Forgotten Ally: China's World War II, 1937-1945 (10 page)

The government that had so concerned the Japanese was a rather unusual creature. In theory, the Nationalist Party was a “vanguard party” which controlled society through a system of “tutelage” until it was enlightened enough to enjoy “democracy” (which had been one of Sun Yat-sen’s Three Principles of the People, along with nationalism and social welfare). Yet for a one-party dictatorship, the Nationalist Party was exceedingly diverse. The views of its members ranged from liberal to highly traditional and conservative. Often, all these people had in common was an allegiance to party leader Chiang Kai-shek. It was a mark of Chiang’s skill that he was able to keep such disparate men together in one party and retain their loyalty.

Some of the most pro-Western members of the government were also Chiang’s relatives, the children of a Shanghai merchant, Song Jiashu (nicknamed “Charlie” Soong), a well-heeled supporter of Sun Yat-sen from the days of the 1911 revolution. All had remarkable careers in Chinese Nationalist politics. Song Meiling (Soong Mayling), known in much of the West as “Madame Chiang Kai-shek,” was one of Charlie Soong’s daughters. She spoke fluent English, a product of her education at Wellesley College in Massachusetts.
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Chiang had first proposed to her in 1920, as he was beginning to come to prominence in the Nationalist Party, but she declined him. He appeared undistinguished, had little facility for small talk, and was anyway already married. By 1927 things were very different. Chiang was clearly the leading force in the Nationalist Party, and he and Song Meiling courted for over a year. He fulfilled the two conditions she set him by obtaining a divorce from his previous wife, and by agreeing to study the Bible and consider converting to Christianity. They married on December 1, and from that point she became Chiang Kai-shek’s face to the Western world. Diplomats frequently noted that if they met the “Gissimo” (Generalissimo), they would frequently meet the “Missimo” as well; the British diplomat Robert Howe noted early on in the war years that “it is a difficult matter to gather [a] definite impression from a Chinese of Chiang Kai-shek’s stamp who is slow to make up his mind . . . Madame Chiang Kai-shek . . . is of a more volatile temperament.”
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Song Meiling’s views were shaped by her cosmopolitan background, and she was able to give a wider picture of the West to Chiang (who had never been further west than Moscow). At her wedding, she had bowed down before a portrait of Sun Yat-sen. She would go on to play a significant part in the greatest test that Sun’s Republic would endure.

Song Meiling’s brother, T. V. Soong (Song Ziwen), also became a major figure in the government. Harvard-educated, and fluent in English, Soong’s great talent was raising revenues, which he did for several years as minister of finance (1928–1931, 1932–1933). “T. V.” was well known and liked by Western diplomats and financiers of the age. He was relatively liberal, which helped to keep channels open to the United States. Another of Chiang’s brothers-in-law, H. H. Kung (Kong Xiangxi), also played a crucial role in the financial affairs of the government. Kung believed himself a 75th-generation descendant of Confucius, but his influence derived from a twentieth-century connection, his marriage to Song Ailing, the sister of Song Meiling. From 1933 to 1945 Kung served as governor of the Bank of China, as well as finance minister for most of that same period, taking over in the latter role from T. V. Soong. Kung, unlike Soong, was not well regarded in political or public circles, and was frequently accused of being the richest—as well as the most corrupt—man in China. Song Meiling had one other sister, Qingling (Song Chingling), who had married into the finest revolutionary pedigree possible, first as the wife and then widow of Sun Yat-sen.

But the Nationalist Party also contained elements who were much warier of the West. The initials of two brothers, Chen Lifu and Chen Guofu, gave their faction the nickname of the “CC Clique.” They were two tough political operators. The Chens were nationalists and anti-imperialists, but did not believe in any fundamental change in the economic makeup of society and were strongly anti-Communist. Throughout Chiang’s rule, the Chens would push for crackdowns on dissidents, and argue that China needed a more regimented society, rather than a more liberal one. And behind all of the party’s activities was a man who was not a blood relative, but whose loyalty meant he might as well have been. Dai Li was later characterized by the journalist Oliver Caldwell as “China’s Himmler.” Dai was the head of the Nationalist Secret Service, the Juntong (officially the Military and Statistics Bureau). When assassinations or arrests were called for, Dai’s men were selected for the job.
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Completely absent from the power structure was Wang Jingwei. Wang had never forgiven Chiang for his usurpation of power during the Northern Expedition, and he spent the first three years of Chiang’s rule attempting to topple him, either from abroad or in alliance with militarist leaders opposed to Chiang. In 1930 Wang joined forces with the powerful northern warlords Feng Yuxiang and Yan Xishan in the Northern Plains War. Further factional battles between Wang and Chiang’s other rival, Hu Hanmin, followed in 1931. Sun Yat-sen’s heir refused to relinquish his legacy.

In 1931 the atmosphere changed utterly with the Japanese invasion of Manchuria. At that moment, Japan became the single most pressing problem facing Chiang’s government—greater than the Communists, or rival militarists, or other imperialist powers. Woodrow Wilson’s internationalist ethic in the interwar period had dampened Japanese expansion in Asia. But in 1929 the Great Depression plunged Japan into an economic crisis and onto the path of authoritarianism and aggressive imperialism. The two-party system that had operated in interwar Japan had always been troubled, but the collapse of Japan’s export economy during the Depression turned people’s minds toward protectionism and away from liberal ideas of free trade. The United States had begun to close its markets with laws such as the Smoot-Hawley Tariff of 1930, and the British Empire embraced “imperial preference.” Japan now tried to assess where it might create its own zone of economic autarky. The idea that Manchuria was Japan’s “lifeline,” and that Japan should have special and indeed exclusive rights on the Chinese mainland, was expressed in ever more strident terms. In September 1931 the Kwantung Army, directed by Ishiwara and Itagaki, declared that the locals had revolted against the corrupt warlord government of the then provincial leader, Zhang Xueliang, and that they had established in its place an independent state named “Manchukuo” (country of the Manchus), which would receive friendly “assistance” from the Japanese. Few believed this fiction, but nobody (including an investigative committee that the League of Nations dispatched in 1932) had the power or will to counter it—a lesson likely noted by Adolf Hitler, at that time a rising German opposition leader. Refugees from occupied Manchuria lobbied Chiang to resist Japan, but he insisted on limiting himself to official protests.

Over the next few years, Japan’s policies would become a toxic series of interactions between the armies in the field and the civilian politicians. While there were differences of emphasis between various Japanese leaders, the overall ideological belief that Japan deserved special and exclusive rights in China was held throughout leadership circles. Senior Japanese generals took an active role in interfering in Japanese military maneuvers in north China.

Chinese diplomats did make repeated angry exhortations to the League. Chiang declared on September 23 that “If the League of Nations . . . fail[s] to uphold justice, the National Government is prepared for the final and supreme struggle . . . I shall go to the front and if need be fall with other patriots.”
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But Chiang could not live up to this promise, at least, not yet. He knew that his armed forces were simply not strong enough to take on the Kwantung Army, never mind the whole Japanese Imperial Army.

The exiles from occupied Manchuria formed a lobbying group known as the Northeast National Salvation Society, which used everything from media campaigns to demonstrations to try and persuade the government to employ force to recapture the lost northeastern provinces. One of their public announcements in November 1931 chided the government for its inaction: “Only if we unite can we strive for our survival . . . Set up a strong government, bring about a united country, and make your minds up to declare war on Japan.”
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But in the mid-1930s there was still little popular enthusiasm within China for war, and while the fate of the exiled Manchurian Chinese engendered sympathy, it had to battle for attention against the other crises of the era, including the continuing economic crisis. Manchuria’s geographical separateness meant that it did not form a central part of Chinese identity.

There was no doubt that atrocities were taking place under Japanese occupation: the massacre of the 3,000 villagers of Pingdingshan in 1932 (on the pretext that they had been harboring resistance fighters) was just one case that caught international attention. “Houses were put to the torch by Japanese soldiers,” wrote one reporter, “and their inhabitants mowed down mercilessly by Japanese machine guns.”
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In spite of this crime, and others like it, there appeared to be little appetite for resistance within Manchuria itself. There was scant enthusiasm for the Japanese, but neither had the locals felt any deep attachment to the previous modernizing regime of Zhang Xueliang, nor to his father, Zhang Zuolin, who had been a classic warlord, illiterate, and addicted to opium. The Japanese combined threats of terror with a certain amount of spending on local infrastructure to appease the population. The invaders also found local officials who were willing to continue their previous roles under the Japanese, providing a sense of continuity. Collaboration with the occupiers may not have been enthusiastic in most cases, but it was widespread. The occupation of Manchuria helped the Japanese exercise control of the mainland and also taught them lessons on how the Chinese population might respond in the event that they ever expanded beyond the boundaries of Manchukuo.

Chiang was feeling pressure from all sides in late 1931. He was still being opposed by the southerners within the Nationalist Party, Wang Jingwei and another veteran of the early days of the revolution, the Cantonese conservative Hu Hanmin. The Communists seemed well established in Jiangxi. To fight the Japanese as well would have been suicidal. Furthermore, the increasingly militarist government in Tokyo took every opportunity to argue that the Nationalist government was “insincere” about its relationship with Japan, and any provocation inevitably would allow them to demand more territory. (One such incident was the arrest and summary execution of one Captain Nakamura, who had been traveling undercover near the Mongolian border and had been suspected of spying by local Chinese soldiers.)
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Chiang’s prestige had been damaged by the loss of Manchuria, and he desperately needed to restore his standing. And so, on December 15, 1931, he resigned.

With this bold gamble, Chiang aimed to prove that no other leader could take his place in the midst of a crisis. Within days, it was clear that he was correct. Top military leaders declared that they would not serve under his replacement, Sun Fo (the son of Sun Yat-sen); tax offices would not transmit funds to the new government; there were public demonstrations demanding that Chiang come back. By early January 1932, Chiang had agreed to return, his position much strengthened. He was also now able to draw in one of his most constant rivals, Wang Jingwei. The threat from Japan now appeared too great to ignore, and after uneasy negotiations Wang agreed to serve in Chiang’s government as the president of the Executive Yuan (the equivalent of prime minister). This was a highly prestigious position, theoretically putting Wang in charge of the major executive body in the government, but it had no military authority at all. Chiang had managed to bring his opponent into the government without allowing him any autonomy, though Wang’s grouping, known as the “Reorganization Faction,” was at least given a significant role in the government. Chiang was now the undisputed leader of the party, and his rivalry with Wang was subdued, if not buried.

However, Chiang’s decision not to challenge the Japanese occupation had serious repercussions, as it encouraged ever greater boldness from his opponents. In February 1932 fighting broke out in Shanghai between Chinese factory workers and Japanese monks, and escalated quickly. A Japanese naval commander, Rear Admiral Shiozawa Kôichi, seized the opportunity to demand an apology and compensation, along with the suppression of anti-Japanese demonstrations in the city. The navy was jealous of the Kwantung Army’s success in Manchuria, and this was an opportunity for them to gain prestige. In public, Chiang offered a compromise, but in private, he encouraged the Chinese 19th Route Army, under the command of Cai Tingkai, to fight back. China and Japan were at war. It was a short conflict, but a real one: the inhabitants of Shanghai were surprised to see trenches dug in the alleys and boulevards of the great city as missiles and bullets flew. In three weeks, there were some 14,000 Chinese casualties, and over 3,000 Japanese; civilian deaths were 10,000 or more. Eventually the two sides reached a truce, an agreement which restricted the ability of Chinese troops to operate in Shanghai and was therefore highly unpopular with the Chinese public. With his stated opposition to Cai’s resistance (even if he had a different position behind the scenes), along with the policy of nonresistance in Manchuria, Chiang developed a reputation for appeasing Japan. He was further embarrassed by the Communists, who trumpeted their determination to resist the occupation, but most of the party was in Jiangxi province, sixteen hundred kilometers away from Manchuria. Unlike Chiang, the CCP were not called upon to make good on their threats.
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