Accidental State

by Hsiao-ting Lin

  Meanwhile, Chiang Kai-shek allowed no delay in summoning southern provincial governors for personal meetings. In early January 1949, governors of Yunnan, Guizhou, and Sichuan provinces flew to Nanjing, where Chiang was eager to secure their political allegiance and, hopefully, their unswerving anti-Communist stance.5 After announcing his resignation, Chiang, still holding the title as head of the KMT party, returned to his “little Western-style house” at his home hamlet in Xikou, Zhejiang Province. At Xikou, Chiang established several wireless radio stations, through which he continued to monitor and remotely control military, political, and party affairs in the areas held by the Nationalists. Within three months of his “retirement,” Chiang received more than a hundred important Nationalist civil and military officials, to whom he was relentless in offering his “personal and informal” advice on almost every outstanding issue.6

  Despite Chiang Kai-shek’s professed retreat from the public scene, the prospect of Nationalist rule in China remained uncertain. The Nationalist authorities under Li Zongren, who had the backing of General Bai Chongxi and his half-million troops deployed in Central China, seemed momentarily confident about an effective management of a new political landscape in Chiang’s absence.7 In late January 1949, Bai made known to John Leighton Stuart that he would endeavor to create an anti-Communist bloc through an alliance with the Muslim leaders in the far northwest and regional militarists in the south and southwest. The Guangxi general told the American ambassador both he and Li were confident that, with the peace negotiations with the CCP imminent, these regional leaders could be expected to form a new political bloc, as they were “already seeking means to cast off affiliations with Chiang Kai-shek.”8

  Yet the American ambassador doubted that Chiang’s withdrawal from the scene was genuine, and that Li’s legal authority within the Nationalist government had the scope he claimed. Realistically speaking, as the Guangxi Clique was forming an anti-Communist political confederation that included anti-Chiang elements, a fierce struggle between Chiang and Li over their future respective base areas in the gradually shrinking and endangered Nationalist territorial domain was unavoidable.9 In his personal memoir, Li detailed his original scheme to secure a southwest territorial citadel in case negotiations with Mao Zedong ultimately failed. According to Li, if in the worst case scenario the PLA crossed the Yangtze, he would order the abandonment of Nanjing and Shanghai, and utilize Bai’s 400,000 army troops then deployed in Central China, along with Tang Enbo’s 300,000 forces that were expected to retreat from the great Shanghai area to the Zhejiang-Jiangxi border, to prevent a Communist march southwestward. To put it in a nutshell, Li ideally deemed it practicable to preserve a vast territorial base in South and Southwest China, so long as the defense line, running from Wuhan, along the Zhejiang-Jiangxi railway, down to Swatow in eastern Guangdong, could be consolidated.10

  The “retired” Chiang Kai-shek and his die-heart adherents harbored a very different view of Communist encroachment, and as a result, a rather different strategic landscape emerged. Back in June 1948, Chiang had a very private discussion with General Zhang Zhizhong, a trustworthy, erstwhile Whampoa fellow subordinate who was then director of the Generalissimo’s field headquarters in Northwest China. Since the spring of 1946 when he was made governor of Xinjiang, Zhang had advocated a rather leftist policy in that province. Now Zhang urged Chiang to adopt a pro-Soviet policy, thus solving the Communist issue and preventing the trouble-laden government from being dragged deeper into the civil war. If Chiang found it hard to patch up with Moscow right away, Zhang argued that the Chinese Nationalist foreign policy should at least place Soviet Russia and the United States on the same scale, rather than tilt entirely toward Washington, a move which Zhang viewed as “dangerously hopeless.” As Zhang saw it, only through a shift toward Moscow could Chiang and the Nationalist government rescue a worsening situation in China.11

  At the time of the Chiang-Zhang meeting, Northwest China remained virtually free of any CCP threat, and a large part of the government forces were under the command of the Ma Muslims and specifically, General Hu Zongnan, another favorite of Chiang. Thus, Zhang’s seemingly wild idea was not entirely unrealistic to Chiang. For a period around June 1948, Chiang was carefully weighing the situation in the far northwest. He summoned key Ma Muslim figures in that region to Nanjing for personal consultations, hoping to work out the best strategy.12 In his final analysis, however, Chiang dismissed the idea of making Northwest China his last territorial bastion. Up to that point, Chiang also dismissed the idea of using the defensible, resource-rich southwestern provinces as a potential power base against his enemy, a practice he had applied when fighting the Japanese between 1937 and 1945. Instead of turning northwestward and establishing a power base there, for which a pro-Moscow foreign policy stance was a precondition, Chiang now dwelled on the idea of creating his future anti-Communist redoubts along China’s southeastern coast, thereby reconfirming his ongoing approach of turning eastward to seek assistance from the United States, including the SCAP in Tokyo.13

  Although later developments on the mainland and on Taiwan would force Chiang Kai-shek to reconsider and change his strategy, by the time he stepped down in early 1949, Chiang’s group felt an urgent need to strengthen control over the southeast and south coast. To build a lasting stronghold against the Chinese Communists, Chiang had a “strategic triangle” in mind. Tang Enbo’s appointment clearly demonstrated Chiang’s desire to hold the lower Yangtze Valley and to prevent the PLA from crossing the river in the event that the peace talks broke off. However, expecting that Li Zongren would eventually abandon Nanjing and withdraw southward, Chiang formulated a strategy aimed at defending the Fujian-Guangdong-Taiwan territorial triangle and turning it into an effective regional citadel.14 To thwart any Communist advance into this territorial triangle, Chiang immersed himself in studying guerrilla warfare in the mountain areas bordering Zhejiang, Jiangxi, and Fujian provinces, as well as military operations from the islands off Zhejiang and Fujian provinces.15

  To safeguard this strategic triangle in Southeast China, in the early months of 1949, a new harbor and an airfield were constructed on the Zhoushan Islands off Zhejiang. While Li Zongren’s intention was to throw Tang’s garrison forces into the defense of the Hunan-Jiangxi border, Chiang’s was to use the Zhoushan isles as a crucial base, to which Tang’s men could be evacuated and from which they could defend China’s southeastern coast. As it turned out, when Shanghai fell in late May 1949, Tang’s troops were indeed transferred to Zhoushan, from where they were subsequently deployed southeastward to defend Fujian and Taiwan.16

  SAFE HAVEN OR PERILOUS REFUGE?

  Chiang Kai-shek’s move to integrate Taiwan into his anti-Communist triangular fortress in southern China generated a grave concern to the United States. General David Barr, chief of the U.S. Military Advisory Group in China, could not believe that Chiang would abandon the whole mainland and develop Taiwan, when provinces in the far northwest and south of the Yangtze were still intact and Taiwan’s legal status remained questionable.17 Roger D. Lapham, chief of the ECA mission to China, who played a weighty role in planning America’s aid policy toward China, was so annoyed at Chiang’s ambition for Taiwan that he suggested Washington provide no capital expenditures to the island unless the United States was fully prepared “to go to the limit” in protecting such expenditures from being capitalized upon by Chiang. Lapham meanwhile advocated that Washington exercise its influence to prevent “further exploitation of the island by the mainland people,” who he thought would make the island “a Chinese military base to operate against the Communists on the mainland.”18 On March 10, 1949, in his personal memorandum to Dean Acheson, Lapham reemphasized the necessity of keeping Taiwan from becoming a “KMT reactionary stronghold.” In other words, Lapham was deeply convinced that a Taiwan governed by local Taiwanese, not Chinese mainlanders, would best serve Americans’ interest in the Far East.19

  George H. Kerr, now a professor at
the University of Washington but still occasionally instrumental in Washington’s military intelligence circle, was angry that no actions were taken to stop Chiang Kai-shek from going to Taiwan. When approached by the State and Defense departments for advice, Kerr repeated his early theory that if the United States attempted to support the “ragtag and bobtail refugee KMT government” on the island, the six million local people would ultimately turn to the Communists as their last chance. Unseating the KMT there, Kerr declared, was the most imperative issue. He advocated unreservedly that a puppet regime of native islanders would be far more effective in an American program than a puppet government by exiled mainlanders, “who were hated by the Formosans and hounded by the mainland Communists.”20 Kerr’s views were soon absorbed by Washington’s intelligence establishment. In a research report issued in March 1949, the CIA specified that American inactivity would lead Taiwan to eventually pass into the control of the Chinese Communists. The report argued in line with Kerr’s idea that even some moderate course of action might produce results beneficial to American interests, leading to a strengthened will to resist communism in Japan, Korea, the Philippines, and elsewhere throughout the Far East, including the southeast coastal areas of China.21

  Chiang Kai-shek probably found it difficult to swallow the fact that his once-staunch American allies might now stand in the way of his efforts to bring Taiwan under his sway. Livingston Merchant was sent to Taiwan to verify local conditions, while the State and Defense departments in Washington began discussing the best way to secure their interests on the island. Officials from both departments reckoned that, for the time being, only political and diplomatic means should be applied to do something to benefit the people of Taiwan. At this point, two probable courses emerged to meet such an end. Washington could either hold a plebiscite for the island’s trusteeship under the United Nations or SCAP, or take “calculated risk” and depend on political or diplomatic maneuvering to secure the real support and cooperation of the Nationalist local administration.22

  General Sun Liren obviously was the top of the candidates for whom Washington had high expectations. By all accounts, for virtually all Americans who had contact with the Nationalists, Sun was “the most outstanding Chinese military leader.” General MacArthur in later years would state that he knew very well that this “able and gallant officer who graduated from our own VMI” was “no small matter” to the Far East commander or the general’s chief of staff Ned Almond, who was also a fellow graduate of the Virginia Military Institute. They cited Sun as evidence that the Nationalists could be “a formidable force” if provided with sufficient support.23

  As Virginia connections entered SCAP calculations, as already seen, on February 10, 1949, Sun meet with MacArthur to explore “the most urgent need” for anti-communist efforts and the possible implementation of “a radical reform of our psychology and ways of doing things—in political as well as military fields.”24 The meeting is interesting for what it tells us about Sun at this point. Ostensibly still asserting his personal loyalty to Chiang, Sun nevertheless was being honest with MacArthur about his ideas on anti-communism, democracy, and the creation of a “Free Province” in Taiwan. In a bold and yet inappropriate manner in terms of his position as a mere Nationalist military general, Sun emphasized the necessity for “a regeneration of political souls” when carrying out the aforementioned goals. Despite a gloomy situation on the mainland, Sun claimed aloud that it was never too late for the United States to help China. After returning to Taiwan, Sun further expressed his expectations of receiving “encouragement” and advice from the United States. He was convinced that with “hard work and fair means,” he would be able to contribute to “a worthy cause” in the near future.25

  After his extraordinary visit, Sun remained in close contact with the American consular officials and military attachés in Taipei, with whom he usually discussed firsthand information about the island. In May 1949, in a private conversation with American Consul-General Donald Edgar, Sun bitterly complained that Chen Cheng was trying every possible way to shelve him in favor of Chen’s own men and interfering at low levels with Sun’s training programs. While expressing his immense disgust about the mainland affairs, Sun also hoped Taiwan could soon have a strong civil governor over a unified military command. He doubted that there was any serious Communist activity in Taiwan, and claimed that the troops on the island under him were absolutely loyal to him.26 It is clear that Sun was trying to impress the Americans and convince them that Washington could fully rely on him and that he was their best choice.

  The peace talks between the KMT and the CCP, as had been expected, proved to be a sham on the part of Mao Zedong, who used them only as a chance for the PLA to rest and regroup. Mao now insisted that his earlier eight-point proposal be adopted as a precondition to the any negotiations. As well as punishing all “war criminals” such as Chiang Kai-shek and T. V. Soong, Mao insisted the Communist armies be allowed to cross the Yangtze unopposed, that the Nationalist army be folded into the PLA, that the Communists immediately absorb the Upper Yangtze River region and eventually all of China, and that continuance of Nationalist authority in the KMT-sustained areas be temporary, on a “caretaker” basis, pending convocation of a political consultative conference to form a new CCP-dominated coalition government. These requests were favored by Li Zongren’s peace delegation in Peking, but were totally unacceptable to the Nationalist authorities south of the Yangtze, who deemed the acceptance of these points as suicidal.27 On April 21, Mao ordered the PLA to resume the offensive. Over one million Communist troops already camped on the north bank of the Yangtze immediately sprang into action. Crossing the river, they stormed into Nanjing on April 23, and Hangzhou, Wuhan, and Shanghai fell consecutively within a month. A few hours before the PLA entered the national capital, Li Zongren and his entourage fled from Nanjing city airport to Guangzhou, the retreating Nationalists’ new headquarters.28

  Just twenty-four hours before Nanjing fell to the Communists, Li Zongren hastily flew to Hangzhou to meet with Chiang Kai-shek. Li persuaded Chiang to restore the presidency, as the failure of the peace talks now indicated that a continued military struggle with the CCP was the only way out. Chiang politely turned down the request, but guaranteed that henceforth he would “fully assist and cooperate” with Li’s administration.29 However, the two men were unable even to agree on such an urgent issue as how to mobilize and redeploy the now seriously demoralized Nationalist force south of the Yangtze. Chiang ordered the withdrawal of Tang Enbo’s troops to the southeast coastal areas through the Zhoushan offshore outpost, leading to the abortion of Li’s original plan to transfer the force southwestward and join Bai Chongxi’s defense along the Jiangxi-Hunan provincial border. Impressively, Bai’s divisions, retreating from Wuhan and now being deployed in southern Hunan province, were capable enough to check Lin Biao’s army, thus delaying the Communist advance into South and Southwest China for almost half a year, until October 1949.30

  As the PLA marched across the Yangtze and the Nationalist capital was moved to Guangdong, Chiang’s determination to manage his own redoubts along China’s southeast coast increased. As of early 1949, because of the Nationalist economic failure on the mainland, the annual rate of inflation on the island had reached a horrendous 3,000 percent. In early March, Chiang instructed T. V. Soong to conduct a survey tour in Taiwan about a possible currency reform there. With the support of gold and silver reserves then deposited in Taiwan and Amoy, Soong suggested that a new bank note, convertible with the British pound sterling, be issued with limited circulation in Taiwan, Fujian, and Guangdong provinces. This proposal again well demonstrated Chiang’s ongoing strategy to build a territorial triangle in China’s southeast.31 In May 1949, while temporarily staying in Shanghai to supervise Tang Enbo’s arduous resistance against the PLA, Chiang again cabled T. V. Soong, who was then in Hong Kong, to delay his trip to Europe until Taiwan’s finances and economy were fully stabilized.32

 
Chiang’s effort to defend Shanghai up to the last minute, thus allowing a successful withdrawal of Nationalist troops, was greatly praised by General Albert Wedemeyer. In May 1949, Wedemeyer sent Chiang a personal letter, encouraging him to build Taiwan “as a base of operation and the most efficient government devoted to promoting the welfare of the islanders.” More strikingly, Wedemeyer advised Chiang to replace Chen Cheng with K. C. Wu, the reformist mayor of postwar Shanghai, who had acquired a reputation in the United States as “La Guardia of China,” as Taiwan’s new provincial governor.33 Greatly inspired by the American general’s message, Chiang responded by inviting Wedemeyer to become his personal military advisor. Curiously, however, Chiang in his reply made no mention of Wu.34

  STORMS FROM WITHIN

  How Chiang Kai-shek perceived General Wedemeyer’s proposal and thought about replacing Chen Cheng with K. C. Wu is unknown. But one thing is clear: At this juncture, Chiang was already having other issues, besides worrying about Taiwan. With the breakup of peace negotiations and the resultant collapse of the Yangtze defense line, more and more Nationalist high echelons regarded Chiang as hampering an effective anti-Communist resistance under Li Zongren. Still more were convinced that only Chiang’s early exit from China could strengthen Li’s leadership within the Nationalist authorities.35 No doubt, Chiang himself sensed a waning of his influence, especially among the Nationalist military quarters. One extraordinary episode clearly illustrates this unpleasant situation. Before Shanghai fell, Chiang boarded the SS Jiangjing and sailed to the Zhoushan Islands, where he intended to spend a quiet week working on his coastal defense projects and new military and political training programs.36 On May 12, when Chiang was still in Zhoushan, some ten high-ranking officers from the Nationalist Air Force unexpectedly appeared at his temporary residence, where they bluntly urged Chiang to hand over Taiwan and to agree that the island should be placed under the authority of the Chinese Air Force. Controlling the air power that the PLA was still lacking, these contemptuous air force chiefs believed they now had the strength to request, if not demand, Chiang make a concession. One proposal was that Chiang should declare, either publicly or privately, that General Zhou Zhirou was the supreme leader of the Nationalist Air Force command. Startled, Chiang reprimanded these arrogant officers right away, believing that they were abetted by the ambitious Zhou. Privately, Chiang worried more about his rapidly declining control over the increasingly unbridled Nationalist military establishment.37