Accidental State

by Hsiao-ting Lin

  It was thus understandable that, as early as 1952, some core intelligence staff in Washington began doubting Chiang Kai-shek’s intention to recover the mainland. In February 1952, the Joint Chiefs of Staff proposed “a show of force” along China’s coast to enhance the U.S. position with Beijing in the Korean theater, once again seriously contemplating the use of Nationalist forces.35 In its analysis, the Pentagon believed that the Nationalists’ recapturing Hainan would be militarily, psychologically, and logically valuable to the United States in containing the Chinese Communists’ aggression in Southeast Asia. Seizing Hainan would both divert Chinese Communist forces from Korea and raise the morale of all anti-Communist Chinese. Strategically, returning Hainan to Nationalist control would make it a base for counter-operations and for possible future land, sea, and air action against the mainland.36 Thus a new directive was sent from Washington to MAAG in Taipei recommending that the current training programs for the island be expanded to provide for the possibility of two Nationalist army divisions in areas outside Taiwan.37

  Chiang, however, outwitted the increased U.S. pressure to retake Hainan by ordering his military staff to formulate a counterproposal, in which the main targets for the preliminary landing operations (were these to be undertaken) remain concentrated on the Fujian littoral, with Fuzhou as the focal point. If the situation improved, Chiang would consider extending military operations as far north as Shanghai and Nanjing and as far south as Guangzhou. Against the Pentagon’s express wishes, Hainan was not even mentioned in this latest policy design.38 On March 26, 1952, General Frank Merrill, one of Joseph Stilwell’s closest lieutenants during World War II and now a representative of Washington’s military intelligence establishment, arrived in Taipei to meet with Chiang Kai-shek.39 In their discussions, Merrill emphatically expressed Washington’s grave concerns that Chiang did not want any kind of military counterattack. Chiang was shocked but neither admitted nor denied that he was against a counterattack, only confirming that recapturing Hainan was indeed the last thing he had on his mind.40

  As the war in Korea entered a stalemate in the spring of 1952, pressure from Washington for a prompt and effective Nationalist operation to retake Hainan escalated. In May, Admiral Arthur Radford, leader of the U.S. Pacific Command, visited Taipei and tried to persuade Chiang Kai-shek to undertake the Hainan operation. Radford’s visit greatly alarmed the British consular staff on the island, who viewed his presence as an indication that Washington might “de-neutralize” Taiwan, assist in the Nationalist military actions along the Communist China coast, and accept Nationalist military help in Korea. British apprehension further intensified when there was a coincident renewal of inflammatory talk about “mainland recovery” within the KMT party.41

  The true scenario, however, proved rather different. During the meeting between Chiang and Radford, the initially amicable discussion took on a sour tone. The admiral underscored Hainan’s strategic value, including its importance to the worldwide anti-Communism cause. Chiang argued that any attempt to retake the island would cost Taiwan at least ten divisions of armed forces, in addition to year-long efforts to eradicate local Communist influence and consolidate the new power base, all of which Chiang thought too high a price to pay. Radford found it ridiculous when Chiang told him that, while reconquering the mainland would boost the Nationalist morale, recapturing Hainan could only do the opposite.42 Later, when William Fechteler, the U.S. Chief of Naval Operations, and, again, Arthur Radford visited Taipei and urged Chiang to occupy Hainan under U.S. sponsorship, Chiang remained unmoved.43 Even the British came to see that the incessant pressure was from the United States on the Nationalists, not the other way around. In his field report to London, the British consul in Tamsui, E. H. Jacobs-Larkcom, depicted the U.S. military representatives on Taiwan as in an “impudent mood,” prompting the Nationalists to further demonstrate their military capability against the Chinese Communists. Probably not fully aware of the details of the proposed Hainan operation, the British saw the U.S. toughness as a political maneuver to push the peace talks in Korea and to influence the presidential election campaign at home.44

  While the Hainan operation stagnated, the marine-based raids along the Fujian and Zhejiang Coasts, backed by the CIA, were up and running. In November 1950, several months before the Joint Chiefs of Staff had approved aiding guerrilla movements as a way to check the Chinese Communists, the CIA entered into secret negotiations with top Nationalist intelligence brass for a joint program to launch clandestine attacks against the mainland. The original plan, according to the now-declassified official Chinese files, was for the CIA to provide a well-trained Nationalist guerrilla unit of about a thousand men with enough ammunition to infiltrate and sabotage Communist military and other infrastructure facilities, particularly the railways, along China’s northeastern and southeastern coastal areas. A small isle or two would be the secret base of contact between the CIA agents and leaders of the guerrilla unit, as well as the storage space for the ammunition provided by the CIA. Chiang approved the idea and designated his trustworthy intelligence chief Zheng Jiemin to handle the details.45

  Covert collaboration with the Nationalists along mainland China’s coastal areas had become even more imperative owing to the CIA’s failure to predict Communist China’s entry into the Korean War.46 In March 1951, CIA personnel began streaming into Taiwan under the cover of Western Enterprises Incorporated (WEI), a private military procurement agent for the Nationalist government. (Charles S. Johnston, who initiated the secret contact with the Nationalists, became the president of the Pittsburgh-headquartered WEI; William R. Peers directed the WEI base in Taipei.) Accompanying the CIA personnel was the first batch of munitions for the guerrillas, including 1,740 boxes of high-explosive charges, 680 carbines, 420 light machine guns, 200 pistols, 25 boxes of radio equipment, 70 rocket launchers, and 379,000 rounds of ammunition.47 A string of Nationalist-held isles off Zhejiang Province, including Yushan, Pishan, Nanqi, Beiqi, Yijiangshan, and Upper and Lower Dachen were designated as the operational bases for the WEI-led guerrillas’ organization, training, and covert coastal raids. An immediate task was to bring the disparate anti-Communist guerrilla groups already on the isles under a more centralized command structure, a task that Chiang Kai-shek assigned to General Hu Zongnan, his onetime favorite in the mainland era. In July 1951, Hu established a guerrilla headquarters on Dachen, as well as a Zhejiang provincial government, a small symbolic sign of continuing Nationalist control over Chiang Kai-shek’s home province.48 The irregular maritime redoubts along Zhejiang’s coast soon extended to larger islands off the Fujian coast, chiefly on Quemoy and Matsu. Meanwhile, three WEI-directed training centers were set up in Tamsui, Magong (on the Pescadores), and Quemoy, where programs such as the Guerrilla Leaders Course, Combat Intelligence Course, and Agent Case Officers Course were mounted to train thousands of Nationalist intelligence cadets.49 According to one Nationalist intelligence document, by March 1952, 149 cadets had completed the WEI training program in Tamsui and been sent to conduct underground activities in northern Burma, Yunnan, and Hainan Island.50

  From the outset Chiang Kai-shek had been wary of the WEI personnel and the clandestine maritime activities that would likely come under their sway. Seeing them as short-tempered, difficult to get along with, and eager for quick successes and instant victories, he installed Madame Chiang as chair of the “Guerrilla Committee,” where members of the WEI and Nationalist intelligence establishment could meet, as a way to restrain the WEI personnel.51 But Chiang came to realize that the advantages of the WEI program far outweighed its disadvantages, for the WEI operations along China’s coast would keep the momentum of “recapturing the mainland” relatively risk free, without issues such as who should lead the command in the event of a genuine mainland offensive. In addition, the practical value of the WEI-led activities seemed impressive, in that the raiding activities enabled the Nationalists and the Americans to gather firsthand information from China’s eastern
coast in addition to sabotaging Communist facilities. Moreover, Chiang may have deemed the raids as gratifying opportunities to verify and appraise the capabilities of the Nationalist armed forces. That reality check, however, disillusioned, rather than strengthened, his hopes for a return to the mainland.52

  Between mid-1951 and mid-1953, several dozen covert coastal operations were conducted off Zhejiang and Fujian provinces, ranging from petty hit-and-run coastal harassments and ship interceptions to large-scale raids claiming thousands of lives. The payoff from these operations, however, appeared modest at best, having more of a propaganda effect than any substantial military or strategic merit, but allowing the Nationalists to claim that their “mainland counteroffensive” was still alive.53 By the early summer of 1953, with a cease-fire in Korea in the offing, the WEI began reevaluating the effectiveness of its raid program. Believing that the evidently increased Communist naval strength precluded Nationalist guerrilla force landings, the WEI decided to withdraw from Dachen and the adjacent isles, which its personnel now deemed it as “threatened” and having “little tactical value.”54 In addition, the friction between MAAG and WEI, and between WEI and the Nationalist authorities, who were unhappy with the dubious character and highhandedness of some CIA personnel, further overshadowed the program. It took another year and a half for the CIA officially to end its WEI business; by March 1955, WEI’s responsibility for coastal raiding and maritime interdiction had been transferred to MAAG.55

  MAINLAND HANGOVER

  A maritime military strategy was conspicuously in the best interest of Chiang Kai-shek and his leadership on Taiwan. As long as the war in Korea continued, Chiang could exploit the situation by using the pretext of an intended mainland offensive to seek the aid he desired. After the inauguration of the Eisenhower administration, when employing Nationalist forces outside Taiwan was still a heated proposal, a shrewd and well-calculating Chiang ordered his subordinates to draft an outline of the supply plan for a counteroffensive on the mainland. Chiang boldly requested an amazing amount of ammunition, 553 planes and 622 ships of various sorts, plus 36 divisions of ground forces and corresponding military supplies for the “initial stage” of the counteroffensive, with more items to be expected for the latter stages of the putative mainland operations.56

  This was by no means the only episode demonstrating Chiang’s manipulation of the professed mainland counteroffensive to achieve political or diplomatic ends. The issue surrounding the 35,000 Nationalist internees in Vietnam is another good example. By the middle of 1951, when the Hainan operation was enthusiastically advocated by the Americans as a way to distract the PRC from the Korean War and, more recently, to cut the Chinese Communist support of Vietminh, Chiang was dwelling on the best strategy to exploit this agenda. Considering a strained military budget within the Nationalist government, along with the very fact that the internees essentially belonged to Bai Chongxi’s old Guangxi Clique, Chiang preferred sending these ex-soldiers back to Southwest China to conduct guerrilla warfare, rather than absorbing them into the Nationalist army in Taiwan.57 Learning that the French authorities would neither repatriate these Nationalists nor rearm them for the purpose of fighting the Vietminh so as to avoid provoking the Chinese Communists, in the spring of 1951, Chiang turned to the United States for a better solution.

  From a strategic point of view, officials in the State Department did not entirely discard the idea of rearming the interned Nationalists and using them in Indochina. The idea was particularly attractive because, at the moment, Washington was determined to assist the French in Indochina, but without utilizing American ground forces.58 To ascertain whether such an idea was feasible, in July 1951 Karl Rankin proposed that General William Chase personally fly to Vietnam to negotiate with the French. The visit was called off at the last minute when the U.S. diplomatic staff in Saigon gave an unfavorable evaluation of Chase’s presence in Vietnam.59 As Washington continued to press Taipei about the Hainan operation and other possible military action along Southwest China, Chiang decided to use the issue of the internees as a bargaining chip. On August 29, 1951, Wellington Koo met with Dean Rusk at the State Department, emphasizing once again the importance of rearming the Nationalists in Vietnam in case the Far Eastern situation became more troubled. With Chiang’s prior consent, Koo implied that Taipei did not object the use of these troops either in fighting the local Communists or recovering Hainan, so long as they were not assimilated into the French forces but were allowed to operate as separate units.60

  Both the State and Defense departments were tempted by such a formula, but when Jean de Lattre de Tassingny, French high commander and commander-in-chief of the French forces in Indochina, visited Washington in September that year, he repeated emphatically that these actions, including rearming or repatriating the interned Nationalists, could be considered provocative by the Chinese Communists and should be avoided at any cost. It was not until late 1951 that Washington became aware that Taipei’s true intention was to desert the internees, and the United States gradually shelved the issue.61 In the spring of 1953, when a cease-fire in Korea was expected, rearming and using the Nationalist internees was out of the question, and the French authorities finally agreed to their repatriation. Still, Chiang Kai-shek was deft enough to talk the MAAG in Taipei into subsidizing the repatriation. Emphasizing the government’s lack of military budget and a welcome alleviation of the island’s manpower shortage the return of the internees might bring about, Taipei sought Washington’s permission to appropriate parts of the mutual security funds for the repatriation.62 The State Department was aware that Taipei’s request was a maneuver to obtain U.S. financing for its additional paramilitary projects. Nonetheless, the Eisenhower administration agreed on humanitarian grounds to utilize Section 303 of the 1949 MAP Act to authorize the expenditure of funds to meet an “emergency” relief problem in the general area of China.63 By July 1953, approximately 23,000 Nationalist internees were transferred to Taiwan.

  The most prominent case illustrating the island-rooted Nationalist China’s mainland hangover in the early 1950s was Li Mi and his irregulars in northern Burma. In the spring of 1950, Chiang Kai-shek gave Li a political mandate to chair the exiled “provincial government” of Yunnan and provided a moderate stipend as a way to control Li’s forces from afar. Throughout the summer of 1950, the ragged Nationalist irregulars fought with the Burmese army and struggled to retain their base of operation in the Shan State. As their cause seemed doomed, the CIA entered the scene, subsidizing and regrouping what Washington’s military intelligence chiefs believed might be instrumental in blocking further Communist expansion in Asia after the war broke out in Korea.64 In late 1950, a CIA-operated Southeast Asia Defense Supplies Corporation which resembled the WEI establishment in Taiwan, was set up in Bangkok to render covert support to Li Mi (code-named Operation Paper). In the months that followed, Taipei joined the CIA in making parachute drops of ammunition and military equipment to the irregulars in northern Burma. With the new supplies, Li Mi’s forces underwent a period of vigorous expansion and reorganization. Training bases staffed with CIA and Nationalist instructors flown in from Taiwan via Thailand were constructed along the Burma-China border, and by the spring of 1951 Li had over 4,000 men under his command.65

  In April 1951, the attempted reconquest of Yunnan began when Li Mi’s 2,000 irregulars crossed the border into Southwest China. Accompanied by CIA advisers and supplied by regular airdrops from unmarked C-47s, the forces moved northward in two columns, capturing Gengma in southern Yunnan without any resistance. However, as they advanced north of Gengma, the PLA counterattacked, causing huge casualties among the Nationalist irregulars. Li Mi and the survivors fled back to their Burmese base after less than a week in China. Undeterred by this crushing defeat, Li later dispatched another 2,000-man contingent into southern Yunnan. But they too were overwhelmed, and in July 1951 were driven back into northern Burma.66

  Chiang Kai-shek well understood that these CIA-d
riven adventures bore marginal if any military or geo-strategic significance to Taiwan’s defense and security. And yet the political and psychological effect these adventures registered could not be simply ignored. When summoned to Taipei to meet with top Nationalist authorities in the early months of 1952, Li Mi claimed that he had managed to augment the size of his “national salvation army” considerably by virtue of the counteroffensive. Other high officials in Taipei replied with an unconfirmed statement that the Yunnan guerrillas, who remained staunchly loyal to the Nationalist government on Taiwan, had cooperated with Li during the invasion and that Li returned with 30,000 men after going in with only 3,000. No one needs to be surprised that Chiang was more than pleased to take advantage of Li Mi’s wild escapade as clear evidence that Taipei’s determination to recover the whole Chinese mainland was alive and kicking.67

  During the Korean War, as the necessity to cultivate anti-Communist forces to counteract the Chinese Communists continued to be felt in the United States, the CIA redoubled its support for Li Mi despite the disastrous defeat in the summer of 1951.68 Late that year, the exiled Nationalists reopened the old World War II landing strip at Mong Hsat to handle the large two- and four-engine aircraft flying in from Taiwan or Bangkok. Enormous quantities of arms and goods were forwarded to Mong Hsat by the Southeast Asia Defense Supplies Corporation in Bangkok, and with the refreshed supplies, Li Mi press-ganged 12,000 soldiers from the hardy local hill tribes, including the Karens and the Mons. During the first half of 1952, Li had concentrated his expanded forces in a long, narrow strip of territory parallel to the Yunnan border, where the indefatigable general seemed ready to launch yet another bid to retake his home province at any time.69