After MacArthur’s visit to Taiwan, Marshall received a “chatty private missive” from May-ling, one paragraph of which, disturbed the recipient:
The Generalissimo… told General MacArthur that from various quarters, including the guerrillas, there have come requests and suggestions that I head the guerrilla movement on the mainland. He asked the General what he thought of the matter. The General replied that as far as the effectiveness of the work is concerned, he thought it would be fine. The person heading the movement should be someone the enemy would not suspect and certainly I would be the last one the enemy would suspect. But [General MacArthur] thought that the sacrifice on my part would be tremendous because whoever heads the movement would be fraught with danger and subject to torture and death if caught.… His last words as we left the car at the [air]field to me were: “I would not like to see you in such danger.”
Marshall clearly agreed, and the matter was dropped.
Unless May-ling and Chiang were trying to signal desperation or fervor for their cause in some roundabout Chinese way, the fact that either of them would have entertained such an idea and spoken of it to Mac-Arthur says something very strange about their relationship at this time. The summer of 1950 was a hard one anyway for the G-mo’s wife. “I know you are ever so busy, but when I get your letters you and Mrs. Marshall do not seem so far away,” she wrote the general with atypical melancholy. “This island feels very isolated sometimes, and of all my friends in America, you two are among the very few who have any idea of what my life in China is like.”
About this time, U.S. News & World Report interviewed Chiang Kai-shek by radio, asking him what he thought American policy in the Far East should be. His answer was no surprise: “The most pressing task today is to find the means to prevent the conflagration started by the Communists in Korea from spreading to the other parts of Asia.… American co-operation in the air and naval defense of Taiwan should no longer carry with it the condition that free China should refrain from all military operations against the mainland.” Published in the same issue was an interview with Stanley K. Hornbeck, former chief of the Far Eastern Division of the State Department, who said that the “Chinese Nationalists are the only people who are in any position today to put up any substantial resistance to the Chinese Communists.”
Thus, during the first two years of the Korean War, the U.S. Office of Policy Coordination (OPC), successor to the OSS of World War II, ran all of its covert operations out of Taiwan. Having acquired Chennault’s bankrupt CAT airline for just under a million dollars in 1949, the United States had air transport for its clandestine operations, flying 15,000 support missions and overflights of the mainland. As the Korean War heated up, Taiwan became the base where the United States collected its intelligence and from which some six hundred agents waged secret warfare against the Communists. In return, the United States provided the Nationalists with “a cornucopia of money, arms, equipment, and training.” Although Ching-kuo supervised Taiwan’s intelligence operations, including those run in tandem with the Americans, it was Madame Chiang who dealt with the high-level agents of the OPC/CIA, reporting on matters of intelligence and covert action directly to her husband.
But May-ling, who was usually more realistic than Chiang, had lost her political perspective since her arrival on the island: “I have faith that before the end of the year, we shall be back on the mainland,” she wrote Emma in January 1951.
… Evidently the American public is getting educated, and from recent signs I would say that the State Department, too, is learning its lesson. Some two years ago when I came to America, I warned your people that what was happening to mainland China then would have repercussions on practically every individual American, and now the enormous taxes, if nothing else, imposed for defense and for carrying on the war in Korea, should be sufficient proof of my observations and prognostications. I remember, too, I pointed out that when Russia starts to make the Asia mainland a base for her nefarious activities, Formosa would be invaluable as a spring-board to launch an anti-Communist offensive. Now, again, I assert that the only effective resistance against Russia and the Chinese Communists in Asia, lies in Formosa, for what other country besides Free China has millions of guerrillas on the mainland and 600,000 troops just “rarin” to spring at the throat of the Red Beast?
If May-ling harbored grandiose dreams, so did MacArthur, and it did not take him more than a few months after the onset of the Korean War to run afoul of President Truman. In early April of 1951, a member of the House of Representatives read a letter from the general in which he said that the United States should stop confining itself to limited engagements and pursue an all-out war. “If we lose the war to communism in Asia,” he declared, “the fall of Europe is inevitable.” He also asked the Joint Chiefs of Staff for permission to drop atomic bombs on Chinese military installations in Manchuria. In response, Truman, who feared that any aggravation of the limited war might lead to World War III, dismissed MacArthur in favor of General Matthew Ridgway, ending the G-mo’s plan of piggybacking his return to the mainland on MacArthur and the U.S. Army.
There were, however, some compensations. The next month, Assistant Secretary of State Dean Rusk declared that Chiang “more authentically represents the views of the great body of the people of China” than the Communists. Five months later a U.S. mutual security appropriation of $535,250,000 in military aid and $237,500,000 in economic support for Asia and the Pacific area was passed, much of which was sent to Taiwan.
DURING THE PREVIOUS month, the peace treaty ending World War II with Japan had finally been signed in San Francisco by forty-eight countries,* but it was not until the end of April 1953 that the Nationalists and Japanese came to an agreement under which the latter renounced title to Taiwan and the Pescadores Islands, thus officially ending the world war. In discussing the settlements with an interviewer a decade later, Madame stressed her husband’s magnanimity: “our government did not ask for any damages from the Japanese… regardless of the losses to lives and property of our people… the President wanted to emphasize to our people that we should not take an attitude of revenge… we had every right—moral right and legal right—to ask for war damages, but we did not.”
As for the Korean War, a cease-fire, called in the summer of 1951, was followed by what one historian called “interminable truce negotiations” eventually leading to an armistice in July 1953. The war had been a big issue in the presidential campaign of 1952, and the China Lobby was pleased when Dwight D. Eisenhower won the election. The new president announced that the U.S. Seventh Fleet would continue to protect Taiwan from an invasion from the mainland and canceled the injunction against the Nationalists launching an attack on the Communists. But Chiang, knowing that he could not capture the mainland alone, settled back to wait, as he had in World War II, until others had reason to wage war for him. He also agreed not to attack the mainland without consultation with and agreement from Washington. He was particularly pleased when the United Nations insisted that prisoners of war must be allowed to decide for themselves where they would go after the Korean War armistice, and 72 percent of the 14,000 Chinese prisoners chose Taiwan over the Communist mainland.
IT WAS DURING this period that May-ling, who needed an outlet for her nervous energy and creativity, discovered painting. “An astounding thing has happened; you simply won’t believe it,” she wrote Emma in the fall of 1951. “I have been learning Chinese painting the past five months and all the artists and connoisseurs of Chinese painting say that I have the possibilities of a great artist. Some even say, perhaps the greatest living artist.… I myself believe that what the Chinese authorities tell me is true because, curiously enough, it is no effort to me at all to paint.… I must confess that at first I did not believe them.… Painting is the most absorbing occupation I have known in my life. When I am at work, I forget everything in the world, and I wish that I could spend all my time in doing nothing but painting and painting.”
May-ling employed two master artists, who were picked up in her private car and brought to her residence to teach her her craft. Chiang had laughed at her when she started—“If you were any good at painting, you would have discovered it before.… You’ll never be any good at it at your age”—but, as she became more proficient, he allowed her to hang her paintings when visitors came, so that they would admire her work. In what Hahn called “a time-honoured face-saving formula,” he also changed his tune: “I thought you could do it, but I knew if it sounded too easy, you’d never go ahead with it. I discouraged you on purpose.”
Like Chiang, May-ling failed to realize that she lived in a cocoon and it was to the advantage of the spinners to keep her there. “Got the photographs of your paintings back from Jo Lansing* a few days ago,” Emma wrote six months later. “She had shown them to three experts, without identifying the artist, and they all agreed they were done by a person with real ability. They believed them to be copies of other paintings and recommended that the artist do more original work, to gain greater freedom. She herself, while no expert, was quite impressed, the same for me.… I so hope you have time to keep it up, for not only do you have real ability, but you get such satisfaction out of it.”
Shortly after moving to Taiwan, May-ling had also invited five friends to help her start a prayer group like the one organized by her mother and carried on by Ai-ling after Madame Soong’s death. “My friends were enthusiastic from the start,” May-ling said. “In the beginning, a certain self-consciousness in praying aloud had to be overcome.… People who have known each other intimately can suddenly seem strangers in the presence of God.” Each member took her turn leading the meeting, starting with a reading from the Scriptures, talking about herself in relation to the lesson, and going on to a general discussion.
By the time May-ling wrote about her group, it had expanded to forty women and had led her to a personal conversion. While reading one day about the crucifixion of Christ, she said that she had
paused at a passage where the soldier used a spear to pierce His side, causing blood and water to flow from the wound. I had read that passage many times before, and it had never particularly moved me. This time, however, I wept. At last I felt that the suffering and pain of Jesus Christ were for me. I cried and cried, overcome with my own unworthiness. It was a peculiar sensation, at once great grief and great release… my tears were a torrent. I could not control myself. At the same time, my heart felt light and relieved, with a sense of atonement.… When I told of this to a few of our group, some instantly understood and recognized what I tried to convey.
Though May-ling’s spiritual life was bringing her joy, her physical condition was giving her problems. Ever since her arrival in Taiwan, she had been suffering from her usual neurodermititis, which apparently became much worse in late 1951. To relieve the discomfort, her doctor prescribed a new drug.* “It was miraculous,” she wrote Emma. “In two days my skin cleared completely, and I felt so well and energetic that I got more work done within a week than I had in the past three months. The only trouble was that I could not sleep more than two or three hours a night, for it was very stimulating.… It is such a powerful drug, however, that one cannot keep on it always.” Six months later, however, she was still on the drug, which not only revved her up but made her “look awfully swollen and puffy.”
In August of 1952, May-ling flew to San Francisco, where she stayed in a hospital for two months undergoing treatment. Told by the doctors that she should remain in the United States to recover, she took a United Airlines plane, in which a “special bed” had been built, to New York, where she moved into the Kung home on Long Island. In September, she received a cable from Chiang, inquiring about her health and saying he missed her.
“The weather is cold and no longer humid, and I think that this is the right weather for you to recuperate when you come back to Taiwan, which I hope will be soon.” But May-ling stayed where she was, missing both Chiang’s sixty-sixth birthday and their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. “It is a great pity that we can’t be together this year,” he wired. “… I hope that we can be together every year from now on and never separate again.”
May-ling wanted to attend Eisenhower’s inauguration in January, but there was no precedent for foreign heads of state (or their wives) appearing at what was considered a “purely domestic event,” so she had to settle for tea at the White House in March. There, according to Wellington Koo, “Madame Chiang was able with her usual skill, she confidentially told me afterwards, to bring up a few serious questions of special interest to our country to the President’s attention.” The following month, against the advice of her doctors, she “suddenly” decided to fly home. The reason had to do with her friend K. C. Wu.
DR. K. C. Wu, the governor of Taiwan, was a liberal and reformer. He had a fine reputation in the United States, and Time had put him on its cover in the summer of 1950. Ever since then, Chiang had been trying to entice or coerce Wu into working with Ching-kuo. But in 1952, the governor took a tour of the provinces, urging local leaders not to “look up” to satisfy their superiors but to “look down” to serve their people. “When I returned to Taipei,” Wu said, “I heard that my speeches had greatly displeased Chiang. Even while I was still on my tour he had chosen to show his displeasure by ordering the executions of almost eight to ten persons every day… on charges of being Communists or Communist-affiliated.” These executions, he claimed, had resulted in the death of nearly a hundred people. A similar trip undertaken by Wu in November of 1952, shortly before elections, had resulted in the arrest of 998 people by various branches of Ching-kuo’s secret police; when challenged, however, the police could produce evidence against only three or four of their victims.* The detainees, Wu explained, were “civilian leaders in their various localities. arrested in order to intimidate them to vote a certain way in the forthcoming elections”; thus, “all possible opposition to Kuomintang candidates had been… crushed.” The final blow was the kidnapping of two city councillors. When Wu asked that the policeman responsible be dismissed, Chiang had him promoted instead.
Having discovered that he was being spied on, that his phones were tapped, and that his servants were reporting on him, Wu tried to resign, but his resignation was refused by Chiang, who claimed that the governor was “over-wrought” and gave him a month’s sick leave. Wu took his wife up to their mountain home at Sun Moon Lake, saying that he would not return until his resignation was accepted. Since the governor was, in his own words, “very popular with the Formosan people” and “strong in the American press,” Chiang was determined to get him back.
As soon as Wu’s resignation became known, May-ling flew home. “She never liked Chiang Ching-kuo,” Wu said, “and she knew that if I were to go, it meant further strengthening of Ching-kuo’s position.” But Madame Chiang’s proposed return had put Wu into a Chinese quandary: if he went to meet her, he would be denying his resignation; if he did not go, he would be committing a social gaffe. Since the Chiangs and the Wus were good social friends, Wu sent his wife, Edith, to the airport. Chiang was also there, and “he smiled and greeted her warmly in front of everybody.”
“I came back because of K.C.,” May-ling whispered to Wu’s wife as soon as she saw her. “Will you please ask K.C. to come down from Sun Moon Lake right away. I am quite surprised that he did not come to see me here.” When Wu’s wife answered that she knew her husband would not return, May-ling said she would go to see him the following day. But Chiang refused to let her go. After a multiplicity of messages sent back and forth, Wu finally agreed to come down from the mountain to see May-ling. Although she insisted on taking him outside her home to talk, explaining that the house was bugged,* nothing was settled on either side.
On the way back up the mountain there was an attempt on Wu’s life. His car had clearly been tampered with, and had he and his wife not changed their plans and stopped for lunch, giving the driver and a mechanic time to check what was wrong, they wo
uld all have been killed. Determined to find out if Chiang was part of the plot, Wu sent him a letter quoting the words of a famous minister about to be executed by his emperor on a false charge: “My crime is worthy of death, but my sovereign is always wise.” Adding the question “Would Your Excellency have great mercy upon your faithful servant?” he requested an interview with the G-mo. “Chiang,” he said with Chinese logic, “could react only in one of two ways. If he knew nothing about the attempt he would think that I had seriously misunderstood him and he would call me to see him.… If he had known of the attempt, he would know that I had guessed he was at the back of the whole thing, and he would not see me.” Not surprisingly, Wu never received an answer to his note, and a week later he was dismissed from his position as governor.
Passport applications for high officials or politically “sensitive” persons had to be passed by Chiang Kai-shek, but after some difficulty, the Wus were given passports and permission to travel. It was said that Madame Chiang, hearing that another attempt would be made on Wu’s life on his way to the airport, convinced her husband that such a murder would have serious repercussions in Taiwan’s relationship with the United States. Although Wu and his wife were allowed to leave, Chiang kept their teenage son in Taiwan as hostage. The Wus moved to Evanston, Illinois, and kept quiet for thirteen months. While there, they wrote May-ling three times, asking for help in getting a passport for their son. She had already replied twice that she could do nothing, when they received a third letter from her asking Wu to return to Taiwan to become secretary-general of Chiang’s office.* When he refused, rumors were spread around Taiwan that Wu had embezzled public funds, absconded with a half-million dollars, and was living in luxury in the Waldorf Towers in New York City. No newspaper in Taiwan would carry his statement to the contrary, although Wu’s father paid to have it run.
The Last Empress Page 78