On the Front Lines of the Cold War

by Seymour Topping

  Stuart had not received any response from the State Department about the proposed Peking visit and in the interim had been instructed to return to Washington for consultation. Now assured that Mao and Zhou would welcome him, the ambassador messaged Washington listing the pros and cons. While conceding that the visit might enhance the prestige of the Communists and might mistakenly signal recognition, he said the benefits would outweigh any negative effects. He said it would have a beneficial impact on Washington’s relations with Peking and would strengthen the more liberal faction in the Communist leadership. A debate ensued within the State Department as to whether Stuart should make the Peking trip, with the majority of China specialists favoring taking up what they regarded as a significant gambit by the Communists for exploratory talks. Previously, on April 6, Dean Acheson, then secretary of state, responding to a request from Stuart to stay on in Nanking after Communist occupation, had authorized the ambassador to stay and undertake secret exploratory talks with the Communist leaders to better define their attitudes.

  I was at work in the AP office on July 1 when J. C. Jao, my Chinese assistant, excitedly called my attention to a declaration being broadcast by Peking Radio. It was in the form of a self-interview by Mao Zedong, marking the twenty-eighth anniversary of the founding of the Chinese Communist Party in July 1921. In essence it defined the foreign policy line of China for the next decade. Mao proclaimed that China would “lean to one side” in favor of the Soviet Union. As if he were reflecting a debate which had taken place in Peking among the Communist leaders, Mao posed questions and provided his own answers. This is a translation of our recording:

  “You are leaning to one side?”

  “Exactly . . . We are firmly convinced that in order to win victory, and consolidate it we must lean to one side . . . Sitting on the fence will not do, nor is there a third road.”

  “You are too irritating?”

  “We are talking about how to deal with domestic and foreign reactionaries, the imperialists and their running dogs, not about how to deal with anyone else . . . either kill the tiger or be eaten by him—one or the other.”

  “We want to do business?”

  “Quite right, business will be done . . . When we have beaten the internal and external reactionaries by uniting all domestic and international forces, we shall be able to do business and establish diplomatic relations with all foreign countries on the basis of equality, mutual benefit and mutual respect for territorial integrity and sovereignty.”

  “Victory is possible, even without international help?”

  “This is a mistaken idea. In the epoch in which imperialism exists, it is impossible for a genuine people’s revolution to win victory in any country without various forms of help from international revolutionary forces, and even if victory were won, it could not be consolidated.”

  “We need help from the British and U.S. Governments?”

  “This too, is a naive idea in these times. Would the present rulers of Britain and the United States, who are imperialists, help a people’s state? . . . Internationally, we belong to the side of the anti-imperialist front headed by the Soviet Union, and so we can turn only to this side for genuine and friendly help, not to the side of the imperialist front.”

  I telephoned Ronning at the Canadian Embassy to tell him of the Mao statement. There was a lunch in progress, on the occasion of Dominion National Day, for the Commonwealth ambassadors, and Stuart was among the guests. Ronning broke the news to them. It shocked Stuart, who had counted on visiting Peking and hopefully reaching some kind of an understanding with the Communist leadership. It shattered what he referred to later as his “dream of a China peaceful, united and progressive, helped in this by American technical advice, and financial grants or loans.”

  Mao and Zhou Enlai clearly were affronted by the delay of more than a month in responding to their invitation to Stuart. Absent a reply from Washington and suffering a loss of face in the exchange with Truman, Mao had chosen to lay down the line of leaning to the side of the Soviet Union. Two days after the Mao declaration, Stuart received a message from the State Department saying that his proposal had been considered “at the highest levels,” obviously President Truman, and under no circumstances should he visit Peking.

  Stuart left Nanking on August 2 on the embassy plane. In Washington, the ambassador’s public comments were screened by the State Department. No public mention was made of his invitation to Peking. The State Department announced on August 14 that the United States intended to retain its diplomatic relations with the Nationalist government. Four days later, Mao published an article, “Farewell, Leighton Stuart!” in which he described the ambassador as “a symbol of the complete defeat of the U.S. Policy of aggression.” The declaration reflected resentment of Stuart’s support of the Chiang Kai-shek government during his tenure as ambassador and Mao’s loss of face over the curt dismissal of the invitation to Stuart to visit Peking.

  Before Stuart left Nanking, I spoke to him about Mao’s invitation. It was his view that he might have improved relations with Peking and laid the foundation for the establishment of normal diplomatic ties. On November 30, aboard a train going from Cincinnati to Washington, Stuart suffered a severe stroke, which incapacitated him. He lived in Washington from 1950 until his death in 1962 at the Chevy Chase home of Philip Fugh and his wife. It was there in later years that Philip Fugh gave me the sole access to Stuart’s personal diary, which contained the details of his contacts with Huang Hua.

  In his will Leighton Stuart asked to be buried in China beside his wife on the grounds of Yenching University. Stuart’s ashes were kept in an urn in the Fughs’ home awaiting the opportunity to fulfill his wish. The urn was passed after the deaths of Fugh and his wife to their son, John, who rose to become a major general and judge advocate in the U.S. Army. General Fugh told me that he had sought unsuccessfully for years to obtain Chinese government permission to have Stuart’s remains interred at Yenching. It was evident that the Chinese have not forgotten the contretemps of the aborted Stuart visit to Peking. Rendering an evaluation of Stuart in his Memoirs, Huang Hua said: “Despite his popularity among some Chinese intellectuals, he was after all a firm believer in American First, and faithfully carried out the United States policy of backing Chiang Kai-shek in its fight against Communism . . . In the final analysis, Stuart and Secretary of State Dean Acheson tried to play the China Card in the worldwide U.S.-Soviet struggle, intending to draw China to the U.S. side. However, the wheel of history did not turn in the direction Stuart wished.”

  General Fugh, now retired and chairman of the Committee of 100, an organization of prominent Chinese Americans, continued to press for fulfillment of Stuart’s wish. In 2008, Beijing relented and allowed Stuart’s ashes to be interred on August 2 in a private ceremony in Hangzhou beside the summer home that the ambassador had maintained in the resort city. The ashes were shipped from Washington in a State Department diplomatic bag to avoid any possible mishap. The small ceremony was attended by the American ambassador, Clark Randt Jr., the mayor of Hangzhou, along with alumni of Yenching. After placing flowers on the grave, General Fugh said: “Now, after a half century, his wish has finally been carried out.”

  Looking back on the Stuart episode, I believe that the ambassador was correct in assuming that Mao’s relations with Stalin were equivocal at the time Stuart was invited to Peking and thus provided an opening for the United States. As late as December 1949, Mao was not yet fully accepted into the Soviet camp. In January of that year, still uncertain of Mao’s loyalty, Stalin had sent Anastas Mikoyan, a Politburo member, on an exploratory mission to Mao’s provisional headquarters in North China at Hsipaip’o in Hupei Province. Mao assured him of his solidarity with Stalin and that he looked to Moscow primarily for economic aid. It was his intention, he told Mikoyan, to create “a people’s democracy based on the worker-peasant alliance,” under the leadership of the Communist Party. Nevertheless, speaking to his party’s Central Committ
ee in 1962, Mao recalled: “Later on, I went to Moscow to conclude the Chinese Soviet Treaty of Alliance, Friendship and Mutual Assistance [February 14, 1950], which also involved a struggle. He [Stalin] did not want to sign it, but finally agreed after two months of negotiations. When did Stalin begin to have confidence in us? It began in the winter of 1950, during the Resist-America Aid-Korea Campaign. Stalin then believed we were not Yugoslavia and not Titoist.”

  While Mao had been prepared to welcome Stuart to Peking, Huang Hua told me years later, the Communist leaders believed that American policy was set and there was little prospect for change. At best they hoped to deter further American intervention in the Civil War on behalf of Chiang Kaishek. But this does not mean that a meeting with Stuart in Peking, which Mao and Zhou sought, could not have been extremely useful for both the United States and China. It might have led at least to the opening of channels of communication. As many China specialists in the State Department felt at the time, that was reason enough to accept Mao’s invitation. Even in the absence of normal diplomatic relations, the Chinese had been disposed to maintain channels to cope with dangerous confrontations. If Americans had continued to talk to the Communists, many of the misunderstandings and much of the agony in Asia over the next decades might have been averted. Critical policy decisions dealing with the confrontations in Indochina and Korea during the 1950s and 1960s were made on both sides on a basis of incomplete information and mistaken assessments. It is likely that the entry of Chinese Communist “volunteers” into the Korean War in November 1950 could have been avoided. Not until 1971, with President Richard Nixon’s diplomatic opening to China and the visit to Peking by Henry Kissinger, did the United States begin to acquire firsthand information upon which realistic assessments could be made of Chinese intentions.

  Soon after Truman ruled out the Stuart visit in July 1949, Mao took action that had a decisive effect on the course of the French Indochina War and later on the American war effort in Vietnam. He agreed then to provide Ho Chi Minh with a major program of military aid.

  Mao had been approached by Ho Chi Minh for such assistance as early as 1945. In that year Ho made the last of eight recorded appeals to President Truman for support in his struggle with the French for Vietnamese independence. Like the previous appeals, it went unanswered. Truman had already approved resumption of French control of Indochina. Ho then turned to Mao for help. From 1945 to 1949 there were only limited exchanges between Ho’s League for the Independence of Vietnam, known as the Viet Minh, and the Chinese Communists. In March 1946, a Chinese Communist militia unit, the First Regiment, retreated from Kwangsi Province into Vietnam under Nationalist attack and in return for food and other help given to them by the Viet Minh trained some of their guerrilla units. But otherwise the relationship did not significantly broaden until Chinese Communist troops arrived at the Vietnam frontier in force in 1949. After the founding of the People’s Republic of China on October 1, 1949, Ho sent envoys to Peking to renew his request for military aid and diplomatic recognition of his newly established Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) in the North. Mao was in Moscow at the time negotiating the Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship, Alliance and Mutual Assistance. He cabled instructions to Liu Shaoqi, the party secretary, who was in Peking to comply with the requests. The Maoist regime formally recognized the DRV on January 5, and Liu set to work putting together a major military aid program. On Mao’s urging, Stalin extended diplomatic recognition on January 30 with the understanding that China would take the lead in providing aid to the DRV. To make direct contacts with the Communist leadership, as Qiang Zhai, the Chinese American scholar, describes in his book China and the Vietnam Wars, 1950–1975, Ho walked for seventeen days from his jungle headquarters to the China border, arriving there on January 30. He then continued on to Peking, where he negotiated the terms of military aid with Liu Shaoqi. Liu appointed Luo Guibo, a senior Civil War veteran, as the principal liaison and adviser to the Viet Minh. Beginning in April, the Chinese began shipping large quantities of weapons and other supplies to the Viet Minh. A Chinese Military Advisory Group (CMAG) was created to coordinate the work of almost three hundred Chinese advisers assigned to the Viet Minh army headquarters near the Indochina border, at an officers’ training school and in the field at the divisional level. The advisers were instructed to train the Viet Minh in the tactics and strategy formulated by Mao on September 7, 1947, in his directive from his northern Shensi mountain headquarters to the People’s Liberation Army. Supplemented by deliveries of Soviet weaponry, the Chinese program gave Vo Nguyen Giap, the Viet Minh military commander, the means to defeat the French and later to prevail in their war against the United States and its South Vietnamese allies.

  In allying himself with Ho Chi Minh, Mao seemed to be motivated by two considerations: one was his ideological commitment to leftist revolution in Asia; the other was a desire to create a buffer in Vietnam against any American military thrust into China. Could Mao have been convinced through assurances conveyed by Leighton Stuart that there was no American intention to threaten the security of his regime? One can only speculate, but in my view and in the opinion then of the most respected China experts within the State Department, Stuart might have made a difference if he had been permitted to go to Peking.

  On the day that Mao proclaimed the establishment of the People’s Republic of China, October 1, 1949, Huang Hua summoned the diplomatic corps in Nanking to the Foreign Ministry. Speaking in Chinese, he informed them of the proclamation and invited their respective governments to recognize and establish relations with the newly organized government in Peking. His statement was received in complete silence by the assembled ambassadors. After an awkward interval, Keith Officer, the Australian ambassador, rose to say that his statement had not been understood and asked if Chester Ronning, could act as interpreter. Huang Hua agreed, and Ronning acted as the translator for the diplomatic corps. Following the ambassadorial meeting, India agreed quickly to establish diplomatic relations and transferred its ambassador in Nanking, Sardar K. M. Panikkar, to Peking. With the outbreak in the next year of the Korean War, Panikkar became a vital channel of communication to Foreign Minister Zhou Enlai. He conveyed the warning that Chinese troops would intervene if American troops crossed the thirty-eighth parallel into North Korea. If Panikkar’s intercession had been taken seriously by the United States, the entry of Chinese troops might have been averted.

  Audrey and I became friendly with Panikkar in Nanking, chatting often with him under the plum trees in his lovely garden about events in Asia. Born into the untouchable caste and then adopted by a Brahmin family, Panikkar, through sheer brilliance despite his humble origins, had achieved remarkable success in India’s diplomatic service. Educated at Oxford, he was also a distinguished historian. Panikkar was sympathetic to the Chinese Communists as revolutionaries, but I found that his personal sympathies did not cloud his highly perceptive observations of the realities.

  Like Panikkar, Ronning recommended to his government that Canada establish relations with the Peking government forthwith. T. C. Davis, the Canadian ambassador, had earlier left China, and Ronning was the chargé d’affaires of the mission. Ronning saw an opportunity to influence the evolving policies of the Maoist regime through the prompt opening of a diplomatic channel of communication. But Ottawa hesitated, according to Ronning’s personal papers, until June 25, 1950, when he was informed that the Canadian government had finally decided to enter into negotiations for recognition. He was instructed to advise Huang Hua to that effect. But before he could comply, the Korean War erupted. Ottawa then told him that the war had introduced new factors affecting relations with Peking. Ronning was instructed to close the Canadian Embassy and return home, where he was to become the head of the Far Eastern Department in the Ministry of External Affairs. Following the declaration of an armistice in the Korean War, Ronning in July 1954 was sent to the Geneva Conference on Korea and Vietnam as the Canadian representative. There, Wang Pingnan, a memb
er of the Chinese delegation, broached the question of Canadian diplomatic recognition. Ronning told him that normalization of relations was not possible while three Canadian Catholic missionaries were in prison and another was being denied an exit visa. Nine days later, the priests were released, but Canada did not make a move toward recognition until 1956, when Ronning was informed by Lester Pearson, the foreign minister, that Canada would recognize the People’s Republic and he would become Canada’s first ambassador. Shortly before the formal announcement was to be made, Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent and Pearson visited Washington to inform President Eisenhower of the decision. To their surprise, Eisenhower, who was embittered by the Chinese intervention in the Korean War, protested. Eisenhower told them that other nations would follow the Canadian example, and this might result in the People’s Republic being admitted to the United Nations. If China were seated, Eisenhower contended, the American public would demand that the United States withdraw from the United Nations and might even insist upon the UN headquarters being removed from American territory. Once again, Canadian recognition was delayed, this time until October 13, 1971, when Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau finally established diplomatic relations with the Peking government.