In reviewing the Korean War, Chiang also rode on moonbeams, claiming that “if… the Republic of China’s troops had been used… it would have had a great political and psychological effect on the Chinese Communist troops in action, and the latter could have been crushed in Korea. If the troops I offered* could have pursued the enemy… they… would have fostered an anti-Communist revolutionary movement on the Chinese mainland.… I believe that the Western powers’ objection to the dispatch of an expeditionary force to Korea by the Republic of China was the greatest cause for the stalemate in the Korean War” (the italics are Chiang’s).
Perhaps the G-mo’s most ludicrous claim, however, had to do with his fights with Stilwell, which he blamed on the American Communists who said that members of the CCP were merely “agrarian reformers.” According to Chiang, “General Stilwell was one of those influenced by this propaganda.… I regret to say that he had no idea whatsoever of the Chinese Communists’ schemes.… General Stilwell’s subsequent dispute with me was created entirely by the Communists and their friends.… I should have confided in him all the facts about Soviet Russia’s intrigues and her real aims.… I regretted very much that I did not do this.… On this point it might be said that I made a mistake. To this day my heart still aches over this unfortunate affair.”
What Soviet Russia in China makes abundantly clear is that, as one of Chiang’s biographers put it, the generalissimo “understood the Russian Communists better than he understood the Chinese Communists,” and it was this lack of comprehension, along with the widespread corruption of his own government, that had landed him where he was.
WHILE POLITICAL LIFE withered and died on Taiwan, the economy thrived. But, according to Crozier, the “prosperity, economic growth, [and] relative contentment” meant less to Chiang than word of international crises that might help him in his dream of reconquering the mainland, and bad news about the Communist government cheered the G-mo far more “than all the record-breaking statistics of Taiwan’s booming economy.” When the Communists sent seventy-odd vessels to bomb the island of Yikiangshan—a dot on the map north of the Tachen Islands—and annihilated 720 of the generalissimo’s soldiers, Chiang’s spirits rose at the prospect of U.S. military action and were just as quickly dashed when the crisis petered out. Left out of the Southeast Asia Defense Treaty, signed in Manila in September 1954, his ego was soothed by a visit from John Foster Dulles, who visited Taiwan after signing the treaty. Meanwhile, vast amounts of economic and military aid continued to flow to the government in exile from the United States.
Shortly after Dulles’s visit, President Eisenhower sent the Chiang’s friend Roy Howard of Scripps Howard Newspapers to see if the G-mo could be persuaded to give up the islands of Quemoy and Matsu, which he had long claimed as essential to the defense of Taiwan. The four of them, the Chiangs and the Howards, met at Sun Moon Lake. With May-ling translating, it quickly became clear that, as Howard put it, “Chiang intends to defend Quemoy and Matsu if he has to do it alone. His reason is that if he does not do so he is sunk anyway,” i.e., defeat could be overcome, but such a retreat— read loss of face—would result in the “complete collapse” of the Taiwanese army.
The following year, at the end of May, May-ling decided to go back to the United States, the source from which more blessings should have been flowing. Planning “a triumphal return to the American spotlight,” Madame did not listen to friends like journalist George Sokolsky, who, aware of her tendency to try to impress audiences with her erudition, sent her a copy of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address along with some advice: “If anything is being done here to keep Formosa before the American people, it must be done very quietly.… You can always do more for your country than anyone else as long as what you say is you, simple, sweet, to the heart.” The advice of John Foster Dulles, who told her that she should speak whenever possible about “the evils of Communism,” was more to her liking. “Now, Madame,” he told her, “we in America are doing all that we can to fight Communism and to acquaint our people with the necessity of eradicating Communist aggression, but you should take every opportunity to speak on what Communism means.”
According to an FBI office memo, Madame was “an extremely gracious and effective platform speaker,” although in at least one instance—what the bureau called a “very brilliant performance” before the American Chemical Society—it was clear that “not all present were as strongly opposed to world communism as was Madame Chiang Kai-shek.” In spite of early FBI reports of financial malfeasance on the part of members of the Soong family, Madame Chiang and FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover were becoming friendly acquaintances, exchanging articles and books based on their mutual hatred of communism, and in 1960, May-ling was added to the director’s “Special Correspondents list.”
During her stay in the United States, Madame met Roger Straus, head of the publishing house Farrar, Straus & Company,* and tried to sell him her husband’s book. She was, according to Straus, “a particularly handsome woman… obviously smart as hell… brilliant… well dressed and well jeweled, and had a great presence. She was very cool, very aloof, but I found her a most intriguing character… she had an Oriental look, but she was very American in terms of business conversation and social conversation.” Straus managed to convince himself that the generalissimo’s book was a “historical document that should be published,” primarily because Madame told him that she had “a lot of notes and journals” and was currently writing her own autobiography, which he “wanted very badly.”†
When she wasn’t speaking, writing, or selling, Madame spent time with Emma and pursued a new passion for antiquing. She browsed in the New York shops, where, according to DeLong, she spoke to the dealers in pidgin English so they would not know who she was. Her companion-secretary, Miss Garvey, would then go back and buy what she wanted. In one shop the dealer said that the lady who had been there looked a lot like Madame Chiang Kai-shek. “Many people think so,” said Garvey, “but not if you saw them together. Besides, I believe Mme. Chiang speaks better English.”
Most of the time, however, Madame Chiang spent her energies warning Americans about Communism. As if to prove her contention, in late August the mainlanders lobbed 50,000 shells in two hours at the island of Quemoy and continued their attack for five days. Chiang immediately called on the United States for food, ammunition, and other necessities, which were escorted in by the U.S. Seventh Fleet or airdropped there from planes. Ten days after the bombings, the Madame warned an audience in Chicago, “If this state of affairs is allowed to continue, and specifically the foreign policy pronouncements of the United States are made to look ridiculous in the eyes of the world, then Communist tyranny will overrun and overpower not only the non-Communist areas of Asia, but in time the Western Hemisphere as well.”
A week later, on September 11, Eisenhower issued a statement saying that the bombings were “part of… an ambitious plan of armed conquest… [to]… liquidate all the free-world positions in the Western Pacific area and bring them under captive governments… hostile to the United States and the free world.” Although Dulles had announced that the United States would be in favor of the Nationalists evacuating the offshore islands pursuant to a cease-fire, the matter was finally settled by a communiqué issued jointly by Chiang and Dulles saying that the United States believed that the Nationalist government was the “authentic spokesman for free China”—which, according to Crozier, “proved that Chiang Kai-shek and his regime… were safe but circumscribed.” That was clearly not enough for Madame Chiang, who appeared on Meet the Press quoting a refugee from the mainland as saying that the people there were asking “Why doesn’t the Republic of China use nuclear weapons on the mainland?” Pursuing this line of thought, she claimed that a Taiwanese invasion of mainland China is “growing nearer and nearer every day… because we are responding to the cries of suffering of tortured, oppressed people.”
The editors of The Philadelphia Inquirer were outraged, responding in their lead e
ditorial, “Mme. Chiang has no objections whatever to a nuclear war— to help Chiang keep his grip on two islets impossible to defend.” Some days later, May-ling, who had taken to her bed with “inflammation of back and shoulder muscles from a draft in the TV studio,” discussed the crisis on Quemoy with Emma. “The Nationalists’ opportunity of counting on a comeback attempt over the situation is foolhardy,” Emma told her. “The idea of America getting involved over the off-shore islands isn’t popular.” “I know it,” May-ling confessed to her friend.
Nevertheless, she cabled to commend Ching-kuo for going to the front lines in Quemoy to talk to the soldiers. It was, she said, “very important for their morale. We are going through difficult times.… Don’t let your father get overtired, and please pay special attention to the state of his health.” Stepmother and stepson had grown closer over the past few years; Ching-kuo now addressed her as “Mother” and signed his cables “Son Ching-kuo.” Four weeks later she wrote, “Today is your father’s birthday. I cannot be there, and I hope you are with him and treating him well. I’m so tired after these months of meeting visitors and preparing speeches. I have a foot ache, and the doctor said that I need an operation. But I have received so many invitations for November, so I will wait until these are over. I will let you know when I am going into the hospital.”
Claiming that Madame Chiang had “become one of the most sought-after speakers in the country,” Newsweek noted, “Even her critics were coming to admire Mme. Chiang’s eloquence, however fiery her arguments. And most Americans, whether they agreed with her or not, couldn’t help liking the way the tiny, courageous woman threw her punches straight from the shoulder.” Occasionally, however, May-ling’s need to impress her audience interfered with her message. In addressing the American Bar Association in Los Angeles, she could not resist the temptation to insert references to the Sachsenspiegel (a law book from the German Middle Ages) and the Schwabenspiegel (a legal code circa 1275 A.D.).
In June 1960, President Eisenhower paid a state visit to Taiwan, and Chiang took the opportunity to tell him that the time had come to establish guerrilla bases on the mainland—centers of resistance for which he needed planes and telecommunications equipment. On his return to Washington, Eisenhower, who had promised to take the G-mo’s request under advisement, was told by the Pentagon that such an undertaking would “meet with almost certain defeat with undesirable consequences for both [Taiwan] and the United States.” But, Eisenhower went ahead with the joint planning for a project that was never executed because he thought it would placate the generalissimo.
Two years later, a carefully orchestrated barrage of what the U.S. Embassy called a “crescendo of demands for counterattack” on the Chinese mainland resounded throughout the island. Six months earlier James McHugh had warned that “Chiang Kai-shek is in a Gotterdammerung mood,” and in his New Year’s speech of January 1, 1962, the G-mo appealed directly to the mainlanders, saying that “the time for collective action is here. Our armed forces have made adequate preparations for the counter-offensive and therefore are capable of moving into action at any time. Have no fear of lack or shortage of supplies or assistance. Both will be forthcoming once you take action.” At the end of January, Chiang told a group of American newspaper editors that the Nationalists’ return to the mainland was “fast approaching.” A month later his vice president told the Legislative Yuan that “we must not wait idly for the Peiping regime to collapse. We must improve ourselves and destroy them with our own strength.” These statements were accompanied by supportive editorials in the island’s leading newspapers.
Although the Taiwanese took the campaign for the simple morale builder it was,* President John F. Kennedy, who was now in office and preferred ambiguity in the matter of Taiwan, was sufficiently alarmed to send Averell Harriman to secure the G-mo’s promise that the Taiwanese government would consult with the United States and do nothing behind its back. Chiang, who informed Harriman that the Communist regime on the mainland was in a state of collapse, told the diplomat that he could assure Kennedy that any action taken would be “with full US knowledge” and that “nothing would be hidden.”
Meanwhile, the G-mo did what he could to harass the Communists— gathering intelligence, sabotaging communications, and dropping guerrillas onto the mainland. Frogmen swam up the Min River to Fukien to blow up Communist ships and damage their harbors. Although Taiwan advertised the great achievements of these raids, they were rarely successful, and by the beginning of 1963, Chiang’s government had to admit that 172 of its guerrillas had been killed. There was, however, one large group of guerrillas that did more than try to organize cells of resistance. In 1949, at the time that Communist troops were overrunning southern China, some 12,000 Nationalist soldiers had crossed the Chinese border into Burma. Four years later, in response to Burmese complaints and a U.N. resolution, Chiang agreed to remove his soldiers from foreign soil. Although close to seven thousand persons were brought to Taiwan—an evacuation paid for by the United States—it was noted that the new arrivals to the island were either very young or old. It seems that all the able-bodied young men had been left behind to tend the poppy fields and produce the opium that paid for military equipment. It was never established whether these men operated on their own or under the aegis of Chiang, although Crozier said that “the Nationalist government is involved in the opium traffic in the ‘Golden Triangle’ where Burma, Laos, and Thailand overlap.” This statement, which appeared in one of two articles written for the London Times in 1973, would certainly go along with Chiang’s old practice of funding his war against the Communists through the opium trade. It also underlines the fact that the generalissimo’s objectives and methods were still those of a classic Chinese warlord.
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We like to have a figure to center our interest and curiosity and adulation; something in the constitution of the American people lends itself to this setting up of an idol. Usually along with the hero-worship moves the undercurrent of criticism, a darker tide set in motion by jealousy and envy and malice.
—HELEN HULL
ALTHOUGH CHIANG and May-ling lost no opportunity to rail against the Communists, their presence on the mainland and in Russia served as a convenient excuse for the policy of political repression that continued to characterize the Chiang regime. In 1960, Lei Chen, a former Kuomintang official, poet, teacher, and editor of Free China Fortnightly who was sympathetic to the woes of native Formosans, tried to start a new party called the China Democratic Party. Lei apparently believed that his former connections with the KMT would keep him out of trouble, but his party lasted only the few days it took for him and his fellow members to be arrested. The order to imprison Lei came from the G-mo himself, acting in his capacity of head of the military. One of Lei’s colleagues admitted that in 1953 he had attempted to win Lei over to the Communist cause, and, since Lei had not informed against the man, he too was treated like a Communist agent and interrogated for the better part of a month, while his writings, subjected to rigid examination, were naturally found to be subversive. When Chiang told some American journalists that Lei would be proven guilty of helping the Communists, he rendered the verdict with total confidence—in spite of the fact that Lei’s trial was not scheduled to take place for three weeks. No lawyer dared represent Lei when he was brought to trial on charges of sedition and conspiracy to overthrow the government, charges that demanded the death penalty, but a kind judge sentenced him to only ten years’ imprisonment. While there, he wrote a poem* of tragic resignation that resounded deeply with the Taiwanese and caused the magazine in which it appeared to be banned. Lei’s wife, who had sneaked her husband’s writing out of prison, was denied visiting rights, which were reinstated only after some traveling foreign dignitaries asked that she be allowed to see her husband once a month.
A tragic corollary to the story of Lei Chen involves a young Taiwanese named Su Tung-chi, who signed a petition seeking mercy for Lei. A graduate of Meiji University in Tok
yo, Su was thirty-nine years old with a wife and five young children. Security officers entered Su’s home one morning at 2:00 A.M., took both adults away, and searched their home for “incriminating evidence,” coming up with several old copies of Lei’s Free China Fortnightly , and some copies of Reader’s Digest, translated into Japanese.* Su was charged in a military court with plotting rebellion, sentenced, and presumably executed. His wife was given a life sentence. The rationale for cases like this and others was the imminent Communist threat to the island, but, according to a 1960 report by American intelligence, “The strength of the existing Communist undercover organization is… generally believed to be negligible.”
A few years later, Professor Peng Ming-min, a former chairman of the Department of Political Science at National Taiwan University, and two of his former students were denounced by the printers they had hired to make 10,000 copies of antigovernment political tracts masquerading as examination papers. Sentenced to eight years in prison, Peng was pardoned six months later by Chiang under pressure from scholars around the world, including Henry Kissinger and John Fairbank. Peng later published an article asserting that the state of “national emergency” proclaimed during the Chinese Civil War in May 1949 had “suspended most of the guarantees and protections of individual rights and freedom written into the Chinese National Constitution” and had no basis in reality. “Clinging to the fiction that it is the sole legitimate government of all China, the Nationalist Government views the Communist victory in China as nothing but a ‘state of Communist rebellion,’ ” he explained. Noting “the Government’s tenacious refusal to accept reality,” Peng called the emergency laws, still in effect twenty years after the Civil War, “grossly cynical devices to suspend the constitutional guarantees, deny political freedom and suppress the legitimate aspirations of the local population, all for the convenience of the authoritarian control of the regime.” Among the most egregious provisions that Peng cited were statutes prohibiting public meetings, strikes, and demonstrations; the law that provided for offenders to be tried before military rather than civil courts; provisions calling for the death penalty for such crimes as circulating rumors, inciting riot, and disrupting the money market; and the payment of monetary rewards to “security agents, investigators, prosecutors and judges… in proportion to the severity of the sentence rendered.”
The Last Empress Page 80
