Foreign Relations of the United States: Diplomatic Papers, 1944, China, Volume VI
893.00/11–2244
The Chargé in China (Atcheson) to the Secretary of State
[Received December 8.]
The Chargé d’ Affaires, a. i. has the honor to enclose, as of possible interest, a copy of a memorandum, dated October 10, 1944, prepared for General Stilwell, then Commanding General, USAF, CBI, by Mr. John S. Service, Second Secretary of Embassy, detailed to United States Army Headquarters, China Theater. This memorandum did not reach the Embassy until November 9, 1944.
[Here follows summary of report.]
It is not believed that Mr. Service’s memorandum requires comment by the Embassy at this time. It represents the views of an individual officer who is, as the Department is aware, politically minded and a competent political observer and the memorandum is forwarded in the thought that his comment will accordingly be of interest.
Report by the Second Secretary of Embassy in China (Service)
Subject: The Need for Greater Realism in Our Relations with Chiang Kai-shek.
To: General Stilwell, Commanding General, USAF–CBI.
- 1.
- You have allowed me, as a political officer attached to your staff, to express myself freely in the past regarding the situation in China as I have seen it. Although in Yenan I am only a distant observer of recent developments in Chungking and Washington, I trust that you [Page 708] will permit the continued frankness which I have assumed in the attached memorandum regarding the stronger policy which I think it is now time for us to adopt toward Chiang Kai-shek and the Central Government.
- 2.
- It is obvious, of course, that you cannot act independently along the lines suggested. The situation in China and the measures necessary to meet it have both military importance and far-reaching political significance: the two aspects cannot be separated. Because of this inter-relation, and because of the high level on which action in China must be taken, there must be agreement and mutual support between our political and military branches. But this will be ineffective without clear decision and forceful implementation by the President.
- 3.
- It is requested that copies of this report be transmitted, as usual, to the American Ambassador at Chungking and Headquarters, USAF–CBI, for the information of Mr. Davies.
Approved:
David D. Barrett, Colonel, G. S. C.
Memorandum by the Second Secretary of Embassy in China (Service)
Our dealings with Chiang Kai-shek apparently continue on the basis of the unrealistic assumption that he is China and that he is necessary to our cause. It is time, for the sake of the war and also for our future interests in China, that we take a more realistic line.
The Kuomintang Government is in crisis. Recent defeats have exposed its military ineffectiveness and will hasten the approaching economic disaster. Passive inability to meet these crises in a constructive way, stubborn unwillingness to submerge selfish power-seeking in democratic unity, and the statements of Chiang himself to the Peoples Political Council and on October 10, are sufficient evidence of the bankruptcy of Kuomintang leadership.
With the glaring exposure of the Kuomintang’s failure, dissatisfaction within China is growing rapidly. The prestige of the Party was never lower, and Chiang is losing the respect he once enjoyed as a leader.
In the present circumstances, the Kuomintang is dependent on American support for survival. But we are in no way dependent on the Kuomintang.
We do not need it for military reasons. It has lost the southern airbases and cannot hold any section of the seacoast. Without drastic [Page 709] reforms—which must have a political base—its armies cannot fight the Japanese effectively no matter how many arms we give them. But it will not permit those reforms because its war against Japan is secondary to its desire to maintain its own undemocratic power.
On the other hand, neither the Kuomintang nor any other Chinese regime, because of the sentiment of the people, can refuse American forces the use of Chinese territory against the Japanese. And the Kuomintang’s attitude prevents the utilization of other forces, such as the Communist or Provincial troops, who should be more useful than the Kuomintang’s demoralized armies.
We need not fear Kuomintang surrender or opposition. The Party and Chiang will stick to us because our victory is certain and is their only hope for continued power.
But our support of the Kuomintang will not stop its normally traitorous relations with the enemy and will only encourage it to continue sowing the seeds of future civil war by plotting with the present puppets for eventual consolidation of the occupied territories against the Communist-led forces of popular resistance.
We need not fear the collapse of the Kuomintang Government. All the other groups in China want to defend themselves and fight Japan. Any new government under any other than the present reactionary control will be more cooperative and better able to mobilize the country.
Actually, by continued and exclusive support of the Kuomintang, we tend to prevent the reforms and democratic reorganization of the government which are essential for the revitalization of China’s war effort. Encouraged by our support the Kuomintang will continue in its present course, progressively losing the confidence of the people and becoming more and more impotent. Ignored by us, and excluded from the Government and joint prosecution of the war, the Communists and other groups will be forced to guard their own interests by more direct opposition.
We need not support the Kuomintang for international political reasons. The day when it was expedient to inflate Chiang’s status to one of the “Big Four” is past, because with the obvious certainty of defeat Japan’s Pan-Asia propaganda loses its effectiveness. We cannot hope that China under the present Kuomintang can be an effective balance to Soviet Russia, Japan, or the British Empire in the Far East.
On the contrary, artificial inflation of Chiang’s status only adds to his unreasonableness. The example of a democratic, non-imperialistic China will be much better counter-propaganda in Asia than the present regime, which, even in books like China’s Destiny, hypnotizes itself with ideas of consolidating minority nations (such as Tibet [Page 710] and Mongolia), recovering “lost territories” (such as the “Southern peninsula”), and protecting the “rights” and at the same time national ties of its numerous emigrants (to such areas as Thailand, Malaya and the East Indies). Finally, the perpetuation in power of the present Kuomintang can only mean a weak and disunited China—a sure cause of international involvements in the Far East. The key to stability must be a strong, unified China. This can be accomplished only on a democratic foundation.
We need not support Chiang in the belief that he represents pro-American or democratic groups. All the people and all other political groups of importance in China are friendly to the United States and look to it for the salvation of the country, now and after the war.
In fact, Chiang has lost the confidence and respect of most of the American-educated, democratically-minded liberals and intellectuals. The Chen Brothers, Military, and Secret Police cliques which control the Party and are Chiang’s main supports are the most chauvinist elements in the country. The present Party ideology, as shown in Chiang’s own books China’s Destiny and Chinese Economic Theory, is fundamentally anti-foreign and anti-democratic, both politically and economically.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Our policy toward China should be guided by two facts. First, we cannot hope to deal successfully with Chiang without being hard-boiled. Second, we cannot hope to solve China’s problems (which are now our problems) without consideration of the opposition forces—Communist, Provincial and liberal.
The parallel with Jugoslavia has been drawn before but it is becoming more and more apt. It is as impractical to seek Chinese unity, the use of the Communist forces, and the mobilization of the population in the rapidly growing occupied areas by discussion in Chungking with the Kuomintang alone as it was to seek the solution of these problems through Mikhailovitch and King Peter’s government in London, ignoring Tito. We should not be swayed by pleas of the danger of China’s collapse. This is an old trick of Chiang’s.
There may be a collapse of the Kuomintang government: but it will not be the collapse of China’s resistance. There may be a period of some confusion, but the eventual gains of the Kuomintang’s collapse will more than make up for this. The crisis itself makes reform more urgent—and at the same time increases the weight of our influence. The crisis is the time to push—not to relax.
[Page 711]We should not let Chiang divert us from the important questions by wasting time in futile discussion as to who is to be American commander. This is an obvious subterfuge.
There is only one man qualified by experience for the job. And the fact is that no one who knows anything about China and is concerned over American rather than Chiang’s interests will satisfy Chiang.
We should end the hollow pretense that China is unified and that we can talk only to Chiang. This puts the trump card in Chiang’s hands.
Public announcement that the President’s representative had made a visit to the Communist capital at Yenan would have a significance that no Chinese would miss—least of all the Generalissimo. The effect would be great even if it were only a demonstration with no real consultation. But it should be more than a mere demonstration; we must, for instance, plan on eventual use of the Communist armies and this cannot be purely on Kuomintang terms.
Finally, if these steps do not succeed, we should stop veiling our negotiations with China in complete secrecy. This shields Chiang and is the voluntary abandonment of our strongest weapon.
Chinese public opinion would swing violently against Chiang if he were shown obstructive and non-cooperative with the United States. We should not be misled by the relatively very few Kuomintang die-hards; they are not the people. The Kuomintang Government could not withstand public belief that the United States was considering withdrawal of military support or recognition of the Kuomintang as the leader of Chinese resistance.
More than ever, we hold all the aces in Chiang’s poker game. It is time we started playing them.
[In a memorandum dated October 19, 1949, Mr. Service, who was then in the Division of Foreign Service Personnel in Washington, wrote to the Director of the Office of Far Eastern Affairs, Mr. W. Walton Butterworth, as follows (893.00/10–1949):
“I understand that General Hurley is about to make public the full text of a memorandum which I wrote while at Yenan in October, 1944. Presumably this is the memorandum which Hurley declares advocated that we ‘ditch’ the Generalissimo. I do not have the text of the memorandum but the following tentative comments may be useful to you.
Hurley’s arrival in Chungking about the first of October, 1944, was heralded by copious publicity to the effect that he was going to straighten things out and ‘unify the Chinese war effort’, I was at that time, in Yenan with the U. S. Army Observer Group. Hurley’s own statements concerning the purpose of his mission naturally attracted the keen interest of Mao Tse-tung, Chou En-lai and the other Chinese Communist leaders. They immediately forwarded through the Observer Group a formal invitation to General Hurley to visit Yenan. This was moderately phrased and based on the claim that General Hurley should hear their side and personally verify some of their claims regarding their importance as a factor in the war against Japan.
Days went by with no answer from Chungking or from General Hurley, not even an acknowledgment of Mao’s invitation. The initial puzzlement of the Communists began to change to annoyance and inquiries were made of us daily whether any reply had been received.
About the 8th or 9th of October Colonel MaNally, who was acting as an aide to Hurley, arrived unannounced at Yenan. He astonished us by saying that Hurley’s attitude had been that he could not possibly come to Yenan nor even acknowledge the invitation since it would constitute some form of recognition. McNally also informed us of the Generalissimo’s renewed drive to force Stilwell’s recall and he gave us the impression that Hurley was beginning to accede to Chiang’s wishes in the hopes of obtaining better subsequent cooperation. McNally’s report indicated that Hurley considered his primary mission of keeping China in the war was dependent upon maintaining the prestige of Chiang.
It was against this background—in some haste and heat—that I drafted my memorandum of October 10. It was addressed personally to General Stilwell for whom I acted in a loose capacity as ‘political adviser’ (this fact was emphasized by Secretary Byrnes in his testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee about December [Page 713] 1, 1945).81a Hurley was not yet Ambassador. A copy was furnished to the Embassy at Chungking, as was done by agreement in the case of all my memoranda. But this was not intended to be a despatch in the formal sense. It was a personal memorandum for Stilwell relating to a particular and very acute situation. I intended that Stilwell could make any use of it which he saw fit. Actually, Stilwell left China before he received the memorandum and he did not see it until I delivered it to him here in Washington in late October.
The memorandum was intended to make several points:
- 1.
- That the Chinese war effort and Chinese resistance was not entirely dependent upon Chiang. There were groups who would continue even if Chiang should carry out his threats of quitting. We were not therefore dependent upon Chiang, although he was becoming increasingly dependent upon us. I did not advocate throwing Chiang out. What I did say was that we could and should make our own terms.
- 2.
- That we could make no progress in bargaining with Chiang as long as we met him on his own terms and treated him as the only representative of China. For this reason I suggested the value of a visit by Hurley to Yenan even if it involved no negotiations and was done only for demonstration purposes.
- 3.
- That Chiang, in pressing for the recall of Stilwell, was up to his old tricks of beclouding the issue and introducing irrelevant matters. We could not expect success in dealing with Chiang if we gave in to him on this and other important matters.
At various times Hurley has suggested publicly that I gave the Communists the text of this memorandum. This is entirely untrue. No one would have shown the party whose confidence he was trying to gain a memorandum suggesting that they be used merely as a bargaining pawn and that Hurley make a purely demonstrative visit to them without any intention of real consultation. Hurley’s unfounded accusations regarding my breaches of security are strange in view of the fact that he gave a copy of this memorandum to T. V. Soong although it was classified, if I remember correctly, as Top Secret. Hurley’s action can be verified by F. McCracken Fisher, at that time Chief of OWI Operations in Chungking, and by Colonel Joe Dickey, G–2 in the U. S. Army Theater Headquarters at Chungking.
It is ironical to recall that when I passed through Chungking about October 19, I spent my one evening in Chungking discussing the Communists with Hurley at his request. The main burden of my comment was that the Chinese Communists were going to be very [Page 714] difficult to deal with, that they were extremely confident of their strength which they felt was increasing steadily, and that their immediate goal was to insist on receiving a share of American arms chiefly because of the recognition which that implied. Hurley repeatedly stated that that was ‘one of the things that he was there for and that he was going to see to it that they did receive some arms and that they were made a part of the unified Chinese war effort.’ Finally, it was not long after all this that General Hurley did visit Yenan. But when he did so, he went far beyond my proposal.”]
- See statement by the Secretary of State, December 7, 1945, Department of State Bulletin, December 9, 1945, p. 930.↩