China at War

by Hans van de Ven

  Chiang’s blood brother, Chen Qimei, was murdered in 1916. Shaken to the core and influenced by the ancient writers he was reading, Chiang began a determined effort to bring under control his bad temper, curb his womanising and live a purposeful, disciplined and worthwhile life. ‘I dedicate myself to building my character and strengthening my learning to continue Chen Qimei’s revolutionary mission,’10 he wrote in his diary. In 1919, looking back on his behaviour after the 1911 Revolution, he wrote in self-disgust that he had been ‘incredibly dissolute and depraved’. A good friend, Dai Jitao, who was a translator and private secretary to Sun Yatsen, once upbraided Chiang for a particularly vicious outburst. Chiang came close to hitting him, but once he calmed down he acknowledged that Dai ‘looks down upon me because of my own terrible character; I must learn to be vigilant’. Bridling his anger and resisting temptation became a lifelong effort for Chiang. ‘Now I wish to put my mind straight and cultivate the self, but no matter how hard I work at improving my knowledge and then strive to implement it, I fear it is too late.’11

  In 1919, China was rocked by a wave of student demonstrations when it became clear that Japan would get its way at the Paris Peace Conference. Japan had joined the First World War on the Allied side and its navy had helped police international shipping lanes. In 1917, China had also joined the war on the Allied side, expecting that at the post-war peace conference the Allies would agree to hand over German possessions in Shandong province to China.12 When the USA, the UK and France instead agreed to Japan taking them over, student demonstrations erupted across China. These fuelled the May Fourth Movement, whose more radical wing, in a fit of iconoclastic fervour, called for the destruction of the ‘Confucian Shop’ – China’s traditional culture – so that ‘Mr Science’ and ‘Mr Democracy’ could flourish. Chiang rejected the movement’s iconoclasm but drew some energy from it: ‘this is the first protest movement of the Republic, a real breakthrough. I now see that our spirit is undiminished and that the revival of the Republic will happen one day.’13

  Another wave of protests a few years later further revitalised Chiang’s energies. On 30 May 1925, the Shanghai International Settlement police shot dead two protesters at the Louza police station, where fifteen students involved in organising strikes and protests were being held. During the spring, demonstrations and strikes had taken place regularly in protest against the working conditions and deaths in Japanese factories, as well as the high-handed measures of the foreign Shanghai Municipal Council. The shooting at the Louza police station occurred after protesters had forced their way into the building in order to release the students. The incident triggered a nationwide response, with protests and strikes taking place in most major cities, including Canton, where foreign police in the Shameen Concession killed dozens of Chinese protesters.

  These incidents left Chiang furious. ‘The stupid British slaves [probably a reference to some Sikh policemen from India] look on Chinese lives like weed, to be rooted out mercilessly. When I learned of these incidents, my guts nearly split apart. I have never been so upset in my life,’ he wrote, adding later, ‘We must not forget this day of shame.’14 Having been patronised by drivers and telephonists working for the foreigners, he fumed: ‘parasites working in the foreign concessions for municipal governments and foreign companies should all be killed.’15 Now fully recovered from his post-1911 Revolution despair and both angered and motivated by incidents such as the Louza shooting, Chiang Kaishek was once more ready for action.

  Sun Yatsen and Chiang Kaishek

  Chiang’s search for a purpose in life ended when Sun Yatsen’s KMT decided to create an independent military force. Until then, Sun Yatsen had put his faith in the ability of an isolated mutiny or local rebellion to spark a nationwide uprising, as indeed had happened in 1911. Otherwise he relied on the support of a powerful local figure in command of a substantial army. That was the case when Sun Yatsen established a military government in Canton in 1917, only to be driven out two years later. He returned to Canton soon after and once more formed a government, but in 1922 he was turfed out of the province once again, this time by Chen Jiongming, a Qing Dynasty legislator and Revolutionary Alliance member who was at the time the military governor of Guangdong province. Chen Jiongming objected to Sun Yatsen’s preparations for a military expedition to unify China by force, for which the resources of Guangdong would have to be used. Chen Jiongming preferred a federal form of government, in which the provinces would be largely autonomous, as opposed to Sun Yatsen’s more centralised vision for China.

  These experiences led Sun to agree with those of his followers, including Dai Jitao, who argued that the Nationalists needed to have their own armies. Following the repeated failure of Sun’s putschist strategy and the success of the Red Army in the Russian civil war after the October Revolution of 1917, Dai Jitao concluded that a party army was ‘indispensable for destroying the forces of the old and creating a new world’.16 Shortly afterwards, Soviet agents arrived in China, seeking to export revolution to Asia after it became clear that the revolutions that had broken out in Europe after the First World War were destined to fail. Having decided that Sun was their best bet, the Soviet representatives offered him advisors, arms and funds, which he accepted with alacrity, agreeing to the Soviets’ condition that he work with the Communists. Soon after, a Nationalist–Communist united front was negotiated.

  Chiang Kaishek’s close friend and lifelong confidant Dai Jitao argued that Sun’s ideas were rooted in Confucian thinking, a suggestion obviously congenial to Chiang. As with Chen Qimei, Chiang was willing to go to great lengths to help Dai. For instance, he agreed to raise as his own Dai’s illegitimate child, Wei-kuo, born in Japan of a liaison with a Japanese woman. Dai feared that his wife would not accept Wei-kuo, but Chiang was as good as his word and appears not to have revealed the child’s parentage even to his wife, Madame Chiang.17 Loyalty to friends and living up to his promises were important to Chiang.

  Sun now turned to Chiang to help build up his party army. Not only was Chiang one of his more knowledgeable followers when it came to military affairs, but he had also proved his loyalty and bravery when, in 1922, he had rushed to Sun Yatsen’s side when he had taken refuge on a gunboat to escape the shelling from Chen Jiongming’s artillery. In 1923, having succeeded in marshalling enough forces to regain his position in Canton, Sun sent Chiang Kaishek to Moscow to negotiate details of a collaboration agreement with the Soviet Union,18 a mission Chiang saw as an opportunity ‘for a fundamental solution for our country’.19

  In Moscow, Chiang somewhat overstated the Nationalists’ position, arguing that they were in control of three provinces in south China and commanded an army of 60,000 troops; he also claimed that the KMT had powerful backing in Manchuria and in the region of the lower Yangzi river. He tried to convince the Soviets to establish a military base at Ulan Bator in Mongolia and at Urumqi in Xinjiang province in order to train and equip a force of 30,000 men in two years. His idea was that, once ready, it would strike towards Beijing at the same time as the KMT’s forces would march north from Guangdong province. When the Soviets advised that the Nationalists should first make propaganda for their cause and establish mass organisations, without which military action would be premature, Chiang countered: ‘in Russia, the Communist Party only faced the Tsar’s government. China is different: we encounter the resistance of all imperialist countries in the world … This is why we must develop military action.’20 Chiang concluded from the Soviets’ rejection of his proposal that they wanted to expand their own influence in Mongolia and Xinjiang.21

  Upon his return to Canton, Chiang became commandant of the Whampoa Military Academy, where Soviet advisors oversaw a training programme of cadets recruited from across China, many of whom would rise to prominent positions in the Communist as well as the Nationalist militaries. The academy’s aim was to train for the Nationalists’ National Revolutionary Army, a corps of officers educated at least to middle school level who were
not only dedicated to the Revolution but were honest, competent and trustworthy. Their training included tactics, rifle practice, logistics, engineering, communications, hygiene and geography. Already, by October 1914, 1,000 cadets were in training. By 1929, 7,399 cadets had graduated from the academy, enough to staff a good number of divisions. All had taken courses in Sun Yatsen’s ideas, party discipline, socialism and the ills of imperialism.22

  A Military Affairs Council, established in June 1925, supervised efforts to incorporate local military forces into the National Revolutionary Army. Many were in actuality ‘guest armies’, which had decamped from poorer neighbouring provinces to grab a resource base in rich Guangdong province. Some had been invited in by Sun as he faced this or that challenge. The Council attempted to integrate these armies by setting up a central supply office, appointing political commissars to all units and creating a unified staff system. Naturally, few armies, guest or otherwise, welcomed such inroads into their independence. Nor did their aggressive tax-raising efforts endear the Nationalists to Guangdong’s merchant classes or indeed to its local population.23

  Chiang Kaishek found his purpose in life when he joined Sun Yatsen’s revolution in Canton. Sun Yatsen put him in a position of serious responsibility and drew him into his inner circle, if still only as a junior member. After Sun Yatsen died of stomach cancer on 12 March 1925, the Nationalists turned him into the great missing figure of the Chinese revolution, using his legacy in many ways, including to justify Nationalist one-party rule. But the close relations many had with him, and the sense of personal gratitude they felt towards him, probably also played a role in the emergence of the Nationalists’ Sun Yatsen cult. That gave the struggle to be regarded as the true heir to his legacy a personal, and therefore an especially sharp, edge.

  Chiang Kaishek’s coup

  Sun Yatsen’s death became a huge public event. Tens of thousands of people attended the memorial service in Beijing. The hearse carrying a giant portrait of Sun proceeded at a solemn pace along Chang’an Avenue, the boulevard that runs east–west through Beijing, passing south of the Forbidden City and north of Tian’anmen Square. In 1929 a similar portrait to the one on the hearse was fixed to the Gate of Heavenly Peace on the north side of Tian’anmen Square in the place where Mao Zedong’s portrait now hangs.24 Mass memorial events also took place in Canton, of course, and in Hong Kong, where the British police wielded their batons to drive away the workers who had brought the traffic to a halt.25 In New York, a memorial service at International House was, according to The New York Times, attended by some 1,000 people and ‘the dead Chinese leader was referred to by one speaker as carrying out the ideals of Jesus, Confucius, and Buddha, and by another as “one of the greatest men of all time”’.26

  Sun Yatsen’s death, however, also raised the obvious question of who was to take over. Its consequence was a succession struggle which left one party elder dead, another preferring exile to staying in China, and Chiang Kaishek leading his Nationalist armies out of Guangdong province on a military expedition to unify the country. At stake was the leadership of a popular party with an armed force. But warlord armies were on the march, students were protesting, and workers were striking against both foreign imperialism and domestic warlordism – and the Soviet bid for exporting revolution to China had upended decades of international cohabitation in China. Change, real change, was in the air.

  There were three contenders for power. One was 42-year-old Wang Jingwei, the Nationalists’ wunderkind, stylishly handsome, forever youthful, charismatic. A Cantonese like Sun Yatsen, Wang Jingwei had passed the fiendishly competitive civil service examinations and then gone on to study law and polit ics in Japan, where, like Chiang, he joined the Revolutionary Alliance. He rapidly developed a name for himself as a spellbinding speaker and a stylish essayist. Refusing to accept an arranged marriage, he had married the daughter of a rich Penang merchant who was a revolutionary in her own right. A failed 1910 attempt to assassinate Prince Chun, the regent of the child emperor, led to his arrest, a commuted death sentence and nationwide fame. This was much enhanced by the four beautifully crafted poems he published about his selfless sacrifice for China, in one of which he compared himself to the legendary jingwei bird, who spent his life carrying pebbles in his beak to fill the ocean, that is, in selfless sacrifice for the good of all. One line read: ‘another day, when tender blossoms bloom/please recognise on them the speckles of my blood’.27 Wang Jingwei, whose real name was Wang Zhaoming, had taken jingwei as his pen name.

  Hu Hanmin, who was also from Guangdong province, led the right-wing challenge. Four years older than Wang Jingwei, he too had passed the civil service examinations, although at a higher level than Wang, and had then gone on to study in Japan after the Boxer Rebellion. He also joined the Revolutionary Alliance, becoming the editor of its main organ, The People’s Journal. After the 1911 Revolution, he served as governor of Guangdong province and then joined the rebellion against President Yuan Shikai, after the failure of which he fled to Japan and helped Sun Yatsen reform the National Revolutionary Party, as the Nationalist Party was then called. He followed Sun Yatsen to Canton when Sun formed a new government there and acted in various senior positions, including as Minister of Transport, General Councillor and Acting Marshal when Sun was away from the city.

  The third contender was not Chiang Kaishek but Liao Zhongkai. Born in San Francisco in 1877, where his father worked for the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank, Liao Zhongkai had been educated in the United States, at Queen’s College in Hong Kong and at Waseda University in Japan. Having joined Sun Yatsen’s Revolutionary Alliance in the year of its founding, he became its financial expert, using his excellent connections among wealthy Cantonese as well as overseas Chinese to raise funds. In the 1920s, he served as Civil Governor of Guangdong province. He was one of the main architects of the first Communist–Nationalist united front and supported Chiang Kaishek’s appointment as commandant of the Whampoa Military Academy. In 1923 Chiang resigned in protest at the origins of some of the funds that supported the academy and at Sun Yatsen’s reliance on local militarists. In a stream of letters and telegrams to Chiang Kaishek, now back home in Zhejiang province, Liao Zhongkai beseeched him to retract his resignation, writing on one occasion that ‘the finances of the Academy have been arranged and you can announce them upon your return. As to other reforms, these we should plan together. If we fail, it will not be too late to resign together then.’28 Won over by this show of support, Chiang returned to Canton.

  Wang Jingwei soon appeared to have emerged as the winner. He was at Sun Yatsen’s side in Beijing as the stomach cancer overwhelmed him. On 11 March he recorded Sun Yatsen’s Last Testament, in which Sun entreated his followers to ‘arouse the masses and struggle together with all peoples in the whole world who treat us as equals’,29 a phrase that could be interpreted as an injunction to continue to work with the Soviets, as Wang Jingwei preferred. On 1 July, Wang Jingwei was elected chair of the National Political Council of the National Government, which had only just been set up. He also became chair of the Military Affairs Committee and the Central Political Council of the Nationalist Party. On 20 August, Liao Zhongkai was assassinated, an event in which, rumour had it, Hu Hanmin was implicated. Hu was arrested and, in an illustration of the influence the Russians wielded, was sent to the Soviet Union for further investigation. With Liao Zhongkai dead and Hu Hanmin out of the way, Wang Jingwei’s position seemed secure.

  However, Chiang Kaishek took Liao Zhongkai’s assassination as evidence, so he wrote in his diary, of ‘the existence of counter-revolutionary plots’.30

  Chiang had not been among the original candidates to succeed Sun Yatsen because he was still relatively young; also, as a mere military man, he lacked the stellar educational qualifications of Wang Jingwei, Liao Zhongkai and Hu Hanmin; and he had only just joined Sun Yatsen’s inner circle. However, the growing influence of the Chinese Communists, including at the Whampoa Military Academy, and that of t
he Soviet advisors made Chiang suspicious about the direction of travel. These deepened when the Russian General N. V. Kubishev, nicknamed Kisanka or Pussycat, declared himself opposed to the Northern Expedition, a military campaign from Guangdong province which aimed to unite China, which Chiang believed had been Sun’s cherished aim, and for which Chiang was now working hard to train up a new Nationalist army. The condescension of the Soviet advisors towards Chiang strained their relationship and increased his doubts about their intentions. General Kubishev described Chiang as ‘irresolute’ and unlikely to be a ‘success as leader of troops without the aid of outside instructors’.31 In 1926, Chiang wrote in his diary about Kubishev and the other Soviet advisors: ‘I treat them with sincerity, but they reward me with duplicity. These are not comrades with whom I can work.’32

  Chiang Kaishek’s worries intensified further when Wang Jingwei chipped away at his hold on military power. Not only did Wang relieve Chiang of his posts of commander of the KMT’s First Division and Canton garrison commander but he sided with Kubishev on the Northern Expedition and agreed to its cancellation. ‘The situation is extremely dangerous,’ Chiang concluded, ‘No revolution will happen if we do not take drastic action to break through this difficult impasse … I must bear insults and shoulder a heavy burden to protect the party and safeguard the nation.’33 Chiang became convinced that it was up to him to save the revolution that Sun Yatsen had begun. On 27 February, after a series of sleepless nights, he wrote: ‘I must be firm in implementing my final decision, otherwise the damage to the party and the nation will be indescribable.’34 On 5 March he added, ‘my situation now is that of singlehandedly facing merciless enemies on all sides. I am like a lone minister without support at court and people treat me as a bastard son. May the souls of Sun Yatsen and other martyrs protect me so that I do not fail.’35