740.0011 Pacific War/3274: Telegram
The Chargé in China (Atcheson) to the Secretary of State 70
[Received 8:26 p.m.]
803. It may be of interest to the Department for me to set forth my impressions, after 3 weeks in Chungking, of the situation in China, as follows:
While the determination of General Chiang Kai-shek, and his supporters in the policy of resistance to continue to hold out does not seem to be lessening, they feel a situation which in many aspects is out of control and which in practically all aspects is seriously deteriorating. Economically the deterioration is rapid and is leading toward something that may eventually spell disaster. The military situation is slower than the economic, but there is a vicious circle in the relationship between the two by which each is worsened. Thus lack of food is affecting the troops more adversely than the lack of ammunition has affected them in the past 5½ years (the price of rice in Kweilin and Chungking has doubled since the beginning of the year) and as current Japanese military operations in Hunan and Hupeh Provinces, one of China’s important “rice bowls”, is being circled and lost to Free China. If the Japanese success continues, if the Chinese suffer further serious reverses on other fronts, or if the new crops are not good it is not unlikely that there may be precipitated a crisis which will further greatly lessen Free China’s power of endurance and resistance.
As a result of these circumstances and combination of circumstances Chinese morale in general is progressively being lowered. In the past it has seemed that if the morale of China’s leaders were sustained the morale of the soldiers and of the people would remain at a fair level. At present one of the greatest dangers is that the already low morale of the troops and of the people may break, irrespective of the determination of some of the leaders to hold together the shaky economic and military structure. The common people and the common soldiers, never safely distant from the margin of subsistence, cannot live on the belief in an eventual Allied victory or on the wishful thinking in regard to the post-war world which helps sustain some high officials, and the people must have food and clothing and the soldiers must have in addition to these things guns, ammunition, artillery and adequate air support. There is a limit to their extraordinary endurance and resistance; and even greater than Chinese capacity in those respects is [Page 58] their capacity, when faced with the inevitable, for accepting things as they are.
A tendency on the part of the military as well as other Chinese to make the best of the realities is apparent in the growing trade and smuggling between unoccupied and occupied China. With this tendency unchecked—and if the Japanese should refrain from further advances—there is a strong probability of a further extension between Free and occupied China of the armed truce which already exists in many places, with trade across the static lines expanding, with the Japanese and the puppets peacefully consolidating their position as they have in Manchuria, and with Free China becoming economically dependent upon the other area.
In any case the existing situation cannot endure very much longer. A number of intelligent Chinese of affairs with sober, conservative and balanced minds have variously estimated to me that under present conditions China “can last” only from 6 months to a year. If they were speaking only in terms of inflation and currency depreciation their estimates might be considered by the optimistic as exaggerated, although it is difficult to conceive that population can or will continue indefinitely to bear up under an inflationary process whereby the cost of living has become eighty times what it was in 1937 and continues to rise some 10% a month. Already there is agrarian unrest in a number of widely scattered places. In Provinces of Hupeh, Hunan, Kweichow, Kwangtung, Fukien, Kansu and Ningsia (due to conscription, requisitioning of grain for troops, taxes in kind and corruption on part of local tax and other officials) except that in Kwangtung famine is chiefly responsible and in Fukien bad crops (and there is increasing desertion of soldiers and petty officials to puppets. In Shansi Province General Sun Tien-ying with 30,000 troops not long ago reported[ly] went over to puppet [régime?]).
The magnitude of the problem should not be underestimated if it is to be met. It is a part of their deterioration in morale and their appreciation and acceptance of realities that they have come to adopt an attitude of sitting back and waiting for the United States and Great Britain to resolve their grievous and increasing difficulties by crushing Japan. Chinese officialdom’s highly developed interest in postwar problems is an example of this psychological process; they seem to seek, any of them, escape from these realities, which they cannot cope with, into a vague but roseate future which unfortunately can never materialize unless something drastic is done successfully about the present.
Foreign loans will no longer help. Political gestures are limited in usefulness to their effect upon leaders, who for most part actually [Page 59] lead only in a negative way; political gestures do not help the troops or the people.
The inviting of General Chiang Kai-shek to a conference with the President and Mr. Churchill recently suggested by Mr. Churchill as a possibility would undoubtedly give much encouragement to Chiang himself as he feels that he has lost face with his officials and peoples because he has not received such invitation in the past. The recapture of Burma would give great encouragement to the soldiers and the people, but any concrete effect on the economic situation, after the first upswing towards new confidence, would be long delayed during the process of restoring the Burma Road and placing it in effective operation. Even then its actual economic benefits to the people as a whole would be meager because of the minor role foreign consumer goods play in the lives of agrarian peasants.
Wong Wen-hao, Minister of Economic Affairs, and some other economically minded Chinese have advanced the theory that if the Chinese could recapture and hold Ichang and the hinterland leading into southern Hupeh and Hunan, and if they could also hold the Hunan area, the flow of produce and cotton into Free China would soon reduce the cost of food and clothing by 50%. The current Jap military successes on the Hupeh–Hunan front (Embassy’s 800, May 28, 9 a.m.) are daily rendering any such possibility all the more remote as a result of Chinese efforts alone. The question arises whether there is any action which China’s allies might take in their own interest toward rehabilitating the morale of the China’s allies might take in their own interest toward rehabilitating the morale of the Chinese troops and toward improving situation as a whole. Would it for example be practicable for American and British military authorities to work out some tactical arrangement with the Chinese military whereby the latter, with adequate British and American air support, would undertake determined offensive action to attack and recapture at least one or two economically and militarily important points such as Ichang, Hankow, etc.? As regards military matters one can of course do no more than offer for possible consideration by those competent to judge and decide, such suggestions as occur to an observer who perceives the necessity that something be done. There would seem to be little doubt that forthright and significant military action having direct bearing upon the situation within China must be taken in the near future if China’s most valuable potentialities for the common war effort are not to be lost to us.
The Naval and Military Attachés request the [that] paraphrases of this telegram be furnished the War and Navy Departments.
- Copy transmitted to Lauchlin Currie, Administrative Assistant to President Roosevelt.↩