Accidental State

by Hsiao-ting Lin

  During April and May 1947, the Nationalists launched a major campaign against their Communist rivals in Shandong Province, where Chiang used some twenty divisions, about 400,000 men, against an estimated 250,000 Communists. The result was a disaster for the Nationalists, who may have lost as many as 15,000 men killed or wounded during the epic battle of Menglianggu in south-central Shandong between 14 and 16 May. As difficult as it was for many to believe, the Nationalist 74th Reorganized Division, then regarded as Chiang’s best division, was completely annihilated. The division commander and his staff committed suicide before being captured.4 In the meantime, the losses sustained by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) were soon replenished and its munitions quickly replaced, a situation which obviously did nothing to promote Nationalist morale. This critical battle in North China also stunned U.S. military experts, who were surprised to discover that the Communist army had been transformed from a guerrilla force into a regular army within a relatively short period of time.5 In fact, the implication of the Menglianggu campaign was so crucial to the subsequent military balance between the Nationalists and the Communists that many historians have cited the battle as a major turning point in the Chinese civil war.6

  In the summer of 1947, U.S. President Harry Truman sent General Albert Wedemeyer to lead a fact-finding mission in China to assess the general situation and the practicality of further aid for the Nationalist government. Taiwan was included in Wedemeyer’s tight schedule. On August 11, Wedemeyer and his delegates arrived in Taipei, where they were warmly received by Governor Wei Daoming and other provincial leaders. According to George Kerr’s account, presumably based on the information given by his contacts in the State Department, during the visit Wei sensed the general’s lack of enthusiasm but did his best to convince him that Taiwan was indeed a bastion of democracy.7 In his own report to Washington, however, Wedemeyer claimed that the experience in Taiwan was most enlightening. There were indications, the general specified, that at the time of his inspection tour the Taiwanese were “receptive toward U.S. guardianship and United Nations trusteeship.” The general also observed the Taiwanese now feared that the Nationalist government would contemplate “bleeding their island to support the tottering and corrupt Nanking machine,” and he thought that their fears were “well founded.”8

  Albert Wedemeyer’s bold statement on Taiwan would not be made known until two years later, in August 1949, when his observation was compiled into the China White Paper. And yet, publicly, to avoid causing suspicions on the Chinese side, the general did not propose anything relating to Taiwan during his fact-finding mission in China. Instead, while in Taipei, Wedemeyer asserted that the United States “has no interest in Taiwan,” a statement that surely chilled the hearts of Taiwanese elites who might have hoped he would at least suggest a U.S.-handled investigation of the situation on the island.9

  The general’s professed reassurance no doubt pleased the Nationalist authorities. Nevertheless, as the situation in China steadily declined, a shift of stance toward the island on the U.S. side seemed inevitable. On August 22, 1947, two days before Wedemeyer left China, a confidential report, in many ways a reincarnation of George Kerr’s earlier reports, was submitted to the general by the American embassy in Nanjing. The report highlighted that Nationalist China’s de facto control of Taiwan was generally recognized, but the transfer of sovereignty of the island was by no means being formalized. It went on to propose that an efficient government and a rationalized economy on the island, with its insulation from the termite-ridden economy and finances of the mainland, would be of great interest to the United States. Only if a politically and economically enlightened administration were set up in Taiwan, the report argued, would American involvement or even governmental economic aid be justified. It concluded by suggesting that personal references be made by Wedemeyer to Chiang Kai-shek to utilize Taiwan as “a Sino-American joint training ground” for a division and perhaps more of Nationalist Chinese troops.10

  On the day after the Embassy’s report, in a personal memorandum to Wedemeyer, Philip D. Sprouse, assistant chief in the State Department’s Chinese Affairs Division and a member of the mission, went one step further by claiming that the Taiwanese now desired a United Nations trusteeship or an American guardianship for the island because they felt “the lot of the island under Chinese rule [was] hopeless.” Pretty much echoing what George Kerr’s advice, Sprouse implied that the misrule of the Chinese on the island and the February uprising against that rule had no Communist inspiration, but he fretted that the situation now offered “fertile ground for the spread of Communist influence.”11

  General Wedemeyer’s fact-finding mission was meant to strongly influence the decision-making process of Washington’s military assistance to Chiang Kai-shek. A top-secret report by the State-War-Navy Coordinating Committee in early October 1947 temporarily shelved sections on how the U.S. policy toward China should be formulated, awaiting the data gathered by Wedemeyer’s mission for its finalization.12 While a more concrete policy was still waiting to be formulated by the State and Defense department chiefs, one matter was getting crystal clear in their minds. As revealed in its report, the Coordinating Committee was now quietly reviewing the legal status of Taiwan, and its conclusion was that the island should be officially acquired by the Chinese central government only after a formal peace treaty with Japan was concluded.13

  SOUTH CHINA AS AN ANTI-COMMUNIST BASE

  Around the same time as the Wedemeyer mission, it became evident that Chiang Kai-shek was planning to use Taiwan as a safe haven for military training. One indication was his decision to send General Sun Liren to initiate a new military training program on the island. In the summer of 1947, Sun, accompanied by a group of U.S. military advisers, arrived in Taiwan to inspect a suitable location for the training program. When this piece of news began to circulate, it must have brought about mixed reactions among those who had long wished to see a change of U.S. policy toward the island. As a Virginia Military Institute graduate, Sun spoke fluent English, and his capability and talent during World War II had become a legend among many senior officials in U.S. military and political circles, including General MacArthur. In November 1947, Sun’s training program was inaugurated in a former Japanese military base in Fengshan near Kaohsiung.14 While the idea of a UN trusteeship of Taiwan was brewing, the presence of the much admired Sun in Taiwan was deemed, particularly among American naval and intelligence chiefs, as an encouraging sign that Taiwan could be secured as a link in the Japan-Okinawa-Philippines strategic chain.15

  Sun Liren’s military training program in southern Taiwan began shortly after the ignominious defeat of Chiang’s best army divisions in North China.16 More critically, a series of Nationalist military fiascos, beginning in the spring of 1947, had led to new, key geo-strategic planning among senior Nationalist leaders. In the eyes of Chiang Kai-shek and his core advisers, the abysmal defeat in North China, along with the general downward spiral of the military situation in Manchuria, signaled the probable end of Nationalist rule in territories north of the Yangtze.17 On June 19, 1947, when meeting with John Leighton Stuart, Chiang for the first time admitted that the military situation in Northeast China was “hopeless,” asserting that he had come to realize this just recently. Without hesitation, the American ambassador shared Chiang’s pessimism with his British counterpart in China.18 Sun Liren’s new assignment on the island of Taiwan, rather than being launched anywhere on the mainland where it might be exposed to Communist attack, was also viewed as an indication of Nanjing’s concern with the deteriorating political and military situation, and of resignation to the likelihood of losing much or all of northern China and perhaps even all of the mainland.

  In order to fight a prolonged war against the Communists, the Nationalists needed to establish a safe territorial stronghold south of the Yangtze, where Communist influence was still weak and where war provisions and natural resources were readily accessible. It was thus ironic that in
September 1947, when Nationalist Defense Minister Bai Chongxi pledged aloud that the government would use its full strength to suppress the Communists in North and Northeast China, surreptitious preparations for the worst-case scenario had already been taken by Chiang Kai-shek.19 Before such preparations could begin, however, Chiang and his advisers had first to decide where to build up this putative territorial redoubt. Given its superb geographical conditions as a major agricultural province, its location on the South China Sea where it faced the outside world, and a historical legacy as the revolutionary base of the KMT, Guangdong Province was selected by Chiang as the place to form the nucleus of the future Nationalist power base on the mainland.20

  On August 20, 1947, Nanjing promulgated a new formula for its counterinsurgency and mobilization activities aimed at tightening Nationalist control in the southern rear base. In this new anti-Communist undertaking, Guangdong was stipulated to be established as the pivotal geostrategic point for the struggle against the Communists.21 Four weeks later, T. V. Soong, recently retired from the premiership, was appointed to the new governorship of Guangdong. At the same time, he was appointed head of the Generalissimo’s field headquarters in Guangzhou, a position that would legally empower him to command all Nationalist forces in both Guangdong and Guangxi provinces. Soong’s new appointment, which was in fact a downgrade in the Nationalist hierarchy from a constitutional point of view, still encountered some opposition within the KMT party, especially from the powerful CC Clique, then firmly in control of the province’s party organization and secret service. As American career diplomats had observed, Chiang had never truly liked his brother-in-law, whom he thought too presumptuous; but Chiang distrusted local military and political figures in Guangdong, the so-called Guangdong Clique, more than Soong. On a more practical note, Chiang thought that Soong’s personal network with the Westerners would be of great value in attracting much-needed financial and economic support to strengthen the central government’s position in South China.22

  From the outset, T. V. Soong endeavored to demonstrate that he was a provincial governor of a very different kind. To build a solid anti-Communist bastion in Guangdong, Soong prioritized the suppression of local “bandits” whom, until late 1947, the Nationalists refused to recognize as an organized Communist force.23 Realizing he could not expect to obtain genuine collaboration, not to mention trust, from the local militarists and politicians, Soong instead sought assistance and advice from Sun Liren, his erstwhile subordinate (Sun had served in the Finance Ministry Tax Police Regiment in the early 1930s when Soong was the finance minister). Shortly after Soong was sworn in as the provincial governor, he asked Sun, then training the new armies in southern Taiwan, to recommend a capable officer to serve as his chief of staff in Guangzhou. General Hu Weida, a graduate of the U.S. Armor School in Fort Knox, Kentucky and a faithful follower of General Sun, was his recommendation. Hu soon became Soong’s trusted military adviser.24 In the following months, Soong continued to seek additional officers from Sun to conduct his “banditry suppression” in South China. Nevertheless, successful anti-Communist operations were getting more and more difficult to come by, and so in September 1948, Sun personally flew from Kaohsiung to Guangzhou, where he advised an increasingly hard-pressed Soong how best to manage the province’s military.25

  3.1 T. V. Soong inspects the Guangdong provincial garrison force, ca. 1948. During the Chinese civil war, Soong worked to create South China as KMT’s last territorial base. (Courtesy T. V. Soong Papers, Hoover Institution Archives)

  T. V. Soong also turned to the Americans for help. Two months after assuming his governorship, Soong wrote to Lester K. Little, American inspector-general of the Chinese Customs Service, seeking ammunition with the justification of improving the province’s anti-smuggling capability. An inspired Little, who deemed Soong’s new appointment in Guangzhou as one of the most “encouraging and significant developments since the end of the war,” immediately wrote to John Leighton Stuart, urging the ambassador to seriously consider rendering a loan or a gift of $2.5 million to support Soong’s purchase of four vessels, wireless communications, and spare parts for Customs ships in the Guangdong area.26 The American ambassador politely rejected the idea, as he could not accept the inspector-general’s “informal presentation,” and instead suggested to Little that he advise the Nationalists to lodge their request with Washington. A persistent Little immediately followed suit.27

  From Nanjing, however, no official request for armaments for Soong was presented to Washington, and the reason was not difficult to detect. Soong’s unspoken idea was actually to create a paramilitary force at his own disposal, free from the influence of regional cliques and militarists who were constantly at odds with Chiang Kai-shek. Toward the end of 1947, the obstinate Soong went out of his way to establish a separate “water police” in Guangdong, thereby detaching the provincial marine security forces from the Chinese navy, which was barely under Chiang Kai-shek’s control anyway.28 Soong’s attempt to create a military mechanism that was under his effective command was also hindered by his American military advisers. They strongly dissuaded him from his plan by arguing that from a purely military and strategic point of view such a move would only generate “a very awkward command structure” in the region’s military and security establishments. Worse still, when Soong thought he could further dominate the military in both Guangdong and Guangxi provinces by issuing orders in his capacity as the Generalissimo’s representative in Guangzhou, his American advisers informed him that in all honesty no high-ranking military officers in the army and navy headquarters took his orders seriously.29

  Notwithstanding these frustrations, from the early months of 1948 until he resigned the governorship in early 1949, through personal channels from abroad, T. V. Soong was able to acquire a considerable amount of ammunition for his provincial garrison forces. In April 1948, without prior consultation with Nanjing, Soong cabled General Jiang Biao, his longtime associate and Nationalist China’s ammunition procurement representative in Ottawa, Canada, to request six PA-11 planes and other related radio facilities for his “smuggling suppression” in the South China Sea.30 In the following months, Soong augmented his regional force by purchasing arms through various connections such as the Bank of Canton in San Francisco, the Canadian Commercial Corporation, the China Supply Agency in Ottawa, Jiang Biao, and other international brokers, including a mysterious American named Mr. Schroeder. These munitions, which included thousands of Bren guns and pistols, over 10 million rounds of ammunition, and twenty tanks, were shipped from Canada and European countries like Spain and Belgium to Guangzhou via Hong Kong.31 The Hong Kong governor, Alexander Grantham, hoping adjacent South China would remain a Communist-free zone, wrote to Soong that he would be pleased to grant the necessary facilities for the shipments.32

  T. V. Soong was equally concerned about consolidating the province’s economic stability and financial security. Just before his inauguration, an agreement was signed between the Central Bank of China and the Hong Kong government in which the Guangdong provincial authorities obtained promises of cooperation from the British colonial authorities to suppress smuggling between South China and Hong Kong. This agreement was designed to ensure that tax revenues from Chinese exports via Hong Kong would come into the hands of the Nationalist government and to secure the elimination of the existing free markets in Hong Kong in U.S. dollars and Chinese Nationalist currency.33 Shortly after assuming his new post in Guangzhou, Soong endeavored to attract foreign investments for the province’s economic development. In early 1948, despite the anti-British demonstrations in Kowloon and other major cities in Guangdong, there was talk of a big British project in the province. A new “Guangdong Iron and Steel Works Project” was feverishly discussed, and Soong sought British cooperation in industrial and other investment undertakings.34 Considering that their colonial interest in Hong Kong was closely connected to the situation in Guangdong, it is not surprising Whitehall policymakers seemed m
ore cooperative than those in any other country to work with Soong to bolster the economy in South China.

  At the same time, the United States was not exactly absent from Soong’s efforts to build a Nationalist power base in southern China. In early 1948, with the help of William Youngman, another important associate of T. V. Soong from his wartime years, discussions got underway about the participation of Morrison-Knudsen, one of the largest construction companies in the United States, in developing the Chinese infrastructure. Some of the grandiose projects discussed included the reconstruction of the Guangzhou-Hankou railway, the building of a new railway connecting Guangzhou with Southwest China, and the renovation of the Whampoa harbor.35 In addition, Soong brought with him Nationalist premier Weng Wenhao to endorse a cross-regional economic cooperation program to be mounted by provincial authorities south of the Yangtze.

  In the early summer of 1948, Soong somehow managed to bring together governors from Hunan, Fujian, Taiwan, Jiangxi, and Guangxi in Guangzhou to coordinate their actions in developing South China’s economy, finances, and infrastructure. For a short time, this political feat, along with the spreading news that the U.S. Congress would soon approve all-out aid to the Nationalists, momentarily attracted hundreds of foreign investors who were interested in areas under Soong’s control.36

  Within the KMT power structure, however, the struggle over who should be the real master of South China remained fierce. One of Soong’s strongest competitors was General Zhang Fakui, a powerful Cantonese leftist militarist who was Soong’s predecessor as head of Chiang Kai-shek’s field headquarters in Guangdong. Zhang was not only bitterly opposed to Soong’s control of the province’s military, but also disagreed with Soong over the issue of including Hainan Island, where the Soong family came from, as part of Guangzhou. Zhang advocated that, to reinforce South China as an effective Communist-free region, it was imperative to detach Hainan from Guangdong provincial jurisdiction. As Zhang saw it, establishing a new Hainan provincial administration directly under Nationalist control and maintaining an independent garrison command, separate from provincial authorities, would both alleviate the burdens of Guangzhou and facilitate Communist suppression activities on the island.37 According to Zhang, around May 1947, Nanjing accepted his proposal and Chiang Kai-shek was ready to appoint him as the first governor of the island.38