The Last Empress

by Hannah Pakula

  Although she sided with the Communists, Ching-ling seldom hesitated to allow her sisters to provide her with luxuries from the capitalist world. The Soong sisters were all addicted to lovely things, and it was Ai-ling who usually provided them for the other two. “I’m always thinking about whether you have all the things you need for your comfortable and happy life.… Please… ask for anything you might need,” Ai-ling wrote Ching-ling a few years later. And again:

  I wonder if you have received the black coat I bought for you not long ago. I gave May-ling a long overcoat (made of silk).… The one I gave you is suitable to wear in the spring.… I asked Wang Z to send you several amethysts including a pair of earrings, three buttons and a ring. In addition there is a beautiful black coat with a fur lining, material for four dresses, and a black handbag.… H.H. has something for you as well, maybe two pairs of gold earrings. Please send me the prescription for your eyes by the Russian doctor.… If you need money, please ask. Have you got the liquid for hair-growing and the eyebrow pencil. Be sure to tell me.

  May-ling had returned in an American military plane, but her baggage had to be transferred to other planes in Assam to lighten the load over the Hump. According to author Graham Peck, who was working for the Office of War Information in China at the time:

  This [transfer] was done in a rather remote part of the field, and the GI’s who were doing it happened to drop one crate. It split open and its contents rolled out… it was full of cosmetics, lingerie, and fancy groceries with which Madame Chiang planned to see herself through the rest of the war. The GI’s were furious, for this was one of the times when the Hump transport was in a bad state, with many American fliers losing their lives to get war supplies to China. The soldiers dropped and broke all the other crates they transhipped. When they had kicked every fur coat and trick clock around in the dust as thoroughly as time would permit they threw the mess into the waiting planes.

  TWO DAYS AFTER receiving the Legion of Merit, Chiang agreed to take part in the ground campaign to reenter Burma. “After a year of constant struggle, we have finally nailed him down,” Stilwell wrote triumphantly in his diary. “… What corruption, intrigue, obstruction, delay, double-crossing hate, jealousy and skulduggery we have had to wade through.” But according to Tuchman, even Stilwell had finally begun to take cognizance of what always held Chiang back. As he wrote Marshall, looking at the situation from the generalissimo’s point of view, “it would be risky to have an efficient trained ground force come under the command of a possible rival.”

  In the middle of August 1943, Roosevelt and Churchill met at Quebec, where they set D-Day for May 1, 1944, and reorganized the Southeast Asia Command (SEAC). T.V., who had been lobbying for China to be named one of the four Great Powers and included in the Munitions Assignment Board, came to the conference in order to determine the status of his requests. The Americans and British, who were having enough trouble agreeing with each other, refused T.V. on the ground that adding China would have meant including the Soviet Union, which was not possible since the Soviets were not yet at war with Japan; they also knew that the countries of Western Europe were unlikely to accept decisions made by China; and, finally, they did not trust the Chinese government to keep a secret.

  The day before the conference ended, Roosevelt and Churchill invited T.V. to lunch. Before they sat down, the president spoke to T.V. “in a confidential manner” about his difficulties with the prime minister. After his arrival, Churchill informed T.V. that the British government had appointed Lord Louis Mountbatten, a member of the royal family, as the new commander in chief in the Far East. T.V., whom Churchill had introduced to Mountbatten in London, wired Chiang that “he is indeed an able man… young and energetic” and “has long admired Your Excellency.” Before he left the lunch, T.V. was warned not to mention Mountbatten’s appointment in his dispatches back home.

  There had been a series of “bad leaks” during recent months in Chungking, one of which was a highly important dispatch from the American chargé d’affaires to Washington that wound up in Chinese hands. That fact plus T.V. Soong’s boast—“No conference takes place regarding which I do not have accurate and complete information”—had worried Lauchlin Currie enough to send a warning note to the White House. Moreover, the Americans had learned that the Japanese had broken the Chinese code, but the British refused to pass this information along to T.V., lest he radio it to Chiang Kai-shek. Marshall finally called T.V. in to swear him to secrecy—with upraised hand—before telling him that the Chinese code had been broken and that if he radioed this information to Chungking, he would be finished.

  One of the theories behind the American concern about sharing information with the Chinese was a strong suspicion that the head of the Chinese Secret Service, Tai Li, was exchanging intelligence with the Japanese and their puppet government in Nanking. The Office of Strategic Services (OSS) was of two minds about Tai Li. One side, under the command of a naval captain named Milton Miles, worked with Tai’s secret police in an organization called the Sino-American Cooperation Organization (SACO), arming and training Chinese soldiers. The other side, those who did not trust the head of the Chinese Secret Service, told stories like the one about two OSS officers who were teaching the art of guerrilla warfare to their Chinese counterparts near the Yellow River. Although SACO rules prohibited the Americans from engaging actively in combat, their Chinese students got so excited that they blew up enough of a bridge to delay a Japanese assault for three months. Not only were the Americans recalled by Tai Li, who was in charge of SACO, and reprimanded for usurping authority, but the Chinese group was forcefully disbanded. As one member of the OSS put it, “The only logical conclusion was that Tai Li did not want either his own men or the Americans… to fight the Japanese.” By late summer 1943, the OSS had proof that Tai Li was withholding important information from Miles, and William “Wild Bill” Donovan, head of the OSS, arrived in Chungking to dissolve SACO. T.V. gave a dinner for Donovan at which, according to eyewitnesses, most of the men drank far too much:

  Only Donovan and Tai Li drank little or nothing and remained cool and collected. The two great spymasters competed in charm, each smiling and urbane, each so very agreeable.… Then… Donovan bluntly informed Tai Li that if the OSS could not perform its mission in cooperation with him, the OSS would operate separately.

  “If OSS tries to operate outside SACO,” said the smiling Tai Li, “I will kill your agents.”

  “For every one of our agents you kill,” said Donovan, “we will kill one of your generals.”

  “You can’t talk to me like that,” said Tai Li.

  “I am talking to you like that,” said Donovan evenly.

  The OSS chief smiled but a chill that even the most besotted diner soon recognized settled over the room. The party broke up.

  Donovan then severed U.S. ties with Tai Li’s Secret Service.

  One of the most powerful men in China, Tai Li also directed the Smuggling Prevention Office, a government operation under the Ministry of Finance that employed 60,000 men. Like Chiang’s Opium Suppression Commission, Tai Li’s Smuggling Prevention Office was a cover for major squeeze. May-ling became involuntarily involved with it through something that came to be called the Lin Shiliang Case.

  Lin Shiliang was a confidential assistant to H. H. Kung, whom he had met under the auspices of Big-Eared Du. Lin was employed by the Trust Bureau of the Central Bank, and his job was to purchase military goods abroad and arrange to have them brought into China through Hong Kong. Kung’s eldest son, David, who was manager of the Trust Bureau in Hong Kong, also used Lin Shiliang to “manage” the transportation of goods over the Burma Road after its completion.

  The Lin Shiliang Case involved a group of speculators and war profiteers who commissioned Lin’s assistant to transport tires and other valuable goods over the Burma Road to Chungking—a hugely profitable deal in which some of the Kung offspring (David Kung, his sisters, and brother-in-law) were to receive a share
of the profits. The shipment was divided into several parts, two of which were seized by agents of Tai Li’s Smuggling Prevention Office. When Tai Li called Chiang to report the case, the G-mo, who thought that Lin Shiliang had been using Kung’s name to conduct the illegal operation, ordered Lin arrested and sentenced to ten years in prison. When it was discovered that Lin had been spending a great deal of money—personal and public—on drinking, gambling, and women, Chiang ordered him executed by firing squad. But Lin refused to take the rap for Kung’s children. He said that the smuggling scheme had been the brainchild of David Kung, who then appealed to his Auntie May. She took the problem to her husband, who decided in favor of his relations, partly because the case had brought the feuding Soongs and Kungs together. Chiang then proceeded with the execution of Lin Shiliang, but he also removed Tai Li from his place as head of the Smuggling Prevention Office. The Americans, who understood nothing about the case, thought that Tai Li’s removal was due to the Gestapo tactics of his Secret Service.

  DURING THE SUMMER of 1943, what Tuchman calls “the first honest statement” of China’s deficiencies began to appear in the American press. A story written by The New York Times military correspondent Hanson Baldwin was published in Reader’s Digest in August. In the article, entitled “Too Much Wishful Thinking About China,” Baldwin said that the American people had been oversold on the ability of China to win the war against Japan by a combination of “missionaries, war relief drives, able ambassadors and the movies.” According to him, China “has as yet no real army… most of her troops are poorly led and incapable of effectively utilizing modern arms.… They require intensive and protracted training, and capable leaders bound together by a common loyalty to a common cause. Today there are few such leaders; too many of them are still old war lords, in new clothing, for whom war is a means for personal aggrandizement and enrichment.”

  A fairly recent book by Paul Fussell—historian, literary critic, and soldier in World War II—labels Chinese public relations during the war as “The Great China Hoax” and confirms its effectiveness. According to Fussell, “Lin Yutang became a vendor of the highest wisdom” and “Mme. Chiang’s loveliness and desirability were obvious to all.… Wendell Willkie’s immensely popular book One World published in 1943, helped to solidify the myth of a high-minded, powerful, united ‘democratic,’ almost Christian, Western-world-loving China.”

  But perhaps the most informative piece, entitled “Our Distorted View of China,” appeared in The New York Times Magazine several months after May-ling’s return home. Tracing the history of America’s unrealistic love affair with China (“it was a democracy pure and Jeffersonian”) through the disillusionment of Americans sent to Asia (“China is a Fascist dictatorship. China is vilely corrupt”), author Nathaniel Peffer argued that “every country must be judged by its own standards” and outlined the major reason behind Chinese corruption: “A good deal of what is withheld from public funds by private officials in China is what would be considered elsewhere legitimate compensation for public service.” But as for their military, “judged by modern western armies, the Chinese Army is a comic opera chorus.”

  In that regard, Madame Chiang invited Stilwell to a meeting at her home with sister Ai-ling and herself, the first of several meetings in which the sisters began to manipulate Stilwell under the rubric of concern over the dreadful state of the Chinese army. “Summoned to audience… with May & Sis,” Stilwell noted in his “Black Book” on September 13, 1943. “… Apparently T.V. has told them they had better get behind me & co-operate, as result of G.C.M.’s [General Marshall’s] prodding. Alarmed about state of preparations, & hot to do something about it. Gave them the lowdown on conditions in the army, & they were appalled. Told them about blocks & delays & who was responsible.… May craves action.… Sis said she didn’t know how I had the patience to carry on. We signed an offensive & defensive alliance. Whatever the cause, they mean business now & maybe we can get somewhere.”

  Meanwhile, claiming that the appointment of Mountbatten as head of SEAC made Stilwell unnecessary, T.V. had submitted a plan to Roosevelt to replace him with a Chinese, who would control American Transport Command and all other military units in China. He also asked that China be made part of the Munitions Board in order to have a say in Lend-Lease. In doing this, Tuchman says, T.V. was trying to gain a position of strength for himself and “lead China in Chiang’s place.”

  But, according to George Sokolsky, an ultraconservative journalist and “close associate” of T.V., May-ling’s brother, unlike her husband, was no politician. Sokolsky said that T.V. had “over the years striven to build a machine, yet inevitably… quarreled with supporter after supporter.” T.V., he said, had “always wanted to be head of his family.… He resented Chiang and felt that if Chiang hadn’t been brought in he would have become unquestionably the head of the civilian side of China’s government.” Whatever his current aims, T.V. was now fighting for the ultimate power within the family—a phenomenon Tuchman compared to “the same, grim infighting of a reigning family that led to murdered heirs and poisoned nephews in the days of the dynasties.”

  Thwarted by Marshall in his efforts to oust Stilwell, T.V. had recently returned to China, saying that he had obtained a promise from Roosevelt to send Stilwell home. With this story in hand, he got Chiang to demand Stilwell’s recall. But when Mountbatten arrived in Chungking—he brought May-ling a Cartier vanity set with her initials in diamonds—and was told of the generalissimo’s demand, he announced that he could not carry out the plans for using Chinese soldiers if the one man who had commanded them for two years was to be removed.

  Meanwhile, May-ling and Ai-ling continued to confer with Stilwell. “Lunch & conference with May,” he wrote on September 18. “She craves action, wishes she’d been a man, & abominates Ho Y. C. [General Ho] & his gang… he had apparently laughed her off because she’s a woman & she was furious. ‘Why in God’s name that God-damn old fool doesn’t do something, I don’t know. They are like a lot of ostriches with their heads in the sand & their bottoms sticking out. How I would like to take a big club and go after them!’ “

  They met again two days later, this time with Ai-ling.

  May & Ella… had been working on the Peanut.… May made a speech today at the People’s Political Council meeting & bawled out critics of people who were doing their stuff. “Don’t criticize till you know mistakes are being made. Don’t criticize out of jealousy.” Looking directly at Ho. She enjoyed it. They both say that Ho must go, but I don’t see how they are going to do it.… May & Ella have sworn in as fellow conspirators, & are talking very frankly. They are convinced that I mean business and they will play ball. And all the time the Peanut sits on his golden throne & lets us struggle. He’s afraid to take action—that’s the only explanation.

  Three days passed, and Stilwell was still trying to figure out what lay behind May-ling and Ai-ling’s sudden friendship. “I get more and more the idea that these two intelligent dames have (1) been told by T. V. Soong to get behind the U.S. effort, & that (2) the family, less Peanut, realizes the gravity of the situation… the Peanut is even more whimsical & flighty than even I had thought. May keeps letting it out that he is very hard to handle, that you have to catch him at the proper moment, that he forms opinions on little evidence, that ‘they’ are telling him all sorts of stuff about me.” “They” were disgruntled Chinese generals and members of the KMT, who claimed that Stilwell was “haughty” and “anti-Chinese” and was behind a plan to push Chiang out and make T.V. the head of the civilian government so that he, Stilwell, could fully control the military.

  On September 28, Stilwell met again with the sisters. “May let out that she has a hell of a life with the Peanut,” he wrote in his diary; “no one else will tell him the truth so she is constantly at him with the disagreeable news. It can’t be easy to live with the crabbed little bastard and see everything balled up.”

  According to her secretary/stenographer, Pearl Chen,
May-ling was, in fact, extremely frustrated with her husband during this period. Gossiping with an American informant a week or so later, Chen asserted that “Mme. Chiang isn’t in love with the Generalissimo. In fact, she doesn’t care a darn for him except insofar as it helps her position. Of course she takes pride in his achievements and her role in building him up from a common soldier into a national leader. And I’m sure she regards him as a ‘great man,’ too, but she doesn’t love him. The one person who is closest to her is her sister, Mme. H. H. Kung. They are intimate friends as well as sisters. That’s why Mme. Chiang brought that Lesbian, Jeanette Kung… along with her from China and appointed David Kung… as her Secretary-General on the American tour.”

  On October 16, Stilwell was told by the chief of the Army Service Forces, General Somervell, “The G-mo says I must be relieved.” The next evening, May-ling asked him to come over.

  Ella was there. They are a pair of fighters, all right, & Ella said there was still a chance to pull the fat out of the fire. I was noncommittal & calm & told them I did not want to stay where I was not wanted. They talked “China” and duty, etc., and asked me to be big enough to stick it out. Ella said if we put this over my position would be much stronger than before. (“Your star is rising”).… What they wanted was for me to see Peanut & tell him I had only one aim,—the good of China, that if I had made mistakes it was from misunderstanding & not intent & that I was ready to co-operate fully. I hesitated a long time, but they made it so strong that I finally said O.K., & May said we’d go right now. Went over and put on the act, the Peanut doing his best to appear conciliatory.… Now, why was Ella so sure it would come out O.K.? This P.M. she had attacked the Peanut & he had turned his back & left the room. A hell of an insult but she just waited and he came back. Both she and May went to bat for me. Maybe they got him half-turned around as they claimed, ready for me to complete the act. And maybe the Peanut realized finally what a stink would be raised & decided to reverse himself.… But it is suspicious that Ella was so sure that it would come out all right, if I made the advances. As if the thing had been arranged… May said everybody expected her to divorce the Peanut within a year after their marriage. Both May & Ella reiterated that they had put [i.e., bet] the family jewels on me, and would continue to back me up.