Zhang Fakui’s intension of making Hainan a province was met with strong opposition by T. V. Soong, who, Zhang alleged, went to great lengths to prevent Chiang from making Zhang the island’s new governor. Further, Soong’s determination to bring the island into his own satrapy was remarkable. Between late 1947 and the spring of 1948, Soong invited United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration staff and Japanese experts to conduct a thorough investigation of Hainan’s economic and agricultural conditions. Several small-scale industrial and fishery projects were also under consideration.39 In early April 1948, at the invitation of Soong, John Leighton Stuart and General David Barr, chief of the U.S. Military Advisory Group in China, flew to Hainan to inspect the island. It was reported that the establishment of a U.S. military base on the island was being carefully considered, a rumor that soon invited Communist accusations that Soong was about to sell out the island to the “evil American imperialists.”40
It was not until early 1949 that Hainan was eventually made a provincial-level “special administrative district.” Just before Chiang Kai-shek stepped down from the presidency and T. V. Soong resigned from the provincial governorship, Zhang Fakui was nominated to be the first governor of the island. At this juncture, the search for a final territorial base had become a matter of life and death to the crumbling Nationalist authorities. Believing it was too late to rescue the Nationalists from civil war, a less-confident Zhang turned down the appointment.41 As will be shown later, the idea of turning Hainan into an anti-Communist redoubt would revive after the Korean War broke out, although by that time it was largely an American, rather than Nationalist, initiative.
CHINA’S DISINTEGRATION PERCEIVED
Between late 1947 and the fall of 1948, despite a deteriorating situation in areas north of the Yangtze, T. V. Soong’s effort to consolidate the Nationalist position in South China had achieved a certain degree of success. Chiang Kai-shek noted in his diary in May 1948 that he was truly inspired by Soong’s efforts in South China at a time when the situation in other parts of China looked so gloomy.42 As late as January 1949, a report submitted to Mao Zedong from the Communist Chinese Party (CCP) underground unit in the Guangdong and Guangxi regions admitted that the Nationalist “banditry suppression” in these two provinces was so effective that local Communist guerrilla activities were badly checkmated and thus the guerrillas had had to retreat into the mountain areas on the Guangxi-Vietnam border.43 In fact, Soong’s success in purchasing as much ammunition as he could from abroad for his regional forces was largely overshadowed by his difficulty in enlisting enough local soldiers. Even so, the ill-equipped local Communist irregulars were in an even weaker position to challenge the Nationalist authorities and take over the whole region.44 On Hainan Island, for example, between late 1948 and early 1949, the local Communist leader Feng Baiju reported to Mao that the transfer of a considerable number of local Nationalist troops to fight on the mainland had enabled the Communist guerrillas to capture a few counties. But Feng also reckoned that Nationalist control of Hainan remained steadfast and, in contrast to the Communist victory on the mainland, he was never optimistic about an immediate “liberation” of the island.45
The Nationalists’ endeavor to keep South China away from the ravages of the civil war, together with a steady decline of their influence in areas north of the Yangtze, led foreign diplomats and observers to predict that China would gradually lose any hope of becoming a unitary state and instead devolve into a number of separate regions, similar to the way it was in the early years of the republic. The British were the first to suggest this. Several weeks after Nanjing’s disastrous military defeat in Shandong in May 1947, a top-secret memorandum from the British War Office in London, dated July 7, concluded that the Nationalist central regime would soon lose its already precarious hold on Manchuria, which could then become a Soviet puppet state; North China seemed likely to come under Communist control as a Chinese Communist state; South China and the western provinces might establish their independence under regional warlords; Formosa might become independent; and the threatened loss of territory to the Communists might be a factor in intensifying Nationalist interest in China’s claims to territories bordering Southwest China.46 Although officials from the Foreign Office were more cautious about the predictions than their counterparts in the War Office, a commonly held view now in Whitehall was that the Nationalist government under Chiang Kai-shek could either be saved by an all-out American aid, or be left alone to disintegrate. The current U.S. policy of limited support for Chiang would achieve no result, but instead lead China to return “to the days of native warlords.”47
Was such a return to “the days of native warlords” really what the British wanted? To some American officials, the answer seemed to be yes. In the summer of 1947, as Chiang Kai-shek was fighting to strengthen Nanjing’s control over Guangdong, rumors began to circulate that the British were implicitly encouraging a separatist movement in South China. This British-instigated movement, some American diplomats in China alleged, was led by a KMT left-wing general named Li Jishen, a native of Guangxi province who was also a long-time rival of Chiang Kai-shek.48 Although there was no strong evidence to support such a claim by the British, the American embassy in Nanjing immediately instructed all American consular officers in China to “quietly investigate the possibility of the development” of separatist movements in each consular district.49
By early 1948, important foreign representatives in China, including American ambassador John Leighton Stuart, were inclined to believe that the trend toward regionalism had become very real. In a series of analytical reports cabled back to the State Department, Stuart posited that the decline of the Nationalist authorities would lead to a breakup of China into regional and loosely federated units. The deterioration of central authority would also encourage the strongest men to carry on, each in his own territory, as virtually independent entities. Stuart argued this breakup into smaller regional units would have the advantage of more direct control of the local administration and of rallying militia bands to protect their “home turfs” from bandits or Communists. These federated units might also maintain a common organization for foreign affairs. Stuart particularly raised the example of T. V. Soong’s endeavor in Guangdong and Hainan as clear evidence that the appearance of several anti-Communist regional blocs was a highly likely development in China.50
Interestingly, U.S. military and intelligence establishments also shared such a prediction. Sometime during the fall of 1947, the Intelligence Division of the War Department went a step further by exploring the impact of the development of regional divisions in China and the concomitant disintegration of the Nationalist government authority on the Nationalist army and thereby on the possible outcome of the Chinese civil war.51 In a research report issued in November 1947, the still nascent CIA estimated that “secession tendencies” were now prevailing in both the northern and southern peripheries of China. In the North, the de facto independence of Outer Mongolia in early 1946 had generated a potent example for other ethnic minority groups who were subsequently inspired to carve out their own political territories from the Nationalist center. In South China, President Truman’s intelligence analysts watched T. V. Soong’s efforts to convert agricultural South China into a territorial fortress that would be self-sufficient and defensible from Communist attacks. But unlike the U.S. Embassy in Nanjing, which had predicted Soong would be the leader of the South China region, the CIA thought two other powerful regional militarists, Li Jishen and Zhang Fakui, would be the most likely leading figures in such a separatist movement.52
By mid-1948, overall developments in China had led American officials, both civil and military, to agree that the gradual creation of new territorial divisions, coupled with the emergence of their concomitant local authorities, was the most likely scenario in war-torn China. Therefore, to the United States, taking prompt and decisive measures to cope with such a development stood out as a matter of urgency.53 Not
surprisingly, American consular personnel and secret agents everywhere in China were busy building close contacts with political and military figures of various sorts who were perceived to be potential leaders of future anti-Communist campaigns and, therefore, ultimately of the new political units. In Inner Mongolia, for example, a mysterious Frank B. Bessac, allegedly a CIA agent, was actively engaged in secret communications with Prince Demchugdongrob (De Wang), the most prominent name of the Inner Mongols.54 Using the opportune timing of the convention of the National Assembly in Nanjing in May 1948, American embassy staff covertly approached several key ethnic politicians coming from that part of China. Ningxia provincial governor Ma Hongkui recalled that when staying in Nanjing, he was unexpectedly invited for a private dinner at John Leighton Stuart’s residence, where the ambassador was eager to gain firsthand information on Inner Mongolia. Stuart informed Ma that Washington was willing to assist his provincial regime militarily and economically if Ma carried on an anti-Communist stance in his territorial domain. Stuart also revealed that several other Nationalist military leaders, such as the Suiyuan provincial governor Fu Zuoyi, had agreed to collaborate with the United States.55
In Urumqi, American Vice Consul (and CIA agent) Douglas Mackiernan was busy fostering new anti-Communist connections with local ethnic minority figures in China’s far west, notably Osman Batur, a well-known leader of local Kazakhs.56 In March and April 1948, J. Hall Paxton, Mackiernan’s nominal superior at the consulate, conducted a thorough inspection tour of Xinjiang, where he underscored the strength and goodwill of the United States toward the local minority peoples, while at the same time he searched for potential candidates for future cooperation.57 In October 1948, a list of possible recipients of American aid in China’s western frontier then still beyond the Communists’ reach was submitted to the U.S. Embassy in Nanjing. Noticeable names on the list included figures from the famous Ma Muslim family in Northwest China: Ma Hongkui in Ningxia, Ma Bufang in Qinghai, Ma Jiyuan in Gansu Corridor, and Ma Chengxiang in Xinjiang. With the Nationalists seemingly on the losing side of the civil war, Stuart brooked no delaying in urging Washington to render immediate assistance to these regional leaders and their forces to keep away the Communist threat.58
THE GENERALISSIMO STEPS DOWN
Within this strategic framework, with the inevitability of a disintegrated and regionally based China was perceived with alarm by the Americans, a new Taiwan formula began to take shape within high U.S. political and military circles. It was generally agreed in Washington that, as China would very likely return to localized politics, American support should henceforth be given to “regional groups or individuals capable of fighting with the Communists,” rather than provided to a precarious and inept Nationalist central authority in Nanjing.59 To fulfill this goal, targeting the man to lead each potential regional regime was imperative. Given this new policy, compared to what had been done in the outlying territories of China’s north and northwest, the actions undertaken with regard to Taiwan came relatively slowly. In Taipei, U.S. Consular staff on the island had done little more since mid-1947 than promote the picture of America as the world’s foremost champion of liberty, democracy, and minority rights. Yet, such propaganda only invited bitter criticism from local Nationalist-controlled mass media, which accused the Americans of attempting to further “tighten their hold on Taiwan and turn the island into a new colony of their own.”60 In fact, criticism of the United States by the Nationalist mass media grew to such an extent that, in early December 1947, the State Department had to clear the air by stating that both Washington and Nanjing were in complete accord over the issue of Taiwan’s future and that any statements to the contrary were but the opinions of individuals.61
While the British and American governments were concluding that China would soon dissolve into several smaller territorial regimes, Taiwanese elites who favored political independence for Taiwan were busy warning that with the likely collapse of the Nationalist government, American military forces would soon occupy the island.62 In the meantime, American consular officials in Taipei, like their counterparts in other consular posts in China, began developing “exploratory thoughts” on Taiwan, should the situation further deteriorate on the mainland. As to what measures should be taken if the Communists advanced into South China and threatened the island’s security, no agreement could be reached between the Defense and State departments even up to the end of 1948. General MacArthur and his staff in SCAP headquarters emphatically underscored the danger of permitting communist or other anti-Western groups to come into power on Taiwan and thereby rupture the U.S. defense line in the Far East. And yet, implementation of such a policy presented significant problems, in particular, who, for example, should lead the island in the absence of Chiang Kai-shek? What would the U.S. position be should the current provincial governor, Wei Daoming, or General Sun Liren declare autonomy, or ask to be taken under the wing of the United Nations upon Chiang’s downfall? No definite answers to these possibilities were arrived at either in Tokyo or in Washington.63
On the other hand, things were worsening day by day on the Chinese mainland. In mid-September 1948, the Chinese Communists captured Jinan, the provincial capital of Shandong and the first big metropolis south of the Great Wall to be lost permanently to the Chinese Communists. In Jinan, the majority of the demoralized Nationalist garrison had refused to fight, and some actually defected, a clear sign to some foreign observers that the demise of the Nationalist military presence in North China, and ultimately in all of China, was a foregone conclusion.64 The transformation from a sustained defense to defection and surrender that occurred at Jinan was repeated several times over during the final stages of the civil war. This undoubtedly helped speed up the timetable for destruction of the Nationalist forces, which occurred between late 1948 and the end of January 1949, when the Communists launched a coordinated general offensive against three major concentrations of Nationalist armies: the Liaoxi-Shenyang (Mukden) campaign, from September 12 to November 21, 1948, which ended in the complete defeat of the Nationalist armies in Manchuria; the Peking-Tianjin campaign, from November 21 to January 31, 1949, which ended Nationalist resistance in North China; and the Huai-Hai campaign, between November 6 and January 10, which removed the last major obstacle for the Communist march southward of the Yangtze Valley and beyond.65
Elsewhere, Harry Truman was re-elected president of the United States by the narrowest of margins (up to that time) in American history on the same day that Shenyang fell to the Communists. For Chiang Kai-shek and his close associates, Truman’s election was as big a setback as their military disasters in Manchuria. They had hoped that the relationship between the Nationalists and the United States under a Republican administration would signal a return to the kind of close alliance they had experienced during World War II. The Republicans, Chiang felt, were more likely to see the threat posed to both America and China by the Communists and therefore be more willing to counteract it, even at the risk of an all-out war. On the other hand, with Truman and the Democrats, Chiang felt there would be little more than empty phrases. In the last week of November, Chiang and his wife felt so hard-pressed by the extremely adverse situation that he described the two of them in his diary as being trapped in “living death.”66 To rescue Nationalist China from its final breakdown, Madame Chiang decided to fly to Washington to make one last-ditch effort to seek aid from Truman and George Marshall, an idea that her husband sniffed at as unnecessary, stating that it would only cause humiliation.67 Chiang tried in vain to dissuade his wife from going, but she left Shanghai for the United States on November 28, 1948.68
Madame Chiang’s visit to Washington, as it turned out, did little good to save either the Nationalist government or her husband’s political career. Beginning in early December 1948 the United States began to put pressure on Chiang Kai-shek to step down. Since the end of the Marshall mission, the Truman administration had been edging back from Chiang to avoid being trapped in the wreck
age of his impending defeat. If Chiang’s removal could bring the Nationalists and the Communists to the negotiation table, thus stopping the Communists at the Yangtze, it seemed from Washington’s viewpoint there was no reason why he should stay on, and, indeed, that it might be helpful to all if he were taken out of the picture altogether and someone else given a chance to try.69 This message was informally spread to higher authorities in Nanjing and by Fu Jingbo, the adopted son of John Leighton Stuart who was also a special assistant to the ambassador. Fu’s action incurred the wrath of Chiang, causing the latter to disparage the American embassy as responsible for his overthrow.70
Inspired by the way the Americans were putting distance between themselves and Chiang, the Guangxi Clique, represented by Vice President Li Zongren, began forcefully pressing for Chiang’s resignation using various excuses, particularly blaming him for the recent military defeat in North and Northeast China. Believing that the United States was now backing them, key elements of the clique openly expressed their great hope in the proposed peace negotiation with Mao Zedong that Chiang would step down. Meanwhile, movements against Chiang were growing stronger in provinces south of the Yangtze. In the final week of December 1948, politicians in Guangxi and Hunan provinces went so far as to publicly advocate for Chiang to retire as early as possible so as not to hamper the Nationalists’ “long-awaited” peace negotiations with the Communists.71
Accidental State Page 9