Carroll Quigley - Tragedy and Hope - A History of the World in Our Time

The Kuomintang, under Dr. Sun’s influence, accepted the support and some of the ideas of the Communist International, especially in the period 1924-1927. Lenin’s theories of the nature of “capitalist imperialism” were quite persuasive to the Chinese and gave them, they thought, the intellectual justification for resisting foreign intervention in Chinese affairs. Russian agents, led by Michael Borodin, came to China after 1923 to assist China in “economic reconstruction,” political “education,” and resistance to “imperialism.” These Russians reorganized the Kuomintang as a totalitarian political party on the Soviet Communist model, and reorganized Chinese military training at the famous Whampoa Military Academy. From these circles emerged Chiang Kai-shek. With German military advisers playing a prominent role in his activities, he launched a series of attacks which extended Kuomintang rule into the territory of the war lords north of the Yangtze River. The chief of these northern warlords, Chang Tso-lin, held his position by cooperation with the Japanese and by resistance to Russian efforts to penetrate Manchuria.

As Chiang Kai-shek achieved military success in these areas after 1926, he became increasingly conservative, and Dr. Sun’s program of democracy and Socialism receded further into the future. At the same time, the interference and intrigue of the Communist elements in the Kuomintang camp justified increasingly vigorous repression of their activities. Finally, Chiang’s increasing conservatism culminated in 1927 in his marriage to a member of the wealthy Soong family. Of this family, T. V. Soong was an important banker and speculator, his brother-in-law, H. H. Kung, was in a similar economic position, while another sister (alienated from the family by her Communist sympathies) was Mrs. Sun Yat-sen. Soong and Kung between them dominated the Kuomintang government, the former becoming minister of finance while the latter was minister of industry, commerce, and labor.

In 1927 the Communist collaboration was ended by the Kuomintang, the Russians were expelled from China, and the Kuomintang became the only legal party. The native Chinese Communists, under Moscow-trained leaders like Mao Tse-tung, concentrated their strength in the southern rural areas where they established themselves by agrarian reforms, expropriating landlords, reducing rents, taxes, and interest rates, and building a Communist rural militia manned by the peasants. As soon as the Nationalist forces under Chiang Kai-shek completed the conquest of northern China with the capture of Peking in June 1928, they shifted their attack southward in an effort to destroy the Communist center in Kiangsi. The Communist army, whose growing exactions had disillusioned its peasant supporters, retreated in an orderly withdrawal on a twisting six-thousand-mile route to northwestern China (1934-1935). Even after the Japanese attack on Manchuria in 1931, Chiang continued to fight the Communists, directing five large-scale attacks upon them in the period 1930-1933, although the Communists declared war on Japan in 1932 and continued to demand a united front of all Chinese against this aggressor for the whole period 1931-1937.

Though the Japanese seizure of Manchuria in the autumn of 1931 was an independent action of the Japanese military forces, it had to be condoned by the civilian leaders. The Chinese retaliated by a boycott of Japanese goods which seriously reduced Japan’s exports. To force an end to this boycott, Japan landed forces at Shanghai (1932) and, after severe fighting in which much Japanese abuse was inflicted upon Europeans, the Chinese forces were driven from the city and compelled to agree to a termination of the economic boycott against Japan. About the same time, Manchuria was set up as a Japanese protectorate under the rule of Henry P’ui, who had abdicated the Chinese throne in 1912.

As early as January 1932, the United States notified all signers of the Nine-Power treaty of 1922 that it would refuse to accept territorial changes made by force in violation of the Kellogg-Briand Pact to Outlaw War. An appeal to the League of Nations for support, made by China on September 21, 1931, the same day that England went off the gold standard, passed through an interminable series of procedural disputes and finally led to a Commission of Enquiry under the Earl of Lytton. The report of this commission, released in October, 1932, sharply condemned the actions of Japan but recommended no effective joint action to oppose these. The League accepted the Stimson Doctrine of Non-recognition, and expressed sympathy for the Chinese position. This whole affair has been rehashed endlessly since 1931 to the accompaniment of claims and counterclaims that effective League action was blocked by the absence of the United States from its councils, or by Stimson’s delay in condemning Japanese aggression, or by British refusal to support Stimson’s suggestions for action against Japan. All these discussions neglect the vital point that the Japanese army in Manchuria was not under the control of the Japanese civil government, with which negotiations were being conducted, and that these civil authorities, who opposed the Manchurian attack, could not give effective voice to this opposition without risking assassination. Premier Yuko Hamaguchi had been killed as recently as November 1930 for approving the London Naval Agreement to which the militarists objected, and Premier Ki Inukai was dealt with in the same way in May 1932. Throughout, the League discussions were not conducted with the right party.

Except for its violation of nationalist feelings and the completely objectionable means by which it was achieved, the acquisition of Manchuria by Japan possessed many strategic and economic advantages. It gave Japan industrial resources which it vitally needed, and could, in time, have strengthened the Japanese economy. Separation of the area from China, which had not controlled it effectively for many years, would have restricted the sphere of Chiang’s government to a more manageable territory. Above all, it could have served as a counterpoise to Soviet power in the Far East and provided a fulcrum to restrain Soviet actions in Europe after the collapse of Germany. Unfortunately, the uncompromising avarice and ignorance of the Japanese militarists made any such solution impossible. This was made quite certain by their two major errors, the attack on China in 1937 and the attack on the United States in 1941. In both cases the militarists bit off more than they could chew, and destroyed any possible advantages they might have gained from the acquisition of Manchuria in 1931.

In the seven years after the first attack on Manchuria in September 1931, Japan sank 2.5 billion yen in capital investments in that area, mostly in mining, iron production, electric power, and petroleum. Year after year this investment increased without returning any immediate yield to Japan, since output from this new investment was immediately reinvested. The only items of much help for Japan itself were iron ore, pig iron, and certain chemical fertilizers. The Manchurian soy-bean crop, although it declined under Japanese rule, was exchanged with Germany for needed commodities obtainable there. For Japan’s other urgent material needs, such as raw cotton, rubber, and petroleum, no help could be found in Manchuria. In spite of costly capital investment, it could produce no more than its own needs in petroleum, chiefly from liquefaction of coal.

The failure of Manchuria to provide an answer to Japan’s economic problems led the Japanese military leaders toward a new act of aggression, this time directed toward North China itself. As they were preparing their new assault, Chiang Kai-shek was busy preparing a sixth campaign against the Communists, still lurking in the remote northwestern part of China. Neither the growing threat from Japan nor the appeals from the Chinese Communists to form a united Chinese front against Nippon deterred Chiang from his purpose to crush the Communists until, in December 1936, he was suddenly kidnapped by his own northern commander, Chang Hsueh-liang, at Sian, and was forced, under a threat of death, to promise to fight Japan. A Kuomintang-Communist united front was formed in which Chiang promised to fight Japan rather than the Communists and to relax the Kuomintang restrictions on civil liberties, while the Communists promised to abolish their Chinese Soviet Government, become a regional government of the Republic of China, end the expropriation of the landlords, cease their attacks on the Kuomintang, and incorporate their armed forces into the National Army of Chiang Kai-shek on a regional basis.