893.00/3–2145
Report by the Second Secretary of Embassy in China (Service)73
[Here follows survey of political situation in Kwangsi.]
Whether or not it is true, it is important—as a factor in Chinese-morale—that most Chinese believe that Chiang was not sorry to have the Japanese clean up his opposition in the Southwest. Certainly the Southerners believed this and accordingly saw no sense in throwing away their forces in desperate resistance. In both the Kwangsi fighting and in the recent Japanese drive to clear the southern section of the Canton-Hankow railway, these provincial forces put up little more than token resistance.
Incidentally we lost our southern airbases.
Li Chi-sen and a part of his group carried out their already completed plan of withdrawing southward to the Kwangsi-Kwangtung border and setting up a guerrilla area. Under the military leadership of Tsai Ting-kai, of 19th Route Army fame, this area is now busy building up a new army and is seeking to establish a working agreement with the Chinese Communists, whose methods of stimulating popular mobilization it seems to [be] following. Its relation to Chungking is one of practical independence.
This new group now wants to receive American supplies. Strategically situated close to the coast, behind the Japanese and close to communication lines, it would be justifiable on military grounds for us to aid them. Chiang is refusing to permit us. We can expect that he will continue to.
While this strongly liberal group around Li Chi-sen moved south to start independent, popular resistance, the Kwangsi forces were split. Pai Chung-hsi persuaded the Kwangsi Provincial Government to stay with Chungking: it moved north into Chungking territory. Chang Fa-kuei, falling back before the Japanese advance, was ordered to move west. At Poseh, in an isolated, almost barren and sparsely populated northwest corner of the Province, he still has a toe-hold in Kwangsi. But the few troops he had had were almost gone and lacked supplies.
With his 4th War Zone reduced to almost nothing, it seemed logical to place it under the command of Ho Ying-chin. Chiang’s dissatisfaction—over his new command position or the lack of anything to fight with—was assumed to be responsible for his trip to Chungking in February and his apparently deaf ear to orders to return to his post.
Meanwhile Li Tsung-jen’s position in the North was not happy. [Page 296] His 5th War Zone had suffered losses and been cut in two by the Japanese drive in the Spring of 1944 along the Peiping-Hankow railway. It was not suprising that his troops—ill-supplied, demoralized and without the support of the people—were routed. That part of them in the Tapieh Mountains, east of the railway, were now completely cut off.
Despite these “watch-dog” forces, the Communists had reestablished themselves and expanded steadily around Hankow during the past 5 years. Now the situation became even worse from the viewpoint of the Central Government. The whole area east of Peiping-Hankow railway, being behind the new Japanese lines, had now, according to the Communist definition, become legitimate ground for their activities. Li’s forces in the Tapieh Mountains were ordered to stop this expansion. They made at least a half-hearted attempt. There has been sporadic fighting and an American officer was with Communists in this area when they were attacked by Li’s troops.
Li Tsung-jen ordinarily would not mind fighting Communists. He has done it enthusiastically in the past—when the Communists invaded Kwangsi on their “Long March”. But now his forces were depleted, starved of supplies, and cut off from the hope of receiving any more. In his mind the question was probably not so much of saving his forces to fight the enemy as: “If I lose what few troops I have left in fighting the Communists, where will I be in the Chinese political picture.” To Chiang in Chungking it apparently seemed that Li was showing too little ardor. The Communists, moving in from north and south, made steady progress in organizing and taking over the isolated pocket to the east of the railway.
The Japanese drive into Kwangsi, which broke the Southwest clique and sent a part of it into independent guerrilla opposition to Chiang, made it easier for Chiang to take his next step. Robbed of his political base, Li was weaker and hence less necessary to appease. Chinese said that it would not be long before Li would be in trouble.
They were right. In February, 1945, Li was superseded as Commander of the 5th War Zone and “promoted”, in accordance with the familiar pattern, to Head of the Generalissimo’s Field Headquarters at Hanchung, South Shensi. Nominally, this is a big job because it is supposed to mean control of several war areas. Actually, it means nothing because it is without direct command of any troops. The forces in the field get their orders from Chungking.
Li’s successor in the 5th War Zone was Liu Chih, former Garrison Commander of Chungking. He is not noted as a capable commander, but is definitely a Central Government man and close to Ho Ying-chin. He will presumably be glad to use what is left of Li’s Kwangsi troops in the Tapieh Mountains to stop the expansion of the Communists.
[Page 297]Meanwhile, the Japanese have started their new drive toward Nanyang and Laohokow and are finding the same weak resistance they enjoyed in the Honan drive of just a year ago.
Chiang now may be able to rest easier: the Kwangsi clique seems to be finished. But is it? A province has been lost and its people and soldiers embittered. And the liberal group under Li Chi-sen, taking a leaf from the Communist book by organizing popular resistance behind the Japanese, where Chiang cannot reach them, may yet have to be reckoned with.
Chiang can congratulate himself that “unity” has been furthered by the clever disruption—in which the Japanese had an important part—of a strong provincial group. But is the result really unity?
This example of Chiang’s methods is of interest, not because it is so clear-cut and so devastatingly complete in result, but because it is typical. The pattern can be applied in varying degrees to his handling of the Szechwan warlords, the Northeastern Armies, the Feng Yu-hsiang group, and many others.
This general policy has been consistently followed by Chiang since at least 1927. One notable application was the use of civil war with the Communists to reduce and dominate the local governments in south and west China. Another was the political manipulations of local warloads against each other to betray their autonomy, as best demonstrated in the suppression of the abortive Kwangtung-Kwangsi revolt in 1936. Another was the use of regional troops against the Japanese in 1931–2 for similar purposes.
Since the Sino-Japanese war began, the strategic placing of regional troops, as well as their use against the enemy, has been designed to reduce provincial strength. On a typical front, provincial troops are not only the ones directly facing the enemy—with the Central troops getting most of the supplies but staying in the rear as security forces—but the troops come from the most distant provinces—western troops in the east, southern troops in the north, and so on. This not only cuts down regional strength in the home provinces; it also prevents the development of strong regional armies at the front, as might occur if the troops were defending their home provinces or were fighting among people who spoke the same dialect and with whom solidarity might be found.
The handling of the provincial leaders has been along the same lines. Political unity and strength of groups outside the Generalissimo’s immediate clique has consistently been thwarted by the mixing of regional groups and by partiality in appointments. The attempt has been to maintain a balance of power, hence lack of power, among and within these groups outside the Central Government. Once a [Page 298] leader has been divested of his army, or political strength, he is elevated to a meaningless position of high rank but no power.
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Unfortunately the price of such a policy is heavy. The country cannot be honestly unified on such a basis. No people are more sophisticated than the Chinese in this game. The effect for the war is to convince the provincial groups that they are fools to waste their armies and sole base of power in fighting the Japanese.
Actually the result of Chiang’s policy is to increase dis-unity and weaken the war effort. Through his inability to progress beyond his early days of civil war intrigue, Chiang has lost much of the confidence of the people of China and is faced today with the problems of a country far less unified than when it rallied to his support in the early months of the war against Japan.
- Received in the Department about April 27.↩