China at War

by Hans van de Ven

  This was a new situation, in which the policies of both the Soviet Union and the USA changed frequently and at times dramatically. When the USA put forces into southern Korea shortly after Japan’s surrender, the USA and the Soviet Union improvised a deal that made the 38th parallel the dividing line between their two areas of occupation. That level of cooperation proved short-lived. When in November 1945 the Soviet Union failed to comply with its undertaking in its Treaty of Friendship with China to withdraw its forces from Manchuria three months after Japan’s surrender, President Truman dispatched General George Marshall to China. The mission’s aim was to effect ‘a cessation of hostilities’ between Nationalist and Communist forces, assist the Nationalists in disarming, and repatriating Japanese forces and bringing about ‘peace, unity, and democratic reform’.44 These goals were considered essential to nurture China into being ‘amenable to American influence, capable of establishing stability, and intent on circumscribing Russian power’, as Leffler puts it.45

  General Marshall spent a most miserable year in China. The initial omens were good. Shortly after his arrival, on 10 January 1946, he secured acceptance of a ceasefire agreement from both the Communists and the Nationalists. Over the next two weeks, meetings of the Political Consultative Committee resulted in a raft of further agreements, whose main points were that a constitution would be prepared and submitted to a National Assembly, that the State Council would be changed so that half of its members were non-KMT members, and that an army demobilisation programme would be put in place to reduce China’s armed forces to sixty divisions, fifty Nationalist and ten Communist.46 These paper achievements proved the high watermark of the Marshall Mission.

  Having the Nationalists and Communists make promises was easy; having them put into practice proved impossible. Marshall succeeded in arranging the repatriation of 2,986,438 Japanese, thus fulfilling the part of his mission that ensured that there was no risk of a revival of Japanese militarism in China.47 In order to enable him to stand any chance of achieving the other parts of his assignment, Truman handed Marshall a powerful weapon. He made it clear that if China did not respond positively to Marshall’s suggestions, ‘American assistance in post-war reconstruction, including credits and loans, and the development of China’s national army might not be forthcoming.’48 The similarities of that arrangement with the one that had led to the Stilwell debacle would not have escaped the Nationalists’ notice.

  Dependent on US assistance, the Nationalists behaved as if they were heeding Marshall’s advice; in practice Chiang Kaishek declined to serve ‘as an instrument of US policy’.49 Manchuria became the rock on which the Marshall Mission foundered. The area was important to the Nationalists, primarily economically. A report by the Nationalist Minister of Economic Affairs made much of Japan’s development of Manchuria’s heavy industry. After they seized Manchuria, the Japanese established twenty state enterprises, including for fuels, coal, rail, iron and steel, textiles, wheat flour, fertiliser, concrete and timber. By 1944 Manchuria was producing 5 million tons of pig iron and 2 million tons of steel, generating 2.6 million watts of electricity and producing 1 million tons of crude oil per year.50 The Manchuria plains were highly productive, its railway network was intact, and the Japanese had left behind a vast amount of arms, ammunition and food. This made control over Manchuria imperative for the Nationalists, who regarded its recovery as a war aim. This had been accepted by the USA and the UK at the Cairo Conference in November 1943, where Chiang Kaishek secured recognition of China’s territorial demands. Manchuria was also important for China’s security; it had, after all, been the jumping-off point for Japan’s invasion of China south of the Great Wall.

  The USA fully supported Chiang Kaishek’s ambitions in Manchuria because that would prevent the Soviet Union from building up a new power base in north-east Asia. ‘China without Manchuria,’ US officials judged, ‘would be no effective counterpoise to maintain the balance of power in the Far East.’51 Marshall’s truce agreement therefore excluded ‘movements of the National Army for the purpose of restoring Chinese sovereignty’, that is, moving troops into Manchuria.52 US transport planes were put at the disposal of the Nationalists to ferry 200,000 troops to Manchuria and US$ 500 million-worth of surplus military supplies were transferred to the Nationalists.53 When the Soviets stayed in Manchuria beyond November 1945, the USA put pressure on them to leave.54

  As to the Soviets, they initially kept the Chinese Communists at arms’ length; the Treaty of Friendship had given them much of what they wanted. But in October, before the first deadline for their withdrawal from Manchuria, the Soviets switched tack. They suggested to the Chinese Communists that they deploy 300,000 troops into southern Manchuria.55 Soviet policy changed again in late 1945 and early 1946. Besides agreeing to the Nationalist proposal to delay their departure, because the Nationalists were not ready to move in, they suggested to the Communists that ‘the French way’ had much to recommend it. This was a reference to the agreement made by the French Communists after the end of the war in Europe to incorporate resistance forces into France’s national army.56 Leading Chinese Communists, including Zhou Enlai, spoke in favour of this option. Marshall secured his truce agreement during this period.

  In April and early May, unwilling to risk a direct confrontation with the Americans, the Soviets completed their troop withdrawal.57 But to hedge their bets, they also armed the Chinese Communists. We do not know the precise numbers or types of weapons the Soviets handed over to their Chinese comrades, something that will remain unclear as long as Communist archives remain closed. Peking University historian Yang Kuisong asserts that a first transfer of arms and ammunition took place in November 1945. This involved 120,000 rifles, 4,000 machine guns, 150,000 grenades, 20,000 overcoats, 30,000 boots, 8 million rounds of ammunition, an unspecified amount of communications equipment, 6 small transport planes and several railway carriages.58 In the spring of 1946, when the Soviets made their main withdrawal, in the city of Harbin alone they handed over 100,000 rifles, 10,000 heavy machine guns and 1,000 artillery pieces.59 In May, June, July and August 1946, the Soviets made further deliveries, one of which contained 83 heavy machine guns, 32 light machine guns and 10,000 chests of medicine, another consisted of 12,145 rifles, 182 heavy machine guns, 506 light machine guns, 167 grenade throwers and 10 million rounds of ammunition, and yet another consisted of 100 freight cars with arms from Korea.60 The Soviets continued to supply the Communists with arms in subsequent years. In 1947, the value of these shipments reached 151 million roubles, followed over the next two years with transfers worth 335 million and 420 million roubles.61 As British military intelligence put it, ‘the Russians have seen to it that all Chinese Communist troops in Manchuria are suitably equipped and ready for any eventuality.’62

  Chiang Kaishek did not oppose the outcome that Marshall wanted, which was a coalition government with the Nationalists in a dominant position, but he did believe that the Communists should be given a good hiding before any negotiations. In dealing with rebellions before 1937, he had either threatened or used military force and then negotiated an agreement. After Japan’s surrender he took the same approach. General Long Yun in Yunnan province remained virtually independent during the War of Resistance. After Japan’s surrender, Chiang transferred some of Long Yun’s forces to north Vietnam on the pretext that they were to accept Japan’s surrender there, and then ordered forces loyal to him to surround General Long Yun’s residence. Chiang gave General Long Yun a choice: come to Chongqing to accept an appointment as Minister of Forestry or face Chiang’s armies. General Long Yun did not take long to make up his mind. Chiang wanted to negotiate from a position of strength.

  Exploiting the provision in the truce agreement that Nationalist forces could assert Chinese sovereignty in Manchuria, in the spring of 1946 the Nationalists not only took over Soviet positions, they swept from north China into Manchuria to clear out the Communists, moving from Jinzhou in south Manchuria to Shenyang, and t
hen on towards Changchun. The Communists fought back with the result that the fighting spread quickly and Marshall’s truce became unstruck. The Battle of Siping ended on 12 May, but only ‘after twenty-three days of bitter house-to-house fighting’.63 Siping was strategically important. Sitting astride the two railway lines that connect Manchuria to northern China, anyone wishing to control Manchuria needed to capture the city. The battle for Changchun was equally bitter.64 But by the end of May, the Nationalists had succeeded in driving the Communists across the Songhua, or Sungari, river into northern Manchuria.65

  The truce agreement also included the words ‘destruction of and interference with all lines of communication will cease’.66 The Nationalists used this clause to justify operations to clear parts of the east – west-running Long hai railway in north China, as well as parts of the Beijing–Wuhan and Qingdao– Ji’nan rail lines. Furious at having been taken for a mug by Chiang, Marshall threatened to resign his mission unless Chiang ordered an immediate cease-fire, including in Manchuria. Chiang only agreed to a fifteen-day truce ‘to give the Communist Party an opportunity to demonstrate in good faith their intention to carry out the agreements they had previously signed’, including ‘the demobilization, reorganization, and integration of the armed forces of China’.67 The truce agreement was enough to convince Marshall to stay, but the fighting soon resumed. This sequence of events has led some to lay the blame for the eventual defeat of the Nationalists on Marshall. That, though, ignores a raft of other factors and the fact that the fighting resumed after just two weeks.

  While Chiang Kaishek was prepared to make many concessions, his bottom line was a single army and unified government under his leadership. He had battled for this his whole adult life, and now, after the defeat of Japan, he was trying to make it a reality. The Communists for their part were unwilling to give up their own armed forces. Marshall might have had a greater chance of success if he had proposed a deal by which the Nationalists were recognised as China’s official government but the Communists were allowed to govern their own area and maintain forces in it. Throughout the War of Resistance, negotiations between the Communists and the Nationalists accepted the principle of such a solution, which had precedents in China’s political tradition. Today, with the Communists in control of mainland China but the Nationalists firmly established in Taiwan, such a situation has in fact come about, although with the Nationalists and the Communists in reverse positions. For Marshall, coming from a country that had nearly destroyed itself in a ferocious civil war that was partly about that same issue, this solution might not have seemed obvious.

  Besides resisting Nationalist offensives, the Communists intensified a propaganda campaign that depicted the Americans as imperialists and the Nationalists as their lackeys. It was not a difficult case to make. American armed forces occupied Shanghai, the Beijing–Tianjin region and Qingdao, the port city and naval base on the southern coast of Shandong province. The fact that the UNRRA’s 1,000 mostly American staff members were attached to Nationalist government ministries, including Health, Communications, Agriculture, Water Conservancy and Domestic Affairs, suggests that they were indeed under US supervision. Seven hundred and fifty US army and 165 navy officers of the American Military Advisory Group in China, inevitably known as MAGIC, strove to strengthen Nationalist military efficiency.68 US enterprises, including some set up by Claire Chennault, had carved out prominent positions in trade and commerce. As the British Ambassador Ralph Stevenson reported back to London in January 1947, a fear for ‘American enslavement’ was widespread even in Nationalist areas.69

  In August 1946, after the fighting resumed, Chiang Kaishek announced uni-laterally that he would press ahead with the convening of a National Assembly in November to adopt a ‘draft constitution’ and ‘institute constitutional government’. He insisted that his ‘only demand’ to the Chinese Communist Party was that it ‘change its policy of seizing power by military force and transform into a peaceful party’.70 The Communists declined to comply, for the obvious reason that doing so amounted to submission to Chiang Kaishek. Instead, they made steps towards forming a ‘United Association of Liberated Areas’ as an alternative government.71 Chiang announced a unilateral ceasefire just before the opening of the Nationalist Assembly on 15 November, so that constitutional rule formally began at a time of peace, but after Zhou Enlai declared that ‘the assembly would perpetuate the personal dictatorship of Chiang Kaishek’,72 he flew back to Yan’an. Chiang’s attempt to beat the Communists to the negotiating table had failed.

  In January 1947, Truman decided to bring Marshall’s mediation in China to an end. Chiang’s failure to do as they wished was one reason, but there were others. The hope was that distancing the USA from the Nationalists would reduce the chances of a Soviet intervention in east Asia and might convince the Chinese Communists to follow Tito’s example in Yugoslavia and retain a degree of autonomy from Moscow.73 To put pressure on Chiang Kaishek to become more compliant with US wishes, an arms embargo imposed in August 1946 remained in place and a US financial loan was put on ice.74 Truman’s policy, a US State Department official told UK diplomats in Washington, was to wait ‘until conditions in China improve’, at which point ‘we are prepared to consider aiding in the carrying out of policies, unrelated to civil strife, which would encourage economic reconstruction and reform’.75 Unless he changed his ways, Chiang Kaishek would have to face a future without US military assistance.

  The consequences were predictable. Brigadier F. Field, the UK military attaché, believed that ‘we have now reached the stage where – assuming the Government’s ammunition supplies can last them for offensive purposes to July or August – they must, after that, go on the defensive’.76 British naval intelligence concurred. Its assessment was that the Communists were ‘very well armed, mostly with Japanese arms taken over after the Japanese surrender … in all sectors the Nationalists are nervous and uneasy about their position’.77 In April 1947, US Ambassador Leighton Stuart, who had frequent meetings with Chiang Kaishek, told UK Ambassador Ralph Stevenson that he did not believe the Nationalists had the military wherewithal to score telling victories over the Communists over the next few months and that a Nationalist collapse was likely to follow soon.78 UK Ambassador to Washington Archibald Clark Kerr was succinct in his views: ‘all this amounts to letting the Chinese stew in their own juices.’79

  In the spring of 1947, the Nationalists undertook two more offensives, one of which saw them take Yan’an, while the other was a thrust into Communist areas in Shandong province. They also threw back a Communist attempt to retake the city of Siping in June 1947. But from then on a lack of munitions forced the Nationalists to go on the defensive, as predicted. In September, Ambassador Stuart made an urgent appeal to Washington to replenish Nationalist ammunition stocks. General Albert Wedemeyer, who had just completed a fact-finding mission to China, also believed that the situation was critical. He ‘went so far as to secure conditional agreement from [General Douglas] MacArthur’ to make a shipment of arms from US stores in Japan. Ambassador Stuart was ‘anxious about delay in view of the apparent imminence of Communist offensives in Manchuria’.80 But Marshall, who had become Secretary of State and was now concentrating on salvaging the peace in Europe, declined to give his approval.81 He held firm to his conviction that China’s problems could not be solved by military means alone, and certainly not by the Nationalist military. ‘Chiang Kaishek is faced with a problem. He is losing 40% of supplies to the enemy,’ he told one Chinese interlocutor.82 Aiding the Nationalists effectively meant aiding the Communists. President Truman agreed. ‘Pouring sand in a rat hole’ was how he typified further aid to the Nationalists.83

  By the spring of 1947, the Nationalists were in a terrible situation. Demoralisation had the country in a vice-like grip, the economy showed no signs of recovery, rural conditions were deplorable, Nationalist armies were running out of ammunition, and the USA had decided to support them no further. Panics about Communis
t infiltration in cities triggered crackdowns which corroded what little remained of the Nationalists’ standing among the educated urban youth. In February 1947, a ‘black terror’ descended over Beijing when 3,000 students were arrested after a demonstration.84 ‘It is said,’ wrote the British diplomat Lionel Lamb, that ‘one third have been shot, one third released, and one third jailed.’85 Chiang Kaishek’s authority hung by a thread. Ambassador Stevenson reported to London that ‘there is talk of Chiang Kaishek stepping aside’.86 General Li Zongren, the leader of the Guangxi Clique, told Ambassador Stuart that he ‘would continue to support Chiang Kaishek as long as he conscientiously could’,87thereby indicating that his commitment was conditional. Meanwhile, a group of lesser southern military leaders were sounding out foreign diplomats about what response they might expect if they seized power.88 China was ripe for revolution.

  — THIRTEEN —

  NATIONAL LIBERATION WAR

  It is wrong to think of guerrilla warfare as primitive, unorganized, and small scale for there is no other warfare that entails so much complicated strategy and tactics, and relies so heavily on political and economic factors.