Red Star over China (56 page)

“That is all. It is a strange thing that there has been this delay. Had someone come, he could have returned some days ago. …

“C
HANG
H
SUEH-LIANG
.”
^*

But serious trouble was developing in the ranks of the radical younger officers of the Tungpei Army. They had acquired strong direct voice in the affairs of Chang's military council, and their views were important. Infected by the temper of the strong mass movement now spreading throughout the Northwest, they were at first fiercely opposed to the release of Chiang Kai-shek before Nanking began to carry out the eight-point program. The majority, in fact, insisted upon giving Chiang a “popular trial” for his life, before an enormous mass meeting which they planned to call.

The possibility of this public humiliation had also occurred to Chiang. No one knew any better than he the potentialities of the movement that had been set afoot in the Northwest, for a similar rising had almost overwhelmed him in 1927. Chiang's whole career had been a struggle against the intervention in his well-ordered chain of events of that disturbing imperative which he called “the mob.” Talk of the “popular trial” was even on the lips of the sentries around him; Chiang wrote of listening through the doorway to the conversation of his jailers, in which his fate was discussed: “When I heard [the words] ‘the people's verdict,' I realized that it was a malicious plot to kill me by using the mob as their excuse.”

Chiang Kai-shek may have been saved from further humiliation only by the Communists' opposition to any such plan. Even before Chou's talk with Chiang, the Communists had begun to state that they had received enough assurances from him (aside from assurances to be inferred from the objective situation) to believe that if released he would be obliged to stop civil war, and in general to carry out the whole “united-front” program. But to do so Chiang's position had to be preserved and he must return to Nanking with his prestige intact. If he were submitted to the indignity of a “people's trial,” civil war would inevitably develop, the decade of stalemate in the Red-Kuomintang war would be very much prolonged, and hopes of achieving an anti-Japanese national front would become remote indeed. From such a prospect no party could hope to benefit, only China could suffer, and only Japan gain. So, at least, the Reds explained their policy to me.
⁴

By December 22 several envoys and negotiators from the Central Government had arrived in Sian, including T. V. Soong, chairman of the National Economic Council (and Chiang's brother-in-law), the Minister of Interior, the Vice-Minister of War, the president of the Military Advisory Council, the chief aide-de-camp of the Generalissimo—as well as assorted members of the General Staff, who had been “detained” with Chiang Kai-shek. Most of them took some part in the parleys with Chang Hsueh-liang, Yang Hu-ch'eng, Chou En-lai, and high commanders of the Tungpei Army.

The substantial meaning of the eight demands to those who supported them was, in correct order of importance, as follows: (1) cessation of civil war and cooperation between the Kuomintang and the Communists in (2) a definite policy of armed resistance against any further Japanese aggression; (3) dismissal of certain “pro-Japanese” officials in Nanking, and the adoption of an active diplomacy for creating closer relations (alliances, if possible) with Great Britain, America, and Soviet Russia; (4) reorganization of the Tungpei and Hsipei armies on an equal footing (politically and militarily) with Nanking's forces; (5) greater political freedom for the people; and (6) the creation of some sort of democratic political structure at Nanking.

Those seemed to be the main points of agreement between Chiang Kai-shek and Chang Hsueh-liang before they left Sian. Chiang also made a personal guarantee that there would be no more civil war. It is certain that Chiang Kai-shek was quite honest in saying that he signed no document, and there is no evidence to support any claims that he did. But although Nanking and the Generalissimo still had their “face,” subsequent events were to show that the Young Marshal had not lost his entirely in vain.

The arrival of Mme. Chiang on the 22nd no doubt hastened the termination of the interviews, and (as in her lively account of her three days in Sian she made abundantly clear) her own importunity and scolding of Chang Hsueh-liang speeded up the Generalissimo's release. Just as her husband compared himself with Jesus Christ on the Cross, so also Mme. Chiang recognized herself in a Biblical role, quoting, “Jehovah will now do a new thing, and that is, he will make a woman protect a man.” On the 25th, when Mme. Chiang was wistfully wondering if “Santa Claus would pass by Sian,” old St. Nick appeared in the person of Chang Hsueh-liang, who announced that he had won all the arguments with his officers. He would that day fly them back to Nanking. And he did.

Finally, there was that last and flabbergasting gesture of face-saving. Marshal Chang Hsueh-liang, flying in his own plane, went with the Generalissimo to the capital to await punishment!

During the next three months most of the political involutions created at Sian were completely unraveled, and in the end the scene was radically altered. Great conquests were made and victories won. Great losses and retreats were recorded too. But the duels fought were like those in a Chinese theater betweeen two warriors of old. They fling out bloodcurdling yells, viciously slashing the air but never actually touching each other. In the end, after the loser has acknowledged his demise by languidly draping himself on the floor for a moment, he pulls himself together and stalks from the stage under his own locomotion, a dignified walking corpse.

Such was the fascinating shadowboxing that went on at Nanking. Everybody “won,” and only history was cheated—of a victim.

“Blushing with shame, I have followed you to the capital for the appropriate punishment I deserve, so as to vindicate discipline,” said Chang Hsueh-liang to the Generalissimo, immediately after reaching Nanking.

“Due to my lack of virtue and defects in my training of subordinates,” gallantly responds Chiang, “an unprecedented revolt broke out. … Now that you have expressed repentance, I will request the central authorities to adopt suitable measures for rehabilitation of the situation.”

And what were the rehabilitation measures? How superbly all acts of severity were commuted by acts of conciliation, how fine the adjustment of punishment and compensation. Here was the work of a master in the strategy of compromise, of perfect knowledge of how to split the difference
between what the Chinese call
yu shih wu ming,
the “reality without the name,” and
yu ming wu shih,
the “name without the reality.”

As Chiang's first move on returning to Nanking he issued a long statement confessing his inability to prevent the revolt, and his failure as Premier. He immediately ordered the withdrawal of all government troops from Shensi—thus fulfilling his promise to prevent civil war—and offered his resignation (he was to repeat it the traditional three times). In reality he took his resignation no more seriously than did his government, for on December 29 he called an emergency meeting of the standing committee of the Central Executive Committee, and “requested” this highest organ of the Kuomintang to do four important things: to hand over to the Military Affairs Commission (of which he was chairman) the punishment of Chang Hsueh-liang; to delegate to the Military Affairs Commission the settlement of the Northwest problem; to terminate military operations against the rebels; and to abolish “punitive expedition” headquarters which had been set up, during Chiang's absence, to attack Sian. His “recommendations” were “obeyed.”

On December 31 Chang Hsueh-liang was sentenced by tribunal (at which Chiang was not present) to ten years' imprisonment and deprivation of civil rights for five years. On the following day he was pardoned.
¹
And all the time he was the personal guest of Chiang Kai-shek's brother-in-law and recent envoy to Sian, T. V. Soong. On January 6 the Generalissimo's Sian headquarters for Bandit Suppression (Anti-Communist Campaign) was abolished. Two days later it was already known that the skids were under Japanese-speaking, Japanese-educated Foreign Minister Chang Chun, important leader of the “political-science clique” in the Kuomintang. Chang Chun had been the principal target of the Northwest in its charges of “pro-Japanese” officials at Nanking. He was replaced by Dr. Wang Chung-hui, British-educated barrister, and a leader of the Ou-Mei P'ai, the anti-Japanese “European-American” clique of Kuomintang politicians, whom the Northwest junta regarded with favor.

Again at Chiang's request, a plenary session of the Kuomintang Central Executive Committee was summoned for February 15. In the past its functions had been easily predictable, and confined to legalizing important changes in Party policy decided in advance by the ruling cliques, which in coalition were the Chiang Kai-shek dictatorship. What were the important changes of policy now to be introduced? Hundreds of resolutions were prepared for presentation to that august body. The great majority dealt with “national salvation.”

During January and early February, Chiang Kai-shek took “sick leave.” He retired, with Chang Hsueh-liang, to rest in the Generalissimo's country home near Fenghua, his native place in Chekiang. His first resignation
rejected, Chiang repeated it. Meanwhile, ostensibly freed from official duties, he had complete command of the settlement of the Northwest issue, complete control of the conversations going on with the Tungpei, Hsipei, and Red Army commanders. Chang Hsueh-liang, “in disgrace,” was at his side, still a virtual prisoner.

On February 10 the Central Executive Committee of the Communist Party addressed to the National Government at Nanking, and to the Third Plenary Session, a historic telegram.
^*
It congratulated the government on the peaceful settlement of the Sian affair, and on the “impending peaceful unification” of the country. To the Plenary Session it proposed four important changes in policies: to end civil war; to guarantee freedom of speech, press, and assembly, and to release political prisoners; to invoke a national plan of resistance to Japanese aggression; and to return to the “three principles” of Dr. Sun Yat-sen's will.

If these proposals were adopted, in form or in substance, the Communists stated they were prepared, for the purpose of “hastening national unification and resistance to Japan,” to suspend all attempts to overthrow the government and to adopt the following policies: (1) change the name of the Red Army to the “National Revolutionary Army,” and place it -under the command of Chiang Kai-shek's Military Affairs Commission; (2) change the name of the Soviet Government to the “Special Area Government of the Repubic of China”; (3) realize a “completely democratic” (representative) form of government within the soviet districts; and (4) suspend the policy of land confiscation and concentrate the efforts of the people on the tasks of national salvation—that is, anti-Nipponism.

But the Plenary Session, when it convened on February 15, took no formal notice of the bandits' telegram. There was much more important business to be accomplished. Chiang Kai-shek in his first speech to the Session once more recounted, in complete and (for him) impassioned utterance, the whole story of his captivity in Sian. Dramatically he described how he refused to sign any pledge to carry out the rebels' demands. He told also how the rebels were converted to his own point of view, and were moved to tears by the revelations of patriotism in his confiscated diary. And not until he had said all this did he at last, in a very offhand and contemptuous manner, submit the rebels' eight demands to the Session. Reiterating its complete confidence in the Generalissimo, the Session rejected his third resignation, condemned Chang Hsueh-liang, and just as casually and contemptuously rejected the impertinent demands.

Meanwhile, however, in its well-trained way, the Central Executive Committee was accomplishing things on its own initiative. Significant
above everything else, perhaps, was the opening statement of Wang Ching-wei, second only to Chiang Kai-shek in party leadership. For the first time since the beginning of the anti-Red wars, Comrade Wang made a speech in which he did not say that “internal pacification” (eradication of communism) was the most important problem before the country, in which he did not repeat his famous phrase, “resistance
after
unification.” The “foremost question” before the country now, he said, was “recovery of the lost territories.” Moreover, the Session actually adopted resolutions to begin by recovering east Hopei and northern Chahar, and abolishing the Japan-made “autonomous” Hopei-Chahar Council. Of course that did not mean that Nanking was to launch a war against Japan. Its significance was simply that further Japanese military aggression in China would meet with armed resistance from Nanking. But that was a real leap forward.

Second, the CEC, again on the Premier's recommendation, decided to convene on November 12 the long-delayed “People's Congress,” which was supposed to inaugurate “democracy” in China. More important, the standing committee was authorized to revise the organic laws of the Congress to increase representation of “all groups.” The Generalissimo—through Wang Ching-wei again—announced that the second great problem before the nation was the speedy realization of democracy.

Finally, on the last day of the Session, Chiang Kai-shek made a statement in which he promised greater liberty of speech to all but traitors—and he said nothing about the “intellectual bandits.” He also promised “release of political prisoners who repent.” Very quietly an order went out to the press that no longer were the epithets “Red bandit” and “Communist bandit” to be used. A few prisons began to pour out a trickle of their less important victims.