China at War

by Hans van de Ven

  The officers of the Imperial Japanese Army regained control over their subordinates after a number of days had gone by. They kept their men busy with martial arts, sports, exercise, singing, music, painting and Japanese chess. Some Nanjing citizens went on the rampage, looting and burning buildings and extorting money and valuables from the Japanese (in a scenario no doubt repeated across the country). A battle broke out in the streets of Nanjing between forces of the Wang Jingwei government and a group which presented itself as a Chongqing commando force. However, according to General Okamura, ‘in general the attitude of Chinese officials and citizens towards us, Japanese, was surprisingly good’ – something he attributed to Chiang Kaishek’s broadcast, whose message was repeated in the Nationalist newspapers, which resumed publishing in Shanghai and Beijing as early as 17 August.17

  On 8 September General He Yingqin, escorted by nine fighter planes, flew in the twin-engined ‘Meiling’, named after Madame Chiang Kaishek, to the Gugong air field near Nanjing. Here he was welcomed by the senior staff of his advance party. After he had descended the steps of the plane, specially selected Nanjing residents handed him bouquets of flowers and banners of propitious phrases.18 When General He entered the city, ‘excited, flag-waving crowds cheered the procession of cars’, reported the Manchester Guardian.19 ‘A holiday spirit swept the newly liberated capital’, according to The New York Times, ‘as throngs braved the hot Sunday sun to celebrate the official surrender of the Japanese forces.’20 Thousands of Nationalist flags were flying, the words ‘peace’ and ‘victory’ adorned memorial arches at street entrances, and ‘curious onlookers joyfully mobbed American soldiers’, who had also just arrived. After the surrender ceremony, in order to reinforce the image of Nationalist benevo lence, General He Yingqin issued orders rescinding all taxes and levies to alleviate ‘the hardship of the people’.

  The date 9–9–9 never became 11–11–11. Although 9 September was an excellent date on which to stage Japan’s surrender ceremony, in order for it to be imbued with a wider significance – in this case as a display of Nationalist supremacy – it needed to be taken up, or at least quietly accepted, by all parties. While the Japanese were willing to perform their roles as drafted in the Nationalists’ script, the Communists were not. They were not willing to participate in a performance in which Chiang was crowned as a great victor, let alone accept him as China’s ruler, sage or otherwise.

  Civil War

  The Communists had been preparing for Japan’s surrender since the spring. Now they sprang into action. On 9 August, the day the USA exploded the second of its atomic bombs over Japan, Mao Zedong ordered his forces to ‘destroy enemy forces, seize their weapons and materiel, and aggressively expand liberated areas’ – with the word ‘enemy’ referring here to the Japanese.21 The next day, the CCP Central Committee activated plans to seize Shanghai, Nanjing, Beijing, Tianjin, Tangshan and Baoding.22 General Zhu, the Communist commander-in-chief, ordered his commanders ‘to send ultimatums to all enemy units and command posts in nearby towns and along important communication lines to hand over all their weapons to our combat forces’.23 On 11 August, Zhu De instructed Communist forces in Shandong province and north China to move units into Manchuria and join up with Soviet forces there. Mao Zedong stated in Yan’an the next day that ‘it is obvious that the fruits of victory belong to us’.24

  On 14 August, a Yan’an radio broadcast called Chiang Kaishek ‘the Fascist chieftain’. It denounced him as leading a ‘Kuomintang [Nationalist] reactionary clique’ and accused him of trying to use Japanese forces ‘to kill Chinese Communists and destroy the peace of China and the world’. The broadcast compared Chiang Kaishek to Wang Jingwei, suggesting that Chiang too was trying to take control of the country by relying on Japanese troops.25 It also claimed the victory over Japan for the Communists. ‘Unrecognized and not receiving one iota of supply from the Kuomintang Government, anti-Japanese armies of liberated China independently liberated vast territories and over 100,000,000 people, held back 56 per cent of the total Japanese troops invading China and 95 per cent of the total puppet troops by relying solely on their own efforts and the support of the people. Without these armies it is probable that Chiang would have had to choose between exile and surrender.’26 The broadcast’s use of numbers and statistics, suggesting scientific precision and exactness, contrasted with Chiang’s resort to a moral register. It ended by making clear that the Communists did not recognise the legitimacy of the Nationalist government. ‘We want to announce to our three great Allies, the people of China and the world that the Chungking High Command cannot represent the Chinese people.’

  On the day of Emperor Hirohito’s broadcast, General Zhu De despatched a memorandum to the USA, Britain and the Soviet Union to announce that he would not obey Chiang Kaishek’s instruction for his forces to ‘defend the areas in which they are stationed and await further orders’, that is, accept Chiang’s military authority.27 The Communists had refused that from the beginning of the War of Resistance; they would not begin to do so now. General Zhu De also announced that ‘the Nationalist government and its supreme command cannot represent the liberated areas of China or the people’s true resistance forces in the occupied areas.’ He added that ‘in accordance with the Potsdam Declaration’, the Chinese Communists had the right to ‘accept the surrender of Japanese and puppet forces surrounded by our forces’ and to be represented at all Allied surrender ceremonies. As Chiang Kaishek had done, General Zhu sent an instruction to General Okamura to surrender to him, ‘except for those areas where your forces are surrounded by Nationalist army units’.28 The next day, Mao Zedong accused Chiang Kaishek of having fired the starting gun for all-out civil war by insisting that the Japanese surrender to him alone.29

  If Nationalist intelligence is to be believed, in the spring of 1945 the Commun ists had established contact with the Japanese well before their surrender in order to induce them to hand over to the Communists rather than the Nationalists when they did surrender.30 An April 1945 report stated that Chen Yi, the future Communist mayor of Shanghai, had secretly visited the city and suggested that if the Japanese surrendered to the Communists, they would be given safe passage to a northern port through Communist-held territory. A purported meeting in June attended by Chen Yi as well as Pan Hannian, a top Communist secret service agent, and Liu Shaoqi, in charge of Communist operations in urban areas, supposedly led to a signed agreement that the Japanese would notify the Communists one week in advance of their withdrawal from Shanghai. The Communists would not attack them during that time and the Soviet Union would send a naval force to take control of the city, at which point the Japanese would make their way home. Without access to Communist archives, it is impossible to confirm whether this meeting took place. But that there was some sort of Japanese–Communist modus vivendi makes sense and such a meeting would have been logical.

  The US diplomat John Paton Davies was born in China and served in the US Embassy in Chongqing. During the War of Resistance he served as political attaché to General Stilwell. He was also one of the instrumental figures behind the American Observers Group that went to Yan’an in July 1944. Following General Stilwell’s dismissal, he was assigned to the US Embassy in Moscow. In a conversation with the Chinese Ambassador to the Soviet Union, Fu Bingchang, Davies stated that, while there was unlikely to be a formal deal, ‘neither side really wants to fight’, the Communists because they did not have the weapons and the Japanese because the Communist-held areas had no military value.31

  Whatever the reality of Communist–Japanese contact, Communist forces went on the move immediately after Japan’s surrender. On 15 August, The New York Times reported that Yan’an announced in a radio broadcast, picked up by the US, that their units were ‘rapidly pushing northward into Suiyuen [Suiyuan], Chahar, Jehol [Rehe], and Liaoning and toward Kirin [Jilin]’.32 Two days later it reported that ‘unofficial but reliable reports said the Communist forces were persisting in military operations north of
the Yellow River aimed at establishing control of Tsingtao [Qingdao], Tientsin [Tianjin], and other vital points and that Communist underground fighters had infiltrated into Shanghai. The Communists announced themselves that they were nearing the ancient Chinese capital of Peiping [Beijing].’33 On 18 August, the paper again reported that ‘20,000 to 30,000 Communist guerrillas were converging on the Yangtze [Yangzi] River port of Wuhu in possible preparation for a sixty mile drive to Nanking [Nanjing]’.34 Similar reports continued to be broadcast, and reported in the US press, for the next week.

  But the Communists had to abort this campaign in order to seize large cities. This was in part because, as previously explained, the Japanese had decided to disregard General Zhu De’s orders and instead obey those of the Nationalists. No fewer than 7,000 Japanese troops died resisting the Communist attacks on Japanese positions that followed this refusal.35 But even more decisive in forestalling this démarche of the Chinese Communists was that the United States and the Soviet Union both opposed it.

  The USA, as mentioned, was determined to repatriate its overseas forces as soon as possible. On 11 August, just days before Japan’s surrender, the US Joint Chiefs of Staff ordered their senior military leaders in east Asia – General Douglas MacArthur, Admiral Chester Nimitz and General Alfred Wedemeyer – to occupy as many Chinese ‘key ports and communication points as is practicable without any major land campaign’.36 US forces were there ‘to preserve law and order and to initiate a program of disarmament and demobilization of Japanese forces’. But if vast amounts of Japanese arms and ammunition fell into the hands of the Communists, this project would become difficult. ‘If the US and the United Nations allowed an opposition party in China which has a military force to accept the Japanese surrender and to take over Japanese armaments, a civil war will be unavoidable,’37 advised Ambassador Patrick Hurley.

  The Russians also declined to support the CCP. They resisted Communist penetration of Manchuria and even evicted Communist units from cities there.38 On 14 August, only a day before Japan’s acceptance of the Potsdam Declaration, the Soviet Union signed a Treaty of Friendship and Alliance with the Nationalists, concluded in a few weeks of rushed negotiations in Moscow. In return for a promise to withdraw their forces from Manchuria within three months of the defeat of Japan, the treaty gave the Soviets acceptance by the Nationalists of Soviet domination of Outer Mongolia, recognition of the Soviet occupation of the southern Kurile and Sakhalin Islands, the internationalisation of the warm water port of Dalian (often called Dairen in Anglophone reporting at the time) and joint management of the China Eastern and Southern Manchurian railways. Together with the occupation of the northern part of the Korean peninsula, these concessions secured for the Soviets a buffer zone around their north-east Asian frontier in the same way that their occupation of east European countries had done on their western frontier.

  Having made these gains, the Soviets had every reason to swing their support behind the Nationalists and to warn the Communists off their land grab. On 14 August, Chiang Kaishek wired Mao Zedong in Yan’an: ‘Japan’s surrender means that a new era of enduring peace will become a reality. I invite you to come as soon as possible to Chongqing so that we can discuss all important international and domestic affairs.’39 Mao declined Chiang’s offer, insisting that he first provide an answer to General Zhu De’s demand that ‘you acknowledge your errors and retract your instruction of the 11th’, that is, the one in which Chiang had ordered Communist units to stay in position and obey his orders. Chiang declined to reply, but instead issued a second invitation on 20 August.

  Mao’s answer to this second invitation was that ‘for the sake of unity’ he had instructed Zhou Enlai to proceed to Chongqing. ‘The reply was considered dis-courteous’, The New York Times reported, doubtless correctly, because ‘behind the politeness was a rejection of the invitation’.40 Chiang Kaishek sent a third invitation on 24 August, in which he assured Mao that he would have been delighted to welcome Zhou Enlai to Chongqing, but ‘in view of the urgency of the problems at hand he hoped Mr Mao himself would come “so these problems may be speedily resolved in the interest of the nation”’.41 At this point, Stalin intervened, wiring Mao: ‘China must not have another civil war. If it does take place, the risk is the disintegration of the country … Chiang Kaishek has issued you an invitation three times. No one inside or outside of China will understand if you continue to refuse. If civil war breaks out, you will be held responsible.’42

  Faced not only with the opposition of the USA and Japan but also of the Soviet Union, the Communists called off their attempts to seize large coastal cities.43 Mao Zedong now declared that ‘the present situation is that the war with Japan is over and we have entered the stage of peaceful reconstruction’,44 a wording that made the best of a climb-down that had become inevitable. He arrived in Chongqing on 28 August together with Zhou Enlai. To guarantee Mao Zedong’s safety, Ambassador Hurley had flown to Yan’an and then flown back to Chongqing with the two Communist leaders. To indicate the Party’s new stance, the Communist newspaper New China Daily began referring to Chiang Kaishek as President Chiang rather than as a ‘fascist reactionary dictator’ and to the ‘National Government’ as opposed to the ‘Chungking regime’.45

  Although no longer aiming to take over large cities, the Communist armies continued operations. They seized no fewer than 150 towns at county level and above in north China, pushed forces into Inner Mongolia, sent units and Party workers into Manchuria and lifted railway tracks across north and east China to prevent the Nationalists from using them to transport troops and government personnel.46 Although they failed in their prime objective, the Communists nonetheless did well out of Japan’s defeat. According to Communist statistics, they seized from the Japanese in north China alone as many as 73,000 rifles, 900 light and heavy machine guns and 160 pieces of artillery.47 They would gain much more later in Manchuria.

  In Chongqing, Communist negotiators submitted eleven ‘main points for negotiation’ to their Nationalist opposite numbers. Among their demands were: recognition of ‘liberated areas’; ‘the punishment of traitors’; ‘re-designation of surrender areas and participation in surrender work’; ‘the implementation of democracy’; the appointment of Communists to the chairmanship of the five provinces of north China and to the vice-chairmanship of six provinces in eastern China; and approval for an army of forty-eight divisions – far more than the Nationalists had accepted before.48 Chiang instructed his negotiating team to make clear that all these issues could be discussed except for two: the size of the Communists’ army, which could be no larger than twelve divisions and which had to be incorporated in a single national command system, and the chairmanships and vice-chairmanships of specific provinces. Chiang did not rule out appointing Communists for these posts, but he insisted that all appointments would have to be made on the basis of merit rather than Party affiliation. Finally, Chiang refused to have any area of China called a ‘liberated area’, but made clear that he would accept a less confrontational term such as ‘special area’.49

  The negotiations culminated in a text, published on 10 October, called ‘Main Points of the Discussions between the Government and the Chinese Communist Party’ – a document more snappily, and optimistically, referred to as the ‘Double Ten Agreement’, in reference to the 1911 Revolution. The agreement paid lip service to ‘peaceful national reconstruction’, ‘avoidance of civil war’ and the ‘implementation of constitutional rule’, but it could not disguise the fact that the interlocutors had failed to agree on fundamental issues.

  Both sides made some concessions. The Communists were prepared to recognise Chiang Kaishek as the country’s leader, while Chiang Kaishek agreed to the creation of a coalition government and Communist inclusion in surrender ceremonies.50 But both sides stuck to the same red lines that had barred a settle ment of their differences throughout the War of Resistance. Chiang Kaishek insisted on a single command for all forces in China as well as a s
ingle government, although he was prepared to condone virtually independent autonomous areas. As to the Communists, they would not give up control over their own forces.51

  On 27 September Chiang Kaishek left Chongqing for a short break in Xichang, a city in the hills of south-west Sichuan province with a beautiful lake and a comfortable climate. During the flight, he read a Reuter’s report on an interview with Mao, who once again boasted about having an army of 1.2 million soldiers and claimed that the Communists should control China north of the Huai river, which flows east–west in between the Yangzi and Yellow rivers. The anger that had been seething within Chiang exploded into rage: ‘this most heinous and evil criminal not only shows no remorse but even demands an army of 1.2 million soldiers and a separatist region north of the Huai and Yellow Rivers … If I do not bring him to justice, how can I possibly face in Heaven the spirits of the soldiers and people who have sacrificed their lives in the War of Resistance?’52 Chiang Kaishek even seriously contemplated arresting Mao Zedong, although once he calmed down he decided not to. This was partly because it might cause the Soviets to renege on their promise to leave Manchuria after three months, partly because he feared a media backlash, and also partly because it was not the appropriate thing to do for a benevolent ruler who bends people to his will through his virtue. Rather than arresting Mao and putting him before a court martial, he did the opposite. On 10 October he bestowed victory medals on both Mao Zedong and Zhu De.53