Forgotten Ally: China's World War II, 1937-1945 (53 page)

For the first time, Chiang met the figure who had loomed so unpleasantly in his mind for the past three years, Winston Churchill. They talked for around half an hour, with Song Meiling interpreting, and it “went quite smoothly; better than I had expected.” The next day they spoke for a full hour, with Meiling and Churchill laughing as the latter declared “You think I’m a terrible old man, don’t you?”
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(The senior British Foreign Office civil servant Alexander Cadogan also noted that “Winston fell for Madame Chiang Kai-shek.”)
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Later that day, Chiang met Roosevelt, who “looked old” (already showing signs of the strain that would kill him). Meiling continued to provide a lively presence, in contrast to the withdrawn Chiang. “During the tea party, my wife worked to entertain everyone,” Chiang wrote. “I talked very little and after an hour I withdrew.” He was discomforted to note that the British and the Americans appeared already to have set the conference agenda, and that China’s proposals and the question of its status had not yet been discussed. “This is very strange,” he noted.
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There were two major pieces of Asia-related business at Cairo. One was the shape of postwar Asia. The other was the immediate strategy for China and the Southeast Asia Command (SEAC). Chiang recorded his own most important postwar goals for the conference: the return of Manchuria, Taiwan, and the Penghu (Pescadores) islands to China; the establishment of an independent state of Korea; and the handing over of all Japanese factories and shipping in occupied China as part of reparations for China.
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But discussions did not go smoothly. The Allies disagreed strongly about the way that the war should be prosecuted in Asia. At Cairo three possibilities were laid out for SEAC: the reoccupation of Burma (“Tarzan”); the invasion of the tip of Sumatra (“Culverin”); and the most ambitious plan, an amphibious operation across the Bay of Bengal to capture the Andaman Islands and threaten Japanese supply lines across Southeast Asia (“Buccaneer”).
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Chiang supported Tarzan, in which Chinese troops were to be deployed alongside British Empire troops under General Slim. But Chiang also wanted a commitment on a push across the Andaman Sea; on arrival at Cairo, he had recorded in his diary that he would advocate joint army and navy moves into Burma, and for making Mandalay the target of the north Burma campaign.
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Churchill was unwilling to back this idea, but Chiang thought that he sensed that “everyone else gave tacit assent.” In fact, the US high command was also unenthusiastic, believing that operations in the Pacific should take priority. Chiang may have had some inkling of this: “I talked to Marshall; his words were long [but vague] . . . I couldn’t work out what his main point
was
.”
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Mountbatten also gave an unfavorable verdict on Chiang, declaring that he could not “help wondering how much he knows about soldiering.”
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At the same time Mountbatten clearly gave little thought to the fact that both the US and British sides were being deliberately vague toward Chiang, making it harder for the latter to make serious strategic choices. Then there was a surprising intervention by Roosevelt: he assured Chiang that Buccaneer would indeed be put into action to accompany Tarzan.
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Chiang’s conversations with Roosevelt gave the Chinese leader reason to believe that his goals for a postwar China with major status in Asia would be fulfilled. In private talks, with Churchill absent, Chiang spoke to the president both about the future of Japan and about the fight against communism and imperialism in the postwar world. “I praised Roosevelt’s policy with regard to Soviet communism,” he wrote, “but I hope that his policy toward British imperialism can also be successful, to liberate those in the world who are oppressed. Only then can we return the contribution made by the US to this world war.”
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Much of Chiang’s concern was about Xinjiang, the northwestern region which the USSR wished to control, and he also repeated his desire for an independent Korea and Vietnam (the latter apparently to be brought about under joint Sino-American tutelage). Chiang’s conversation with Roosevelt reinforced his conviction that anti-imperialist nationalism and anticommunism were naturally compatible positions. One intriguing possibility was also discussed, according to Chiang: a suggestion by Roosevelt that the main occupation force in Japan after the war should be made up of Chinese troops. “This was very significant,” Chiang observed, “but I didn’t say Yes or No clearly.”
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Perhaps this was just as well: Roosevelt’s warm but vague passing comment would never have stood up to examination in a conference chamber, and it is doubtful that anyone in the US command would have attributed to the suggestion the significance that Chiang had given it. Chiang was experiencing what dozens of Roosevelt’s political friends and foes had observed over decades: the president’s ability to utter friendly words that made the person he was talking to believe that the two of them were in perfect agreement, even when Roosevelt had said something almost entirely incompatible to someone else earlier the same day.

Roosevelt was also clearly playing Chiang and Churchill off each other, knowing their mutual distrust. Of Churchill, “I recognize that he’s a British-style politician, and a typical example of the Anglo-Saxon race,” sniffed Chiang. “But [he] can’t be compared with Roosevelt. He can be summed up as narrow-minded, slippery, selfish, and stubborn.” Roosevelt fed Chiang’s animus at the banquet, claiming (according to Chiang) that “the problem that really makes my head hurt is Mr. Churchill,” because Britain still did not want China to be a strong power.
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Chiang’s concern about the British was shared by many Americans, who were also worried that the US war effort was being used to shore up the British Empire. By the time of the Cairo Conference, it was clear to Churchill that his war aims in Asia were substantially different from Roosevelt’s, and that the Americans wanted a great deal more leeway for direct discussions with Stalin about the shape of postwar Europe and Asia. Back in September, Churchill had spoken of the need to maintain “Anglo-Saxon superiority” during a lunch at the White House. There were some in American public life who agreed with this idea, including the former ambassador to China Nelson T. Johnson (although he had always shown a sympathetic attitude to the plight of the Nationalists). But the majority of American opinion, while shaped by its own prejudices, found that the alliance with Britain created an uneasy possibility of alliance with imperialism and the danger of turning the war against Japan into a race war. A. A. (Adolf) Berle, assistant secretary of state and one of Roosevelt’s “Brain Trust” of advisers, observed that the two countries were separated in Asia on issues including “the Chinese question, race question, attitude toward Indian aspirations.” Beyond Churchill’s rhetoric, the reality was that the empire was overstretched and moving into the shadow of its American ally, particularly as Britain’s wartime debts continued to mount.
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The British were also concerned by a real, if not dominant, sentiment in the US that it was the Japanese, rather than the Germans, who were the US’s primary enemies: Alan Brooke for one noted in his diary of the American military that “their hearts are really in the Pacific.”
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Chiang and Song Meiling snatched a quick visit to the pyramids, then departed on November 27. In the aftermath of Cairo, Chiang reflected further on what he had learned. “My first appearance on the diplomatic stage,” he observed, also predicting that he would likely be more confident on future outings. If he managed to achieve the territorial gains that he sought, then “it would likely be the greatest foreign policy success in Chinese history.”
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At one level, this was an absurdly grandiose statement, even for his personal diary. It did, however, focus attention on a startling fact: few countries as diplomatically weak as China had ever forced an alliance of much stronger countries to treat it, at least nominally, as an equal. Chiang also reflected, not for the last time, on British influence: “Britain has a power that extends to the furthest part of the world . . . in two continents, Asia and Africa, even the untameable Muslim peoples obey their orders. You can’t help admiring their magic powers.” Churchill, who spent much of the Cairo Conference fretting that Britain was losing influence with the US, would have been gratified to know of Chiang’s appraisal.

Yet Chiang’s own story showed how far China had come in its relationship with the Western powers. In less than two decades Chiang himself had risen from provincial military obscurity to become a leader who could sit beside an American president and a British prime minister. Now, Chiang reflected, China must take this opportunity to strengthen itself so that it could serve as an example to other countries seeking independence. In the longer term, the country must improve its quality of education if it truly wished to compete with the US and Britain. But more immediately, he reflected, it was clear that “the British will sacrifice nothing to help others,” so it was imperative that Roosevelt guarantee naval support for any land operation in Burma. Chiang’s caution turned out to be prophetic.
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As his aircraft bore Chiang back to Chongqing, events taking place some 1,800 kilometers from Cairo, in the Persian capital of Teheran, would change the picture significantly. Stalin had refused to join the others at Cairo, but at Teheran, meeting only Roosevelt and Churchill, he made his views clear. Europe must be the absolute priority, he argued, and he promised to strengthen operations on the Eastern Front once Operation Overlord was under way. He did pledge that the USSR would join the fight against Japan, but only after the surrender of Germany. The result was a hasty change in Allied objectives. Operation Buccaneer, which was to have seen a significant amphibious operation across the Bay of Bengal, was canceled on December 5.
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It would have demanded a huge proportion of all the landing craft that the Royal Navy possessed, and the American command had never been convinced that it was a viable strategy. The abandonment of Buccaneer was yet another indication that promises to China could be made and broken with seemingly little consequence.

Concerned that he would be isolated and left without support, Chiang refused to deploy his Yunnan-based troops (Y Force) into Burma: “You can see that the British don’t want to use their strength in the Far East,” he complained.
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Churchill gave Mountbatten permission to use some 20,000 empire troops to support the Chinese forces in a smaller amphibious operation on the Arakan coast, but Chiang rejected the idea. With that decision, Buccaneer was dead. Chiang continued to pledge commitment to Operation Tarzan, the push into Burma, realizing that it was important that China should be seen to make some contribution to Allied campaigns outside its own territory. At the same time he was understandably cautious about the way in which China’s interests, and its remaining armed forces, were being used as pawns in a wider geostrategic game. He continued to blame the British for the change of heart: “Britain is not sincere about advancing into Burma,” he wrote, adding that their attitude was “suffocating our economy.”
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Instead of the amphibious attack, Marshall now committed to a north Burma campaign that would lead to the construction of a road across that territory.
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The kaleidoscope kept shifting for Chiang. He had been reminded of the precariousness of his command when he stopped over in India on the way back from Cairo, where he spoke to General Zheng Dongguo and inspected the 33,000 men of the Chinese Army in India (X Force), based at Ramgarh in Bihar province. “Stilwell was treating Zheng as a puppet,” Chiang lamented, “and would not give him any real command power, or allow him to command the frontline at Ledo. There are many incidents like that—it’s truly painful.” Yet Chiang was not blind to the problems of developing officers of high quality. “My commanders” spirit, body, and scholarship, to be fair, cannot compete with that of the Americans,” he admitted. “How can we nurture such a backward people, feel proud of the country, and seek a true national liberation?”
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Meanwhile, doubts were still hardening in some American minds about how far they should support Chiang, and their judgments were becoming harsher. The situation looked very different from Chongqing than it did from Cairo. The American ambassador to China, Clarence Gauss, wrote to Secretary of State Cordell Hull at the end of the Cairo Conference, as the Generalissimo made his way back to Chongqing, expressing concerns about the durability of Chinese resistance. Gauss reported a conversation he had had with Weng Wenhao, the well-respected minister of economic affairs, who had frankly admitted that the gathering of the grain tax in kind had led to deep resentment among the peasantry. “It must be accepted as fact that the Chinese cannot solve their desperate economic problems,” Gauss declared. It also had to be accepted that the Chinese government had now become “completely defensive” in its strategy, and “in many respects, passively and complacently so.” Gauss argued that the Chinese troops were badly nourished and that the army was riddled with corruption and undertook activities of little military value.
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