Chiang Kai-shek

“ The Generalissimo’s honesty and personal integrity have never been questioned by those who know him best, and who were in constant association with him during the Japanese war. General Wedemeyer has attested to this statement and he was the American Chief of Staff to Chiang Kai-shek and knew him intimately. For us to say his Nationalist Government was [Pg 112] corrupt and deserved to fall, amounts to the pot calling the kettle black. Such a situation exists today in Washington, D. C.
Feeding the armies was Chiang’s greatest problem. ”

“ China had thus to be prepared for being involved one day in a great war with Japan. Chiang Kai-shek wanted to postpone war as long as possible. He wanted time to establish his power more thoroughly within the country, and to strengthen his army. In regard to external relations, the great powers would have to decide their attitude sooner or later. America could not be expected to take up a clear attitude: she was for peace and commerce, and she made greater profits out of her relations with Japan than with China ”

“ Chiang Kai-shek had fought for eight years to prevent the spread of Japanese totalitarianism in China. Now he was confronted with a much more vicious brand, Communist totalitarianism. He commented, “The Japanese were a disease of the skin. The Communists are a disease of the bone.”
[Pg 111]
Many people wonder why the Nationalist Armies were so ineffective and why so many of them went over to the Communists without even putting up a fight. Certainly the bulk of the Chinese are not disposed to Communism. They just want an opportunity to feed, clothe and shelter their families. ”

“ Ten thousand people were awaiting us in the field. As we walked thru the crowd, with several hundred soldiers aligning themselves along the edges to protect the meeting, each soldier with a revolutionary banner on his bayonet, a great roar of joy and relief came from the crowd. They had a living demonstration that armed force was not all on one side; and that the International Delegation which the Wuhan government and Chiang Kai-shek had united in welcoming to China was also standing squarely in support of them in their struggle against counter-revolution. ”

“ This was the period which began with the reorganization of the Kuomintang Nationalist government, the split by Chiang Kai Shek and the establishment of the Nanking government, and ended with the breakup of the reorganized National government of Wuhan. It was a time of civil war in almost every city and town which the Delegation visited. A tremendous regrouping of class forces was occurring in the Chinese Revolution. ”

“ Chiang Kai Shek in Nanchang, after greeting the Joint Conference and making proposals to it, changed his mind and denounced it as an illegal body. After negotiations, it was agreed in Nanchang to move to Wuhan on February 9; when that date arrived, postponement was again made until the 16th; on that date it was again postponed. Whereupon, at an enlarged Joint Conference in Wuhan, it was decided that the Central Kuomintang and the National Government should both begin office to succeed the Joint Conference without further waiting. ”

“ Decides to restore all its rights to the People's Republic of China and to recognize the representatives of its Government as the only legitimate representatives of China to the United Nations, and to expel forthwith the representatives of Chiang Kai-shek from the place which they unlawfully occupy at the United Nations and in all the organizations related to it. ”

“ By means of a number of landings the Japanese soon conquered the whole coast of China, so cutting off all supplies to the country; against hard fighting in some places they pushed inland along the railways and conquered the whole eastern half of China, the richest and most highly developed part of the country. Chiang Kai-shek had the support only of the agriculturally rich province of Szechwan, and of the scarcely developed provinces surrounding it. Here there was as yet no industry. ”

“ He learned much from Michael Borodin, Russian-born Communist, and also from Chiang Kai-shek’s one-time Russian advisor, Gallen, who later, as General Bleucher, commanded the Russian Far Eastern Army.
Chou is not afraid of work. Toiling late at night, he writes articles for the press and prepares lengthy [Pg 60] speeches for the radio. He has been able to convert many U. S. State Department officials to the view that in helping Chiang, we were backing the wrong horse and should, instead, have put our money on the Red. ”

“ His contribution, later, to the work of the International Delegation was to present us with a basket of fruit and a propaganda speech to the effect that "China needs a strong man and the only strong man is Chiang Kai Shek." ”

“ In China, in the midst of revolution, the army is necessarily the immediately decisive factor. What was the attitude of the army, therefore, in this inner struggle? A few of my own contacts with the army will indicate what was going on in many places:
(1) At Whanpoa Military Academy, the stronghold of Chiang Kai Shek, the International Workers' Delegation was received by a wildly enthusiastic demonstration of 5,000 cadets, who sang "The Internationale" and shouted in unison slogans which included, "Follow the advice of the Communist International." ”

“ His military tactics are the same as those of the Huns of Attila, the Mongols of Genghis Khan and the Tartars of Tamerlane. Let the enemy be the source of supplies—the enemy being anyone who has anything you want.
As far back as 1927, Earl Browder had been in China helping the Communists plant the seeds for the future control of that country. They had planned on Chiang Kai-shek playing the role of Kerensky in Russia—that of being a temporary leader of the Chinese to be kicked out as soon as he had defeated the warlords in southern and central China. ”

“ There is great unrest in the country, and the people have no leader. They are fighting among themselves. And yet she thinks she can enslave the world! She is nothing but a weakling! By aiding Chiang Kai-shek, [Pg 93] she is responsible for the slaughter of millions of Chinese!”
An outburst of applause and cries of “Ding How!” (Good! Good!) greeted his words.
Mao continued, waving his arms: “In China, some Imperialism still exists in our ‘New Democracy,’ but we will work steadfastly for a complete Communist Society. Our tools are the People’s Army, Police and Communist Court. ”

“ There are few class distinctions in China, no hereditary aristocracy. Anybody can get anywhere, if he can prove himself able and intelligent enough. The Chinese have their great men who were born in cabins, just as we do. Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek himself is the son of poor parents, and Sun Yat-sen, their George Washington, was a poor boy. The rich in China behave like the rich anywhere except that they don't feel them­selves permanently rich. They know that poor and rich change places quickly in the changes of democratic life. And the poor man in China is independent and energetic. ”

“ Even the famous Burma Road could not save China.
By 1940-1941 Japan had attained her war aim: China was no longer a dangerous adversary. She was still able to engage in small-scale fighting, but could no longer secure any decisive result. Puppet governments were set up in Peking, Canton, and Nanking, and the Japanese waited for these governments gradually to induce supporters of Chiang Kai-shek to come over to their side. Most was expected of Wang Ching-wei, who headed the new Nanking government. He was one of the oldest followers of Sun Yat-sen, and was regarded as a democrat. ”

“ In the meantime, Mao Tse-tung had given up his studies in Peking and had returned to his home in Hunan. Here, he organized his countrymen, the farmers of Hunan. It is said that at the verge of the northern expedition of Chiang Kai-shek, Mao's adherents in Hunan already numbered in the millions; this made the quick and smooth advance of the communist-advised armies of Chiang Kai-shek possible. Mao developed his ideas in written form in 1927; he showed that communism in China could be successful only if it was based upon farmers. ”

“ The general tossed the coin again, absent-mindedly.
"All right!" Nehru grated. "If they agree, so do we!"
It took a month before Pakistan could agree, and all the arrangements be made for the Toss on Kashmir. But in that month, the world had other things to think about. Chiang Kai Shek accepted his gambling loss without a murmur and removed his troops from Quemoy and Matsu, the American Seventh Fleet helping, the Communists not interfering. All civilians on the islands who wished to go to Formosa were taken there. ”

“ The Chinese Communists, like the Soviets, are making every effort to destroy family life and ties, since family loyalty competes with their training program. The first and only loyalty must be to the State. [Pg 85] In some schools, youngsters have been given new textbooks which begin with the verse:
“I do not love my Mama. I do not love my Papa. I love only my Country and Mao Tse-tung.” Other books show pictures of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek and other Nationalist leaders and characterize them as enemies of the State who are “to be killed on sight.” ”

“ We must not allow the latter enough time to consolidate their gains and strike with strategic advantage. It is now widely argued whether Japan would move southward or northward. Some people seem to assume that she is not in a position to strike either or both directions and will possibly devote her further efforts of aggression to attacking China alone. To my mind we must carefully guard ourselves against making any calculation based upon such arguments of assumption because the aggressors are both opportunists and aggressors and therefore are capable of sudden and unpredictable action. ”

“ As such, to the expansion of her power southward she has established naval bases on Hainan Island and in Indo-China. Japan has thus been outstandingly instrumental in magnifying the scale of the war, in finessing the plan she was the first to make. She is to be regarded as more than the villainous originator of the Far Eastern War. She is responsible for the universal character of the strife we now see spreading over the earth. Until this final flame of the evil is backed up there can be no hope of permanent peace for mankind at large. ”

“ The Burma Road is the vital supply route over which the Chinese Republic, cut off from almost all sea commerce by the Japanese invaders, still maintains contact with the outside world. Were it closed, it is doubtful whether the valiant army of General Chiang Kai-shek could long continue its fight against aggression.—Ed.
[2] Many devotees of the "science" of numerology are firmly convinced that the Great Pyramid of Cheops was too geometrically designed as to present to him who could decipher its structural allegory a comprehensive prophecy of the world's future for more than 5,000 years.—Ed. ”

“ They also had an advantage over Western soldiers in their ability to withstand hunger and cold while making long night marches. After all, the rigors of a winter campaign in Korea were not much worse than the hardships the Chinese peasant had endured all his life. Usually he was a veteran of at least five years’ combat experience, for36 China had known little but war since the Japanese invasion of 1935. Many of Mao Tse-tung’s troops, in fact, were former Nationalists who had fought for Chiang Kai-shek. ”

“ Zhongzheng, adhering to the will of the founding father of the nation, leading the national revolution, cannot but take the greatest responsibility of my life. However, this deep understanding and solemn position are not always understood by the international and domestic countries. ”

“ Disbandment programs had not made enough progress by 1937 to alter the general position of the armies in Chinese society. Nevertheless, the counterpart of disbandment—selective recruiting—produced a central force which became the vocation, avocation, and passion of Generalissimo Chiang K'ai-shek. Though not marked in any recognizable way as apart from the rest of the armed forces, the central units were given special arms, special equipment, regular pay, mass education, and training in the patriotic and reform doctrines of the New Life movement. "Chiang's own" were to distinguish themselves ”

“ Chiang was a man of inherited literary tastes and of great learning. In the above treatise he made the "Shuo-wên" his standard of authority (主) , and he seems to have read with care all the good literature bearing on the characters. It was to these rather than to the spoken sounds that he devoted his thoughts and reading. [28]
A much more famous author, however, was Ku Ye-wang (顧野王) al. Ku Hsi-fêng (希馮) . This man was a native of K'un-shan (崑山) , in the Soochow Prefecture of Kiangsu, and lived from 519 to 581. ”

“ After flowing a long distance 105northward of the Mongolian desert, to the northern limit of Shen-hsi, it then turns directly south for a distance of five hundred miles. A right angle turns its course again to the eastward and finally north-eastward, when it flows into the Gulf of Pechili in the province of Shan-tung. The Chiang on the contrary turns south where the Ho turns north, and then after a general course to the eastward and northward, roughly parallelparallel with its fellow, flows into the Eastern Sea, not far from Shanghai. ”

“ The Generalissimo’s gallant stand against the modern war machines and trappings of the Japanese added shining pages to the history of China. History will record a full realization of the importance of his contributions to the United States in World War II. After Pearl Harbor, while the Japanese won many military successes against the Americans and the British, Chiang’s determination to stay in the fight saved countless American lives. ”