On December 20, she wired Chiang that she would “try my best and spare no efforts working for you and for our nation in this difficult situation,” warning that the “conditions in our nation and the statements of our high-level officers will exert a great influence on the U.S. government and General Marshall and will also impact my work in America. Please pay attention to this.” May-ling was clearly worried about stories she was hearing, and the next day she sent two more cables home. In the first, she wrote that
according to the Associated Press in Nanking… you have transferred the peace negotiations [with the Communists] over to members of your new government.… If they decide to make peace, you will have to accept it… and retire from the scene. According to information from a high-ranking officer of another government, the new government has made up its mind to make peace with the Communists.… These stories are very bad for us. If they are not true, please correct them. Please also wire me about the domestic situation, military picture, and your future plans, so that I can use this information in my conversation with Marshall.
In the second wire, she explained that Marshall’s condition still prohibited her from discussing serious issues with him, that even President Truman was not allowed to see him, and that therefore, there had been no decision taken on Truman’s new China policy. Chiang cabled back that the rumor of his retirement and “peace-making with the Communists” had come from the U.S. Embassy in Taiwan, for which he blamed Ambassador Stuart, Stuart’s secretary, and the Communists.
Whoever was responsible, the story of Chiang’s retirement was still out there a week later, and, according to May-ling’s next cable to her husband, “having a very bad effect. I had to explain the truth, and I found it very difficult to counter the rumors.… If you still want to retire, I will suspend my work in the U.S. Please tell me what you have decided to do as soon as possible so that I can make my plans.” And the next day:
I spoke with leaders in the U.S. Congress, all of whom thought that you should persist and wait for assistance. If necessary you can move the government to Guangzhou [Canton]. Aid from America will come sooner or later.… I insist that you not give up. As long as you can sustain your position anywhere on the mainland, the assistance from America will finally arrive. As to the rumor spread by the Associated Press that the U.S. government wouldn’t help China unless you resign, I discussed it with all the media and corrected it yesterday. I am trying to get the U.S. to send VIP officers to China, and the White House is now considering my request.
On January 1, 1949, Madame Chiang issued a gloomy New Year’s message through the Chinese Embassy, predicting that “the year 1949, for my country, will probably be as tortured, as bitter as the year 1948 has been.” But in fact, it was far worse. With Manchuria gone, the next area to fall was northern China. During the previous summer, American aid officials, disgusted with Chiang, had started separate negotiations with General Fu Tso-yi, one of the best of the Nationalist generals, currently in charge of defending the Peiping-Tientsin area. Three of Fu’s armies were insufficiently armed, and the fourth had no equipment at all. The Americans offered to supply Fu with $16 million worth of armaments to enable his soldiers to defend north China and eventually open a corridor to the Nationalists marooned in Manchuria. But the first shipment of arms came late and was missing essential parts. Tientsin fell on January 14, 1949, leaving Peiping open to the Communists. To avoid the destruction of China’s historical and cultural heritage, Fu turned the old capital over to the Communists on January 21. The Communist army gained twenty-five divisions; Fu was later given a position in the Communist government; and Peiping again became Peking, although the Nationalists refused to use the name.
At this point Chiang had already lost 400,000 soldiers trying to defend the city of Hsuchow, a market town and railway junction 175 miles north of Nanking. Hsuchow was the key to a decisive encounter between the KMT and the CCP, known as the Battle of Hwai-hai, which lasted for nearly three months and was fought on a huge plain reaching into four different provinces. The villagers, under Communist control for many months, had dispensed with their landlords through trials and less savory methods, and local farms had been redistributed. Each adult member of a household was now the proud owner of about a third of an acre of land. Armed by the Communists, they had been organized into militias and trained in what was euphemistically termed “self-defense.”
Although both sides in the battle started out with around 600,000 soldiers, the Nationalists, with more ground equipment and control of the skies, still lost the seminal battle in what Crozier called “one of the greatest military defeats in modern history.” According to journalist Seymour Topping, this defeat was directly attributable to Chiang, who bypassed his best strategist and took the wrong position, assigning command of the forces to Generals Liu Chih and Tu Yu-ming, “two notorious incompetents.” Liu had apparently never won a battle, while Tu tried to escape from the battlefield disguised as a prisoner of his own bodyguards, dressed to look like Communists. Moreover, one of Chiang’s assistants was a spy, who kept the other side informed of his plans. During the fighting, the G-mo followed his usual method of telephoning orders to his commanders without being aware of developments on the ground. His soldiers, underfed and underpaid, willingly gave their arms to the Communists in exchange for food. Deng Xiao-ping, then forty-five years old, had mobilized the local peasants to furnish logistical support for the Communist troops, who never hesitated to force the civilians to march ahead of them into battle. The Nationalist defeat was the final blow to Chiang’s government, since it opened up the route to Nanking and Shanghai.
Under pressure from various KMT officials to negotiate for peace with the CCP and/or resign, Chiang Kai-shek called a dinner meeting of forty leading members of the government. “I did not want to quit, but you members of the Kuomintang wanted me to resign,” he announced in furious high tones. “I intend to leave, not because of the Communists, but because of certain sections of the Kuomintang.” As soon as he finished excoriating the party leaders, Chiang released a statement saying that he was willing to negotiate for peace with the Communists, but only on his own terms—the ones they had always rejected and he knew they would never accept. After meeting with the G-mo, a peace group under Vice President Li began a campaign on city walls and in the press: “Unless President Chiang retires, the Communists will not talk peace” read one notice; “Unless President Chiang retires, there is no hope of American aid” read another.
The day Tientsin fell, the Communist radio issued a statement from Mao calling Chiang “China’s number one criminal” and accusing him of selling out “the national interest wholesale to the U.S. government.” Having already published a list of forty-three “war criminals,” headed by Chiang, May-ling, and T. V. Soong, Mao broadcast eight conditions for peace, including punishment for these so-called criminals, reform of land ownership, and the formation of a democratic coalition government to take over the powers of the KMT. Three days later, Chiang cabled May-ling that if the Kuomintang should “decide to sue for peace with the Communists, I will have to retire from my current post, for I am not going to compromise before the Communists.” It took the peace proponents only five days to decide that, however harsh the terms, they had no choice but to accept them, and the Executive Yuan issued a statement saying that it was ready “to cease-fire simultaneously with the Communists, and both sides [were to] send representatives to start peace negotiations.”
On January 21, Chiang turned over the presidency to Vice President Li, claiming that he was sacrificing himself in order to end the war and his people’s torment. As usual, his explanation had nothing to do with the real reasons for his withdrawal and everything to do with saving face: “My earnest prayers will have been answered if the Communist Party… orders a cease-fire and agrees to open peace talks with the government. Thus the people will be spared their intense sufferings, the spiritual and material resources of the nation preserved, and its territorial integri
ty and political sovereignty maintained. Thus, also, the continuity of the nation’s history, culture and social order will be perpetuated and the people’s livelihood and freedom safeguarded.” Reporters who came to the Kungs’ Tudor mansion in Riverdale to get Madame Chiang’s comments on her husband’s resignation were told, “She has no statement to make and she will answer no questions.”
In resigning, Chiang had left Li literally without resources. In the first place, there was no money to use for bargaining with the Communists, since the generalissimo had ordered the governor of the Central Bank to transfer the government’s entire gold reserve to the island of Taiwan. This operation took place late one February night after Nationalist soldiers had cordoned off the Bund. A British journalist who just happened to be looking out the window of his office on the fifth floor of a building near the bank was stunned: “I could hardly believe what I saw,” he said, describing a “file of coolies padding out of the bank,” balancing 500,000 ounces of gold bullion in wrapped packages at the end of their bamboo poles and chanting the traditional “Heigh-ho” of the dockyards. The bullion was then loaded on a waiting ship, which left for Taiwan. When he discovered this, Li forbade the transfer of any more assets to Taiwan. His order came just as the bank was about to send a large quantity of diamonds and other precious stones that the KMT had confiscated during the war—gems that eventually wound up in Communist hands. Chiang had also sent 300,000 of his best soldiers, twenty-six gunboats of the Chinese navy, and the entire Chinese air force to Taiwan. Although 900,000 soldiers remained on the mainland, only 120,000 of these belonged to Li’s old partner General Pai and thus could be relied on by the acting president. Chiang had taken away everything from General Li except the ability to make peace, honorably or dishonorably, with the Communists.
Li named a committee of five men to negotiate with the CCP, and on January 24 he announced the end of martial law, the release of political prisoners, and the disbanding of Chiang’s secret police. He tried to release Young Marshal Chang from detention, only to find that the generalissimo had already sent him to Taiwan. On January 27, Li wired Mao his agreement to the eight-point Communist proposal for peace, but Sun Fo repudiated the agreement and left for Canton with the tag end of the Nationalist government. Meanwhile, Chiang had taken Ching-kuo with him to his old home in the province of Chekiang.
During the previous week, May-ling had wired Ching-kuo, “Your father is planning to return to his home, and I am extremely worried about his safety and the condition of his health. Only if your father’s security is guaranteed can we continue to work for our country. Although we have not received any assistance recently, I have been promoting our work with many people.” A week later she cabled Chiang about the mood in America: “The U.S. authorities are much more worried about China since you retired… so I hope that you can return to the political arena, but, of course, you will need domestic support to kill the rumor that the Chinese oppose your reign.… It is said that Li Tsung-jen [Vice President Li] and Huang* have sent men to the U.S. to spread nasty rumors about you.… A group of senators will put forward the idea of assisting China and will campaign among military leaders. So we urgently need money to promote our position. I heard that our government deposited two million U.S. dollars.… Can you wire ten or twenty thousand now?”† Shortly thereafter, she cabled again to see if her husband, now that he had resigned, would travel with her. “There is magnificent progress in both industry and the military in Europe and the United States. I think that Brother Kai might take this opportunity to visit these countries and widen your horizons. Sister [i.e., May-ling] will meet you anywhere you want to go, and we can travel together.” But Chiang, who knew nothing and cared less about the world outside China, was not interested, cabling back that he hoped she would return soon and that they could “talk about everything.”
Two weeks earlier, the G-mo’s wife had wired Ching-kuo that she was “not anxious to return, nor would it be helpful at this time. This is a difficult period, and my stay in the U.S. will help our party and our nation.” Shortly thereafter, she cabled that she was ill, apologized for her delay in returning, and promised to do her best to offset the bad publicity her husband was receiving in the United States. Although she was eager to help Chiang and China, it seems reasonable to assume that May-ling was currently more concerned about the politics of the situation than in playing the attentive wife. According to Li, she received three cables from Chiang in early March, begging her to return, but she sent her nephew Louis Kung instead. As before, she pleaded illness: “I have been away from you for about three months,” she wrote on March 5, 1949, “and I miss you very much. Although I am still in the U.S., my heart is already back home. My doctor told me that my health was much better after the treatment I received, and my weight is up. It looks like the treatment will be finished at the end of this month, and my doctor says that it is important to continue. As far as my work goes… both democrat and republican senators believe that the U.S. needs to help China. The only problem there is that peace talks with the CCP are taking place. But I think that if we continue to fight the CCP, the U.S. will come to our aid sooner or later.” The following month she again put off her trip because “close friends” were coming to visit her from Washington. As it turned out, May-ling remained in the United States for over a year, not returning to her husband until January of 1950. By then, their life, location, and circumstances had completely changed.
49
The Communists are inheriting the ant heap. Now they are faced with the ancient, unanswered question which has faced all China’s rulers: how are the ants to be fed?
—STEWART ALSOP, 1949
SINCE SHE was in New York, May-ling made her usual stop at the Harkness Pavilion of Columbia Presbyterian Hospital. She engaged a private room as far as possible from the nurses’ station but had twenty-four-hour-a-day security. She was, according to one physician who attended her, not very ill. “In my view,” he said, “there was a lot of feigning of discomfort.” While in the hospital she underwent an elective gynecological procedure. “She was a very unpleasant person,” according to this doctor, who compared her unfavorably to other important world figures who had been patients there. “The nurses had a hard time with her. She was very demanding.”*
While May-ling tended to her illnesses, real and imagined, and Chiang settled down to a peaceful life in the country, funded on loans from the Farmers’ Bank and punctuated by news of events on the mainland, Mao was making Li’s life a misery. The peace talks began in the newly renamed Peking on April 1. The Communist negotiators, led by Chou En-lai, arrived with twenty-four nonnegotiable provisions to be added to Mao’s original eight; taken together, they amounted to total surrender. A few days after their arrival, Mao announced to the delegation and the world that in case of a World War III, the Chinese Communists would join Russia in fighting the United States. Unable to trust the head of the Nationalist delegation, Li turned to two other members of his peace team. But one used his time in Peking to angle for a position in the new CCP government, while the other, who had been working secretly for the Communists for years, kept Chou En-lai up to date on the latest maneuvering by the delegation for the KMT. The entire Nationalist delegation not only capitulated to the Communists but joined them, remaining in the capital with the victors.
In the middle of April, Chou gave the other side an ultimatum: the Nationalists had five days to accept Mao’s terms or Communist troops would cross the Yangtze River. On April 17, Li wired Chiang, asking him to take back the presidency. The G-mo responded by suggesting a conference in Hangchow with Li, General Ho, and others. “What attitude do you think we should adopt?” Li asked Chiang after explaining the Communists’ ultimatum. “I am prepared to send someone to Peiping to negotiate the terms.”
“There is no point in doing this,” said Chiang. “The Communists agreed to peace negotiations, but only because they had not yet deployed their forces to cross the river. Now that their preparatio
ns are complete, there is no room for negotiations. Besides, the first item of the peace terms puts all the blame on our party, writing off the party’s glorious history of sixty years. This is totally unacceptable!” Prepared with an alternative, Chiang produced the draft of a telegram that, he said, “can be signed jointly by ourselves—by you as the acting President, and by me as Director-General of the KMT.” The draft stated that (1) peace negotiations with the CCP had broken down and (2) the Nationalist Government was moving to Canton, where Sun Fo had taken his stand, and would continue to resist. Li agreed to sign and then withdrew to Kweilin in the south for a two-week rest.
Meanwhile, the ultimatum expired, the Communists crossed the Yangtze River with practically no resistance, and Li ordered the evacuation of Nanking. Unlike previous occupiers, the Communists neither looted nor raped the citizens of the city, nor did they touch foreigners. Nevertheless, the occupation of Nanking by the Communists changed the attitude of the diplomatic corps, which, up until this point, had clung to the belief that the Chinese Communists were agrarian reformers who would compromise with the Kuomintang. Now the embassies moved to Canton—all except U.S. Ambassador Stuart, who stayed in Nanking for four more months, thinking he could persuade the CCP to set up diplomatic relations with the United States. Soon after he left, Mao wrote an essay titled “Farewell Leighton Stuart”* in which he called Stuart the “symbol of the complete defeat of the U.S. policy of aggression.”
The Last Empress Page 74