CHAPTER 7
CHINA made a great impression upon the foreigners who came to assist in its modernization. Following his return from a period of service with the Chinese Government, one young Englishman wrote a long private report on the relations between China’s internal affairs and foreign policy. The Head of the Far Eastern Department of the British Foreign Office read it and minuted, ‘It tells one more about the subject than anything I have seen.’∗ In his opening remarks the reporter had observed:
In the nation as a whole, the proportion of persons with high natural gifts is at least as large as, perhaps larger than, that of other eastern or western peoples. It is true that, owing to poverty and to the social structure, the greater part of this talent is never brought to fruition: nevertheless changes in social institutions may well put China once again in the forefront of civilized nations. The developments in the Far East ought therefore to be of first-class interest to the rest of the world.†
The prime characteristic of modern China was the importance of the farmer and the rural situation. This did not mean that farmers governed the country or that the Government was in their interest. On the contrary, as we shall see later, there were few countries in the world where the farmer had less to say in the conduct of affairs: and this was one of the causes of China’s troubles during this time. Nevertheless, it was, broadly speaking, true that though China was governed almost exclusively by townsmen, it was not events in the cities – for example, the sentiments of the town proletariat – which made China strong or weak: it was the events in the countryside. An overwhelming proportion, perhaps 85 per cent, of the Chinese population lived upon farms. If this peasantry were reasonably satisfied, the Government would be powerful: when the peasantry was against the Government, the Government, vis-à-vis its neighbours, was half-paralysed.
The second most noticeable feature was the high density of population in certain areas. To a perceptive observer at the time, Chinese history – though this is subject to controversy – could perhaps be given a cyclical interpretation in terms of cyclical changes in the size of population, bearing in mind that every such simplified interpretation can be only partially true, and that a full analysis would require many factors besides population to be taken into account. With increasing population there was increased pressure on the land; as a result farms would become smaller, rents, and the number of tenant farmers, would increase. Finally, the standard of living would sink so low that banditry would break out on a nationwide scale. In the confusion which resulted, a dynasty would fall, either from pressure outside or from internal weakness; there would follow prolonged civil war; eventually, as a result of violence, pestilence and starvation, the population would reduce to limits which would permit the majority of farmers to win such a living from the land as to place the attractions of peace and order above the more adventurous and uncertain life of banditry. This would enable the political power which happened at that time to be in the ascendant, to consolidate itself and to found a new dynasty; and with peace re-established, China would enter upon one of its periods of great literary, artistic and cultural productivity. Later on the population once more would increase, pressure upon the land grow, and revolt break out afresh. That was how things appeared to stand in the years which preceded the outbreak of Total War between Republican China and Imperial Japan.∗
In spite of its apparently easy defeats, and in spite of its disappointments at Geneva, China did not lose face. In this Japan was disappointed. It had counted on its action being regarded in the public opinion of the world as an old-fashioned colonial operation, which, in the atmosphere of 1931, was still condonable. China, a manifestly unequal Power, was to be put in its place. But the world, to Japan’s surprise, was not inclined to revise its previous impression that China was genuinely in revival, and to write it off as now discredited.
As soon as the fighting in China was checked by a truce, China resumed its continuous, painful steps towards recovery as a Power in world affairs. The Japanese became conscious, though at first they could scarcely credit it, that this Chinese ambition was now fostered by the former imperialists who had once treated it with so much contempt. In fact, Japan’s determination to rise had now become so evident, and was seen with so much misgiving by other Powers, that it was natural for its rivals to switch their interest benevolently to Japan’s enemy. This slow, but lasting change was more evident in Governments than in the sentiments of western businessmen, who, by the old habit of consorting with the Japanese, for a long while had found the change in their Governments nearly as puzzling as did the Japanese.
In the next six years, from 1931–7, this progress continued. Domestically, for China, they were dominated by one man, Chiang Kai-shek. He drew ahead of his civilian colleagues in the Government and came to hold in the public mind of China a position very much like that of the emperors of old. By foreigners he was equated with Chinese Nationalism, its embodiment and its principal agent. Chiang was the dominant figure in China until the end of the Second World War. Many people forwarded the drama but their personalities remain shrouded. In China, however, it is possible to tell what sort of man Chiang Kai-shek was. An attempt to analyse and assess his personality is necessary, for, in understanding what qualities he had and why they established his supremacy in Chinese government, many of the obscure facts about China’s régime may be made plain.
Chiang was the successful general of the Kuomintang. He had mounted on the shoulders of the party and come to dominate it. His special characteristic was will-power. He knew just what he wanted, and was never idle in his pursuit of it. This gave him an advantage over most of his rivals and competitors in Nanking. He was gifted with a great self-confidence, which probably meant that he despised most of the other leaders of the party.
Devious, subtle, resourceful – these he had to be if he was to hold his position among the shifting sands of Nanking. His outstanding quality was an exceptional tenacity: he got his way through single-minded persistence. His mind being made up, he would never change. In this, but not in other ways, he was like Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar:
But I am constant as the northern star
Of whose true-fixed and resting quality
There is no fellow in the firmament.
The skies are painted with unnumbered sparks,
They are all fire, and every one doth shine,
But there’s but one in all doth hold his place.
So in the world: ‘tis furnished well with men
And men are flesh and blood, and apprehensive,
Yet in the number I do know but one,
That unassailable holds on his rank
Unshaked of motion: and that I am he.
He had a chilling attitude to the issues of life and death. If an object could be obtained with comparatively little sacrifice, so much the better. But if its purchase should cost 100,000 lives, he was willing, with scarcely any hesitation, to pay the price. He would have regarded this attitude as realistic.
He was not especially clever, inspiring, good, proficient at public speaking or public appearance. He was the product of a provincial military college in China, and of a rather inferior Japanese education. With this background he was neither so well educated as to have eccentric views, nor so badly as to appear scandalously ignorant. Accordingly the middle ranks, the mediocre, served him well as the medium out of which he rose to fame. He had a poor imagination, but, as against this, an exceptionally good memory. He dissimulated, and always held back his real thoughts. His suspiciousness was boundless. But if he did not check this, he could point to it having served him well. He was habitually surrounded by so much deceit that only a carefully nurtured suspicion kept him aware of the plots of remarkable complexity which were the stuff of Chinese politics.
He had a flair for political manoeuvre, and was excellent at manipulating his colleagues. He knew, and was at home in, the labyrinth of Chinese affairs – in the secret societies, in knowing how to use money to build a personal empire, in knowing how to operate a front in politics, and what to say in public through that front. He had the political talent, which comes near political mysticism, for nearly always foreseeing how things would fall out, and for knowing what needed to be done in particular circumstances. This flair, which included judging a situation correctly – and not with the distraction of moral considerations – was perhaps the key to his success in politics.
He preferred to rule through the ubiquitous secret societies which were always one of the chief characteristics of China. Some of these societies were of ancient origin, had existed originally for respectable purposes, but had degenerated. Chiang took steps to bind the societies to himself. They secured discipline among their members by strong-arm methods, always secret. Chiang, being fundamentally uninterested in ideas, jumped at the opportunity of gaining China by means of authority in this twilight world, twitching a string here, a string there. The extent to which China, before the Communist Revolution, was a rabbit warren of secret societies, ramified with weird ceremonies and tied up at distant removes to Confucianism, cannot be exaggerated. They caught in their net all who mattered in the Government – bureaucrats, soldiers, businessmen. Because of these societies, Chinese public life was always shrouded in a certain mystery. Nothing happened in a quite straightforward way. In any transaction the trail at some stage went underground. Things could not be done without recourse to the secret society. And, more probably than not, Chiang would be involved.
If he never pursued lofty or exceptional aims, that meant he would be set on nothing he could not achieve. He kept his nose to the ground, and pursued ends which were strictly practical. He was cautious and did not expose himself recklessly to danger: but when danger found him, he could call forth the stoic courage of the better type of army officer to sustain him in it. Science and all the arts did not interest him. He became a Christian, and he used to read, and read again, familiar books: but he had no taste for new books. He was not speculative. He had no particular ideas about the way the world was changing, and probably was never in a position to understand this. When he did not understand a point, he was unwilling to speak, and became inscrutable.
He had the natural xenophobia of the uneducated man; but he had the wit to conceal this in his necessary dealings with foreigners. These found him puzzling, and they never established complete rapport with him. But some of them were very much impressed by the man, and agreed that he was dignified, not garrulous, and reserved. He had a cynical view of human nature. But by natural instinct he tended to consort with the type of man who was foreign to exceptional virtue. His cynical views thus proved correct, as far as those with whom he came into contact were concerned. His rancour and vindictiveness against his enemies were constantly spoken of. But probably this rancour proceeded from considerations of prudence, which taught him that a man who was once his enemy was likely to remain so, and that generosity had few conquests, rather than from bitterness of mind.
In private life he was rather dull, faithful by routine to his intimates, determinedly egotistical. In the wider circles of life, he had no friends. Those who knew him well agreed that he was neither particularly wicked nor noticeably squeamish. A study of the countless crises he survived, and his way of dealing with them, might be added as an appendix to Machiavelli’s book.
He was not magnetic and not lovable, though he was sometimes loyal to his colleagues and was admired for this. To outer show, he appeared ascetic, and if, as his enemies alleged, this was a pose, it did not appear so to the mass of the people. His family were venal, but he himself was probably not open to accepting bribes: he more than tolerated such practices in others, especially as a means of exerting political control. He felt the pull of the past and he played round with Confucian ideas, and the somewhat austere and chilly teaching of Chinese conservatives, which ceased to be revolutionary and swung to the Right, was his guiding thought.
Yet that Chiang was in many respects a remarkable man cannot be denied; otherwise he could not have battled on, receiving countless checks, seldom achieving total success. Only his will and obstinacy were indomitable.
The interest of the nation was in reconstruction. The prime concern of Chiang Kai-shek was in fighting the communists.
Chiang was obsessed with the civil war. So were his principal bankers and backers within the Chinese oligarchy, right down to village level. The first shots of the communist wars were fired in Nanchang, the capital of Kiangsi. In August 1927 the garrison commander, Chu Teh, had revolted and declared for the communists. How many soldiers were involved in that rebellion is doubtful, but the number was probably not more than 5,000. Defeated, they retired to the south, met a powerful Government force, and, reduced to a tenth of their former strength, scattered.
Thus, almost unnoticed, began a war which, by the eve of China’s life and death struggles with Japan, devastated great areas in one third of the provinces of China and cost the Central Government over a billion dollars. Hundreds of thousands of lives were lost, and the issue remained in doubt.
As we have seen, the communists occupied, and maintained, a soviet Government in part of the Kiangsi province and neighbouring territory. Between 1930 and 1934 they resisted five successive so-called bandit-suppression expeditions, each of them more elaborate than the last. For a time, the heavy losses sustained by the Red Army were offset by new recruits inducted into their ranks in large numbers. Some came from the local farming communities, some from deserters from the Kuomintang forces. In 1930, when the communists made their first big gains, their armed forces do not seem to have numbered more than 20–30,000 men. Between 1931 and 1934, their number increased to 120,000 regular troops. In addition to their regular army, the communists also disposed of large numbers of militia men, not so well trained or equipped but playing an important part in guerrilla warfare.
The communists promised the expropriation of the gentry and the redistribution of land. The only experiment with communal ownership of land was made upon a small scale, persisted in for one year, and officially declared a failure. On the whole, there can be no doubt that, as a device for enlisting the support of the masses, the policy pursued was shrewd and successful. Families whose sons had enlisted in the Red Army were given preferential treatment in the redistribution of land. Moreover, it was linked with a tax reform effort that did not merely replace one tax collector with another and produce greater income but rather led to real increases in the disposable income of most people. The effect of these policies – strange for a communist programme – was to create a society of yeomen farmers, small capitalists. At the same time, the communists instituted compulsory education for the indoctrination of children and adults alike. Other activities included the organization of credit cooperative societies, the provision of health services (greatly handicapped by the lack of drugs, instruments and modern, trained physicians) and an attempted socialization of trade. Added to this was a cry for the expulsion of the Japanese – a sure-fire formula for winning massive popular support.
The foregoing is the bright side of the picture. On the debit side must be put the restriction of individual liberties – though it may be questioned whether the poorer classes enjoyed much liberty under the old régime; the arbitrary system of government; a large element of confusion and incompetence in the administration; the ruthless destruction of property and of monuments of ancient China; and – the most discreditable part of the soviet record – the massacres and persecutions. These atrocities are well attested. In many villages of Kiangsi there was a field left uncultivated and shunned by the inhabitants: this was the execution ground. It is, however, fair to add that the war against the gentry, although in no way restrained by the soviet Governments, was rather willed by the people than dictated by communist officials. Behind the slaughter lay centuries of oppression and pent-up bitterness. Significantly, recruits were attracted by the Red Army rather than by the politics of the Communist Party.
As is common in revolutions, the terror was directed as much against those within the ranks of the revolutionaries as against their enemies. The death penalty was imposed, and in the majority of cases carried out, upon officials detected in corruption; disobedient soldiers of the Red Army, soldiers who looted, minor intrigants. Death was even the penalty for lax work. For example, during a time of flood, labourers engaged in dyke building were warned twice for idleness, and on the third offence were shot. The ruthless proscription of supporters diverging from the party line recalls, and during those years surpassed, the achievement of Adolf Hitler. In 1934 an internal political crisis was ended by the execution in one week of 4,300 persons, most of them members of the Communist Party.
Some of the leaders enjoyed a special pre-eminence, especially Chu Teh, the Commander-in-Chief, and a political organizer named Mao Tse-tung. Chu Teh appeared to be of a type not unfamiliar in Chinese history: born into a wealthy landlord family, by the time he had reached middle age he had shown an aptitude for life as a successful war-lord, enjoying the pleasures of corruption, the dissipations of opium-smoking and responsibilities which are said to have included nine wives and concubines. An admirer wrote:
One might have thought he had everything he desired: wealth, power, love, descendants, poppy dreams, eminent respectability, and a comfortable future in which to preach the proprieties of Confucianism. He had, in fact, only one really bad habit, but it was to prove his downfall. He liked to read books.∗
Chu underwent the first of several conversion experiences: ‘Disembarrassing himself of his previous encumbrances, he went to Shanghai and joined the extremist wing of the Kuomintang.’† He then left the country to take up political studies among Chinese students in Hanover, Paris and Moscow. While in Germany he became a member of the Communist Party. He returned home late in 1925 and was appointed Chief of the Bureau of Public Safety in the provincial capital of Kiangsi. After raising the communist rebellion against the Kuomintang in Kiangsi, he became a man of a somewhat Rabelaisian turn, living in a very democratic way, and receiving from his followers unbounded devotion, both because his picturesque character appealed to their imagination and because of his genuine care for their well-being. So much legend grew up round him that it is hard to sort out true from false. He was said to be a man of quickly changing moods. Like King Saul, he was given to fits of extreme depression; at other times, like Cromwell, he was inclined to play the buffoon. He was known to order massacres on the grand scale. He was said to live in one room, eat the same food as the common soldier, and drew the regulation wage of a private – $3 a month. Alone among the important figures in China, he is said to have refused the protection of a bodyguard. Chu Teh, though sympathetic to the farmer and the grievances of the poor, did not belong to the doctrinaire wing of the party. Leadership there fell to Mao Tse-tung, an ex-schoolmaster, around whom as much legend grew as round Chu Teh.
Mao came from Hunan, a province noted for the energy and fiery temper of its inhabitants. Son of a poor peasant family, his early career need not detain us. In many characteristics – in his secrecy, and in a certain indirectness – he was typically Chinese; it was said that he took none of his collaborators into full confidence, and was unwilling that they should be in too close touch with one another. When confronted with opposition, he rarely compromised, but veiled his opinion and, in the end, by subtle manipulation, usually carried his point. He was an orator. His characteristics, which were of significance for the fortunes of the Kiangsi Soviet and the travails of his movement thereafter, were an inflexible attachment to principle and a talent for organization. The first of these qualities kept the agrarian rebellion upon communist lines and caused its leaders to pursue something like a consistent policy; the second ensured that an administration, a more or less ordered community, emerged from the storm of revolution, and that the Red Army was fed and supported from the civilian side in such a way as to make it the formidable power which it became.
These and one or two others were the great names among the communists, but in Kiangsi Chu and Mao were certainly not dictators. Not only did they have to give way to each other, but frequently also to other members of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party. It was the Committee which governed; Chu and Mao were the most prominent of its members, but they were not all-powerful.
During most of the time they were in Kiangsi, the communists were able to import supplies from the outside world. The territory between Kiangsi and the sea was held for some time by the Nineteenth Route Army, the force which distinguished itself in the defence of Shanghai against the Japanese. Somewhat radical in its leanings, the Nineteenth Route Army adopted towards the communists a neutrality which was distinctly benevolent, and made no difficulty about the passage of arms and ammunition from the ports of Swatow and Amoy. But the principal source of ammunition was the Government forces. Until the traffic was detected, large quantities could be purchased from corrupt junior officers in the Government Army; moreover, deserters from the Government side usually brought their equipment with them; and the Red troops referred to Government soldiers as ‘our ammunition carriers’.
Nevertheless, the communists never obtained heavy armaments such as big guns or tanks; for a time they possessed two aircraft, but they were not extensively used. The weapon on which they most relied was the machine-gun. Operating on interior lines in the early years, their tactics then were those of guerrilla war. Its elements were ambushes, sniping, surprise attacks at the hour when the morale of their opponents was lowest, and propaganda among the enemy forces (perhaps the most formidable of all their weapons). One of their chief assets was the support received from the population; in many recaptured districts the Government troops were received with a hostility suitable only to a foreign invader, spied on, harried and delayed in every possible way. Another was the speed of movement of the communist forces. Marching as a rule by night, and maintaining contact by means of radio, they would arrive in overwhelming force against an objective, before the Government, infinitely better supplied and much superior in numbers, knew that it was even threatened. As time passed, the communist forces became increasingly professional in their training, and guerrilla warfare gave way to the tactical deployment of the Red forces in large conventional formations.
In fact the communists proved to be far more successful than the Kuomintang in the mobile warfare which characterized the earlier expeditions, but inexorably the tactical skill of the Red forces was overcome by the immense firepower and numerical strength of Chiang’s armies.
As is the way in warfare, the communist tactics eventually called forth new tactics on the other side which checked them. It was not, as might have been expected, the employment of aircraft which defeated them. Aircraft, though they played some part in the Government campaigns, never proved a decisive weapon. Since the Red troops moved by night, it was difficult to detect and bomb their columns, and the Government was unwilling to drop bombs upon civilian villages. The weapon which the Government and its German advisers discovered to be a deadly one was the blockhouse. Fortified by machine-guns, these were able to command the surrounding countryside and were practically invulnerable to any force which, like the communists, lacked artillery and suitable aircraft. The communists, in their turn, attempted to erect their own blockhouses to stem the Government advance, but their constructions were easily destroyed by gunfire. Guided by his German military advisers, and backed up by artillery and air support, Chiang’s armies systematically advanced, carving up the countryside with a new road network, protected by chains of thousands of blockhouses in ever-decreasing circles, depriving the communist leadership of any hope of maintaining its grip on its soviet base. From that time on, communist raids into Government territory became almost impossible: the ground which the Government recovered was held effectively, and little by little the national troops pressed forward until finally the communists gave up the fight.
In the Fourth Encirclement Campaign during 1932, the Hupeh-Honan-Anhwei Soviet was forced to evacuate through the mountains, fleeing westward in disorder to the comparative safety of Szechwan, where they made the best of a temporary respite. Finally, in October 1934, the Central (Kiangsi) Soviet was squeezed out by the Kuomintang. Exhausted, squabbling among themselves, the communists had no option but to take flight or face annihilation. In more attractive terms, the time had come for a move in a way which has become classic in Chinese communist strategy: one step back in order to prepare for two steps forward. It was regarded at the time, however, not as a moment of impending victory or grand strategic opportunity but rather as a desperate struggle for day-today survival:
The Central Committee of the CCP, the Government, the Red Army, their personnel and dependants fled, with the Kuomintang forces on their heels. This was only the beginning of the worst disaster in the history of the Chinese communist movement. The Red political power which controlled some 300 hsien (counties) at one time in Kiangsi, Hupeh, Honan, Hunan, Anhwei, and Fukien, was almost totally wiped out. The revolutionary movement appeared to be on the verge of extinction. The defeat split the Chinese communist leadership both in China and Moscow and gave rise to serious internal disputes.∗
Ninety thousand survivors broke through Chiang’s lines and made an astonishing march, in which their columns again and again repelled or evaded the troops sent to block their way, from Fukien and Kiangsi to the Tibetan borderlands in the far west of China. Chased by Chiang’s forces, the communists then made their way northward and up to the remote and mountainous province of Shensi at the north-west frontier between China Proper and Inner Mongolia, on the northernmost approaches of China to the Soviet Union. The Long March covered a distance of 6,000 miles and virtually wiped out the Red Army. The number which reached the relative safety of the north-west a year later was 20,000.
By this fantastic march the communists associated themselves with all that was remarkable in Chinese military history. Out of their struggles emerged a cohesive party leadership and an exceptional sense of political and social unity. They captured the imagination of the country in a way that was quite disproportionate to their size and their real importance. Arrived in Shensi, they set themselves to build a new soviet Government, as they had had before in Kiangsi, one which was milder than the Kiangsi model and which did not automatically frighten off all the propertied class of peasants. It made more appeal than had the Kiangsi model to rational feeling, less to class warfare. Moreover, it was hallowed by the record of legendary deeds of the communists in the transit force which had crossed eighteen mountain ranges and forded twenty-four rivers from Fukien and Kiangsi to their new home. When they took up the cry for war against Japan, they were heard with increased respect throughout China.
It must not be supposed that the communists had a monopoly of reform activities. The National Government, in fact, embarked upon a plan of economic development which, though on a small scale compared with the effort in such countries as Soviet Russia, nevertheless, both by its scope and success in execution, surprised many experienced observers. The programme covered the whole country, and it was therefore much more difficult to carry out than that of the communists, which was confined to a relatively small area. Moreover, in judging the results, it must be remembered that the greater part of the resources intended for reconstruction were swallowed up in the civil war.
The National Government postulated that, without law and order, economic development was impossible and that the first use of its resources must be the creation of an efficient police system. This involved many difficulties, one of the chief of which was the problem of identifying persons in country districts. To all inquiries from outside, villagers presented an unhelpful and united front. To remedy this state of affairs, the Government revived a part of the ancient administrative machinery of China, first invented eight centuries before but allowed to fall into disuse during the past hundred years. This was called the pao chia. Every ten families were grouped into a unit called the pao; every ten paos formed a chia. All members of the pao must be registered, and every person in the province must wear on his clothes a label showing to which pao he belonged. Each pao and each chia had a headman, appointed by the Government. When any person was wanted by the police, the pao to which he belonged had to produce him, otherwise the members were held, in theory, collectively responsible for his misdeeds. It was a far from perfect system of control but it was on the whole very serviceable as a police measure. It also made the creation of an efficient militia possible and that, in turn, was frequently employed in public works construction such as the creation of motor roads, dyke building and irrigation projects. At the same time, improvements in medical services, agricultural methods, free education, the revival of the silk, cotton and tea industries, the creation of a cooperative movement, and a genuine opium-suppression campaign were all given enormous attention by both the military and civil authorities. Western observers noted that the principal defect in this reconstruction effort was that it did not include a drastic reform of land ownership and tenure. The second defect in the programme was its rigidly authoritarian structure. The third defect was the inability of the National Government to override the reluctance of the gentry to carry out the redistribution of power and influence rapidly and efficiently. These defects, of course, were intertwined with each other.
Meanwhile, Chiang Kai-shek himself had grown in strength, consolidating his executive control over the political forces of the Kuomintang. Of the four groups which combined to make the Kuomintang revolution, the communists and farmers had been eliminated from a share in the Government; the educated, bourgeois group was relegated to a very inferior position: left to administer national finance in the interest of the Army but otherwise disposed to ignore constitutional principles, checks and balances, and confined to commerce, industry and learning, and the Army, under General Chiang, was really supreme. His Army was master of nearly all China.
Chiang Kai-shek, indeed, did not consider that he had suffered a setback. Militarily, he had won. His reconquest of the Kiangsi Soviets had taken four years. It is, however, necessary to be very cautious in interpreting this as a reflection upon the national armies. It is not only that, in guerrilla warfare, the regular forces tend to be at a disadvantage, nor that the Government was distracted by the Japanese question. There were also matters of policy involved. For it is easy to understand that the communist war gave to the military authorities the opportunity to build up, test and experiment with, a national well-equipped Army upon a modern basis. The years 1932 and 1933 were spent in this undertaking, and operations were carried out with only a fraction of the national forces. When the whole might of Chiang’s Army was turned against the communists in 1934, the result was a foregone conclusion.
The military cohesiveness of Chiang’s nationalist forces depended upon his ability to command and enforce the personal allegiance of the warlords who fought under the nationalist banner. It was on this that his political and military authority ultimately rested, but he also attended to building up an élite section of the national army to set an example under his direct control. This was the section which had been trained by German military advisers since the expulsion of a Russian advisory team in 1927. These advisers, with establishment levels of around forty to seventy men, were led by men such as Colonel Max Bauer (1927–9), Colonel Hermann Kriebel (1929–30), Lieutenant-General Georg Wetzell (1930–34), General Hans von Seeckt (1934–5) and General Alexander von Falkenhausen – some of the most illustrious and experienced military officers of the time. They succeeded in adapting themselves to the manners of the more military Chinese, and spoke significantly about the warlike qualities of the Chinese under proper leadership. In startling contrast with the hordes of ragged Chinese troops in their tattered uniforms which were all too familiar in China, occasional khaki-clad regiments were now to be seen, very smart, alert, marching with precision: the élite of the Kuomintang. Its numbers were to rise to 300,000 men. Eventually the German military advisory group, acting with remarkable independence from Berlin but strengthened by a treaty which Chiang had negotiated with the German Government, began pressing Chiang to break off his campaigns against the Chinese communists and to march against the Japanese instead.
Throughout this period, German armaments manufacturers eagerly shipped up-to-date weaponry to Chiang Kai-shek’s forces. As time wore on, this was subject to countervailing political pressures within the Third Reich and compromised German-Japanese relations, but the fact remains that in the year preceding the Anti-Comintern Pact, for instance, almost 60 per cent of German arms exports went to China (20 million Reichs-marks, 113 times the value of German exports to Japan). The Chinese contracts therefore became important in building up the military production of Nazi Germany.
The British and Americans had no doubts that they were being made scapegoats by the Japanese, whom they found entirely unreceptive to suggestions that the Japanese should address their complaints to their German allies. The discomforture of the Japanese was acute, but they were unable to accept the loss of face that would have resulted from any loud objections to Berlin. They did make their displeasure known, but for a prolonged period little notice was taken by the German arms exporters and their governmental patrons. As the disparity between German military exports to China and Japan became increasingly embarrassing, efforts were made by the Germans to adopt a ‘policy of balance’ between the two sides. This compromise solution proved to be unstable. Eventually Joachim von Ribbentrop and his cronies, who opposed the Chinese connection, overcame those who wished its continuance, ordered the German military mission to return home and forced German arms suppliers to tear up their Chinese orderbooks. Nevertheless, according to British and American Intelligence estimates, German and German-occupied Austrian and Czech arms factories continued to supply up to 75 per cent, and even more, of all foreign military equipment and ammunition sent to China from abroad throughout the first two years of the China Incident. When the decision to stop this traffic was taken in April 1938, the Reich Ministry of Economics calculated that the loss sustained by the German armaments industry from cancellation of contracts already signed amounted to 282 million Reichsmarks. Nevertheless, reliable reports indicated that a significant quantity of military supplies continued to flow from Germany and its satellites to China. It is indicative of the importance of this connection that in the first shipment of war materials to pass all the way up the fabled Burma Road into Free China in December 1938, there was German and Czechoslovak machine-gun ammunition valued at $112,000. At the same time a Norwegian steamer unloaded 1,300 tons of Italian arms and ammunition at Rangoon. These were by no means isolated instances. So much for the solidarity of Axis collaboration with Japan. The British Cabinet even took the extraordinary step of instructing British naval and customs authorities to turn a blind eye towards a German freighter due to unload a contraband shipment of arms at Hong Kong in the week following the outbreak of the European War.∗
In everything, things began to go well for China. Its great weakness had been disunity, and the lack of a modern political structure. Now, very slowly, and largely by means of the tortuous, devious policies of Chiang Kai-shek, which he pursued with resolution, China’s political unification made progress. The Kuomintang prevailed in new provinces: the warlords who survived had their powers reduced: the central Government of Nanking found new ways of undermining them, and of making new contact with the people by new institutions. Chiang Kai-shek, alert, like the Japanese of the earlier generation, to take advantage of borrowing what seemed to him relevant from abroad, took over various devices from the contemporary example of Hitler for reinforcing his personal ascendancy. The country began to be studded by a secret organization called the Blue Shirts, whose members were pledged to advance his interest: this included thugs, but also highly respected professors from Peking University, who felt that the desperate needs of the country required that Chiang should be supreme. During this period there was only one retrograde moment when a nationwide unrest among Chiang’s opponents led to an outbreak of civil war on the old pattern: but this was soon stopped by diplomacy.
In 1935 the Kuomintang, advised and assisted by experts lent to it by the League of Nations, France, the United States and the Bank of England, greatly enhanced its prestige when it introduced a new currency throughout the whole country: and held it more or less stable for the first time in the history of China. The new system replaced the silver standard which had been made unworkable by the financial policy of the United States. Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Government, under pressure from senators advancing the interests of silver producers, had raised the price of silver, and, ignoring Chinese protests, created a deflationary spiral of about 30 per cent between 1931 and 1935 which drove China to seek another basis for its currency. The success of the Kuomintang in bringing a fiat currency into areas which it had previously occupied by military means alone was the best sign of the consolidation of its authority. It gave both the Kuomintang and China a fillip: and braced it to face the approaching war. Britain, by giving aid in this reform, had shown that it considered the new China worth taking risks for, and that it was willing to develop its East Asian policy on the hypothesis that China was becoming stable.
In these years an additional person of the drama was beginning to play an interesting and much publicized part. This was Madame Chiang, whom Chiang had married, as his second wife, in 1927. She was one of three ambitious and remarkable sisters, one of whom was the widow of Sun Yat-sen, the leading spirit among the founders of the Kuomintang, who had died in 1925 and was revered as a national hero. One of her brothers was T. V. Soong, the banker, Kuomintang politician and Minister of Finance between 1928 and 1933. Her other sister married the fabulously wealthy H. H. Kung, seventy-fifth lineal descendant of Confucius and Minister of Finance from 1933 to 1938. Madame Chiang supplied the female influence, which recalled to Chinese, who are extremely historically minded, many parallels in the dynastic histories of the past. In a way this increased their tendency to see Chiang as being like one of the founders of past dynasties. But, though her influence on Chiang was considerable, it must be seen for what it was, and not misinterpreted. She was not responsible for developing any new qualities in him: the stubborn will, which had made his place initially in the Kuomintang, was all his own. Madame Chiang, who was American-educated (as were all five of her brothers and sisters) and in temperament had become more American than Chinese, was his window on the United States. Through her, the relations of China and the United States became closer than they would have been without her. Madame Chiang gave her husband a glamour, an interest, which he could not have hoped for himself in American eyes. She was a forceful personality, wilful and dogmatic, and, though she lacked great political wisdom, she had an intelligence which made her a useful intermediary with foreigners. Some observers regarded her as a very wicked lady, misguided, corrupt and selfish in the extreme. Others, such as Sir Stafford Cripps, saw more wholesome qualities. Chiang’s use of his wife was skilful, and she, in turn, probably possessed more power and influence than anyone else of her sex in the world at that time, apart, perhaps, from Eleanor Roosevelt.
In 1934 Chiang Kai-shek, assisted by his wife, launched what was called a ‘new life movement’. This was not very popular: it was the subject of mirth among foreigners and the sophisticated classes of urban China. It was an attempt to revive the ancient Confucian virtues as the spiritual basis of the new state. Confucianism had been repudiated soon after the revolution which overthrew the Manchus; but a void had been left, and the Kuomintang lacked a spiritual basis on which to build the new order. Confucianism was not really a religion; it was a code of ethics which from earliest times had been accepted as the ideal of the Chinese people: it served throughout history as the powerful pillar of the state, and the fact that in China this role was performed by ethics, which in other states was performed by the great organized religions, has been one of the characteristics and fateful elements of Chinese civilization. Confucianism performed the unlikely part of presenting in a fossilized form the ethical outlook and views of the feudal society which was the state of China two thousand years ago. Attitudes which would have been appropriate in a good Chinese feudatory continued to be advocated, though the society which gave rise to them had long since changed. Confucianism urges submissiveness, demands reverence to the old, deplores a headstrong attitude in individuals, prizes the rites of courtesy, assumes that the business of women is to obey in all things. The task which the Chinese set themselves was to reinstate Confucianism, without allowing a too evident Confucian control of all the institutions of public life.
The new life was to be puritanical. A gloom settled over Chinese society. Nevertheless, by dint of propaganda, by the use of all the Government machinery for indoctrination, by the use of various Army bureaux for its propagation, and by manipulation of all the Government powers of patronage, a not unimpressive Confucian revival began to make headway in China. The change in the intellectual climate of China, with the substitution of a rather narrow Confucian dogma for bland scepticism, was one of the notable features of the time.
In the middle thirties the sense that China was recovering, which increased Chinese self-confidence at home as well as affecting the policies of all the powers concerned in the region, caused the Chinese to feel an increasing resentment at Japan’s constant pressure upon them. In 1934 Japan, its ambitions enlarging after the conquest of Manchuria, was demanding that an area, carved out of China’s northern provinces, should be declared autonomous, and that the writ of the Government of Nanking should cease to run there. Obviously the calculation was that in a short time it would pass under the control of Japan. The activities of Japanese agents caused a wave of indignation, and this was particularly strong among the students of Peking. Peking was always the seat of three or four universities, and their pupils, partly because of the regard which China traditionally paid to scholarship and to the learned life, enjoyed peculiar prestige. They were buoyed up by memory of the great demonstration which they had made fifteen years earlier against a particularly corrupt Government because of its craven acceptance of foreign demands; this had never been forgotten by the Government or by the students themselves; they had come to think of themselves as the custodian of the nation’s conscience; they felt themselves morally obliged to be the nation’s barometer. The Japanese overstepped the limit. Pressed too hard, the students erupted, in December 1935, in a great demonstration against the Chinese officials who were subservient towards the Japanese.
Those who had the good fortune to be present on this occasion felt, even if obscurely, that they were taking part in a historic action. The beauty of Peking in the freezing mid-winter, the sense of great issues happening which could only be dimly seen, the foreboding and the excitement, the sense of returning power and rising might in the Chinese people – of a people long oppressed feeling strength to quell the brute and boisterous force of the oppressor – all this made a memorable event in the history of China’s ancient imperial city. Even though Peking at this time was demoted, and had temporarily ceased to be the capital city, the students must have sensed the drama of its being the setting for this great demonstration that marked China’s national resurgence.
The growing nationalist temper was directed in part against Japan: in part against Chiang Kai-shek, because, though he was the military leader of China, he declined to act as its champion. Instead of calling China to arms he continued to sit in Central China, and called for the national attention to be riveted there, to wars for the eradication of communism. In doing this, Chiang began to be regarded as almost a traitor to the Chinese nation. China, or at least its intelligentsia, was ready to go to war, but it felt that one hand was tied behind its back by the Generalissimo of its own armies, or at least was engaged in keeping down the peasantry – an action which the younger, generous section of the nation did not desire at all, and was only necessitated because the landed interests of the Kuomintang required it. How long would these interests continue to control Chiang? When would he become responsive to the will of the younger and more virile section of the nation?
One point stands out sharply. That is, that China, being preoccupied with so many domestic problems, was very ill-placed to deal with foreign aggression. The conflict in the countryside between the gentry and the peasants, which is a normal occurrence in Chinese history at periods of two or three centuries, was then in an acute phase. It was made more bitter because of the distress of the farmers due to the dislocation of the rural economy which resulted from the increased trade with western nations. The contact with the West had led also to the emergence of new classes, the commercial plutocracy and the urban proletariat. The conflict between them increased the social tension; and it introduced to China a medley of new ideas and new conceptions, which profoundly influenced the behaviour of the intelligentsia and began also to influence the behaviour of the masses which, since they were in many cases conflicting, added to the confusion of affairs, caused divided aims and rendered quite uncertain the course which China was ultimately destined to take. As we have seen, a Government, composed of a bloc of the military, the plutocracy and the rural gentry, held with some security the cities and commercial centres. But in many parts of the countryside it confronted either open or potential revolt. Moreover, there was division within the Government itself on personal grounds but also between the faction standing for military and semi-fascist government and the faction standing for a more liberal development.
The policy of General Chiang Kai-shek, of basing the unity of China on his personal authority, was, successful though it had been to date, a source of weakness; for though China in the brief span of ten years had made great progress in modernizing its government, and though public opinion stood for the unity of the country, that unity was a tender plant. For unity to be consolidated other than in the figure of Chiang himself, it seemed to China-watchers that the country needed twenty years of peace during which the new institutions could take root and a system might be perfected by which political power could be shared or transferred without domestic combat or violence. The position thus appeared far too delicate for the Government to enter a foreign war except as a last resort. The patience of Nanking; its willingness to make concessions; its anxiety – in spite of a very real patriotism and a determination to recover lost territory in the future – to find some modus vivendi with Japan; its politic readiness – in spite of its own sincere anti-Japanese sentiment – to suppress the manifestation of it by its citizens; all of these impulses for some years seemed to westerners not only comprehensible but wise and prudent. Eventually, however, pressure for change became irresistible.
While Chiang Kai-shek’s best forces were employed in the war against the communists, a very brief and humiliating campaign took place in which Japan conquered the province of Jehol, which was part of Inner Mongolia, and incorporated it into Manchukuo. This mopping-up operation was conducted by the Kwantung Army. The Japanese Cabinet in Tokyo, the Army General Staff and even the Emperor attempted to frustrate it but to little avail. Jehol was historically of interest as it had been a vast hunting preserve of the Manchu princes when these ruled in Mukden. After the Japanese invasion had breached the Great Wall itself, an armistice known as the Tangku Truce was concluded between China itself and Japan on 31 May 1933. Among its provisions was an agreement to establish a 5,000-square-mile demilitarized zone within the adjacent province of Hopei, ending at the Great Wall. Chinese forces eventually withdrew even from the vicinity of Tientsin, the Shanghai of the north and gateway to Peking. The principal benefit of the Tangku Truce for China was that it enabled the Kuomintang to strengthen its hold upon the nation as a whole. The Truce itself did not address the question of the status of Manchukuo nor its relations with the northern lands which still maintained an allegiance to China.
Nevertheless, the Tangku Truce laid the groundwork for Japanese agents to foster autonomy movements throughout the whole of North China, not merely among the Mongols of Chahar, Suiyuan and Ningsia along the borderlands north of the Wall but in the northern provinces of China Proper, including Hopei, Shansi and even Shantung. One reason for these preparations was to secure the Japanese rear in Manchuria against a Chinese surprise attack in the event of serious trouble with the Soviet Union. Another reason was that the Kwantung Army was eager to exploit the ‘inexhaustible’ iron and coal reserves of Shansi.
If we dilly-dally, these resources will end up in British or American hands. If we keep saying this and that about so-called international ethics, and if we yield the road to others by saying ‘after you, after you’, the one who will be left holding the bag is Japan. Therefore, while Europe and America are preoccupied with situations in their own countries, and while their circumstances are such that they cannot interfere with the Orient, it is of vast importance and a very good opportunity to get North China into the hands of Japan.∗
Exhilarated by their unbroken string of successes, the Kwantung Army was not immune from the temptation to extend their imperium as far as lay within their power. Peking itself, the historic capital of the Middle Kingdom, was now within their sights. The dangers were obvious.
∗
During the two years that followed the Tangku Truce, the Chinese gave way to further demands imposed by the Kwantung Army while Tokyo ran hot and cold. In an address to the Imperial Diet on 22 January 1934, Foreign Minister Hirota Kōki proclaimed a Japanese Monroe Doctrine in East Asia: ‘Japan, serving as the only cornerstone for the edifice of peace in East Asia, bears the entire responsibility. It is in this important position and vast responsibility that our foreign diplomacy and national defence are rooted.’ In remarks to the foreign press on 17 April 1934, the Head of the Foreign Ministry Information Bureau, Amō Eiji, repeated the substance of Hirota’s words and indicated that Japan had no intention of tolerating foreign interference in the bilateral relations between China and Japan. While Hirota’s statement had passed off without much comment, western governments, driven by public outrage, responded to the Amō Declaration with howls of protest. Hirota’s attempt to pour oil over these troubled waters proved unconvincing.
In July 1934 a 72-year-old admiral, Okada Keisuke, replaced the even more venerable Viscount Admiral Saitō Makoto as Prime Minister of Japan. Saitō himself arranged the succession to signify his Cabinet’s united distaste and alarm over the Japanese Army’s unchecked activities on the continent. There was an obvious continuity between the two Cabinets: the War, Navy and Foreign Ministers were all retained and Saitō’s Minister of Agriculture and Forestry was elevated to the portfolio of Home Affairs with all of its police and public order functions. Nevertheless, the new Cabinet, like its predecessor, felt obliged to support the faits accomplis of the Japanese Army in China as well as in Manchuria. Foreign Minister Hirota, indeed, pursued diplomatic initiatives which closely dovetailed into the efforts of the Army to consolidate its gains in the region. In March 1935 the Soviet Union finally sold its Chinese Eastern (Trans-Manchurian) Railway to ‘Manchukuo’ after two years of haggling with Hirota over the price. PaceClausewitz, this was (aggressive) war by other means. It also struck a responsive chord in the Manchurian popular memory, for as recently as 1929 Marshal Chang Hsueh-liang had tried to wrest the CER from its Russian railway guards, lost an ensuing campaign when the Soviet Union dispatched an expeditionary force into northern Manchuria, and been forced to abandon his pretensions in exchange for the withdrawal of the Soviet troops. Ever since the Japanese military conquest of the whole of Manchuria, however, Russian control over the CER had become untenable. The sale of the CER marked the end of an era.
Then in June 1935, following the murder of two pro-Japanese Chinese journalists, General Ho Ying-ch’in, Head of the Peking Military Command, yielded to grotesquely disproportionate demands pressed upon him by the Commander of the Japanese North China Garrison in Tientsin, Lieutenant-General Umezu Yoshijirō, and endorsed the secret Ho-Umezu Agreement promising to evacuate Kuomintang troops and abandon all political activity in the province of Hopei. The Japanese Government in Tokyo was unaware until late in the day how far Umezu had exceeded his authority, but there was considerable satisfaction at the outcome once the crisis had passed. By degrees, the Chinese were learning the Japanese definition of ‘cooperation’.
At almost the same time, another trifling incident took place in Chahar during which four Japanese soldiers were held at gunpoint for four or five hours by Chinese troops. Former War Minister General Minami Jirō, now Commander of the Kwantung Army, ordered the head of his Special Services Agency, Colonel Doihara Kenji, to negotiate a settlement of the incident that would satisfy the honour of Japan. Late in June 1935 the outcome, known as the Ching-Doihara Agreement, spoke volumes concerning the nature of the pressures which the Japanese were ready to impose. Unable to appease the Japanese by a token punishment of the Chinese officers responsible, General Ching Teh-ch’un, the Chinese Army commander in Chahar, unwillingly evacuated his military forces from the province, agreed that all political activity by the Kuomintang within the province should cease forthwith, prohibited further Chinese immigration into northern Chahar, and banned all anti-Japanese activities within the province.
Within two months of the Ho-Umezu and Ching-Doihara Agreements, Prince Teh, a Mongolian chieftain who had striven for some time to carve out an autonomous government north of the Great Wall, overcame his apparent reluctance to accept Japanese assistance. General Minami promised him money and lent him two battalions of cavalry to help the Prince extend his control from Suiyuan province into northern Chahar.
On 5 August 1935 Foreign Minister Hirota advanced several general guidelines which he believed should govern Japan’s relations with her continental neighbours. He lost no opportunity to repeat these ‘Three Principles’ in the months that followed: first, the Kuomintang must suppress all anti-Japanese pronouncements and activities, end China’s subservience to European and American interests, and take positive steps towards friendship and cooperation with Japan; second, China must accept Japan’s special relationship with Manchukuo, cooperate with Manchukuo in economic and cultural relations, and, ultimately, grant formal diplomatic recognition to the independence of Manchukuo; third, China must collaborate with Japan in Chahar and adjacent territories to obliterate communist influence in areas bordering Outer Mongolia. At the time, Japanese military factions and business circles were obsessed by the fear that Communism might spread from Russia to China. There was some foundation for these fears, given the close connection between the Chinese communist movement and the spread of ‘anti-Japanism’ across the length and breadth of China.
A Five Ministers’ Conference of the Japanese inner Cabinet (chaired by Prime Minister Okada and attended by his War, Navy, Finance, and Foreign Affairs Ministers) reviewed the situation and reached the conclusion that Japan should give strong support to other autonomy movements in North China, thus progressively undermining the Kuomintang’s efforts to unify the whole country. Three days later the midwives of the Kwantung Army attended to the birth of the East Hopei Anti-Communist Autonomy Council within the demilitarized districts defined by the Tangku Truce of 1933. In early December the Kuomintang responded by establishing the Hopei–Chahar Political Council, headed by General Sung Che-yuan, who undertook the thankless task of attempting to effect a reconciliation. Contrary to the expectations of the Kwantung Army, Sung successfully steered a middle course between this Scylla and Charybdis.
In January 1936 the Commander of Japan’s North China Garrison Army was instructed by his military superiors in Tokyo on how to deal with the situation in his area. A summary of those instructions, cabled by Foreign Minister Hirota to Ariyoshi Akira, Japan’s first fully-fledged Ambassador to China in the modern era, accurately shows how naked self-interest tends to masquerade in altruistic clothes in such circumstances:
The principal objects to be borne in mind in dealing with the North China area are to assist the Chinese people in realizing a self-government in North China by themselves, and thus to let the people enjoy their lives and jobs peacefully; also to let them adjust their relations with Japan and Manchukuo, and thus promote the mutual welfare of these three nations…
Territorially speaking, the five provinces of North China will be made the object of that self-government, but we must be careful not to be too eager to embrace the entire area all at once. On the contrary, we should first aim at a gradual realization of self-government in Hopei and Chahar as well as in the Peking and Tientsin conurbations and we should aim at inducing the remaining three provinces to join with the other two voluntarily. Our advice and guidance to the Hopei-Chahar Political Council should be given through Sung Che-yuan for the time being, and self-government movements by the people should be encouraged in so far as they remain fair and just, and should make use of them in gradually realizing an actual self-government among the people of those two provinces, thus laying firmly the foundation of eventual self-government for all five provinces in North China…
With regard to the extent of that self-government, it would, of course, be better to let the people have as much liberty as possible, but for the present, we should aim at and endeavour for the realization of such a state as will leave no room for the Nanking Government [of Chiang Kai-shek] to carry out anti-Japanese and anti-Manchukuo policies, and by leaving the rest for gradual achievement in future, we should avoid too hasty a desire for an acquisition of independent powers.
With regard to the guidance to be given by us, we should endeavour principally to guide in the economic field, especially in finance, and also in military affairs, along with the education and guidance of the general populace; and in doing so, we should confine our guidance to the general line, leaving, as much as possible, the details to the task and responsibility of the Chinese people.∗
The document goes on to explain these policies at greater length and to establish the importance of seeking cooperation from the Kwantung Army and close contact with Japanese military attachés, diplomats and naval officials stationed in China. Other messages, much more aggressive in expression, were to follow in the months ahead. More importantly, internecine political struggles and civil/military conflict once again rocked Japan. In North China, however, peace of a kind was maintained, uneasily, until July 1937.
Although it was not immediately apparent, a turning-point had been reached several months earlier in December 1936. The Young Marshal Chang Hsueh-liang, driven into a bitter exile from Manchuria, had found Chiang Kai-shek utterly unwilling to embark upon major operations designed to expel the Japanese from Manchuria and North China. On the contrary, Chiang attempted to pit the Young Marshal against the communist forces that had regrouped in Shensi. It was widely believed that Chiang confidently expected both sides to be badly mauled. In any event, the Young Marshal was appointed commander of the ‘North-western Bandit-Suppression Forces’. His Manchurians, numbering 130,000 troops assisted by 40,000 local militia, were deployed across the central and southern areas of Shensi and Kansu provinces, showed themselves half-hearted against the communists, who operated from the more northerly districts. The campaign began well enough but soon began to run out of steam. The morale of Chang Hsueh-liang’s forces drained away: two of his best divisions defected to the communists, weary of the Chinese civil war, desiring only to push the Japanese out of Manchuria. The campaign ground slowly to a halt. By degrees, in the summer and autumn of 1936, the two sides found they had reached a common understanding and mutual respect. In June 1936 Chang met with an exceptionally astute young communist leader named Chou En-lai, one of Mao Tse-tung’s most trusted lieutenants. It seemed pointless to fight one another: the time had come for all Chinese guns to turn against their common enemy. Chang did everything within his power to persuade Chiang Kai-shek to move in the same direction.
Chang Hsueh-liang made two fruitless journeys to Nanking simply to press his case. At the end of November, he wrote eloquently to Chairman Chiang:
For the period of nearly half a year, I have continuously laid before Your Excellency my principle and program of struggle against Japanese imperialism for national salvation… Now the war against Japanese imperialism is beginning… I have therefore waited patiently for Your Excellency’s order of mobilization. To my greatest disappointment, I have so far received no such order at all… Pressed by the zealous sentiments of my troops and urged on by my personal convictions, I ventured to present my recent appeals, but Your Excellency instructed me to wait for an opportunity… In order to control our troops, we should keep our promise to them that whenever the chance comes they should be allowed to carry out their desire of fighting against the enemy. Otherwise, they will regard not only myself but also Your Excellency as impostors, and will no longer obey us. Now is exactly the right time. Please give us the order to mobilize…∗
It was all in vain. Chiang was unmoved by the Young Marshal’s pleas and warnings.
The tension came to a head in December 1936. Chiang flew to inspect the Manchurian troops at the Young Marshal’s headquarters in Sian, the provincial capital of Shensi, accompanied by a large entourage and eighty bomber aircraft to see why no progress was being made in the ‘bandit-suppression’ campaign and to read the riot act.
From Chairman Chiang’s point of view, the quality of the troops and their record as fighting men were both rather poor, and their employment had been a problem. Blockading is a tedious duty: the soldiers and officers felt themselves in a strange land; they desired only to be led back to their homes. So disgruntled were they that they fell easy victims to propaganda by the communists, whom they were supposed to be cutting off from all communications with the outside world. Rumour of this had reached Chiang, but he did not realize how deeply the rot went. It is very strange that he should have ventured among such disaffected troops with no proper bodyguard. Not for the first or last time in his career, the secret police and Intelligence services, who were a major factor in his Government, failed him. He visited Chang Hsueh-liang twice at his headquarters in Sian, and on his second visit, on the first night, he was surprised while in a bungalow by a rising of the Manchurian officers. He managed to escape in the darkness and crawl up the garden, but he had hurt his back in getting away, and after a few hours he was discovered.
The Young Marshal had learned of the appointment of another general to take direct charge of the operations, and it was this which finally led him to break with Chiang, side with the communists and unexpectedly place Chairman Chiang and his entire entourage under arrest. Chang Hsueh-liang sent telegrams to Nanking. A period of suspense followed news of the kidnapping. The mutineers tried to negotiate Chiang’s release in return for an undertaking that he would declare war on Japan. Chiang refused absolutely to enter into negotiations with them, and tried, though power was all on their side and he was isolated and defenceless, to overawe them and compel them by superior strength of will to set him free. Chang Hsueh-liang appeared quite prepared to kill Chiang in the event of any attempt by the Kuomintang to mount an expedition to rescue their national leader. Afterwards it emerged that Chiang’s life was spared mainly through the intercession of Chou En-lai, a man of great patience, tact and persuasion. Chiang, too, impressed his captor, who eventually wilted under Chiang’s rebukes, and who, in consequence, became his protector against some of the more extreme officers, who would have shot him on the spot. Whatever may have been felt later about Chiang, his bearing among his captors compels admiration.
In the outer world, the Government in Nanking was extremely bewildered. There were signs of a break-up, and some of the key personalities began to prepare for a struggle for the post which Chiang seemed to be about to vacate. In Tokyo, too, the Government had no plans for such an unexpected contingency. Britain and America likewise waited, consulting their runes.
The people with resolution were on the one side Chiang’s dynamic and opinionated wife and his brother-in-law, T. V. Soong: and on the other side the leaders of the communists, who were only a few miles away. After Chiang’s captors had drawn a blank in their efforts at compelling him to negotiate, they sent for Chou En-lai and the political officers of the communists. It has never been cleared up whether the communists had known beforehand of the plot. One view is that, immediately after the kidnapping, Moscow had taken a hand in the direction of events. There was radio communication between them and Yenan, the capital of the communists in Shensi province; and the policy of Moscow, which was itself under menace from Japan, had been to preserve, at whatever sacrifice this might be to ideological sense, Chiang Kai-shek alive as the most useful and strongest ally against Japan. The kidnapping threatened this policy, and the interests of the USSR. Simultaneously, Madame Chiang and her brother flew to Sian. By acting whilst others talked, they had intervened to prevent the Nanking Government from using its planes to bomb the mutineers. Such an action might have seemed justified, but it would probably have resulted in Chiang’s immediate execution. His death might have suited the ambitions of some of the higher officers of the Nanking régime.
There were confused and secret deliberations at Sian. In the end the communists returned home, apparently convinced that Chiang would call off another large-scale offensive against their position in Shensi, which had been planned for the immediate future: and they seem to have been given some assurance that he would in future carry on a more lively defence against the Japanese. The communists were to be autonomous in the areas, not very extensive, which they actively held, and an attempt was to be made at associating a few communist dignitaries in the central Government of the Kuomintang. In his own aircraft, Chang Hsueh-liang flew Chiang and Madam Chiang out of Sian on Christmas Day and following an overnight stay at Loyang reached the safety of Nanking on Boxing Day. Chiang was once again a free man. The Young Marshal, to everyone’s astonishment, surrendered himself to Chiang, announcing that having thoroughly repented of his own part in the mutiny he now desired to make restitution. He was tried and imprisoned for a ten-year term. But this was nothing more than a gesture to demonstrate the authority of the National Government, and the Young Marshal was granted a free pardon almost immediately afterwards.
It took several months before the significance of these confusing events could be understood, months during which the central political authorities met to consider the situation. The Chinese communists put forward a programme calling for an end to the civil war; the introduction of freedom of speech, assembly, organization, etc., and the release of all political prisoners; the convening of a national congress representing all parties, factions, military groups and organizations, to serve as a focal point for national talents in the interests of national salvation; the initiation of preparations for a war of national resistance against Japan, and amelioration of the living conditions of the Chinese people as a whole. In exchange for these the communists declared that they would abandon their attempts to overthrow the Kuomintang by force of arms; transform their so-called ‘Soviet Government of China’ and ‘Red Army’ into a loyal ‘Government of the Special Region of the Republic of China’ and a ‘National Revolutionary Army’ subject to direct control by the Chinese central authorities; accept a democratic system of universal suffrage within the ‘Special Region’; end the expropriation of landlords, and commit the communist movement to the service of the anti-Japanese united front.
The Government and the Kuomintang’s political leadership, however, threw out the proposals put to them by Chang Hsueh-liang and the communists. Communists and their collaborators were declared to be anathema to the state. There could be no compromise with those who spread communist subversion, nor with any group whose activities undermined national unity. The Sian rebels had engaged in treasonable sedition; their resort to force nullified the terms which Chiang Kai-shek had been obliged to accept during his captivity. The Young Marshal, indeed, seemed to have struck the death knell of the ‘common front’ strategy. One foreign observer, listening perhaps too much to the opinions of well-connected Chinese politicians and bureaucrats, wrote at the time that the Young Marshal’s ‘foolhardy action… called down upon him the wrath of the vast majority of the Chinese people and robbed him of what little prestige he still possessed’.∗ Following his pardon, Chang retired to Fenghua in Chekiang province south-east of Nanking: far from Chang’s Manchurian homeland but near to where Chiang Kai-shek was recovering from his injuries at his home outside Ningpo. The Young Marshal’s disaffected troops were transferred to the provinces of Honan, Anhwei and Kiangsu, where they were integrated into the forces of the Central Government but retained their own officers. There they were kept out of trouble, and were well positioned to move forward against any attempt by the hated Japanese to seize control of Shantung or Shanghai.
The Sian Incident had been dramatic: and was also fateful. It might as easily have ended in an opposite way. Chiang Kai-shek might have been executed by the communists or his captors: the history of Sino-Japanese relations would in that case certainly have developed in a different way. It throws light on the intelligent and subtle mind of the communists, whose roughness of manner had hidden their talent for diplomacy. They must have calculated that Chiang alone could lead China into war: and they were content to use him, and the huge and growing armies of the Kuomintang, for this purpose. Ostensibly Chiang agreed to this; he accepted that it was allegedly the national decision to respond to Japanese aggression by making war. One of the great curiosities of the next four decades was the fact that Chou En-lai, in no small measure the saviour of Chiang Kai-shek’s life, was to devote the remainder of his own life and statesmanship to the extermination of Chiang’s régime and reputation.
In reality Chiang fought still to temporize, to procrastinate, to trip up the persons who were relentlessly pressing him forward, to complicate the issues, to drag new considerations to the front. In any case time was needed to make dispositions for war. He was the Reluctant Dragon – dragon because all Chinese emperors (and Chiang was virtually an emperor) are thought of as dragons – reluctant because he was warned by his sure political instinct that his position – and much else besides – would not survive the war.
But in July 1937 the Japanese attacked, and Chiang had to accept their challenge. The assessment which he made, and which forced his hand, was probably as follows.
The students, and the university professors, so vastly influential in the China of that day, so exaggeratedly more important than their numbers or physical power made credible, were, with few exceptions, for resisting. They compelled the country as a whole to take a stiff line, beyond what it would otherwise have thought possible. Also, for an end to patience – though it was hard to speak of a solid voice of such a disparate class, and one not used to having its views considered – were the army officers as a whole, underneath the top commanders. They were variously derived: many were corrupt; but the national spirit was apparent, in varying degrees, in most of them. The same was less true, as Chiang knew well, of some of the senior commanders, who were exposed to the blandishments of the Japanese, whose attitude changed from time to time according to the inducements offered to them, and who did not constitute an inspiring leadership. However, in 1937, most were willing to fight. The landed gentry, while not exactly enthusiasts for resistance, reflected the mood of China: their patience was strained beyond endurance.
Of the true middle class – the native bankers and money-lenders, the petty manufacturers, the craftsmen, the minor civil servants – the disposition was fairly solidly nationalist, and ready to oppose Japan. Some sections were less forward than others; there was always the contradiction between defence of their commercial or other advantage, and the gratification of feeling: none of them could have felt that war would bring them benefits. But they also felt, obscurely perhaps, that they were instruments in a conflict, and it was not in their power to stand aside. They may have deplored their fate, but most of them, while privately desiring to be left in peace, were ready to follow the national path. The merchant guilds, which played a considerable part in the organization of economic life, had been very prominent in the organization of the resistance in Shanghai in 1931. It was indicative of the part which national sentiment was to play in the organization of the people in the Chinese war effort.
More individualist and more cynical was the attitude of the great bankers and financial magnates of the Treaty Ports. Some of them, indeed, were with the war party: many had greater political regard for the security of their possessions.
The masses of people – the poor peasantry, the unskilled workers of the towns – the people who were to bear the main burden of the war in hardship and toll of life – were not consulted, and their opinions would have been taken as being of little weight. But among these, so far as they were informed, the temper was apt to be nationalist, and strongly nationalist. In the Asia of the past generation, it was always remarkable how news circulated, and how accurate the reports tended to be which circulated in the back streets and urban slums. The temper of the vast anonymous mass could not be overlooked.