Accidental State

by Hsiao-ting Lin

  A political irony was that Lu Han’s governorship was endorsed by no one but Chiang. In the summer of 1945, Chiang initiated a coup in Yunnan to remove Long Yun, the powerful Sinicized ethnic Yi who had ruled the province for nearly two decades. When Japan surrendered, Chiang ordered Long’s Yunnanese troops to occupy Indochina on behalf of the Nationalist government. The unsuspicious Long Yun followed suit, leaving Kunming, the provincial capital, vulnerable. In a quick coup, the remaining local troops loyal to Chiang surrounded and disarmed Long’s retainers, and the helpless Long was packed off to Chongqing, and then Nanjing, where he was kept under Chiang’s surveillance. Chiang later appointed Lu Han, Long’s distant relative, principal protégé, and chief military subordinate, as the new governor.36 Hence, Lu played well with the Nationalist central authorities who had put him in power. Anti-KMT and leftist movements that were rampant during Long Yun’s reign were largely checked, and Nationalist influence in the province quickly grew. It was not until early 1949 that a worsening military and political situation in China shook Lu’s pro-KMT stance.37

  Li Zonghuang provided two possible courses of action for Chiang to contemplate: the Generalissimo might take the opportunity offered by a scheduled meeting of Southwestern governors to remove Lu and appoint someone else, or Chiang might use the two central government armies then stationed in Yunnan under the commands of Generals Yu Chengwan and Li Mi to subdue Lu and reorganize the provincial government.38 Chiang obviously gave Li Zonghuang’s proposals very careful thought. He agreed that Lu Han’s attitude was the most critical factor in determining the success of the whole resistance movement in Southwest China, and he was ready to work out a thorough plan to achieve this end.39

  Where did Chiang Kai-shek’s momentary confidence in this last mainland endeavor come from? The speculation about probable U.S. aid to China’s regional authorities in the southwest was surely one important factor. Moreover, the PLA’s smooth advance into Northwest China since late August 1949 also led Chiang to predict, inaccurately as it turned out, that Mao Zedong might prefer a military occupation of the entire northwest, thus connecting Communist-controlled China with his Soviet patrons. The corollary was that the Communists would delay their operations south of the Yangtze so as not to divert focus from their ongoing campaigns in the far northwest.40 In line with this wishful thinking, Chiang’s aides initiated a new military scheme, aiming at mustering at least three additional army divisions in Southwest China and enlisting Khampa Tibetans into the new combat force. Chiang obviously intended to use these ethnic divisions, backed up by Hu Zongnan’s forces then retreating from Shaanxi into Sichuan, to march westward into the Xikang-Tibet borderland, where Chiang’s over-optimistic stalwarts sought to create Nationalist China’s “last anti-Communist base in the high plateau” and to extend Yunnan’s rear bases in the event of a retreat.41

  To play out this last gambit, in the last week of August 1949, Chiang went to Chongqing. He summoned provincial governors and division commanders for meetings, laying out strategy and voicing his determination to keep the PLA out of Sichuan and the territories beyond.42 Whereas most of the regional military leaders were present at the meetings, Lu Han had declined to join, which intensified Chiang’s worry and suspicion. A military coup to remove Lu, proposed by Li Zonghuang, was underway. Meanwhile, in early September, Chiang secretly instructed General Yu Chengwan to maneuver the 26th Army, now garrisoned on the outskirts of Kunming, for a surprise attack on Lu’s residence and then to occupy key provincial buildings.43 Chiang was so eager to control Yunnan that his secret service agents were meanwhile plotting to assassinate several key politicians in the province who were bitterly opposed to Chiang and were making secret deals with the local Communists.44

  Fully aware of the geostrategic significance of Yunnan in the event of the fall of South China, Li Zongren and the Guangxi Clique were anxious to stretch their influence into the province using a different, but equally drastic approach. Exploiting his capacity as an acting president, Li decided to appoint General Lu Daoyuan, a veteran Yunnanese militarist then serving under Bai Chongxi, as Yunnan’s new provincial governor. Anticipating that this appointment would stir up political turmoil in Kunming, Li planned to airdrop General Lu Daoyuan’s divisions into Yunnan to control the situation. If Lu Han refused to comply and intended to resist, Li would pour more of Bai’s divisions into the province from adjacent Guangxi and Guizhou.45

  The heated power struggle between Chiang and Li over Yunnan forced the uneasy and mentally vacillating Lu Han to take self-protective actions. To survive politically, Lu decided to throw in his lot with Chiang. On September 6, without warning, Lu flew to Chongqing to meet a surprised Chiang. With tears running down his face, Lu Han explained his difficult situation in Yunnan, begging Chiang’s understanding and support. Lu promised to side with Chiang as long as financial aid was provided and more garrison forces were sent in to assist local “bandit suppression” and expel the Communists. Deeming Lu’s risky idea worth giving a try, Chiang appropriated one million silver dollars out of the reserve in Taiwan to facilitate Lu’s anti-Communist cause.46

  Satisfied, Lu Han flew back to Kunming and launched “operation cleanup” according to Chiang’s wishes. All publications, except two pro-KMT papers, were closed, and all public meetings without official approval were forbidden. The noisy provincial council was dissolved, and the KMT secret service began widespread arrests of pro-CCP or leftist students and politicians within the province. Most important of all, Nationalist reinforcements, salaried by Chiang’s gold and silver reserves, began moving into the province from the adjacent Sichuan and Guizhou provinces.47 This episode, widely viewed as a coup of another kind, gave Chiang and his faithful followers hope. Writing in his diary, Chiang devotedly thanked his “Heavenly Father” for bringing about such a victory, which he described as a crucial turning point for the whole Chinese nation. Overly optimistic that a power base was now consolidated in Southwest China, Chiang began seriously considering kicking Li Zongren out and returning to the presidency.48

  Back in Taiwan, Lu Han’s vacillating attitude and the “political cleanup” in Yunnan triggered new rumors about the future of the island. The American consul general in Taipei, John MacDonald, reported a rumor that the SCAP in Tokyo would bring Allied forces to Taiwan by mid-October to thwart a Communist takeover. Although Chen Cheng made several public statements on the stability and oneness of Taiwan with China, local uneasiness continued to mount. MacDonald observed that, because many islanders believed trouble was imminent and inevitable, their anti-Chinese feeling was much greater than in the aftermath of the February 28 incident of 1947.49 When informed that SCAP was not coming to Taiwan, Taiwanese elites were so disappointed that they urged the United States to either step in and keep the Communist invasion out or sponsor them to present a petition regarding Taiwan’s future to the United Nations.50

  In the eyes of Chiang Kai-shek, the security of Taiwan remained in serious doubt. On October 5, 1949, shortly after returning from the mainland, he received another secret report from Madame Chiang to the effect that Sun Liren was having unusual relations with “certain foreign and Communist underground elements [in the State Department],” who were attempting to alienate Sun further from Chiang.51 Perhaps around this time Chiang realized that Washington would eventually pick Sun Liren, along with K. C. Wu, to take over the island’s military and political affairs under the aegis of the MAP aid program recently approved by Congress. Chiang’s apprehension redoubled when he learned from General Claire Chennault that Washington would allocate part of the new fund to support Bai Chongxi in sustaining the Guangxi Clique’s anti-Communist efforts in Southwest China.52 The U.S. aid to China, if it materialized, then was likely to become regionalized; Chiang thus deemed it almost impossible that any substantial amount of MAP aid would come to him.

  The Generalissimo’s anxiety about America’s true intentions reached new heights in early November 1949, when, on Washington’s instructions,
John MacDonald presented him with a National Security Council demarche (NSC 37/8). This latest policy paper specified that the future American attitude toward Taiwan, especially the provision of augmented economic assistance, would hinge on “an improved performance and maximum self-help” on the part of the Nationalist government. According to MacDonald, on receiving the demarche, Chiang seemed pleased that it was delivered to him, not anyone else within the KMT. MacDonald interpreted Chiang’s pleasant mood as the result of a positive sign that Washington was now “willing to deal with him again,” and that Chiang had after all not been abandoned by his “old friend and ally.”53 Chiang’s personal diary, however, draws a totally different picture. He found this demarche preposterous and regarded it a “face-saving” gesture on the part of George Marshall, who apparently tried to amend a broken relationship with him after the publication of the China White Paper a few months earlier.54

  On November 19, 1949, at the invitation of John Leighton Stuart and General Albert Wedemeyer, General Zheng Jiemin, Chiang’s faithful intelligence chief and vice minister of National Defense, flew to Washington to ask key political and military chiefs to aid ailing Nationalist China. At one crucial meeting, Vice-Admiral Oscar C. Badger, a special advisor to the Pentagon, conveyed the following message: If Chiang would agree that Chen Cheng be replaced by K. C. Wu, he could expect American economic and military aid to help the new governor launch genuine reform in Taiwan. This aid would include, among other things, an economic advisory group to Taipei and enough military materiel to replenish six Nationalist army divisions under Sun Liren.55 Ostensibly, the consensus now at Washington was indeed that Sun, rather than Chen Cheng, should lead the island’s military.

  THE ABORTIVE YUNNAN INDEPENDENCE MOVEMENT

  General Albert Wedemeyer had urged Chiang to make K. C. Wu Taiwan’s new governor since May 1949. Now Washington attributed the Nationalists’ two recent wins on the islands of Quemoy (Jinmen) and Dengbu (off Zhejiang) to the new divisions trained by the capable Sun Liren. As such, Washington believed, Sun should be given full responsibility for Taiwan’s future military defense.56 In his confidential report to the State Department, John MacDonald gave a rather unconvincing account that, to show his sincerity toward the American advice, Chiang had delivered a secret message to Washington via the American military attachés in Taipei that he would be willing to turn over command of the remaining Nationalist troops to the United States in return for a public statement from Washington that would “allow wavering to cease, uncertainty to disappear.”57 This alleged gesture of surrender generated a striking, if not false impression among Washington’s top decision-makers that Chiang was sincere in handing over power. In a retrospective memorandum by the State Department’s Office of Intelligence Research dated March 8, 1950, it appears many in Washington viewed Chiang’s willingness to reorganize Taiwan’s provincial and military leadership as a crucial turning point, “making unlikely a coup of anti-Chiang political and military leaders—[which was] a definite possibility around October 1949.”58

  The release of Chiang Kai-shek’s personal diaries allows us to piece together the political jigsaw puzzle and see a more complete picture of the historical landscape. On receiving Badger’s message, Chiang wrote about his “deepest distress,” thinking that Taiwan’s future would be henceforth at the disposal of the United States. Uncertain whether the island would come under his firm grip, Chiang still hoped against hope that a territorial base of his own could be established in Yunnan.59 But his endeavor was greatly overshadowed by the PLA’s ongoing thrust into Southwest China, a development that was contrary to his early prediction. In mid-October, Bai Chongxi’s exhausted forces were no longer able to defend Guangzhou, and the Nationalist capital city fell to the Communists. Although the seat of the Nationalist regime was moved to Chongqing in Sichuan, the morale of both Nationalist military and civil officials was rapidly disintegrating. By mid-November, the Nationalist authorities in Sichuan were already at their wits’ end. Feeling no longer able to save a topsy-turvy situation, the frustrated Li Zongren returned to his home province of Guangxi and refused to chair a decomposing “central” government any more. Chongqing seemed undependable, but pathetically, no Nationalist officials at this juncture were able to point to safer headquarters.60

  5.3 Chiang Kai-shek (middle) summons local Nationalist officials in Chongqing for Southwest China’s last defense against the People’s Liberation Army, ca. November 1949. (Courtesy of the KMT Party History Institute)

  To Chiang Kai-shek and his core staff, the loss of the mainland would very likely lead to the loss of the Nationalist regime’s international status and credibility, and therefore they desperately wanted to give Yunnan a last try. On November 14, Chiang flew to Chongqing to supervise the shaky local defenses. In Sichuan, he assigned a Japanese ex-military officer named Tomita Naosuke the task of initiating the last defensive operation against the approaching Communists.61 Although Naosuke’s plan was never implemented due to the unexpected mutiny of the Nationalist garrison forces on the southern outskirts of Chongqing, Chiang was impressed with his expertise.62 This episode also marked the beginning of Chiang’s employment of personal military staff from a recent enemy country. Before long, a group of informal Japanese military advisors under the leadership of Tomita Naosuke began operating quietly in Taiwan, and they would continue to do so in decades to come.

  The fall of Chongqing on November 30 sent Chiang and his stalwarts some 167 miles away in western Sichuan to Chengdu, which would become Nationalist China’s last official capital on the mainland. The very next day, in a desperate attempt to secure the generals’ promise to make their last stand in the southwest, Chiang summoned these regional leaders to Chengdu for an urgent meeting. Lu Han not only refused to join, but he also turned down Chiang’s offer to make him head of Nationalist bandit pacification commission in Yunnan and Guizhou provinces.63 As it turned out, Lu had a wild idea in mind. On November 15, around the time Chiang arrived in Chongqing, Lu sent an unidentified Yunnanese businessman to the U.S. Consulate in Kunming. Apparently inspired by the recently approved MAP program and by Washington’s statement that the U.S. government would aid any local group in China that actively opposed Communism, Lu’s representative secretly appealed Yunnan’s independence. According to Lu’s proxy, if Washington was willing to help defend Yunnan’s territorial integrity, the “top rank local government officials” would do anything required by the United States. In other words, the provincial authorities would “break with the Chinese government, accept American protectorate and troops, and follow orders of American military, political and economic advisers.”64

  Upon receiving this message, the U.S. vice consul in Kunming, LaRue R. Lutkins, urgently cabled the State Department for clear instructions. Partly sympathetic toward Lu Han’s difficult position and his independence proclivity, and partly worrying that the recent detention of the American consular staff in Shenyang would be repeated in Kunming, Lutkins warned the State Department chiefs that refusing this proposal might “virtually affect an immediate situation here and evacuation of consulate personnel.”65 A week later, Dean Acheson, after having discussed the situation with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, rejected the appeal, arguing that it was impossible for the local Nationalist armed forces to prevent the Communists from advancing into the west, and that Yunnan’s geographical remoteness made delivering any U.S. military provisions and other supplies highly impracticable. Meanwhile, Lutkins was instructed to inform Lu Han’s man that Washington could not undertake any guarantee that would “represent far reaching commitment involving direct intervention in China’s internal affairs.”66

  5.4 LaRue R. Lutkins (right) in 1964. He was deputy chief of mission at the U.S Embassy in Sri Lanka, serving under Ambassador Frances E. Willis (left). (Courtesy Frances E. Willis Papers, Hoover Institution Archives)

  On November 28, as the fall of Chongqing became unavoidable, Lu Han sent his man to see Lutkins for one final appeal. Lu’s repres
entative stressed that any type of aid from the United States would prove effective and that it would not be necessary to send American troops. In addition, Lu was willing to declare Yunnan’s independence first, and then ask for American protection, a move that Lu believed would not constitute an “intervention” on the part of the United States.67 But Washington remained unmoved. Seeing this, Lu Han swiftly decided to transfer his political allegiance. On December 9, Chiang Kai-shek sent his close confidant Zhang Qun to check Lu Han’s reliability and make arrangements for the arrival of Nationalist troops being airlifted from Sichuan to facilitate the withdrawal of Nationalist headquarters in Kunming. Fearing a genuine entry of Chiang’s authority into his domain, Lu placed Zhang and his entourage under house arrest.68 The next day, Lu radioed other Sichuan generals to join him in kidnapping Chiang. In despair, Chiang, accompanied by his son Ching-kuo and a dozen of his closest aides, took off for Taipei before any kidnapping could take place, never to set foot on the mainland again.69

  Before leaving Chengdu, Chiang was still planning to transfer Hu Zongnan’s troops from Sichuan westward into Xikang province, where he sought to establish a military stronghold in Xichang and continue his mainland resistance.70 But Lu Han’s sudden defection and the resultant loss of Yunnan shattered such a dream. In his personal journal, Chiang remorsefully blamed his own misjudgment and naivety about Lu, attributing Lu’s “capriciousness and mistrustfulness” to the latter’s “frontiersmen nature.” Chiang confessed he had learned a bitter lesson, admonishing himself that henceforth he should act according to “realpolitik,” rather than moral appeal, when dealing with internal and external affairs.71 Chiang might be right about his belated judgments, but when lamenting the entire fiasco of Southwest China, he probably never knew that the United States played a role, albeit indirectly, in catalyzing Lu Han’s ultimate betrayal at the final hours of Nationalist China on the mainland.