Marshall, who had flown to America, returned in late April to renewed fighting and once again brought the clout of the United States to bear. He urged the Communists to leave Changchun, which they did, turning the Manchurian capital over to Nationalist troops nearly without bloodshed. Chiang flew north, and Nationalist soldiers pressed on toward the city of Harbin, north of Changchun. His pride assauged, the G-mo agreed to negotiate another truce with the CCP, which lasted from the middle of May until the end of June 1946. During the hiatus, the capital of Nationalist China was officially moved from Chungking back to Nanking.
But on his return from Manchuria, Chiang also closed down 776 papers and periodicals in Peiping, a forewarning of the suppression and cruelties that would follow throughout that summer. All the liberals whom Tai Li’s Secret Service could entrap were imprisoned, killed, or otherwise silenced. In Shanghai, intellectuals and even so-called “thinkers” were registered by the police and given identification cards of various colors.
For their part, some Chinese officials, believing that Marshall had come to China to clean up the corruption in Chiang’s government and frantic at the idea of not satisfying “their greedy appetite for bribes,” launched an attack on Marshall and his wife. Hence, the following letter from Marshall to Dwight D. Eisenhower, then chief of staff, in June of 1946:
I gave Mrs. Marshall your message of concern regarding her reported illness. The facts are these, amusing and a commentary on the virulence of the present propaganda warfare: she merely made a weekend trip to Shanghai with Madame Chiang, but some of the diehard Government political boys, in their assaults on me, to weaken my influence and clear the way for a war of extermination [against the Communists], which they are incapable of carrying through without our assistance, built up a press attack that Katherine and I had fallen out and she had left Nanking in a huff. Then I had gone to Shanghai to bring her back, but she immediately went into the hospital. They left her there, I returning empty-handed. She was never sick, never saw a hospital, and returned here with me and Madame Chiang. The part which greatly amused us but outraged Katherine was a description: “Mrs. Marshall, though over 60, still demands her diversions. Throughout the war, General Marshall had to take her to the movies and other diversions. Since he came to China, he has been too busy, so she left him, etc., etc.”
The ingenuity and power of the right-wing forces did not go unnoticed. In August of 1946, President Truman wrote Chiang that he had been following the situation “closely,” noting that there
exists in the United States an increasing body of opinion which holds that our entire policy toward China must be reexamined in the light of… the increasing tendency to suppress freedom of the press as well as the expression of liberal views.… There is a growing feeling… that the aspirations of the Chinese people are being thwarted by militarists and a small group of political reactionaries, who, failing to comprehend the liberal trend of the times, are obstructing the advancement of the general good of the nation.… Unless convincing proof is shortly forthcoming that genuine progress is being made toward a peaceful settlement of China’s internal problems, it must be expected that American opinion will not continue in its generous attitude towards your nation.
To counteract the bad publicity, Beal wanted Chiang to hold a press conference. Knowing that “it was a case of getting her [May-ling] to persuade her husband,” he went to see her. “I began immediately with a lecture on what a lousy press China was getting.… She agreed.… ‘I know what you want me to do,’ she said. ‘You want me to be there (at the Gimo’s meeting with the press) and interpret. I did that during the war, and I’m tired of it, and I’m not going to do it any more.… That’s what a minister of information is for.’ ” According to Beal, May-ling objected to Chiang’s giving a press conference in any case, saying that “he was President of all China, above politics, and to hold a public press conference would put him on a level with Chou En-lai.” Beal suggested that he be replaced by one of the Chinese negotiators; May-ling agreed and suggested that the press be brought in for “tea and an off-the-record chat” afterward with her husband. She also told Beal that the Encyclopaedia Britannica had asked her to write 5,500 words on the history of China from 1937 to 1946 and asked him to read it for her when she was finished. Her attitude toward both her role in her husband’s pronouncements and her newfound celebrity seems to indicate a shift in the balance of their marriage. The Madame had clearly become less the worried wife and attentive translator and had moved farther on toward a very un-Chinese feminine independence.
DURING THAT YEAR, May-ling also dealt with the hospitalization and death of her old friend and adviser W. H. Donald, who had left China in early 1941. While on an island-hopping vacation with a young woman, the Australian journalist had continued to receive letters from May-ling asking him to return. He finally decided to go back, but while on a freighter bound for China, word came that Pearl Harbor had been bombed. The ship’s captain headed for Manila, where Donald was interned by the Japanese. Dubbing him “the evil spirit of China,” Japan had put a hefty price on his head. “Time and again Japanese searched the camp records for my name. I always was known as W. H. Donald. I registered on the internees’ list truthfully as William H. Donald. That confused the Japanese. But what fooled them most was my recorded age—nearly 70. See that, they would shrug their shoulders and say, ‘That’s not the same man. We’re looking for a much younger man.’… Internees held my identity in strictest confidence. That is something for which I shall ever be grateful.”
Released in early 1945, Donald traveled to the United States, and by fall of that year, the war was over. Since he was not feeling well, he returned to one of his favorite spots, Tahiti, where he was diagnosed with lung disease. Advised by a French doctor to get to an American hospital, he contacted May-ling, who sent a plane to pick him up and fly him to the naval hospital in Pearl Harbor. While in bed, he worked on his memoirs with his future biographer for an hour every other day until he became too ill to continue. “One day, I found him morose,” the biographer related, “and in a way so subtle that I was not aware of it until I returned home, he let me know that he had been waiting in vain for weeks to hear from Madame Chiang. In all his talks with me, his abiding admiration and affection for the M’issimo were evident. It seemed plain he felt that she, who had used so much of his strength, now might supply some for him. I wired her, not omitting a sting.”
A week later Hollington Tong arrived in Hawaii to say that permission had been granted by the Navy doctors to fly Donald back to China, which was what he had said he wanted. “I guess I have enough of those people in me,” he said, “to want to go home to die.” A special navy plane, complete with berth and attendant nurses, arrived on March 14, 1946, to carry the old journalist to Shanghai, where he lived for seven months longer. May-ling decorated his hospital room with a handsome rug, a large easy chair, bright curtains, and embroideries and made sure that he always had fresh flowers. When she was in Shanghai she visited him every day, and whether she was there or not, she sent a member of her staff to see if he needed anything.
The Kungs had been very nice to Donald, and on the day he died, he asked to see H. H., to whom he gave his Masonic ring. He had also asked to see May-ling and, when she did not appear on time, kept inquiring “Do you think she could be hurt?” “Is the weather fine for flying?” “I thought I heard her voice outside.” When she finally arrived, she read him the Twenty-third and Ninety-first Psalms and later went home to rest. When his pulse became weak, she was called back to the hospital. He kissed her hand and told her to take care of herself. According to someone who was there at the moment of death, he just slipped away with no pain. For his funeral the chapel was hung with white satin scrolls bearing the Chinese characters for “China’s Best Friend” and “Australia produced this man; can there ever be another so fine.” Madame had him buried in the Soong family plot.
THUS FAR, THE Russians had done little to help the Chinese Comm
unists get arms and ammunition. Suddenly, in the summer of 1946, Stalin produced 1,226 guns, 369 tanks, 300,000 rifles, 4,836 machine guns, and 2,300 vehicles* for the CCP, all of which had been taken from the Japanese. He also arranged for 100,000 troops from North Korea to be incorporated into the Chinese Communist army. These moves, although they did not bear fruit immediately—the Chinese soldiers had to be trained to use modern equipment—would soon give the Communist army an advantage over that of the Nationalists.
In June of 1946, Marshall asked Hu Lin, an important journalist and editor, to visit him at his residence in Nanking and give his frank opinion on the prospects for peace. The journalist made eight points, the most important of which were the following:
1. The Americans were wrong in believing that the Chinese Communists were merely “land reformers.” To drive home his point, Hu quoted an old Chinese proverb: “The crows are black all over the world.”
2. There was no basis for a coalition government with the KMT and the CCP. It would be like setting up a “United Republic of Germany and France.”
3. A temporary peace, even a cease-fire, would require international supervision.
Present at the briefing was John Leighton Stuart, former president of Yenching University, who would be named U.S. ambassador to China within the month.*
Although Marshall listened politely to Hu, he apparently did not hear what he was being told. Moreover, from the time that Marshall returned to China, his relationship with the generalissimo had begun to deteriorate. (Marshall told Beal that the “only thing that kept him on reasonable terms with Chiang was the great shine the Gimo has taken to Mrs. Marshall, who has introduced him to the game of Chinese checkers.”) Chiang wanted Marshall to guarantee that the Communists would observe the January cease-fire, and if he did not do this, Chiang said, the Nationalists must go ahead and occupy Manchuria. He proceeded to Mukden to direct his armies and in July ordered them to take the offensive. By the middle of September, they had gained control over the largest railway network in north China, trapping the Communist soldiers in the mountains of Shantung and Shansi. He then set out to capture the Mongolian city of Kalgan, currently serving as the capital of the CCP.
Unable to hold Kalgan militarily, the Communists returned to diplomacy, and on September 30, Chou wrote Marshall that if “the Kuomintang Government does not instantly cease its military operations against Kalgan and the vicinity areas, the Chinese Communist Party feels itself forced to presume that the Government… has ultimately abandoned its pronounced policy of peaceful settlement.”
“The more I hear and see of this situation out here, the more I am inclined to think that we should pull out completely and let this civil war take place,” said James McHugh. “It would unseat Chiang and T.V. and all of the other crooked politicians, all of whom are growing rich now on all that we have given China… there is a hopeless stalemate between the KMT and the Commies which can never be resolved except by civil war. And there will never be any reform in the Central Govt until it is forced by civil war.… Corruption is rampant.… Everyone knows about it; the Chinese all admit it; and the foreigners all fume at it. Yet Washington goes right on blandly overlooking it and pouring more and more of our own patrimony into the hopper.”
McHugh was not the only observer to come to that conclusion. Marshall told Chiang that if the Nationalist army did not halt its Kalgan offensive, he would leave China and the U.S. government would declare an embargo on all military equipment going to the KMT. In response to this ultimatum, the G-mo delivered “a long speech in which he quoted the Bible and indulged in generalities but did not budge an inch.” It was not until Chiang learned that Marshall had already radioed Washington about cutting off U.S. aid that he actually backed down and agreed to a ten-day truce on Kalgan. “His old foot went round and round and almost hit the ceiling,” Marshall said, referring to Chiang’s habit of jiggling his foot when he was upset. To save face, Chiang sent May-ling to speak with Marshall. She came over at 9:00 P.M. with a statement from her husband about the truce that, Marshall told her, was “terrible.” May-ling gave the American general permission to change it. “Finally,” Marshall reported, “I cut out a page and a half of the Gimo’s generalities—just cut it right out.” After four meetings with his advisers the next day, Chiang accepted the edited version. “The Madame sold it,” said Marshall. Marshall told Beal that Chiang always insisted that May-ling be there for his conversations with the G-mo, “even when she was sick, or tired, or tried to beg off.” He said that during a discussion of Chiang’s “lack of understanding of Western democracy,” she had told Marshall that “in all her years with him [Chiang] she felt she had made only a ‘two per cent impression’ on him.”
In agreeing to the Kalgan truce, Chiang demanded certain minor conditions having to do with delegates to the upcoming National Assembly, and it was probably sometime on October 10, Chinese Independence Day, that the Communists released a statement officially refusing Chiang’s terms. In retaliation, the Nationalist army took Kalgan, and Marshall immediately carried out his threat to stop all aid to the Nationalist government. The edict was neither made public nor communicated to Chiang, who did not discover what had happened until a month later, when a request for deliveries of military equipment was turned down.
Without American equipment and no longer in a position to take the offensive, Chiang said he was ready for a rapprochement, but by then the Chinese Communists had lost interest and motivation (if, in fact, they had ever had any). Instead of a truce, they now demanded that the Nationalist armies pull back to positions held on January 13 in China and June 7 in Manchuria. Moreover, both the Communists and the Democratic League refused to attend the National Assembly, which met on November 16, 1946, to pass the first Chinese Constitution.
For that event, the hall was hung with red, while blue and white banners bearing Sun’s portrait served as the backdrop for the stage. After a kowtow to their dead leader, the delegates were sworn in en masse. “The abstention of the Communists and other minority representatives,” one observer noted, “left many vacant seats on the floor.” Chiang delivered a twenty-minute opening speech “in a detached sort of way,” after which the meeting was adjourned. The day before the Assembly, Chiang had apparently spoken for more than an hour to the delegates from the KMT, urging its members to treat the minorities with consideration, and during a subsequent session, it was decided to keep seats open on the presidium in case the Communists decided to join. But while Chiang was issuing his final statement to the Assembly—a speech involving a cease-fire “except to defend against attack” and negotiations with the Communists for unconditional cessation of hostilities—his armies were trying to capture the port of Chefoo. “He must have known about it,” Marshall said in disgust. “It made a mockery of the statement.… The Communists did it in June… but this time it was the Nationalists. Every time there is a gesture for peace the army makes an attack that nullifies it.”
Chiang and Marshall met two weeks later. Marshall complained that Chiang not only had damaged his attempts at mediation with his military actions but had contributed to China’s financial collapse by designating 80 to 90 percent of its budget for the military. In doing this, the generalissimo had impoverished the Chinese and left them ripe for the spread of communism. Chiang argued that the Communists had never intended to join a coalition and that their sole purpose had been to disrupt the government. Both were right.
The Assembly minus the Communists and other minority parties that had refused to attend,* passed the new constitution on Christmas Day, 1946. “It is unfortunate that the Communists did not see fit to participate in the Assembly,” Marshall said, “since the constitution that has been adopted seems to include every major point that they wanted.” Two weeks later, on January 7, 1947, the American general, having failed to do the impossible, returned to the United States to be named secretary of state by President Truman. Ambassador Stuart described the last exchange between Chiang and the gene
ral as “one of dramatic intensity,” in which the G-mo “pled with great earnestness” for Marshall to stay and act as his supreme adviser, “offering to give him all the power which he himself possessed and promising to co-operate with him to the utmost.” Marshall, Stuart said, was “deeply moved,” but was, of course, not at liberty to explain why he had to leave.
One correspondent describes Marshall’s departure on a “very cold morning” under “a slight snowfall.… His private plane… was waiting on the runway.… And there this pathetic little group stood, all waiting for him to bring about the final breach. Madame Chiang was there in a very handsome heavy beaver coat. The Generalissimo was there, Ambassador Stuart, T. V. Soong.” Chiang followed Marshall into the plane to say good-bye. When he had emerged and the plane had taken off, “the Madame turned to her brother, T. V. Soong, and said, ‘Shall we have a cup of coffee?’ That was the end of the Marshall mission.”
Marshall’s last report—released an hour after his departure—blamed the failure of his mission on the reactionary members of the KMT, who were “interested in the preservation of their own feudal control of China” and the Communists, who, while issuing “vicious” propaganda, “do not hesitate at the most drastic measures to gain their end… without any regard to the immediate suffering of the people involved.” William Bullitt, a former ambassador to the USSR and France, summed it up this way: “Never,” he said, “was a distinguished soldier sent on a more hopeless and unwise political mission.”
47
Chiang stood for a moment within reach of statesmanship. His assent to the Communists’ terms would have brought peace. Dissent meant bloodshed—and Chiang dissented.
—THEODORE WHITE AND ANNALEE JACOBY
ON MARCH 12, 1947, President Truman gave a speech before Congress, spelling out what came to be called the Truman Doctrine. The president started by announcing that immediate military and economic assistance would be given to Greece to fight the Communist revolutionaries who were seemingly about to take over the government. Truman’s largesse was based on a new direction in foreign policy, which was to “support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressure,” i.e., Communists. Sure that China qualified for the same assistance, Chiang sent his troops back on the offensive and dispensed with the financial services of T. V. Soong.
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