Gellhorn’s change of attitude clearly brought out a different side of Madame as well: “We have been married fourteen years,” May-ling told her. “We get on very well, two people with such tempers. When we married, everybody said it would not last. And he takes care of me. Sometimes I get so overworked I cannot think. I am like a fly stuck in flypaper. Then my husband says, ‘Now you go over to the south bank to the country,* and stay there a few days.’ He just picks me up and sends me off.”
When Gellhorn told May-ling that she and Hemingway had met Ai-ling, May-ling said that her sister was
an angel. She has the most heart of us all.… And people say terrible things about her. They say of my sister that she speculates.… You know how that lying story started? Dr. Kung was in Europe at the coronation. The government bonds were falling in the market. My husband talked with us about it. We must prevent this decline. So my sister said she would buy them, as a private individual, to support the market. But she was really buying for the government.† Afterward, the real speculators, who had tried to force the bond down, and had been caught, accused my sister of speculating.… People are wickedly unjust. Stories start and no one checks them and they are repeated. I get so angry when I hear bad things about Dr. Kung. No man in China would have stayed at the job so long, and worked so hard, or given such wholehearted co-operation. He has sacrificed his health and his family; he has let his own affairs go. He gets nothing for himself except endless work.… And then people talk about him. I would fight back. But they are nobler than I am.
IT WAS MAY-LING, however, who was now the most important member of the Soong family—the first lady of the land, in locus empress, wielding, as Pearl Buck put it, “an influence which it is impossible to overestimate.” Along with her duties as the wife of the generalissimo, she established a Women’s Advisory Committee of the New Life Movement, an umbrella group with nine departments, including one to deal with refugee children. There were thousands of these orphans (or warphans, as May-ling liked to call them) after the Japanese bombardments of Shanghai and Nanking. With forty-nine orphanages under her direction, May-ling arranged to house, feed, and clothe some 25,000 youngsters and set up a program of “adoption,” whereby anyone anywhere in the world could pledge $20.00 a year to cover the basic costs for one child. Like similar programs today, the benefactor received a photo of the orphan and a yearly report on his or her progress. May-ling had strong opinions about these institutions, which reflected her American upbringing. The children’s food was served in individual bowls, rather than the one central dish into which everyone was used to plunging his or her chopsticks, sharing not only food but germs. Dishes were washed carefully after meals and rinsed three times. Even the floors of her orphanages, traditional repositories of spit and dust, were kept spotlessly clean. This was quite an innovation when we consider that in 1935 one out of every two Chinese died before the age of thirty and that three quarters of these deaths could have been prevented with adequate methods of sanitation.
The generalissimo’s wife also used the exigencies of war to improve the position of women in China. And like the wives of other wartime heads of state around the world, she was photographed visiting orphanages, distributing gifts to wounded soldiers, dabbing a wound, admiring a portable X-ray machine, holding an outdoor clinic, and tramping through the mud in the countryside.
But behind the facade of a family united for the defense of the country, there were hidden factions, particularly a rivalry between T. V. Soong and H. H. Kung. In this situation, Kung was invariably backed up by his wife and May-ling, who was not always on good terms with brother T.V. Since the competition between the brothers-in-law had a serious impact on the economy of China, it seems like a good idea to stop our story at this point and examine the history of these two men vis-à-vis Chiang Kai-shek and the Kuomintang.
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[T]here has been no crisis, international or domestic, in the past 20 years that T.V. hasn’t been summoned to handle sooner or later.
—VANYA OAKES, MAGAZINE DIGEST, 1945
KUNG, DESCRIBED by White as “a round man with a soft face draped with pendulous flabby chins,” was “undoubtedly more Chinese than Soong.” Kung’s ancestral ties were certainly more impressive than those of Charlie Soong’s eldest son, but they had also left Kung with certain vestigial impediments. He was, like his ancestors in the Middle Kingdom, “basically anti-foreign” and, like Chiang Kai-shek, ever willing to put up with second-rate subordinates. The consummate gentleman, easily swayed, and overly concerned with “face,” Kung’s “one great desire was to be loved, and those who knew him well found him so lovable that they called him Daddy.”
A tall man of imposing bearing, T.V. was quicker, far more intelligent, and less tactful than Kung. He did not appear to care about personal popularity—a tendency that led to periodic fallings-out with the G-mo as well as others: “in a country where compromise is an art, he refuses to compromise, and among people who assiduously practice circumlocution, he talks straight from the shoulder,” said one American journalist, who described the men who worked for T.V. as “direct, young, and energetic. As a correspondent… I found that if I wanted facts, not platitudes, the person to look for was a T.V. man.”
Owen Lattimore, a China scholar appointed in 1941 by Roosevelt as political adviser to Chiang, preferred Kung’s style to T.V.’s substance. Lattimore’s dislike for May-ling’s brother can be traced to his first formal call on T.V. in Washington. Burly, with a Boston accent, T.V. “was sitting behind a big desk, behaving like his idea of an American big boss.… He was brisk and brief. No oriental courtesies here.… He congratulated me on my nomination*… he had not been consulted. His manner was as distant as it could be without being rude.… T.V. Soong wanted to give the impression that he was not only Chiang’s brother-in-law, but his confidential man in the United States, and anything important should go through him.”
K. C. Wu, who served as T.V.’s vice minister and later as governor of Taiwan, said that what appeared as arrogance in T.V. was actually deficiency in his native culture and speech, plus an inability to make small talk. T.V. had what Wu called “a brilliant mind. Very sharp. If you say half a sentence he knows the rest already.” Wu added that “T.V. had a very low opinion of H. H. Kung’s intelligence”—a judgment echoed by McHugh, who added that T.V. was unable to “conceal his contempt… toward Kung.” He pointed out the rift in the Soong family between May-ling, Ai-ling, and T.L. on one side versus T.V., Ching-ling, and T.A. on the other. But the intense competition between T.V. and Kung was due largely to Kung’s wife, Ai-ling, whose political ambitions for her husband and financial ambitions for her family seemed to many observors to be well nigh insatiable. According to T.V.’s good friend, journalist Joe Alsop, “Mme. Kung called the tune and her husband danced.”
In the early days when Dr. Sun was alive, however, Ai-ling had helped T.V. find a job in the government. Starting in the position of Dr. Sun’s English secretary, he had quickly graduated to manager of the salt audit office of Kwangsi and Kwangtung provinces. He reorganized the collection of salt duties, which became a valuable source of revenue for the revolution, and was promoted to president of the Central (revolutionary) Bank. In 1925, he was named minister of finance and minister of commerce for Sun, laying the foundation for his later title, the “King of Finance” in China. Kung, on the other hand, did not go into the government until after Sun’s death, when his wife secured a position for him on the Central Political Committee of the Kuomintang. She also arranged for him to take over the post of finance minister for the province of Kwangtung from T.V.
Thus, after the establishment of Chiang’s government in Nanking, T.V. was in a far more powerful position than Kung. In spite of the fact that both Kungs had voluntarily supported Chiang against the Communist faction in Wuhan, whereas T.V. had to be forced into eventual compliance, T.V. was immediately made minister of finance, and Kung was rewarded only later with the lesser position of minister of ind
ustry, commerce, and labor. T.V., who was in his thirties at the time, changed government policy toward the businessmen of Shanghai—reducing the element of financial coercion imposed earlier by Chiang, substituting a policy of collaboration, and creating a market for government bonds that he offered to Shanghai bankers at huge discounts. Although he proved that he was the only man capable of dealing with China’s financial problems, he is reputed to have made a number of enemies along the way, men who were anxious to destroy his reputation.*
At the end of 1931, shortly after Japan invaded Manchuria, Chiang Kai-shek submitted one of his periodic resignations, and among the members of his cabinet who resigned with him were his brothers-in-law, T. V. Soong and H. H. Kung. When Chiang returned to his post at the end of January 1932, T.V. was quickly reinstated as minister of finance, president of the Central Bank, and commissioner of the Economic Committee. But by the time Chiang returned, his old rival Wang Ching-wei had assumed the presidency of the Executive Yuan, and Kung’s position as minister of industry, commerce, and labor had been taken over by a supporter of Wang. In this situation, Kung and his wife did what Chinese officials often did in similar circumstances—they took a trip to Europe and the United States. They stayed away for nearly a year, returning just about the time that T.V. had begun to quarrel with Chiang over the huge amounts of money the generalissimo demanded from his finance minister to fund his campaigns against the Communists. Chiang and T.V. had never gotten along very well anyway, due partly to the influence of Donald. James McHugh, who often lunched with the three of them, reported that Donald “lost no opportunity to stress both to Madame Chiang and the Generalissimo that Soong was ambitious, unscrupulous, selfish and domineering.” Moreover, T.V. had now started to question Chiang’s policy of ridding China of Communists before attacking the Japanese. The month after Kung returned from his travels, T.V. resigned as president of the Central Bank, which acted as the public treasury, and Kung took his place. Although the usual Chinese excuse of illness was the official explanation, T.V. called a press conference. “I have one remark to make, and only one,” he announced. “I am in perfect health.” The first man ever to balance the Chinese national budget, T.V. then took off for the World Economic Conference in London and from there traveled to the United States. His arrival was preceeded by the publication of a flattering profile in Fortune magazine written by Elizabeth Moore, Henry Luce’s sister.
Luce, the right-wing publisher of Fortune and Time magazines,† had visited China the previous spring and interviewed T.V. at the time. “He refused to see anyone—except the Editor of Time and Fortune,‡ to both of which he subscribes,” the publisher boasted in his sister’s article about Soong’s ability to raise money and, at the same time, retain his credibility with the bankers and merchants of Shanghai. The piece praised Soong for abolishing the likin, a tax levied by individual cities that had delayed shipments and cost merchants a fortune in bribes over and above the normal squeeze. Hailed by the Luces as a financial genius, T.V. arrived in the United States in 1933 to great acclaim. While there, he arranged for a $50 million wheat and cotton loan to China. He was not, however, able to interest the big Western banks in helping China develop its industries, since the bankers were too afraid of provoking war with the Japanese. Before leaving China, T.V. had tried to do away with the preferential treatment accorded Japan in China’s tariff schedule, and the Japanese had retaliated by trying to force him out of the Chinese government. While he was away, they wired both Chiang and Wang to say that he must be removed from office.
T.V. returned to China at the end of August 1933. He discovered that while he was abroad, Kung had issued new bonds to pay for Chiang’s war against the Chinese Communists. Soong was infuriated. In October, after a fight with the generalissimo, he resigned his positions as minister of finance and deputy general of the Executive Yuan. “Being minister of finance is no different from being Chiang Kai-shek’s dog,” he said. “From now on, I am going to be a man, not a dog.”
There were as many other explanations for the fight between Chiang and T.V. as there were people to speculate about it. K. C. Wu, who was close to the Soongs, claimed that Ai-ling had “engineered the ousting” so her husband could take his place. Emily Hahn, who interviewed the Soong sisters in the 1940s, claimed that T.V. was involved with a friend of Ai-ling; he resented her trying to break it up and, as Hahn phrased it, “he who quarrels with Madame Kung quarrels with Madame Chiang.” Hahn also said that because of this, May-ling did not try to smooth things over with Chiang, as she usually did, but simply allowed, perhaps even encouraged, her brother to withdraw. Li* goes further, saying that May-ling, acting under the aegis of Ai-ling, flew to Shanghai to get T.V.’s resignation. Most people thought the G-mo and his brother-in-law split over the issue of Japan, but T.V.’s friend George Sokolsky said that T.V. had criticized Chiang openly during his visit to the United States and had even “suggested” to the London bankers that “their interests lay in supporting him and in opposing Chiang.”
“T. V. Soong is a curiously complex personality,” Sokolsky said. “Brilliant, hard-working, single in his ambitions, he might have been one of the great men of this earth.” But according to Sokolsky,
Soong’s major weakness has undoubtedly been his jealousy of his brother-in-law, Chiang Kai-shek. Often, in conversations with me, Soong was sharply critical of Chiang’s policies and methods.… Soong hoped for an end to military dictatorship and for civilian government. Such a government would place him in control. So long as the armies dominated China, Chiang must be supreme. It is utterly absurd to suggest that Chiang and T.V. split on the Japanese policy of the Nanking Government.… It was not Japan that split these two men; it was jealousy.… To me, knowing with intimacy his every fault, he remains the most attractive personality in China.
Once again, T.V. refused to give the usual Chinese excuse of illness for his departure from government: “I wanted to resign because I was unequal to my task [of raising funds for the military],” he said. After leaving the government, T.V. organized the China Development Finance Corporation, a semiprivate group created to facilitate industrialization through a consortium of banks for privately funded enterprises from which the new company profited. The corporation arranged financing for government railways, acquired control over state-run projects that it privatized and helped private firms that needed financing.
After T.V. resigned, Kung took over his brother-in-law’s official positions—a move that delighted Ai-ling and pleased Chiang, since Kung, who was far more cooperative and self-effacing than Soong, served the generalissimo as “a willing and subservient cashier.” Indeed, at his inauguration as minister of finance, Kung promised to support Chiang by raising the funds for the fight against the Communists, saying that a balanced budget was a good thing but the suppression of the Chinese Communists was more important. The British were not so sanguine about Kung, and Cyril Rogers, the quiet-spoken representative of the Bank of England in China, believed he was incompetent. “If I were to record his conversations with me about banking and play it back, nobody would ever take Chiang’s government seriously again,” he said. The North-China Herald was a tad more subtle, commenting that Kung’s “new shoes are a size larger than those which he comfortably and usually fills.” During 1934, when China tried to get loans from abroad, the British still insisted on conducting their negotiations with T.V. rather than Kung.
Kung’s detractors were proven right. To raise the required funds for the military, he sold government bonds at high interest rates to the Shanghai bankers, who bought them only because they were a better investment than the farming and industrial sectors of China, currently in a depression, and by early 1935, a little over a year after he took over the Ministry of Finance, China was facing a major financial crisis. Kung then turned to the Central Bank of China to buy up the government bonds, but with all its resources it was not able to finance China’s deficits by itself. As the crisis deepened, the second and third most powerful
banks in the country, the Bank of China* and the Bank of Communications, stopped cooperating with the government, and the president of the Bank of China began to divest the bank of government bonds. After meeting with Chiang and T.V., Kung announced that since the banks were doing nothing to help industry and business during the current depression, the government would take them over. A year and a half after T.V. left the government, Kung asked him to resume his old position as president of the Bank of China. The outgoing president claimed that he was being intimidated by the secret police and had been warned by Big-Eared Du not to raise any objections “for the sake of my health.”
One of the consequences of bringing T. V. Soong back into the fold was the addition of another point of view on foreign affairs. Kung, in deference to Chiang, had never strayed from the policy of repressing the CCP and letting the West take on the Japanese. T.V., as we have seen, felt differently. In 1935, he told Hallett Abend of The New York Times, “This is the time for fighting [Japan]. If we do not resist now, our chance may be lost for good… the Japanese appreciate nothing but force.… This aggression will continue until we have to fight.”
After his banking takeovers, Kung attacked the silver problem. During the last half of 1931, England, Germany, Japan, and Canada had gone off the gold standard, and in March 1933, the United States had followed suit. This sent silver prices soaring, pushing China, whose currency was based on silver and whose products had become less competitive on the world market, further into depression. On November 3, 1935, Kung announced the fa-pi (legal tender) reform, saying that from November 4 on, China was off the silver standard and the only legal currency would be the banknotes of the three government banks.
The Last Empress Page 43