Accidental State

by Hsiao-ting Lin

  6

  Floating State, Divided Strategy

  THE DEFECTION OF Yunnan Governor Lu Han and other Nationalist military leaders in Southwest China left Chiang Kai-shek with no option but to leave the Chinese mainland. The diplomatic and political events in China’s southwestern provinces in late 1949 not only accelerated the pace of the Chinese civil war but also helped create the accidental Nationalist state of Taiwan. Retreating to the island became an unavoidable for Chiang and his followers. But even so, Chiang remained rather skeptical as to whether Taiwan was a secure place of shelter. In this regard, the U.S. attitude remained a grave concern for him.

  On December 4, 1949, while still in Chengdu, Chiang dispatched his trusted men to Taipei to further evaluate the local situation; up to this point, plans were underway aimed at withdrawing the national capital westward to Xichang in Southwest China.1 Meanwhile, Muslim forces recently retreating from Northwest China into southern Xinjiang, where the creation of another anti-Communist territorial citadel was under consideration, had momentarily elevated Chiang’s hopes of staying on the mainland.2 This hope proved ephemeral; by December 6, Xichang was surrounded by local bandit forces and was no longer a secure place. Having no alternative, Chiang departed for Taipei, ready to face the United States over the future of the island and his own fate. When the first Executive Yuan meeting was convened in Taipei on December 12, 1949, Nationalist China’s de facto territorial domain consisted only of Taiwan, Hainan, small segments of southern Xikang and southern Yunnan, and a string of offshore islands from Zhoushan down to the South China Sea. As K. C. Wu reminisced, Chiang was frequently in an extremely anxious state of mind; these island territories were the only residue of a huge empire he once possessed and governed, and no one in the near-bankrupted Nationalist mechanism was certain about their defensibility.3

  Among the earliest compromises Chiang made with the United States was the rearrangement of Taiwan’s new provincial leadership. On December 24, 1949, Chen Cheng reluctantly handed over the governorship to K. C. Wu. In his personal memoir, Chen bitterly recalled his strong belief that it was extremely unwise to reorganize the Taiwan provincial government at this critical moment. And yet, for the sake of the collapsing Nationalist regime’s dire relations with the United States, Chen said he was willing to back down and resign.4 Chen’s bitterness was a vivid contrast to the elated and confident attitude of K. C. Wu, who now thought that he had the full support of Washington. On the eve of his inauguration, Wu secretly met with American consular officials in Taipei, to whom he pledged to fully cooperate with General Sun Liren in bring about genuine and satisfactory reform. In return, Wu urged that the promised American aid, especially political and military advisors, be dispatched to Taiwan without delay.5 These underground communications only increased Chiang’s strong suspicion and uneasiness. On January 5, 1950, Sun Liren secretly informed an anonymous American military attaché in Taipei that the Generalissimo had learned about his “reported plan for coup.” Sun said that he had told Chiang that this was a rumor inspired by the Communists, and suggested Chiang thoroughly investigate the source of the rumor and that all possible Communist elements be driven out of Taiwan. Sun then told the military attaché that Chiang apparently believed his words as much as he believed anyone.6

  As Li Zongren was in the United States for medical treatment, Nationalist China had constitutionally become a state without a head. In early February 1950, Li informed Taipei that, for health reasons, he had to remain in the United States. In reality Li was by no means willing to return to a place where Chiang Kai-shek was trying to take full command. Chiang had now decided to resume the presidency, which led Li and his followers denounced as “illegal,” “rebellious,” and a substantial “coup d’état.”7 Li undoubtedly tried to win back his political legitimacy; a luncheon meeting with President Truman, Dean Acheson, and Louis Johnson was arranged in late February through Gan Jiehou, Li’s aide in Washington. On March 2, while Li was being entertained at Blair House as Truman’s “special guest,” across the Pacific Ocean, in Taipei, Chiang Kai-shek and his wife stood on the balcony of the presidential palace, gleefully waving to a crowd of some 100,000 “enthusiastic citizens” who gathered to celebrate Chiang’s resumption of office.8

  Indeed, at this critical moment, Washington’s policy toward the barely surviving Nationalist China and its divided leadership was opaque and perplexing. Edward Martin, then an economic adviser in the U.S. Embassy in Taipei, recalled that he and his colleagues were frequently puzzled by the American policy toward Taiwan. They could not understand what it was supposed to do, and felt rather unhappy about not getting clearer messages from Washington.9 On the eve of Chiang’s return to presidency, it appeared that using drastic means, including an assassination or coup, to remove Chiang had momentarily become an option. According to Chiang’s own account, a coordinated plan to remove him from Taiwan was orchestrated by certain inner-circle moguls from both London and Washington. V. K. Wellington Koo, Nationalist Chinese ambassador to the United States, was approached by an unidentified Briton who urged him to persuade Chiang to hand over power to “three specially designated Nationalist figures on Taiwan” and leave the island for good. The reward for Chiang’s exile, according to this person, would be a luxurious cruise ship worth $4 million. The next day, this person invited Koo to a luncheon with Allen Dulles, who would become director of the CIA a few years later. Although nothing more about Chiang’s removal was discussed during the luncheon, Koo was convinced that Washington’s intelligence chiefs were aware of the secret British proposal.10

  Chen Cheng, now a relatively innocuous figure compared to Sun Liren, was awarded the premiership of the resettled Nationalist government in Taipei. In the meantime, Chiang might have implicitly sought to use Chen to checkmate K. C. Wu, whom Chiang now thought “too popular abroad.” Predictably, Chen’s appointment caused the uneasy and angered Wu to threaten to resign from the provincial governorship, a position constitutionally subordinate to the premier.11 The tension between Chen and Wu was not just personal or emotional, but also institutional; the move of the Nationalist seat to Taiwan indicated that there was now a skeleton central government in exile superimposed on a much larger and well-functioning provincial mechanism. As the positions of premier and provincial governor inevitably overlapped and conflicted in various ways, a power struggle over the island’s tax revenues and other crucial resources was a natural and unsurprising consequence.12

  During the first weeks after resuming the presidency, Chiang Kai-shek became so frustrated when mediating between Chen Cheng and K. C. Wu that he frequently threw his hands up in disgust. In his diaries, a dispirited Chiang scoffed at his premier’s “narrow-mindedness and unyieldingness,” while criticizing his provincial governor as “overbearing” and “egotistical” for accepting foreign backup. But Chiang was unable to come up with a solution to the power struggle.13 Indeed, tensions grew to such heights that, in a private dinner meeting in late April 1950 with Robert Strong, the American chargé d’affaires, Wu expressed his gravest concerns about continuing his “almost heartbreaking” job as a provincial governor. Surprisingly, as revealed in Strong’s report to Washington, a pessimistic Wu frankly admitted that there was little doubt that Taiwan would not last beyond the spring of 1951, and subsequently “questions of visas for both [his] wife and [him]self [to] visit [their] daughters in the United States entered [the] conversation.”14

  In the Nationalist military establishment too, fierce competition, mistrust, and suspicions prevailed in all corners of the island. To everyone’s surprise, the U.S.-favored Sun Liren was not made Chiang’s new chief of staff. Instead, Sun was only appointed commander-in-chief of the Nationalist Ground Forces, and his duties were largely confined to military education and training programs. Sun was outraged with this appointment as it was merely a window dressing to attract American support for Chiang. An extremely reluctant and unhappy Sun accepted the new post only after Chiang assured him that the ne
wly arrived U.S. ammunition, if it were to be sent to Taiwan, would go first to Sun’s forces stationed in the southern part of the island.15

  The Nationalist military chiefs seemed to hate their fellow comrades as much as their deadly Communist enemies. In a private conversation with the U.S. military attachés in Taipei in late April 1950, Sun Liren strongly condemned General Zhou Zhirou for dancing “100 percent to the tune of Chiang,” who made him chief of general staff nonetheless, still giving Sun poor cooperation. Sun did not hesitate to disclose to the Americans that Nationalist troops stationed on the islands of Zhoushan, Quemoy, and Hainan were made up of at least 20 percent “paper” (nonexistent) soldiers, while he was having great difficulty getting supplies for his troops. Sun thundered that this was due entirely to his complete lack of control over the military decision-making.16 The purpose of these complaints, it appears, was to try to secure Washington’s concrete support and strengthen Sun’s position on Taiwan.

  Given Sun Liren’s extraordinary foreign background, Chiang Kai-shek’s mistrust of him is easy to comprehend. But it should be noted that Chiang was equally distrustful of other high-ranking military officers. Around late February, Chiang ordered the execution of his deputy chief of general staff, Wu Shi, who had been found guilty of spying for the Chinese Communists. Then in mid-March 1950, shortly after Chiang resumed the presidency, it was reported that a major-general in the Nationalist Defense had allegedly headed a group of about twelve conspirators attempting to assassinate Chiang. As one U.S. confidential telegram from Taipei to Washington reveals, a time bomb attached to Chiang’s limousine exploded just after he left the car.17 Even Chen Cheng was said to have very distasteful relations with Chiang; speculations had it that Chiang’s appointment of Chen as premier was intended to weaken Chen’s military power on the island “by kicking him upstairs out of immediate military control.”18 The political chaos within the Nationalist hierarchy, accompanied by a deteriorating financial outlook, led K. C. Wu to assert that, by early 1950, the eventual collapse of the Nationalist regime in Taiwan was more a certainty than a probability.19

  HAINAN ISLAND AND THE OTHER NATIONALIST AUTHORITIES

  The schism among high-ranking Nationalist authorities was not confined to the island of Taiwan. The Nationalist remnants on the Hainan Island had unwittingly and embarrassingly posed a serious threat to the unity and survival of the precarious Nationalist state. By late 1949, in addition to Taiwan, Hainan had become a major haven for Nationalist troops retreating from the mainland. Since undertaking Hainan’s governorship in March that year, Chen Jitang had endeavored to make the island another strong territorial citadel outside Chiang Kai-shek’s sphere of influence. Chen was convinced that he might one day become Free China’s supreme leader, if he could hold on to Hainan for a few more years, when he expected World War III would break out between the West and the Communist bloc. His naivety and optimism about Hainan’s effective defense stemmed in part from the fact that, in late 1949, the PLA still lacked air and amphibious capabilities to invade the island. Militarily, the strength of the local Hainan Communist guerilla forces was relatively weak in comparison with Chen’s well-equipped, 70,000-odd Nationalist troops.20 Meanwhile, Chen shared a common belief that Washington had virtually abandoned Chiang Kai-shek and instead would support any regional leaders who were both willing and capable of resisting the Communists, including himself.21

  The fall of Guangdong in October 1949 placed Hainan in an increasingly difficult position. Bai Chongxi’s 300,000 soldiers, which he originally intended to withdraw from Central China to his home province in the southwest, were largely annihilated on the Guangdong-Guangxi border, and only a few surviving divisions managed to retreat to Hainan and French-controlled Vietnam.22 As 1950 began, approximately 80,000 Nationalist troops belonging to various political factions loyal to different military leaderships were already on the island. Having moved his provincial seat to Hainan as soon as Guangzhou was lost, the exiled Guangdong Governor Xue Yue was made commander-in-chief of the Hainan military defense and took over the island’s military command. The resultant power struggle between Xue and Chen Jitang grew to such an incredible extent that, around late 1949 and early 1950, the American intelligence unit gloomily predicted that the discontented Chen might soon turn over Hainan to the Chinese Communists. According to the CIA, Chen sent a secret message to the newly arrived Communist authorities in Guangdong, offering to arrange a peaceful handover of Hainan on condition that his personal property and assets in Guangzhou were protected and returned to him, and that he would be allowed to remain Hainan’s governor for six months after the Communist takeover. The Communists turned down Chen’s proposition and reiterated their demand for an unconditional surrender.23

  Presumably as a result of the Communist rejection, Chen Jitang could only show his determination to secure the island, contrary to his fallback position (surrendering to the Communists). In mid-January 1950, Chen wrote to Senator William Knowland, appealing for immediate U.S. aid to Hainan. Chen cleared the air with Knowland by stating that the Nationalist high officials on the island were united and cooperative. He added that all the troops were “high-spirited and willing to die for the island,” and were now entrusted to the command of Xue Yue, to whom Chen “automatically” surrendered his post as commander-in-chief of Hainan’s military defense. Chen also stressed that Taiwan and Hainan were the last two island bastions of anti-Communist forces in China, and he regretted that the outside world did not recognize Hainan, which he believed had more natural resources than Taiwan, having richer land, abundant mineral resources, and unlimited agricultural products, and therefore, strategically, was equally important.24

  Around the time Chen sent his letter of appeal, Gan Jiehou in Washington also wrote to the State Department and sought support for Hainan’s cause. Apparently on Li Zongren’s instructions, Gan argued that in view of the number of troops deployed in Hainan and its strategic position, this island stronghold was no less significant than Taiwan for the ultimate recovery of the mainland. Gan therefore urged that equal attention be paid to the defense of Hainan as to Taiwan.25

  At one point, in Washington, discussions about giving more substantial aid to the Nationalists in Hainan were underway, and this disturbed Chiang Kai-shek tremendously. In Chiang’s eyes, Hainan had long been the turf of the Guangdong Clique, and even Li Zongren and the Guangxi Clique were in a stronger position than Chiang to claim that island. Chiang fully realized that even if Hainan was to be held, his influence on the island’s affairs would only be tenuous and limited. Yet during the first few months of 1950, when Nationalist morale was close to a breakdown, Chiang was in no position to abandon Hainan because of a very implicit and politically subtle reason. When a flurry of underground operations were being planned in Taipei, Hainan was still designated as an important anti-Communist island stronghold, where a KMT-backed “Free China Labor Union” (Ziyou Zhongguo Laogong Tongmeng) branch office would be established, and where a large wireless station would soon be installed for future Nationalist espionage in South and Southwest China.26 Nevertheless, from a pragmatic point of view, the very fact that Hainan was 800 miles from Taiwan and only 10 miles from the mainland suggested that, in the event of a Communist invasion, no effective logistic support could be mounted from Taiwan. It was scarcely surprising that, shortly after the Nationalist center moved to Taipei, in January 1950, Chiang had very quietly ordered his aides to draft withdrawal operations in anticipation of Hainan’s eventual abandonment.27

  The coexistence of the two essentially independent Nationalist island authorities constituted a thorny issue for Chiang Kai-shek and the officials surrounding him. By the spring of 1950, the nascent Communist rule in the southern regions of Guangdong Province still showed signs of considerable instability. In Leizhou Peninsula, opposite Hainan, the economic and monetary situation had deteriorated to a point that the area was noticeably restless; PLA troops were no longer allowed in the cities at night and their camps on
the outskirts were heavily guarded.28 In early March 1950, Xue Yue’s forces repeatedly repelled Communist attempts to land on the northern shore of Hainan. Moreover, Nationalist naval patrols destroyed Communist wooden boats seeking to approach the island several times, while the air force continued to bomb PLA bases along the southern Guangdong coast.29 To sustain Hainan’s finances, Chen Jitang and Xue Yue managed to sell 600,000 tons of the island’s iron ore to Japan, and Hainan military leaders were busy flying between Haikou, the provincial capital, and Taipei to solicit more military and economic aid.30

  Around late March and early April 1950, the outwardly improving situation in Hainan momentarily led some in Washington’s intelligence quarters to decide that the danger of an immediate invasion of the island was “more remote than ever.”31 Even policy planners in the State Department shared this ephemeral optimism. In a memorandum drafted by the department’s Policy Information Committee on April 12, the situation in both Zhoushan and Hainan was depicted as “stabilized,” and in no danger of immediate collapse.32 It took a private national policy formulation, chiefly orchestrated by an “unofficial” American advisor, to decisively bring about the total abandonment of Hainan permanently in May 1950, before the Communists invasion of the island fully materialized.

  NSC 48 SHOWS CHINA POLICY STILL UNSETTLED

  The Communists’ sweeping victory on the Chinese mainland not only disrupted the surviving offshore Nationalist authorities, but also divided Washington’s military and foreign policy establishments. In the final weeks of 1949, Chiang Kai-shek and his core officials in Taipei might have been unaware that, just when they thought they would get support from the United States following the crucial meeting between Oscar Badger and Chiang’s intelligence chief Zheng Jiemin in Washington and the resultant reorganization of the Taiwan provincial government, interdepartmental debates in Washington over the policy toward Taiwan made Badger’s verbally promised delivery of military aid virtually impossible. Still, in early December 1949, partly pressed by Chiang’s supporters in the United States, and partly anxious that the Communist triumph in China would be total, the Defense Department pushed for a more assertive approach to keeping Taiwan out of Mao Zedong’s clutches. Policymakers in the Pentagon contemplated how to make the most effective use of $75 million in a “303 fund” earmarked for the “general area of China” under the 1949 Military Assistance Program. They had also neared completion of National Security Council (NSC) 48, a comprehensive policy paper for Asia that had been in progress for a number of months.33 In Tokyo, General Douglas MacArthur let it be known that he thought Taiwan ought to be held because of its strategic value. As modern scholars now agree, the Far Eastern commander also displayed a penchant for independent action toward the Nationalists’ island stronghold.34