The Tragedy of Liberation: A History of the Chinese Revolution 1945-1957 (19 page)

This was far from an isolated incident. As the communists swept through China in 1948–9 they harassed foreigners in general and Americans in particular. In April 1949 soldiers entered the residence of the American ambassador John Leighton Stuart, barging into his bedroom on the second floor where he lay ill. ‘Who are you?’ the envoy asked. Stuart was one of the few foreigners to have stayed behind in Nanjing, hopeful of reaching an understanding with the communist party. Born in Hangzhou in 1876 to Presbyterian missionary parents, he was more fluent in Mandarin than in English. He had spent his entire career in China, in 1919 becoming the first president of Yenching University. A few months later Mao Zedong published a sarcastic editorial, ‘Farewell, John Leighton Stuart’, denouncing him as a ‘loyal agent of US cultural aggression in China’.
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But for most foreigners the exodus started even before liberation. Many read the signs and packed their bags before it was too late. Israel evacuated several ships of Jewish refugees from Shanghai as early as 1948. Yet even as the People’s Liberation Army was massed outside Beijing and Tianjin, most governments advised only those without major commitments to leave while adequate transportation was still available. ‘It’s all most people talked about, whether at work, at home or at parties – to leave or not to leave,’ a former British resident of Shanghai recalled. The United States was the first country to order the wholesale evacuation of all its nationals. On 13 November 1948, half a year before the communists had even reached Nanjing, Ambassador Leighton Stuart advised his secretary of state that ‘emergency evacuation procedures for practically all of China’ had become imperative. US naval forces in the western Pacific helped to transport thousands of Americans and other foreign nationals.
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The decision sent shockwaves through the foreign community. Other countries followed suit. The Philippines, for instance, sent a converted tank-landing ship to evacuate a motley crowd of itinerant musicians and their families. Manila also generously accepted 6,000 White Russians who had come to China to escape the Soviet state and had few illusions about the nature of communism. But the British continued to play down the risks of social disorder and advocated ‘standing fast for the time being’. They were jolted in April 1949, when the
Amethyst
was shelled and trapped for ten weeks. ‘One by one people are making up their minds to leave,’ wrote Eleanor Beck, a United Nations employee, a week after the Royal Navy frigate ran aground.
10

But many decided to wait and see, reluctant to abandon their homes, jobs and personal possessions. The longer they wavered, the more they stood to lose in a rapidly falling market, as newspapers filled up with advertisements for houses, cars, refrigerators and other household goods.
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At first all had seemed well. Many foreigners heaved a sigh of relief as they emerged from liberation with barely a scratch. The communists repeatedly guaranteed the protection of foreign nationals and their property, and they seemed equal to their word during the takeover of the country. There were no riots or looting. Some foreigners wrote enthusiastically about how courteous groups of soldiers occasionally borrowed household goods only promptly to return them, in stark contrast to the thuggish behaviour of nationalist soldiers.
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But the official hostility was unmistakable, as was the vitriolic propaganda in the press endlessly attacking every perceived slight and injustice of the past. Every reminder of imperialism, whether real or imagined, seemed to rankle, with the result that every trace of foreign involvement in the economy, religion, education and culture was considered incompatible with the goals of a new China – from missionary schools, democratic institutions, international banks and foreign films down to legal language and street signs in English. Soon even the continued use of English on electricity bills in Shanghai was stridently denounced as betraying ‘a strong sense of colonial influence’. When one foreigner turned up at the Telegraph Office with a query about sending a radiogram, an official thrust a cardboard sign stating ‘Speak Chinese Only’ in his face. His colleagues laughed loudly and puffed out their chests.
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‘Those who had long been humiliated now took every opportunity to humiliate,’ writes the historian Beverley Hooper. Foreigners became vulnerable, as even minor transgressions were blown up in the media as perennial symbols of imperialist aggression. One of the most notorious cases involved the vice-consul William Olive, a slight, unassuming young man who was detained for three days on rations of bread and water in Shanghai for driving along a street that had been closed for a victory parade on 6 July 1949. He was brutally beaten, denied medical treatment and forced to sign several confessions. The local press widely exploited the case to portray the communists as liberators of Shanghai from imperialist oppression. ‘All is not well with imperialism,’ trumpeted an evening newspaper on 12 July 1949 in short poetic verses:

When the tables are turned,

We Chinese have no further need for you knaves.

Imperialists beware,

All is not well with you any more.
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There were countless incidents involving foreigners, some petty and niggling, others sparking international condemnation. Foreign consulates were officially ignored and subjected to minor indignities and annoyances. Foreign correspondents were banned or censored. Various restrictions were placed on the movements of foreigners. Soon the entire foreign population was required to register with a local Bureau for Public Security. As one foreign student reported from Beijing in July 1949: ‘The procedure is long and onerous. It involves several visits, the writing of quadruplicate answers in Chinese to a fairly detailed questionnaire (rejected if answers are incomplete or wrong), and submission of six photos. The climax is a personal interview, lasting anywhere from fifteen minutes to an hour, at which all answers are recorded.’ Some of the interviewers were former government employees from the nationalist regime, but in the corner, taking no part in the procedures, sat a cadre. Then came house calls by security personnel. ‘It wasn’t unusual to find party officials sitting in the living room,’ recalled an employee of Jardine Matheson. ‘They’d want to know your whole life history.’
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Less than two months after liberation, many foreigners decided that they had seen enough. In September 1949 a relief ship was allowed into Shanghai and evacuated 1,220 passengers of thirty-four nationalities. Each had to apply for an exit visa, a cumbersome process which took several days. ‘I have never been so thankful for anything in my life as I am to be here,’ wrote Eleanor Beck in her diary as the
General Gordon
sailed down the Whampoa River. ‘Don’t let anyone fool you about communism.’ ‘Fare thee well, passengers of the
Gordon
,’ declared one newspaper triumphantly.
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And still some foreigners gritted their teeth and resolved to carry on. In 1950 extortionate taxes ruined the foreign community’s cultural and charitable organisations. Hospitals, schools and churches were taxed out of existence, while once prosperous social clubs went bankrupt. Foreign enterprises were squeezed to the limit. Assertive employees, their class hatred fired up by labour unions, exacerbated the situation by demanding massive pay rises and shorter working hours. When the foreign owners could no longer bear the costs, their enterprises were acquired without expropriation and resultant compensation claims. Again the
General Gordon
went to pick up hundreds of dispirited foreigners, this time in Tianjin.
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The campaign of mistreatment reached its highest pitch in the months following China’s entry into the Korean War in October 1950. A few months later, on 16 December 1950, the US Department of State ordered a freeze on all the tangible and intangible assets in the United States of residents of China. The People’s Republic reciprocated by freezing all American assets, taken over by Military Control Commissions. In the following months foreigners, Americans in particular, were denounced as so many spies and agents gathering information for the imperialist camp, whether they were students, missionaries, entrepreneurs or diplomats. By March 1951, dozens of American nationals lingered in prison on baseless charges, held incommunicado, sometimes without any charges being brought at all. Funds deposited by the remaining churches, schools, hospitals and charitable organisations were frozen. Before long all American enterprises throughout China were under government control. Workers, according to the Chinese press, celebrated the occasion ‘with the discharge of fireworks and the display of flags and bunting’.
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Other nationals were also persecuted. Exit visas were withheld for months on end until every asset had been voluntarily surrendered. Bill Sewell, a university lecturer in Chengdu, Sichuan, explained:

Intent to leave the country had also to be advertised in the local press: and from old servants and others arose endless claims which had to be investigated and settled, increasing the delay. The cadres had to make sure that no university property was mixed with private possessions, so that all baggage had to be listed and every item repeatedly checked. Some thought that bloody-mindedness was carefully cultivated by many officials. Further to add to the difficulties many foreigners were finding ready money hard to obtain. Anxiety, mixed now with anger, now with depression, haunted those who helplessly waited for the signal to depart.
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Once they were allowed to leave, stringent regulations limited the amount of personal belongings that could be taken abroad: no automobiles, no bicycles, nothing made of bronze, silver or gold and a very limited number of carpets, scrolls, shades and other objects. Only one piece of jewellery or one watch per person was permitted. Personal papers looked suspicious and were prone to be confiscated – if they were not interpreted as classified information. Many left the clutter of a lifetime behind, departing with a mere suitcase of clothes. Liliane Willens, born in Shanghai to Russian Jewish parents who had fled the Bolshevik Revolution, had to present her photo and stamp albums for inspection. The examiner meticulously removed a photo of her and her sister, still children, sitting on each side of their amah, who was wearing a white jacket and black trousers. Apparently her clothing was an unacceptable sign of imperialist exploitation.
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Some were stopped even with an exit permit. When Godfrey Moyle, who had worked at the insurance department of Jardines, turned up at the border in Tianjin in June 1951, an official took his passport, slowly read it, looked at him again, and then without a word tore the document into shreds. The official shouted one word: ‘Cancelled!’ Moyle was speechless. ‘I couldn’t get one word out, not a word would come.’ He was never told why his permission to leave had been revoked, and had to wait a further two years for a new document.
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But departure could be a much more protracted affair for many business owners. The communists rejected the principle of limited liability and held whoever appeared to be in charge personally responsible for the discharge of a company’s obligations – shareholders, office managers, accountants, sometimes even custodians. Leading entrepreneurs and industrialists who could no longer meet the extravagant claims from tax collectors and labour unions were routinely sent to prison until the appropriate sum of money had been secured or wired from abroad. H. H. Lennox, the manager of the Shanghai and Hongkew Wharf Company, which became insolvent in 1950 as a result of the blockade and shortage of shipping, was put behind bars for his inability to pay the workers their annual bonus. ‘Here he found himself with some 40-odd Chinese also under temporary detention. Apart from some sandwiches he had with him and a narrow bench around the room there were no amenities whatever in this place.’
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Fiscal policy was made retroactive, meaning that it applied not only to current assets and profits of foreign businesses but also to past activities. Employing close scrutiny of account books and forcibly obtained testimonies, local cadres invariably found some reason to recover what they believed the regime was entitled to. Much of this was achieved through tight control of all banks. The Bank of China was taken over by the regime and started acting like a chief comptroller, it alone being authorised to provide credits for foreign trade. Banking operations were reduced to a minimum along the once famous Bund of Shanghai.

The law offered little recourse, since it was vigorously suppressed as an instrument of imperialist exploitation. Lawyers were prohibited from even setting foot in the courts, where judicial proceedings were determined by a presiding judge loyal to the party. Many prominent members of the bar in Shanghai who had acted as legal advisers to foreign firms were never heard of again. All existing codes, including civil and criminal, were suspended.
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Foreigners were also persuaded to part with their homes. The technique was always the same: predatory land and house property taxes and very heavy cumulative fines for failure to pay on due dates, combined with the fact that property could no longer be sold on reasonable terms, meant that most people preferred tacitly to let the ownership interest lapse. And once foreigners faced the threat of an exit visa being deferred for ever, they were often keen to hand over their assets to the People’s Government.
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