Patrick J. Hurley (far right), the U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of China, watches Chinese Communist leader Mao Tse-tung (left) and Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, leader of Nationalist China, toast one another at a “peace” conference in September 1945. Chiang Kai-shek and his fellow Nationalists would evacuate to the island of Taiwan in 1949. (U.S. Naval Institute Photo Archive)
The Hegelian Dialectic and the rise of modern China: Mao Tse-tung (left), leader of the Chinese “Left” and Chiang Kai-shek (right), leader of the Chinese “Right”. Although Mao and Chiang opposed one another politically, both Mao and Chiang claimed to be successors of Dr. Sun Yat-sen and his “Three Principles of Democracy.” Both Mao and Chiang were acquainted with prominent members of the Soong family;
Chiang Kai-shek was married to Soong Mei-ling. Both Mao and Chiang indirectly served the interests of the Communists, Soviet Russia, and later corporate America. Chiang Kai-shek opposed Communism and Soviet Russia after an assassination attempt on him occurred in Canton, China in 1926. Mao Tse-tung allegedly attended Yale-In-China and allegedly maintained ties with Yale scholars.
Soviet troops make their presence in Harbin in Manchurian province of China in August 1945.
(Photo: AP/Wide World Photo/The Strange Connection: U.S. Intervention in China, 1944-1972 by Bevin Alexander)
Soviet Red Army troops congregate outside the Harbin train station in Harbin, Manchuria (China) in August 1945.
(Photo: http://pro-patria-mori.tumblr.com/post/43474379563/soviet-troops-in-manchuria-at-the-harbin-train)
Commander-in-chief of the China Expeditionary Army Yasuji Okamura (left) presents the Japanese Instrument of Surrender to Nationalist Chinese General He Yingqin at Nanking, China on September 9, 1945.
Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek (right), the leader of the Republic of China, meets with Chinese Muslim generals Ma Bufang (second from left) and Ma Bufang’s brother Ma Buqing (first from left) at Generalissimo Chiang’s temporary residence in Xining in August 1942. Ma Bufang lived in exile in Egypt and later Saudi Arabia; Ma Bufang served as the Nationalist Chinese Ambassador to Saudi Arabia for several years.
(Source: KMT Party Archives)
A conference takes place at Yenan Communist headquarter for the upcoming Chungking meeting in Yenan, China on August 27, 1945. From left to right are: unidentified, Mao Tse-tung, U.S. Army Observer Col. I.V. Yeaton, U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of China Patrick J. Hurley, an unidentified Chinese officer, and Chou Enlai. (Time Life photo)
Chiang Kai-shek’s assistants Chen Koufu (left) and his brother Chen Lifu
Chou Enlai, Mao Tse-tung, and U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of China Patrick J. Hurley arrive in Chungking, China for peace talks, August 1945. (Courtesy Service Family) http://www.honorablesurvivor.com/photosChina1.asp
U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of China Patrick J. Hurley (front row, left) appears with Republic of China’s President Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek (front row, center), Communist terrorist Mao Tse-tung (front row, right), and Chiang Kai-shek’s son Chiang Ching-kuo (back row, left) in Chungking, China in September 1945 during the failed American attempt to negotiate between the Chinese Nationalists and the Communist terrorists. (Photo: Jack Wilkes/Time Life)
U.S. Army General George C. Marshall (second from left) appears with Communist terrorists Mao Tse-tung (right), Chou Enlai (left), and Chu The [Zhu De] (third from left) as well as Nationalist Chinese General Chang Chih-chung [Zhang Jizhuang]
(second from right) at the Communist headquarters in Yan’an (Yenan), China in March 1946.
(Photo: The Strange Connection: U.S. Intervention in China, 1944-1972 by Bevin Alexander)
U.S. Army General George C. Marshall chats with Mao Tse-tung in Yenan, China in 1946.
(Source: Mao Tse-tung by Robert Payne)
Left to right: U.S. Army Gen. George C. Marshall, Madame Chiang Kai-shek (Soong Meiling), Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, and U.S. Army Gen. Dwight Eisenhower have a meeting on a couch in mainland China in 1946.
Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek drops his ballot in the box after voting in the nationwide general election for members of the National Assembly at Nanking, China on December 8, 1947. (Photo: © Bettmann/CORBIS)
Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek and his wife Madame Chiang Kai-shek meet with U.S. Army General George C. Marshall (left) and U.S. Army General Dwight D. Eisenhower in China in 1946.
(Source: The Generalissimo: Chiang Kai-shek and The Struggle for Modern China by Jay Taylor)
U.S. Army Gen. George C. Marshall and Chinese Communist terrorist Mao Tse-tung inspect the “People’s Liberation Army” in Yan’an, China in March 1946.
U.S. Army General George C. Marshall (L) appears with Generalissimo Chiang shek (R) and his wife Madame Chiang Kai-shek (C) in January 1946. (Photo: George Lacks/Time Life Pictures/Getty Images)
Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek is flanked by Leighton Stuart (left), the U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of China, and U.S.
Army General George C. Marshall (right), the diplomatic envoy to China. George C. Marshall was the U.S. Secretary of State from January 21, 1947 to January 20, 1949. Robert A. Lovett (B.A. Yale 1918) was the Under Secretary of State from 1947 to 1949. George C. Marshall and Robert A. Lovett reportedly advised President Harry S. Truman to withhold military equipments and ammunition from reaching Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek and his Nationalist army during the final two years of the Chinese Civil War; the Chinese Nationalists withdrew from Peking, Shanghai, Canton, and Chungking by the end of 1949 and evacuated to the island of Taiwan to avoid surrendering to the Chinese Communists. (Source: Chiang Kai-shek by Robert Payne)
U.S. Army General George C. Marshall (center) meets with Chinese Communist terrorist Chou En-Lai and Chinese Nationalist diplomat Chang Chun in January-February 1946. (Photo by George Lacks/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images)
U.S. Army General George C. Marshall chats with Chinese Communist terrorist Chou Enlai in China in 1946. (George Lacks/Time Life)
Red Chinese terrorist Chou Enlai and U.S. Army General George C. Marshall watch Chinese Nationalist envoy Chan Chun sign an American-sponsored “cease-fire” agreement in Chungking, China on February 1, 1946. George C. Marshall constantly restrained the Chinese
Nationalists from administering China while turning a blind eye to Communist Chinese military aggression in Manchuria. The Chinese Nationalists were forced to retreat to the island of Taiwan by the end of 1949.
Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek (C) is flanked by U.S. Economic Cooperation Administration administrator Paul G. Hoffman (L) and U.S.
Ambassador to the Republic of China J. Stuart Leighton during a meeting in mainland China in November 1948. The Truman administration withheld weapons, ammunition, and other military supplies from the Chinese Nationalists while the Stalin regime in Moscow was constantly providing weapons, ammunition, and other military supplies to the Chinese Communists. (Photo: Jack Birns/Time Life)
Mao Tse-tung addresses his followers in rural China in December 1948. (Triangle Photo)
Mao Tse-tung rides a horse as marches with his bodyguards during their flight from Yenan, China in 1948. Mao and his Red Army would flee to Manchuria, where the Soviet Union would provide Mao and his army with ammunition, clothes, food, and medicine. Mao and his Red Army would defeat several divisions of the Nationalist Chinese army in Manchuria the following year and capture Peking, Tientsin, Shanghai, and the rest of mainland China by the end of 1949. (Source: Mao Tse-tung by Robert Payne)
Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek delivers his inauguration speech as the first President of the Republic of China in the new constitution of 1946 on May 20, 1948. The Chinese Nationalist government (Republic of China) held their only legislative elections in mainland China in 1947.
Map of China during the [Second] Chinese Civil War (1945-1949)
“Meanwhile, at a September 18 [, 1946] tea party in Chungking, Mao proclaimed, “We must stop [the] civil war and all parties must unite under the leadership of Chairman Chiang [Kai-shek] to build modern China…The next day, Double Ten Day (the anniversary of the 1911 revolution [October 10, 1911]), Mao joined Chiang for breakfast while the official talks adjourned with the issuance of a vague but upbeat communiqué. The two sides agreed to establish a political democracy, unify China’s armed forces under the Generalissimo and convene the political consultative conference “as soon as possible.” The devilish details were avoided…Back in Yan’an, Mao told his party comrades that the agreed statement in Chungking was “a mere scrap of paper,” and he informed the Soviet representative that civil war was “virtually inevitable.” In a telegram to the Northeastern bureau, he declared that the party was determined to mobilize all resources to take control of Manchuria and to defend its positions in North China. Within six months, the Chairman concluded, “we must smash all Chiang’s military offensives…then we can…force him to recognize the autonomous status of North China and Manchuria.”
– The Generalissimo: Chiang Kai-shek and The Struggle for Modern China by Jay Taylor (2009), p. 321-323
“Marshall’s immediate objective during his peace mission was to arrange a cease-fire. He again proposed that one way to “reorganize”
CCP troops currently occupying territory and controlling local governments would be to “mingle them with government troops,” in other words, incorporate them into government units. Chiang [Kai-shek], who had long sought just that arrangement, was again elated and concluded he could “certainly trust” Marshall to head a “Committee of Three” to negotiate the terms of the cease-fire. The committee, proposed by Marshall, would include a ranking Nationalist (Zhang Qun) and a Communist (Zhou Enlai) as well as Marshall. Another issue was resolved when Marshall surprisingly persuaded Zhou to accept continued U.S. transport of government troops to Manchuria, as well as a stipulation that during the cease-fire, government forces would be free to move “into and in
Manchuria for the purpose of re-establishing Chinese sovereignty.” In only a few meetings in early January, the Committee of Three astonishingly reached an accord on military integration and a collation government as well as a cease-fire, all with terms that favored the government. Years later, Chiang would lament that Marshall’s “stand and attitude” at this time had caused him to decide to fight for Manchuria. While Mao seemed willing to agree to almost anything on paper, most important to him was what was happening on the ground. He sent another 150,000 troops to Lin Biao in Manchuria and ordered him to incorporate an additional 200,000 local forces into his main units. Then, on January 13, 1946, Chiang and Mao issued orders to their respective armed forces effective at midnight to stop all hostilities and all movement of troops, with agreed exceptions- most importantly the deployment of government forces into Manchuria. Despite the cease-fires’s apparent advantages in Manchuria for the government, Chiang – as well as his generals – thought that overall the truce would be “disadvantageous” to the government. Yan Xishan, for example, warned that the truce would only give the CCP time to regroup and expand. But Chiang felt he had no choice – to protect his relations with the United States and encourage the Soviets to cooperate in the Northeast (Manchuria), he needed to proceed with the agreement. A three-party executive headquarters, which included an American element, moved to Peking to monitor the cease-fire. Chiang’s hopes for a breakthrough with the Soviets were soon to be dashed. On January 14, Ching-kuo returned from his two-week visit to the Soviet capital, after having had two long unsatisfactory talks with Stalin. The leader of the USSR had warned that the United States was trying to use China for its own purposes, and that only if Chiang Kai-shek did not allow “a single American soldier” to remain in China would the Soviet Union tell the CCP to come to an “understanding” with the Generalissimo. Stalin suggested that he and Chiang arrange a meeting. Ching-kuo sadly informed his father that Stalin was “playing games” in Manchuria and following “his own plot.”…Sure enough, the Soviet offers began to fall apart. Malinovsky officially informed Chungking that , for “technical reasons,”
the Red Army could not meet the new February deadline for its pullout. The Soviet general also again demanded as reparation all Japanese-owned factories in the Northeast, assets that he himself valued at US$3.8 billion…In China, however, Zhou Enlai continued to convince Marshall that the CCP leaders were not ideological fanatics or allies of the Soviet Union but rather political moderates committed to his peace plan. Immediately after the cease-fire, Chiang began to receive a stream of reports of Communist attacks in North China as well as in Manchuria, where the Soviet Red Army was reputedly supporting CCP units indirectly in some
engagements. On January, despite the cease-fire, Communist troops took two cities in Manchuria, including the important coastal port city of Yingkou. Chiang was now beginning to suspect that Marshall was not going to favor the government’s position as much as he had assumed. Marshall did not in his report to Washington note the seizure of Yingkou, an oversight that disturbed Chiang, who wrote that there had to be a point where “I need to make my final decision” in regard to Manchuria…Zhou reported to Mao that Marshall had told him he trusted the sincerity of the Chinese Communists but was having difficulty persuading the Kuomintang leaders. Zhou [Enlai] told his secretary that [George C.] Marshall “reminded him of Stilwell.”
– The Generalissimo: Chiang Kai-shek and The Struggle for Modern China by Jay Taylor (2009), p. 339-343
“Meanwhile, in Manchuria, the PLA [People’s Liberation Army] continued to increase its capabilities thanks to successful conscription and Soviet aid. The government naval commander in Tsingtao reported that his ships had detected several Soviet freighters every week unloading armed Communist troops and weapons at Yantai, the CCP-occupied port at the northeastern tip of Shandong. The rail lines in Communist Manchuria suffered occasional air attacks but were kept humming by a 300-man unit of Soviet Army Railway troops. Soviet doctors, too, were sent to help put down an epidemic of plague in the PLA camps. To pay for the imports of supplies and equipment from Russia, in 1947, Communist Manchuria sent north by train 1.1 million tons of grain as well as other products. Yet throughout the Chinese civil war, CIA [U.S. Central Intelligence Agency] assessments kept reporting that “there was no concrete evidence the Soviet Union was currently supplying Japanese or Soviet material to the CCP.”
– The Generalissimo: Chiang Kai-shek and The Struggle for Modern China by Jay Taylor (2009), p. 372-373
“As fighting outside Manchuria escalated, Truman, in a letter drafted by Marshall, warned Chiang that unless genuine progress was made soon toward a peaceful settlement, “it must be expected that American opinion will not continue in its generous attitude toward your nation.” As Chiang saw it, Marshall had leverage to use against the Nationalist government but absolutely none against the Communists, so he used what he had – his control of U.S. military aid and U.S. military sales to Nanking.
Without any announcement the State Department began refusing to license military equipment for China, even sales for which the Chinese government had already paid. Marshall informed Zhou [Enlai] that he had stopped “almost every direct support” of the U.S. government for the Nationalist military. Zhou must have been delighted at the news: he had virtually achieved his objective of neutralizing the United States in the Chinese civil war. According to a Chinese scholar writing on the mainland in 1996, “CCP leaders [in the fall of 1946] saw clearly that the U.S. basically lacked the strength to intervene in China through military means.” Thus “it no longer made sense to continue purely nominal [good] relations with the United States that were of greater harm than benefit.” Marshall was unaware of this new attitude. Instead, he had again explained the toughening CCP line as a sign that “liberal elements in the Communist Party” were “losing control and the radicals [were] becoming the leaders.” But he continued to believe the top leaders – Mao, Zhou, and company – were still acting in good faith. To Chiang, Marshall and Stuart’s continuing notion that the Communists would truly compromise their revolutionary objectives was like “trying to catch a fish in a tree.” By September [1946], government forces had taken over most of those localities and railways outside of Manchuria that the Generalissimo had demanded the Communists abandon after the cease-fire. The government offensive since July had been far more successful than Marshall had anticipated, but the victories had come at a high cost. According to a Nationalist general, the government had lost “one fifth of its troops and enough U.S.-supplied ammunition and equipment to organize 18 new divisions.” As the chill of autumn crept deeper into Manchuria, relations between Marshall and the
Generalissimo grew testier. Marshall spoke increasingly roughly to the Chinese leader. He told him the only thing holding China together was Chiang’s prestige, which was rapidly deteriorating. When Chiang questioned what a group of Harvard professors who had protested the Kunming assassinations knew about the circumstances, Marshall, obviously alluding to Chiang’s limited formal education, replied that they “were more than a bunch of military high school graduates.” Meanwhile, Marshall’s relations with Zhou [Enlai] remained cordial, even close. One day, complaining to Zhou about Communist anti-American propaganda, he again inexplicably leaked an intelligence source, saying that the United States regularly intercepted weekly “propaganda orders from Moscow to the Communist units in Shanghai and Shanghai’s replies.” Marshall explained to Beal that he knew that as a result of this comment to Zhou the United States would “lose that [intelligence] source,” but “we know it [the information] anyway.” Still, it was another serious slip of the tongue, reflecting the casual and relaxed relations between Zhou and Marshall.”
– The Generalissimo: Chiang Kai-shek and The Struggle for Modern China by Jay Taylor (2009), p. 358-359
“To slow the avalanche in the rapid fall of the yuan, Chiang’s government had tried pegging wages to the cost of living, freezing prices and wages, and rationing industrial materials as well as consumer goods. But nothing worked. A standard sack of rice sold for 6.7 million yuan in June 1948 and 63 million yuan in August. That month, the government announced a new currency called the gold yuan and a new law that required citizens to turn in all the gold and silver bullion they held in addition to the old currency, the fabi yuan. The rate of exchange was 3 million fabi to one gold yuan. Nanking announced that it would distribute no more than 2 billion of the new yuan and it banned wage and price increases as well as strikes and demonstrations. Chiang appointed his son, Ching-kuo, to implement the program in the Shanghai area. Ching-kuo established control over the six or more police and intelligence organizations in the city and cracked down hard on speculators and hoarders, including prominent businessmen and those connected to the Green Gagne. He arrested the head of the Finance Ministry’s Currency Department in Shanghai and a number of other high officials for illegal smuggling of foreign currency and gold to Hong Kong. After that, the Shanghai banks turned over large amounts of foreign currency and gold bullion reserves. Ching-kuo, who repeatedly denounced the depredations of the rich, became a popular figure in the city. He emphasized that the KMT was the party of social revolution and his intent was not only to stamp out economic crimes, but also to end the unequal distribution of wealth. Ching-kuo’s crackdown kept the new currency under control in Shanghai for a few weeks. Among those he arrested was the son of Du Yuesheng; after making a substantial payment to the government, Du was allowed to close his company and join his father, who had decamped to Hong Kong. Before leaving town, Du gave Ching-kuo a list of companies owned by David Kung – Madame’s nephew, the son of Ai-ling and H.H. – that were illegally storing goods. Ching-kuo put David Kung under house arrest, but [Soong] Mayling traveled immediately to Shanghai and met with the two step-cousins….After some negotiation, the young Kung reportedly turned over US$6 million to the government, then left for Hong Kong. Shortly thereafter he joined his parents, who had fled to New York a year earlier.”
– The Generalissimo: Chiang Kai-shek and The Struggle for Modern China by Jay Taylor (2009), p. 386-387
Fu Zuoyi (left), Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek (center), and Wei Lihuang meet in Peiping (Peking), China in November 1948.
Conscripts for the Chinese Nationalist government’s final resistance in Peking against the Chinese Communists stand in formation at the Forbidden City in Peking, Republic of China on December 1948. (Henry Cartier-Bresson from Magnum)