The Last Empress

by Hannah Pakula

  While using the Communist bogey to clamp down on dissenters, Chiang strengthened his efforts to maintain his government-in-exile as the legitimate representative of the Chinese in the United Nations. He was enabled to do this partly by latching onto the powerful position of the United States and partly by using Taiwan’s technological superiority, a legacy from the Japanese, to help emerging African nations. He invited representatives from Africa to Taiwan to study new methods of agriculture and between 1960 and 1966 sent more than 630 experts to nineteen African countries to help them raise their rice yield. When the time came to vote for or against retaining Chiang’s government as the representative of China at the United Nations, these countries felt obliged to support him.

  In January 1964, however, General Charles de Gaulle announced that France would recognize the government of Communist China, and the next day, France and the USSR agreed to negotiate a five-year trade agreement. Infuriated, Madame allowed anger to override both her powers of reason and syntax, writing Clare Boothe Luce that the “French recognition of the Chinese Communists, opportunistic and unprincipled in its motives, was made among other reasons as part and parcel of a schema of defiance impregnated by an emotionalism of a special Gaulist brand of French grandeur bidding for hemispheric leadership.” Within two weeks, Chiang broke off diplomatic relations with France. As he always did when he was in trouble, he sent May-ling to the United States. She left China in August of 1965 and, as before, stayed away for more than a year.

  WITH THE SILVER wings of a Nationalist air force officer pinned to her shoulder, Madame Chiang, according to Newsweek, “tiptoed gently down the gangway” at Travis Air Force Base in California. Inside the VIP guest lounge, Madame, “very much the same unruffled, stunningly attired, defeat-defying figure of decades ago,” announced the theme of her trip: the return of the Nationalists to the mainland. After a rest at the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco, she was driven to Chinatown, where “she appealed for support of the Formosa regime, whose popularity lately has been faltering among the American Chinese community.” Then she was off to New York. Before leaving the airport she spoke to reporters, saying that she doubted that the Chinese Communists would deliberately get involved in a fight with the U.S. military. “I think Red China once considered the United States a paper tiger. But the fact that the United States has shown power has made them think twice. Now they think there is life in the paper tiger,” she said, referring to the large numbers of troops the United States, now led by President Lyndon B. Johnson, was currently sending into Vietnam. The Nationalists, she asserted, were “very much concerned” about the Vietnam War. “What happens in Vietnam,” she said “affects not only Southeast Asia, but Asia, Africa, Latin America and in time, the whole world.”

  There were ten cars in the motorcade that took Madame Chiang to T.V.’s apartment at 1133 Fifth Avenue.* For the first time, the G-mo’s wife had eschewed the excuse of illness, and her trip to the U.S. was billed simply as a response to invitations from “many of her friends.” Although she was now said to be sixty-seven years old and had had a gallstone removed the previous year, her voice, according to the reporter from The New York Times, was “cheery,” her step was “sprightly,” and she “demonstrated that she had lost none of her purposeful drive.” Certainly, she wasted no time delivering her message, calling immediately on arrival for the destruction of atomic plants on mainland China. The fact that the People’s Republic of China possessed the atom bomb “jeopardizes the position of every nation in the world,” she said. “We should try to cut out the cancer before it permeates any further.”

  The article in the Times describing Madame’s arrival was followed some days later by an irate letter to the editor from the president of United Formosans for Independence, complaining about May-ling’s “warmongering statement.” “The toll of American lives,” he wrote, “would be hundreds of times greater than in Vietnam. Millions of Chinese people also would die. Is such human sacrifice worth making to satisfy the ambitions of a small band of Nationalist leaders?… The recovery of the Chinese mainland is a lost cause,” he declared, calling for elections to form a new government representative of the inhabitants of the island. “The days of Chiang Kai-shek have been over for nearly twenty years.”

  An article on May-ling herself, entitled “Many-Sided Empress,” also followed a few days after her arrival. Describing her as “dainty but formidable” and referring to her as “the charming eloquent courageous personification of ‘Free China,’ ” the anonymous author of the piece did not hesitate to add that for May-ling’s detractors, “she is the Dragon Lady, imperious and calculating. East and West are blended in her personality—or, more accurately, her personalities… she can be the poised Wellesley alumna, the haughty empress, the hard-boiled politician, the lady patriot, even the coquettish Georgia belle.”

  Two days later, Madame Chiang could be seen riding “triumphantly” on Chinatown’s Mott Street in a bubble-topped limousine, led by a marching band. In response to rumors of possible trouble, the FBI had alerted the New York Police Department, and what one reporter described as a “wedge of plainsclothesmen” from the department “hustled” Madame through the crowd to a basement auditorium at the Chinese Community Center.

  Dressed in a beige silk suit with ankle-length skirt and long white gloves, she seemed smooth and unflappable—until she was told that there were conflicting versions of her age. “What does it matter whether I am 64 or 67* or something else?” she shot back. “You can tell the age of a person not by the calendar but by his or her purpose in life, character and willingness to be of service to the world.”

  Madame’s own purpose came under scrutiny in the next article about her visit, as the press, which had grown more skeptical of her motives over the years, described her arrival in Washington, D.C., in a private railway car as the “once familiar figure… charmingly eloquent, politically forceful” woman on “a mission wrapped in feminine and perhaps diplomatic mystery.” Her reception, the reporter wrote, “was a far cry from those of a decade and more ago when she swept into town as the courageous personification of ‘free China.’ ” This time, she was met in the capital by 250 members of the Washington Chinese community, including Miss Chinatown of 1965, but the only American greeters of note were Mrs. Dean Rusk, wife of the secretary of state, and Lloyd Hand, chief of protocol. They left with her in a White House limousine and dropped her at the Shoreham Hotel, where she occupied the Presidential Suite.

  No one seemed to be able to figure out why Madame Chiang had come to the nation’s capital or whether she would be able to see President Johnson or Secretary of State Rusk, until one official at the Chinese Embassy leaked the fact that she was to have tea with Lady Bird and dinner with the Rusks. When asked by reporters about the purpose of her trip, she repeated “somewhat sharply” that she had been “invited here by many friends.” Protestations to the contrary, it was clear that she had come on a mission. “The only surmise,” said the reporter, “is that the Generalissimo is concerned that Nationalist Chinese interests are being neglected in the American preoccupation with Vietnam and has sent his wife to spread the message that Nationalist China and South Vietnam are both parts of the same struggle with Communist China.”

  Madame Chiang, still numbered in 1965 by the Gallup Poll as one of the “10 Most Admired Women in the World,” gave eighteen major speeches in the United States in a little over a year. “It will be a test of her notable eloquence and charm,” one Times reporter wrote, “for there may not be too attentive an audience for a voice of a past which many would just as soon remain forgotten.” But May-ling had apparently not lost her appeal. President Johnson, who dropped in just to say hello while she was being entertained at a small tea party by the first lady, took her on a tour of the White House himself. The Johnsons welcomed her in spite of the fact that a few years earlier, when he was vice president, the Chiangs had been “very curt and cold” to both of them when they arrived in Taiwan, assuming they h
ad been sent to “lecture them on the way they were doing things and cut back on… aid.”

  From Taiwan, the G-mo reinforced his wife’s efforts. In an interview with Hanson Baldwin of The New York Times, Chiang declared that the Vietnam War was unwinnable in Vietnam “no matter how many troops” the United States sent in and that it “must be won elsewhere.” Declaring that the South Vietnamese had “indicated” that they would be happy for help from Taiwan over and above the technical, agricultural, and economic assistance the island had been providing, Chiang claimed that they would never ask directly or officially, because they understood that U.S. policy opposed the use of Taiwanese troops in Vietnam. “There is very little our forces could do as long as you remain on the defensive,” he told the American reporter, adding that 600,000 Taiwanese soldiers were keeping half a million Chinese Communist troops out of the Vietnam War on the mainland opposite the island.

  Back in New York, May-ling once again made the mistake of relying on David Kung and his sister Jeanette for assistance in her mission. They even managed to alienate Elizabeth Luce Moore, turning down her invitation to Madame Chiang for a visit to the China Institute. “She [Moore] has now gone to Europe in a huff,” Emma wrote in her journal, “as has her brother Henry Luce, & said that neither the China Institute or United Services to China would take part in a large joint Waldorf dinner being considered by the China organizations—and Moore controls both boards. Dr. George Armstrong, recently chosen ABMAC [American Bureau for Medical Aid to China] president, had written Mayling & received an unsatisfactory reply from David. A second letter hasn’t been answered. Why did she hedge herself in with these two?” Whether it was the influence of the Kung siblings or her own actions, May-ling seems to have made quite a few enemies on this trip. The executive assistant of ABMAC complained to Emma that Madame Chiang was “doing more harm than good here. Soon stories will appear that she had better go home.” Emma did not disagree, confiding to her journal that her friend “certainly is a spoiled brat in many ways, & inconsiderate in her demands, no realization of what it means to the other fellow. She feels free to call upon just about anybody, disregarding their assigned duties.”

  While in the United States, Chiang’s wife paid a visit to her old alma mater, Wellesley College. Since plans had been made for three meals to be given there in her honor, a letter arrived informing the president of the college that Madame was “allergic to alcohol, all seafood, parsley, peaches, strawberries and all spices.” She received a standing ovation before launching into her standard speech on “ambivalent thinking,” which, she contended, aided the imperialistic ambitions of the Communists. Dubbed by The Boston Globe “a kind of Mother Courage of anti-communism,” she was a recipient—along with General Omar Bradley, Walter Judd, Cardinal Mindszenty, and other sufficiently conservative figures—of the Order of Lafayette, an honor given by officers who had served in France at their annual dinner in New York. The awards were presented by Colonel Hamilton Fish, president of the order, for “distinguished leadership in combating communism.”

  In early March of 1966, the Times reported that Chiang Kai-shek was running unopposed for his fourth term as president of the Chinese Nationalist government. Claiming that he would prefer to retire but was “prepared to bear without complaint the burden of the heaviest duties and to face the severest trials and tribulations,” the generalissimo made history, becoming the longest-ruling dictator of modern times, outlasting even Stalin by fifteen years. In spite of the fact that he was now in his early eighties, the subject of who would take over when he died was taboo. “No one dares mention the topic,” said one young member of the KMT, “… no preparations have been made for a day which could be tomorrow.” Moreover, elections continued to be rigged through pressure on opposition candidates, which forced them to withdraw; restrictions on campaign activities; and the stuffing of ballot boxes.

  In April, Chiang issued a statement saying that capture of the mainland could be accomplished by the Nationalist Chinese if the United States would only give him the tools he needed to do the job. “We can return to the mainland with our own forces alone,” Chiang told an AP reporter. “There is no need for American combat troops. We do not want to bring the United States into any war. On the mainland it is between us and the Chinese Communists. We have enough strength once we reach the mainland.” Chiang’s reasoning was based on his wishful thinking that the minute the Nationalist forces hit the beach, they would be greeted with cheers by their compatriots, disillusioned with the Communist regime. The fact that the United States was unwilling to lift the lid off Nationalist forces continued to rankle the G-mo. Both he and May-ling tried to explain that the United States was repeating in Vietnam the mistakes it had made during the Korean War, when it had refused to allow MacArthur to use Chinese troops or bomb the Chinese mainland. In June, Chiang even sent Ching-kuo to Washington to see Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara to promote his newest plan of capturing five southwestern provinces—a plan that, Ching-kuo confided to an acquaintance, he himself did not endorse.

  At his inaugural, Chiang, borrowing General MacArthur’s self-reverential characterization when he was fired by Truman, described himself as an old soldier “indifferent to name and position and oblivious to fame and slander. I have often lived in suffering, humiliation, danger, false accusations, enemy infiltration and subversion and narrow escapes from death,” he said. “I have scored many successes but I have also met with many defeats. All these experiences of successes and failures and precarious living and narrow escapes have made me an undiscouraged old soldier.”

  This and various other announcements emanating from Taiwan reminded Americans of the continued presence of their long-term guest, Madame Chiang, who had not gone home, as they might have expected, to attend her husband’s inauguration. Instead, she continued to do quite a bit of speechifying, traveling to the Midwest, where she spoke in Detroit, Grosse Pointe, Chicago, and Lincoln, Nebraska, on subjects dear to her heart: Peiping’s desire to keep the United States involved in Vietnam so Washington would not focus on the Chinese Communists’ attempts to take over the world; her objection to current liberal tendencies of the American government toward criminals, as exemplified in the Miranda decision;* and, of course, the necessity of keeping Red China out of the United Nations.

  But political speeches, sentimental journeys, and extraneous awards did not seem enough of an excuse for such a lengthy sojourn. An article titled “Mystery Shrouds Mrs. Chiang Here” appeared in the Times in April of 1966, questioning the reason for her visit and reporting that she had just moved into a luxury apartment on the East River owned by her nephew and special assistant, Louis Kung. “Informed observers” commented that “Mrs. Chiang may be trying to persuade the Administration to support nationalist troop landings on the Chinese mainland as part of a general escalation of the war in South Vietnam.”

  Six months later, in October of 1966, Senator William Fulbright of Arkansas asked the State Department to advise the Senate of “the precise status” of Madame’s sojourn in the United States and explain “under what auspices she has come to seek to influence our foreign policy.” The State Department replied that she was in the United States on a private visit. But Fulbright was not far off the mark. Before she left the country, the G-mo’s wife wrote Secretary of State Dean Rusk a lengthy letter, saying that in spite of “certain elements in the American public” that were trying to get Communist China into the United Nations, she knew she could “take comfort in the knowledge that in the midst of certain muddy thinking and rash proposals, your wisdom and experience make you a tower of strength helping President Johnson to steer the United States China policy along the right course with calmness and vision.”

  The letter was dated October 23, 1966, the day she left the United States to go home.

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  Taiwan… is the unresolved last chapter of China’s civil war, or a flagrant example of American interference in China’s internal affairs.

 
—JOSEPH LELYVELD, 1975

  MADAME’S VISIT to the United States was followed immediately by that of her stepson Ching-kuo. In June 1965, the U.S. aid program for Taiwan had come to an end, and the timing of both trips—she left Taipei in August— clearly had to do with the cessation of economic support. Since 1950, the United States had given the island over $1.4 billion, the largest sum of money it had bestowed per person on any country. By 1965, Taiwanese per capita income was the second highest in the world next to Japan’s, and during that year alone, the United States also spent some $130 million in military purchases from the islanders.

  By 1966, it had become clear that Ching-Kuo (called “the Prince” by the staff at the U.S. Embassy) was now the man to be reckoned with in Taiwan. Although the Americans continued to refuse his father’s offer of Chinese troops for Vietnam, Ching-kuo, as the new Taiwanese minister of defense, had already established a Special Warfare Center in Indochina. The third largest foreign contingent on Vietnamese soil, it helped the government of General Nguyen Van Thieu and supported the air activities of the CIA. As Taylor put it, the generalissimo’s son “had been the country’s real CEO— except for the key areas of economic and financial affairs” for some time. Chiang Kai-shek, now seventy-eight, had begun to recede into the background. His eyesight was failing, and his staff, who read his papers for him, made it their business to protect him even more (if that were possible) from unpleasant facts. The G-mo loved, however, to talk about Vietnam: the problems, the military tactics employed, and most of all, the Communists’ use of underground tunnels, which, he said, he himself had encountered during the Civil War.