Forgotten Ally: China's World War II, 1937-1945 (35 page)

Chiang was well aware that this argument might seem desperate rather than logical. So he drew on a more recent historical parallel to make his point. Some seventy years earlier, the Taiping rebels had conquered much of central China. Zeng Guofan, the Qing official tasked with putting a stop to the uprising, had been defeated by the rebel troops and seriously considered taking his own life. But he was talked out of it, and instead studied the reasons for his defeat. He succeeded in reforming the Xiang (Hunan) army, and then won major victories at Wuhan, Changsha, and elsewhere, finally crushing the rebels. The parallels were clear.

But the path to a reformed military—and nation—would not be simple, and Chiang made his dissatisfaction clear to the assembled officers. He was swift to condemn the Japanese, saying that they had lost the special virtue that “people of the East” ought to have, and noting that “arrogant soldiers will always be defeated.” However, the Nationalist army would also have to improve its record significantly. Over and over again, Chiang declared, the army had behaved in ways that undermined organization. Soldiers should collect the bodies of their dead comrades from the battlefield and have them buried in proper, marked graves. Wounded soldiers should be given better medical treatment; Chiang pointed out that there were horrific scenes all over the country of soldiers being left by their commanders to beg or steal to support themselves. In general, the army ought to “blend seamlessly” with the population, but in practice, in many areas, when the army arrived, the locals moved away, concerned that they might be harassed or exploited.

The fault did not lie just with the ordinary soldier, but also with officers who were too concerned with their own positions and not enough with the task at hand. When soldiers deserted, “lazy” officers refused to catch them. Officers contaminated intelligence reports by exaggerating their own achievements, and communications between the different armies often failed. Too much confidential information was leaked, and not enough strong intelligence about the enemy was being gathered. Senior officers were using very limited tactics, seeking to defend just “one line” on the battlefield instead of being more flexible about deploying their troops.
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Chiang also acknowledged his own share of the blame. On the last day of the conference, November 28, he declared that the loss of Nanjing had been “the greatest shame of his life.” He took responsibility for the loss of Shanghai, Wuhan, and Madang, and also admitted that he should have destroyed the airfields and bunkers at Wuhan. By sparing them, he had left a base for the Japanese to bomb Chongqing. Yet even so, he chose his words carefully, blaming the loss of Guangzhou and Madang on his having chosen “bad subordinates.”
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The conference laid down major reforms that were supposed to transform the Chinese armies into powerful fighting forces. These included the centralization of the recruitment bureaucracy, a cut in the overall numbers of troops and of the expenses to support them, and a centrally directed training program, with a third of the forces brought away from the battle areas into the safer heart of Free China for retraining at any one time. The whole program, of course, was also another way to reduce the power of individual commanders and subordinate them to national control.
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Chiang ended his remarks with a reminder about the importance of discipline. “The key point of the war,” he said, in language remarkably reminiscent of Mao Zedong’s, “is whether we can master the masses.”
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By Chiang Kai-shek’s side in Chongqing was his old rival Wang Jingwei. As Wang took up his posts as head of the National Defense Council and the National Political Consultative Council, he might have reflected on how dramatically his revolutionary career had changed. Once he had appeared the clear heir apparent to Sun Yat-sen. Now he found himself in southwestern exile, facing an enemy apparently immune to any resistance that China could offer. He was also subordinate to Chiang, the pretender who occupied what Wang considered his rightful place as leader of the National Revolution, and who had now lost large parts of China’s most ancient heartland to the Japanese. To Wang, Chiang’s closest enemy, the message of resistance seemed increasingly hollow. “Wang was very unhappy about being vice chairman,” recalled the diplomat Gao Zongwu. “He thought he was better qualified than anyone else to be party chair.”
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Wang did not leave behind detailed personal writings, in contrast to Chiang’s diaries or Mao’s extensive notes and lectures, and we have come to understand him in later years through the eyes of others, such as Zhou Fohai.
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When war broke out in 1937, Zhou was deputy director of propaganda for the government.
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Even in the opening weeks and months of the war, Zhou had harbored doubts. He joined other political and intellectual figures who called themselves a “Low-Key Club”
(Didiao julebu)
, the name indicating a desire to discreetly keep open the possibility of a negotiated peace with Japan. Also in the group was Tao Xisheng, a former professor who was close to Wang Jingwei and now served on several key committees within the government. It was through these “low-key” activities that Zhou first became close to Wang.
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Crucial in the move toward a negotiated peace was Gao Zongwu, the Asian Bureau chief in the Foreign Ministry. Although a young man (only thirty when war broke out), Gao had shown consummate political skills in the highly factional politics of the Nanjing decade. He too had studied in Japan, at Kyushu Imperial University, and his writings on Sino-Japanese relations had brought him to the attention of Wang Jingwei, then foreign minister. Even after Wang temporarily left the government in 1935, Gao was tactical enough to hold onto his own position.

In August 1937, hiding in a shelter from the aerial bombing of Nanjing, Zhou and his friends began to discuss an end to the war. “In three months,” Zhou wrote with some hope in mid-August, “they should be able to start talking about peace.” The “Low-Key Club” had no doubt that a long war of resistance would be disastrous for China. “China’s national strength is not sufficient,” wrote Zhou, “so the war should end at the right point.”
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Many of them had visited Japan in their younger days, and felt they knew the country. Years of conflict with a highly uncertain outcome would be worse than a swiftly negotiated peace in which China might be able to make at least some of its demands heard. Gao Zongwu and his friends made sure that Wang and Chiang knew of any attempts to contact Japan.
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Part of Wang’s role in government was to consider a mediated end to the war, and Chiang was kept fully informed of these efforts.
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Chiang was reluctant to be too open to Japan. In August 1937 he rejected the idea of a discussion between Gao Zongwu and Japanese ambassador Kawagoe Shigeru because Gao was a diplomat, and a meeting would therefore give too formal a tone to the discussions. However, the “Low-Key Club” picked up signals that Chiang was not imposing an absolute veto on the idea. After a talk with Wang Jingwei, Tao Xisheng reported that Chiang had indicated he might be willing to allow some talks, but that they would have to be very discreet because he was worried about leaks from the Japanese side. Wang’s friends sought to keep his spirits up. “We persuaded Wang not to lose heart,” Zhou wrote. “Chiang has to stay tough in public,” but perhaps in private, he could allow more flexibility. Wang told Tao Xisheng in mid-September that he thought they should cease fighting and negotiate via the British and the Americans; he claimed that Chiang had agreed, but that he feared the price would be too high.
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During early 1938, as eastern China stood in danger of collapse, the low-key activities had become more prominent. Gao Zongwu had resigned his official position so that he could undertake a new role as an envoy shuttling between Shanghai and Hong Kong, locations where unofficial conversations between the Chinese and Japanese sides could still go on. Gao also returned several times to Wuhan in the spring of 1938 to keep Zhou Fohai informed about the progress of his discussions. Gao and his colleagues met various mid-level Japanese officers and business figures, many of whom had spent time in China and felt great distress that war had broken out between the two countries. In early July 1938, Gao accepted an invitation to Tokyo and spent some weeks there discussing the possibility of peace with Inukai Ken, Matsumoto Shigeharu, and other bureaucrats and journalists who formed an informal “Breakfast Club” that gave advice to Prime Minister Konoye.
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This was a risky move on Gao’s part, as any implication that his presence there was officially approved would have damaged the Chinese resistance effort at a time when Chiang was trying desperately to defend Wuhan. In the end Gao was treated “royally” by his hosts, but not offered any specific concessions. At some point during the discussions, the focus moved from persuading Chiang Kai-shek to come to an agreement with Japan to the possibility of bringing over his official deputy, Wang Jingwei.
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Back in Wuhan, reactions to Gao’s unauthorized visit varied from annoyance to rage; both Wang and Chiang condemned it.
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(Some scholars, however, maintain that Gao did approach the Japanese under orders from Chiang.)
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Wuhan fell on October 25, 1938. Zhou Fohai had a lucky escape; he had made his final journey to Chongqing on October 24, but had originally been scheduled to fly out one day later. Now Zhou had to think hard about what path China should take. Chiang and the CCP were united publicly in support of the “long war,” in which they would wear down the enemy while waiting for the conflict to widen internationally. In his first days in the blistering summer heat of Chongqing, Zhou spent long evenings discussing the old days in Nanjing with friends, as well as discussing the war with Wang Jingwei. Zhou’s disillusionment with resistance grew. He was disgusted by the destruction of his hometown of Changsha. “I’ve heard that we ourselves burned Changsha,” he wrote, referring to Chiang’s directions that the city should be set on fire to prevent it falling to the enemy. “Before the enemy even got there, we burned our own land. This is really like treating our own people as the enemy—terrible behavior—it’s like destroying the fish to save the water, or driving away the birds to save the bush!” Zhou would have known that thousands must have died when the city was set on fire. Nor did Zhou see the political system as likely to come to the rescue. “I never see any calm or detailed discussion,” he said of the National Defense Council meetings. “They just pass the regulations silently. No wonder decisions can’t be carried out well.” He singled out Chiang’s brother-in-law, premier H. H. Kung, as someone who talked “nonsense.”
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Zhou’s crisis of conscience is laid out clearly in his diary for the end of October 1938, just days after the fall of Wuhan. “Do heroes make their own circumstances?” he asked:

Or do circumstances make heroes? If the latter, then we can change the situation, save the country from destruction, but this depends on our future efforts. The future of the nation is beyond our prediction.
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On November 3, Prime Minister Konoye spoke on the radio, announcing his intention of creating a “New Order” in Asia, in which Japan and China would (supposedly) have equal status and would fight together against the real menace, communism. Although the statement did not directly reverse January’s declaration that Japan would no longer deal with the National Government, Konoye’s statement did propose that a Nationalist Party with different “personnel” might well meet with more favor in Tokyo. The message was enough to pique Wang Jingwei’s interest, and he sent another member of the Low-Key Club to investigate.

It was thus at Wang’s suggestion that Mei Siping traveled to Shanghai in the autumn of 1938. Between November 12 and 20, Mei discussed the terms of a peace agreement with Lieutenant Colonel Imai Takeo, the Japanese Army representative who had previously talked to Gao Zongwu. Also present were Gao, and on the Japanese side, Colonels Kagesa Sadaaki and Inukai Ken. The talks took place in a hastily renovated mansion, the Zhongguangtang, in the Hongkou district of Shanghai. The negotiators argued over several key issues. Japan wanted the recognition of Manchukuo, but the Chinese were reluctant, knowing that it would seem like a clear abandonment of Chinese sovereignty. Both sides were able to agree that the two countries should be allowed joint economic exploitation of Chinese territory, although the Japanese demand for “compensation” for losses suffered during the fighting was harder for the Chinese to swallow. Japan was also prepared to end its extraterritorial rights, while still holding onto its concession areas. The Chinese side’s biggest demand, and the one on which their entire risky venture was posited, was an agreement that the Japanese would end their military occupation of China. The initial demand for an immediate end to the occupation was rejected, but the eventual agreement did contain a specific timeline: no more than two years to the end of the occupation, after the “restoration of peace and order.” The discussions were also based on two important assumptions: that Wang Jingwei would defect to head a new government, and that the regime would start its life not in the zone of China occupied by the Japanese but in unoccupied parts of Yunnan and Sichuan in the southwest, and would then extend its authority in that region. The negotiators assumed that Chiang had so many enemies and rivals that the establishment of a rival regime, under a credible leader, and committed to peace, would be very attractive. Militarists such as Long Yun of Yunnan and Liu Wenhui of Sichuan were high on the list of “possible” defectors, along with the large armies that they controlled.
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