugdongrub and the Communists would form an alliance.11 General Zhang’s refusal had come as a result of the fact that Chiang Kaishek welched on an earlier promise to allow him to move into Suiyuan.12 The relationship between the two broke down; discussions ended in shouting matches; Chiang told Zhang that if he disobeyed his orders to suppress the Communists, he would disperse his armed forces to the provinces of Fujian and Anhui, meaning that Zhang would lose them.13
General Zhang Xueliang, supported by General Yang Hucheng, whose units were in the majority in the city of Xi’an itself, took Chiang Kaishek prisoner on 12 December, not only because of this rupture in relations, but also because for many months they had been negotiating with the Communists to form an alliance against Chiang under the banner of forcing Chiang Kaishek to resist Japan. In preparation for this uprising, they made contact with other generals in northern China as well as in Sichuan province in western China.14
To make the situation even more complicated, Chiang Kaishek too had been in discussion with the
Communists. In November 1936, a Nationalist negotiator told his Communist counterpart that Chiang’s conditions for settlement and a new Communist–Nationalist united front were a reduction of the Red Army to 3,000 personnel, with the assignment of all its officers to Nationalist army units and the incorporation of its Communist officials into the Nationalist administration.15 Essentially, in return for ending military action against them, and in accordance with his aim of creating a unified China under a centralised authority, Chiang demanded their submission.16 When Generals Zhang Xueliang and Yang Hucheng took Chiang Kaishek prisoner, Chiang’s gambit to exploit his thrust into north China to bring the Mongolian Federation to heel and to deal with the Communists once and for all appeared to have misfired spectacularly.
The Xi’an Incident
On the morning of 12 December, just as Chiang had completed his morning exercises in his temple residence a few miles outside Xi’an, the sound of gunfire alerted him to the fact that all was not well. His suspicions having already been aroused two days earlier, Chiang concluded that General Zhang Xueliang’s Fengtian Army had revolted. He was right. Together with two bodyguards, Chiang climbed over an outside wall into a moat far deeper than he had anticipated, hurting his back to such an extent that he was ‘unable to move for three minutes’. Under cover of the morning fog, the three climbed up the hillside north of the temple, with Chiang more crawling than walking because of his injury.17 They hid in a small cave under some rocks, but were soon discovered. As his captors approached, Chiang told them: ‘I am Chiang Kaishek. You have found me, so it is up to you whether you kill me. However, I continue to be your superior officer. Do not humiliate me in any other way.’18 The soldiers led him away.
The coup quickly petered out. One reason for this was that Stalin believed that the Nationalists were in a better position to rally China against the Japan ese than the Communists. He instructed the Communists, who could not afford to alienate him, not to support Zhang Xueliang and to facilitate a quick settlement. Stalin was concerned that if Chiang Kaishek was removed or killed, a different, more pro-Japan faction might take charge of the Nationalists. Moscow quickly made known that it was not behind the plot and that it regarded the coup as ‘Japanese-inspired skulduggery, intended to make China easier prey for Japan’s next bite’.19 Following a rapid build-up of Soviet forces, its Far East Command at the time of the Xi’an Rebellion had at its disposal some 250,000 troops, more than 800 aeroplanes and around twenty submarines.20
Although in a strong position, Moscow was reeling from the shock delivered by the Anti-Comintern Pact, signed only weeks before, on 25 November, by Germany and Japan. In this, Japan and Germany vowed not to sign any treaty with the Soviet Union, to consult each other if the Soviet Union attacked either one of them, and to collaborate in the fight against international communism, while Germany also agreed to extend diplomatic recognition to Manzhouguo. Moscow concluded that Japan and Germany intended to foment trouble in countries bordering the Soviet Union prior to a joint attack. It concluded that ‘a united, self-confident China, next to the Soviet’s own Red Army, is the strongest protection the Soviet Union can have against Japanese aggression’.21
Stalin threw his weight behind Chiang Kaishek. While deploring ‘Chiang’s anti-Communist stand’,22 Moscow praised ‘his progress in unifying China and his increasing firmness against Japanese demands’. Stalin ordered the Chinese Communists to change their strategy towards the Nationalists. Learning of Chiang’s capture the day after it had happened, on 13 December, they were delighted, telling General Zhang Xueliang that ‘the whole world rejoices about the arrest of the mother of all criminals’ and informing Moscow that ‘the elimination of Chiang Kaishek can only have positive results’. They were astounded, no doubt, when Moscow told them that their call for Chiang’s dismissal and trial was ‘inappropriate’ as it undermined ‘a united front to resist Japan’. Moscow ordered the CCP to ‘firmly advocate a peaceful settlement’.23 Their negotiator, Zhou Enlai, the future premier, was dispatched to Xi’an to see that this happened.
Other factors leading to the quick resolution were, first, that Nanjing despatched its best units, including its air force, on a ‘punitive expedition’ to Xi’an and, second, that, as in the case of the revolt of the provinces of Guangdong and Guangxi, no other significant regional leader was prepared to come out in support of the coup. Nanjing’s forces made rapid progress in their march to Xi’an and a week after the coup had begun were ready to surround the city.24 Rumours circulated that ‘a small but powerful cabal’ in Nanjing was pressing ahead with military action, which included bombing raids, not to save Chiang but to get him out of the way so that they could implement a Japan-friendly foreign policy.25 It is likely that a number of key regional generals had promised support to the coup, but that when push came to shove, they did not do so. One of them, General Han Fuju of Shandong province, even loudly declared that he had become a ‘Nanjing ally’.26 The plotters had become isolated.
During the coup, Chiang gave all the signs of being willing to die a martyr’s death. Following Sun Yatsen’s example, he drew up a last will in which he wrote: ‘my actions have been so misguided that reactionaries have been able to exploit them to incite their forces … I must sacrifice my life for the party, the country, and the people.’27 According to his brother-in-law Song Ziwen, who arrived in Xi’an on December 20 and jotted down a set of notes of all that had transpired shortly after the incident was over, Chiang had told him that ‘he could not agree to anything under duress, and that the only way is to leave everything to a military solution’, of which Chiang Kaishek would likely have become a casualty.28 General Zhang Xueliang told William Donald, an Australian advisor to the Nationalists who had flown to Xi’an to mediate, that Chiang Kaishek ‘wants to be a martyr’.29 The yearning for martyrdom can be a powerful one.
According to the journalist Hallett Abend, who had a private dinner with Chiang Kaishek and Madame Chiang shortly after their return to Nanjing, Chiang appeared to have a religious experience at Xi’an. ‘He had refused food, he refused water, he refused the services of a doctor … except his one expressed wish, a Bible.’ Abend also reported that Chiang told him that ‘I confessed my sins and shortcomings, and then I prayed that if God had really chosen me to lead China to her salvation, he would show me a sign.’30 When Chiang opened his eyes, ‘I saw two white hares’, which he followed to their hide-out when he tried to escape. Abend commented that ‘always since that captivity in December of 1936 the Generalissimo has devoutly believed that he has been chosen to lead China to her eventual salvation’.31
It is not the case that joint resistance to Japan by the Nationalists and the Communists had become a certainty. However, there had been discussions. According to Song Ziwen, Chiang had initially agreed to the following four terms: 1) reorganisation of the government; 2) renunciation of the He-Umezu Agreement (made in June 1935, by which Japan took virtual control of Hebei); 3) the launching of a campaign to resist Japan; and 4) the release of seven political prisoners. But then Chiang changed his mind, refusing to agree to anything while he was in captivity. Song had talks with Zhou Enlai and General Zhang Xueliang, while shuttling back and forth between Nanjing and Xi’an by aero-plane. Various verbal promises were made, which boiled down to Communist recognition of Chiang Kaishek as China’s national leader, an end to the Communists’ anti-Nationalist operations, Nationalist financial support for the Communists if they joined the fighting against Japanese forces, as well as the removal of most pro-Japanese Nationalists from the government.
After these few promises were made, Chiang Kaishek and Zhou Enlai met briefly, and then Chiang, his wife, Song Ziwen and Zhang Xueliang made their way to the airport – in some haste, as they feared that General Yang Hucheng ‘might use force to secure the person of Chiang Kaishek’. Instead Yang Hucheng had ‘a violent altercation’ with Zhang Xueliang, stating that ‘you started the coup and without securing anything you are allowing the Generalissimo to go.
He will surely cut off our heads.’ Zhang Xueliang feared for his life, not just because of his altercation with General Yang, but also because many officers in his own forces were unhappy with him. Upon his arrival in Nanjing, he declared to Chiang that ‘I have penitently followed you to Nanking to await punishment befitting my crime.’32 He was despatched to a villa frequently used by Madame Chiang, in the foothills of – where else – Purple Mountain.
Following up on their verbal promises at Xi’an, the Nationalists and the Communists conducted negotiations for a final agreement.33 Chiang Kaishek wrote in his diary that his ultimate aim was the abolition of the CCP, the disavowal of communism by its members and incorporation of Communist forces into the Nationalist order of battle.34 His negotiators promised financial support and supplies, permissions for the Communists to administer a number of counties in Shaanxi province, not as a Soviet but as a Special Region, and retention of a small number of troops. Zhou Enlai, the Communist negotiator, wrote in a paper setting out his negotiation strategy that the Communists were prepared to ‘acknowledge the leadership of the KMT in the entire country’ and halt anti-KMT activities, but they could not agree to the abolition of the CCP. However, if ‘the KMT can reorganise itself as a national revolutionary alliance’ (Chiang Kaishek had made noises about this at Xi’an), then the CCP would join as a bloc.35 Zhou argued that the CCP would not renounce communism but would accept the Three People’s Principles of Sun Yatsen as appropriate for China today. No agreement was reached before the outbreak of war.
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