The China Mission

by Daniel Kurtz-Phelan

  White had kind things to say about Marshall, praising his “integrity, wisdom, and devotion.” Yet even he could not “reconcile a policy of peaceful words and warlike deeds.” In Washington, according to White, the standard response to hard questions about that policy was “wait till Marshall gets back.”

  Acheson wrote Marshall to update him on the growing stateside contentiousness, with “extremists on one side calling for all-out support of Chiang and those on the other side advocating complete withdrawal of support.” There was also a rising chorus of complaint from “impartial observers that they have not been kept fully informed of our actions in China,” Acheson related. (“In a sense,” wrote White, “all relations between the U.S. and China exist in the vest pocket of George Marshall.”)

  To address that complaint, Truman released a policy statement on December 18, ostensibly an update of the one timed with Marshall’s initial departure for China. It clarified little, in Nanjing or Washington, mostly serving to reveal how many dilemmas had remained unresolved since Marshall had first waded into the policy debates the previous December. Reprising many of the same exhortations and elisions, along with a slew of new ones, it traced Marshall’s efforts over the past year. “While avoiding involvement in their civil strife we will persevere with our policy of helping the Chinese people to bring about peace and economic recovery in their country,” it proclaimed. In stressing an American commitment to a “united and democratic China,” Truman omitted the third word in the old mantra—strong.

  By now, that mantra—a strong, united, and democratic China—had taken on an ironic edge. Wits in the American embassy had taken to standing impudently at attention every time they heard the three words.

  It reflected a general ill temper in Nanjing’s official circles as the holidays approached. The cocktail parties and receptions started up again, but with little of the hope or good feeling of the year before in Chongqing. On Ning Hai Road, Katherine’s absence was felt by all. Marshall was coming down with a cold, canceling social engagements and avoiding visitors. Madame Chiang sent fruit and candy and cheerily told him to get well by Christmas.

  From Yenan, Truman’s statement occasioned another blast of scorn. “If America wants to show respect for Chinese independence, she must withdraw troops from China,” said a CCP spokesman. Until recently the face of conciliation, Zhou was now the most prominent voice of denunciation. Was it not clear, he asked, “that the United States and Chiang Kai-shek are working hand in glove to give free rein to large-scale hostilities?” Fliers scattered in the streets of Nanjing accused Marshall and MacArthur of colluding with Japanese militarists; Communist outlets compared Americans to Nazis.

  Chiang, meanwhile, hoped to make Truman’s statement play in his favor. He had already been concertedly cultivating Marshall, aware that his mission must be approaching its end. Noting rumors of a presidential run, Chiang repeated his request that Marshall stay as an adviser, insisting he could do more good in Nanjing than Washington. He asked for Marshall’s advice on Chinese democracy. The substance of Truman’s statement suggested that such appeals were doing some good. “What is important is that he put the blame for the failure of the mediation on the Communists,” Chiang judged. “Marshall should be credited for this. He is perhaps moved by my sincerity.”

  Marshall was well aware that “blame for failure” was the paramount concern of both sides at this point. While Chiang searched for promising signals between the lines of Truman’s statement, the Communists insisted they could not be said to have given up on talks, since Zhou’s aides were still in Nanjing. (Marshall had come to have high regard for the skill of these Communist propagandists: “Their publicity campaign is without any regard to the facts but has a well defined purpose,” while “the Government publicity has the same disregard for the facts but lacks clever direction.”)

  Marshall had been struggling over his own ongoing dilemmas—how to support the Nationalists without encouraging hard-liners and undercutting reform, how to spur reform without publicly tearing down the Nationalists and thus playing directly into the hands of the Communists. He did not want to “destroy the foundation” of Chiang’s government, but he also considered it “useless to expect the United States to pour money into a Government dominated by a completely reactionary clique bent on exclusive control of governmental power.” He would not give up entirely on the notion that a unified government might some day be possible—he even continued to speculate offhandedly that Mao could be de facto prime minister under a President Chiang Kai-shek—but it was abundantly clear that such a prospect was at best a long way off.

  “At the present,” Marshall reported to Washington, “I have been using all of my influence to force the adoption of a constitution in keeping with the PCC resolutions”—one that lived up to the high-minded political agreements struck over his first weeks in China, “a genuine democratic document” rather than “a hollow instrument of dictatorship.” With the right constitution, the door back to a peaceful solution might, over the long run, remain open.

  Initial signals from the National Assembly had been worrying. The absence of the Communists and key third parties meant that Nationalist delegates had the power to turn the proceedings into a “steamroller” rather than a deliberative body. (In a moment of frustration, Marshall had wondered out loud whether any of the Chinese even understood democracy.) But recent reports were more promising. The assembly was the biggest gathering of its kind that the world, not just China, had ever seen, and the lively give-and-take persuaded even some skeptical observers that it was more than just a charade. The draft constitution opened with a call for “a democratic republic of the people, for the people, and by the people.”

  What gave Marshall pause was his belief that, in the long run, political progress would depend on the existence of an opposition party to keep the Nationalists in check. He thought one-party control accounted for much of the decay over the years—“what happens when one group stands in continuous power without anybody to attack their motives and procedures.” A coalition government, with the Communists functioning as “a constructive opposition party,” would have created helpful pressure. With that possibility off the table, Chiang and the Nationalists would have to push forward toward democracy on their own. The conniving of the hard-liners so far, especially the previous spring when Marshall was in Washington, made unnervingly clear how hard that would be. “I did not expect the Kuomintang to surrender its power without a struggle,” Marshall complained, “but I also did not expect the kind of chicanery which they have practiced since February.” The party, he declared, “cannot reform itself.”

  That is where the third-party leaders and other liberals came in, or so Marshall, and others, hoped. If bringing the Communists into government was implausible, this small band, disjointed and often ineffectual as it was, could form the basis of a true middle in Chinese politics, checking extremists on both sides. The problem, as Marshall could see, was that rather than joining together, the “liberal elements” continued to bicker and take sides. Nationalist repression—the Nanjing train-station beating in June and the Kunming murders in July still loomed large—was driving many of them away.

  “It is an ugly sight to watch a country increasingly being forced into one extreme or the other,” observed Melby. “It makes any form of decent liberalism seem hopeless.”

  On Christmas Eve, the Chiangs hosted a small party. Marshall was the last to arrive. His cold had gotten worse, and he had canceled plans to attend Christmas services at St. Paul’s, the local Episcopal church. But the Chiangs had worked hard to generate some good cheer for the Americans, and Marshall entered to find officers in dress uniforms and diplomats in dinner jackets standing around on a panda-skin rug, drinking martinis and Old Fashioneds as Christmas music played. After roast turkey and brandied fruitcake, a portly Nationalist official wearing a Santa Claus costume and hoisting a sack of presents emerged from behind a screen. He gave Marshall a reading stand to use in b
ed (his reading habits were well known) and joked, “You know, when I came past Honolulu I saw Katherine and she said to be sure to say hi to George.” Marshall left as soon as he could, and the party broke up immediately afterward.

  Around the same time, another Christmas party broke up six hundred miles to the north, in Beijing. Two U.S. marines had been drinking heavily at the Manhattan Club for most of the night. On their way to the next party, they came upon a 19-year-old woman, a Peking University student named Shen Chung. Later that night, police found them on the nearby Polo Grounds, Shen crying out that she had been raped. As the news made its way around China, protesters began heading into the streets, fury trained on the United States.

  In Nanjing the next afternoon, Christmas Day, the National Assembly held its closing session. (Marshall declined an invitation to attend, instructing that no explanation be given for his absence.) Chiang presided over the ratification of a new Chinese constitution and walked off stage to cries of “Long live China!” The Communists, surprising no one, dismissed the text as a “fake constitution.” But the assessments passed to Marshall were encouraging. Chiang had stood firm against the scheming and dissent of the CC Clique and other conservatives in his ranks. The final document promised national elections in 1947, governmental reform, and the return of the capital to Beijing. Whether any of this would actually be implemented, whether it would prove to be more than a “collection of words” without pressure from a strong opposition, was another question. But it was a start. Inside the hall, there was a notable feeling of accomplishment.

  Outside, there were growing demonstrations. “Yanks, go home,” students shouted at American troops. “Get out you beasts,” read the signs. This time, rather than suppressing protests, Nationalist authorities ordered police protection for protesters. They knew the anger was real. “Every major turning point in modern Chinese history,” Teddy White and Annalee Jacoby had written in Thunder Out of China, “has been signalized by student uprisings.”

  On the afternoon of December 28, Marshall visited Chiang for another difficult conversation. In Marshall’s view, the risks to Chiang’s rule were not just political and social and economic; they were also military.

  Even many Americans were saying that “the Commies don’t have a chance.” The Nationalists had American planes and rifles and artillery, sometimes matched against Communist spears and sickles and pig knives. They had two or three times as many troops, and three or four times as many guns. Communist units were in retreat almost everywhere, including from many of their “liberated areas.” Chiang’s forces had claimed control of more of China than ever before, upwards of 80 percent, from perhaps 15 percent a little over a year earlier. The Communists “fight like babies,” a Nationalist commander scoffed.

  Chiang was readying his final offensive, certain that total victory would come at some point in 1947. The irritations of managing Marshall’s mission would no longer be a drag on his ability to fight (or, for that matter, to suppress dissent). According to Chiang’s plan, two large pincers of the best Nationalist divisions would cut off Mao’s forces. Before the Soviets could effectively intervene to save them, the Communists would be annihilated.

  Chiang had ordered attacks on remaining pockets of Communist strength. He had troops massing to take Yenan (despite promises to the contrary to Marshall, who no longer placed much stock in such promises anyway). He had even started extending his writ beyond Chinese shores, preparing to send decommissioned American Navy ships to seize islands in the South China Sea, based on a map of an expansive U-shaped claim to the contested waters drawn up by his officials. He was confident: total victory was within reach, and it was time for a last burst of action.

  “You can sometimes win a great victory by a very dashing action,” Marshall would say. “But often, or most frequently, the very dashing action exposes you to a very fatal result if it is not successful.” That was the danger he sought to get across now. Nationalist confidence in a great victory was in fact overconfidence, and overconfidence could be fatal. He wanted Chiang to recognize that his power, seemingly so vast, had limits.

  Marshall reminded Chiang that Nationalist generals had been guaranteeing imminent victory since the spring, based on continual “faulty and optimistic estimates” of their strength. Again and again, they had predicted quick success; again and again, their predictions had proved wrong.

  Marshall had served in his country’s army for four decades. He had charted victories in two world wars. He had also witnessed the strange power of rebellion on his first tour in the Philippines, where an outgunned but spirited insurgent army inflicted great damage on a more modern force. When Marshall assessed that Chiang’s “seeming success” was in reality “great weakness,” it was with this long military experience in mind, along with everything he had seen in China over the past twelve months. In his assessment, Chiang’s army was capable of neither “destroying the Communist Party by force,” nor of “defending itself against the guerrilla tactics of the Communists.” The Nationalists might appear to have control, but appearances could be deceiving. As American intelligence reports warned, “The military position of the Chinese Nationalists is actually much less improved than would appear on the surface.”

  Marshall and Chiang had discussed the risks of overextension for months, and Chiang was aware of the danger. But Marshall now saw prudence falling away in the fervor of final victory. Nationalist lines stretched and Nationalist forces spread themselves thin. And Marshall was far from the only one to identify the peril. “China is simply too vast,” Wedemeyer had recently written in one of his missives to Nanjing. “It is obvious that we should not dissipate our resources all over China and Manchuria.”

  The extent of the Nationalists’ advantage in weaponry, with hundreds of millions of dollars in modern arms sent by Washington, was also deceptive. In pursuit of fast-moving Communist troops, heavy American vehicles bogged down in the mud. Antitank guns got marooned miles from the front. American snow boots were too big for Chinese feet. And troubling numbers of the Nationalists’ weapons were ending up in Communist hands, some captured, some bought from corrupt officers. “We do not know how much the Government is losing,” Marshall admitted, but his sources suggested that the number was considerable. Communist troops sang: “We have no rifles, we have no cannon; the enemy makes them for us!”

  When Chiang’s forces won battles, victory often came at a steep price, steep enough to call into question whether they were really victories at all. A Nationalist general estimated that recent forward movement had consumed one-fifth of total strength and enough American ammunition and weaponry to supply tens of thousands of troops. To Marshall’s dismay, Chiang continued to send army after army into Manchuria, many of them with little or no training, peasant boys sent to the slaughter with guns they barely knew how to fire.

  The quality of Nationalist command was a big part of the problem. Marshall would rate Chiang “the worst advised military commander in history.” Generals more interested in court politics than battlefield imperatives gave calamitously misleading assessments of military realities. Leadership positions went to “those politically acceptable rather than those qualified,” noted an embassy analysis. (Until that changed, it added, “all efforts to strengthen the present army by increasing its technical and material means will result in no more than a temporary and superficial benefit.”) Marshall had pressed Chiang to cashier the worst offenders—after all, a purged and rebuilt officer corps was key to American victory in World War II—but with little success.

  The lapses went deeper than bad advice. Nationalist generals could be so suspicious of one another that they thwarted coordination and hoarded resources. Many were guilty of, in Chiang’s words, “corruption and degeneracy,” including selling supplies for profit. (“Jeeps had a habit of walking off if unwatched for a few minutes,” Marshall would point out.) They abused their troops—ruining morale and driving junior enlisted men into Communist armies, where they were said
to get better treatment—and also local populations in regions where it mattered most. In Manchuria, residents started to complain that life had been better under the Japanese.

  Nationalist lapses played right into Communist strategy. As Marshall had pointed out to Chiang, the Communists had “no intention of making a stand or of fighting to a finish at any place”; they “lost cities and towns but they have not lost their armies.” (Chiang’s own experience gave him reason to recognize the potency of this strategy: he had done much the same to the Japanese.) As Chiang’s forces advanced, Communist troops continued to recede into the hinterland, “luring the enemy in deep,” where they waited to strike weak points in roads and rails and logistics networks. They were also well indoctrinated, fired with the belief that they were fighting for something right—especially those peasants who had benefited from land reform, a “gallant peasant army,” the CCP proclaimed, “the best guarantee of our final victory.” The Communists, White and Jacoby had written, “knew precisely what the peasants’ grievances were and how those grievances could be transmuted into action.”

  For the past year, when he contemplated the consequences of his mission’s failure, Marshall had thought of prolonged chaos and civil war, perhaps a return to “the dark ages of warlordism.” Even Stalin, even Mao at many points, had considered total Communist victory as far-fetched as total Nationalist victory. But Marshall was starting to play out the string of consequences that flowed from his warnings. He had seen how impressive Communist command could be, how cunning a strategist Mao was. He realized that collapse was a real possibility, and collapse would be a boon to Communist prospects and an opening to Soviet infiltration. Where would that end? An earlier summary by an aide emphasized: “General Marshall concluded that so long as there remained in existence an independent Communist Government and independent Communist Army, China was highly vulnerable to undercover Soviet infiltration, which would result in the Communists overthrowing the Generalissimo by force of arms.”