CHIANG KAI-SHEK
By Hollington K. Tong
China Publishing Co., Taipei, Taiwan, 1953.
XXI + 553 pages and Index
The difficulty of writing a biography of a living person is well known; the greater difficulty of writing judiciously about a controversial international political figure during his lifetime may well be imagined. The author was prompt in recognizing this weakness. "It is always extremely difficult to write searchingly of a man still in public life ..... For this reason, the book is not offered as the definitive biography. The research and documentation on many of the episodes of the Generalissimo's life are only partial. Access to the Generalissimo's diary and to many of his private papers awaits the future." (p. XI)
Of Chiang Kai-shek's place in modern history, Franklin Delano Roosevelt wrote that he "came up the hard way to accomplish in a few years what it took us two hundred years to attain." A well-known British public man recently referred in Parliament to Chiang Kai-shek as "the man whose political and strategic prestige is far out of proportion to the territory and population under his control." The author writes of him "as a frank admirer." He said, "I have seen him meet them (problems) with…..wisdom. He has been wrong; but history will record that he has been right oftener than his contemporaries. He communicates the impression of true political greatness to those who knew him ....... (p. XI)
The current volume of the President's biography is the second edition of the book first published in China in 1938 and in the United Kingdom in 1939. The larger part of the present book deals with Chiang Kai-shek's career after 1937. To keep the tome to a manageable size, the earlier book has been drastically abridged and rewritten. In many ways, Dr. Hollington K. Tong has written a new book.
"The life-story of the Builder of New China who has successfully evolved order out of chaos, having welded discordant elements into an effective national unit, and won respect for his country from without" is told in 553 pages divided into 42 chapters. Chiang's childhood and early youth occupy only one chapter of 14 pages. His early struggles against Communism are dealt with in eight chapters (IV to VIII, XVI, XIX and XX). Chiang's persistent leadership in the War of Resistance against Japan is recorded in six chapters (XVII, XVIII, XXI to XXIV). The account of his fight for national unity and constitutional government is given in seven chapters (IX to XIII, XXIX, XXXI). The record of the second period of Chiang's struggle against Communism is given in 11 chapters (XXV to XXVIII, XXX, XXXII to XXXVII). Chapters XXXVIII to XLI are devoted to Chiang's renaissance on Taiwan. One chapter each is allotted to moral armament (XLII), the struggle for equal treaties (XV) and an evaluation of the man (XLII).
In Dr. Tong's final chapter entitled "The Generalissimo—an Evaluation," his emphasis was wholly on the Generalissimo as a fighter against International Communism. The author concluded his book by advising everyone in China to have "renewed confidence in this man's conviction, a conviction that has almost invariably been proved right by the events of the past." The reviewer is of the opinion that such an emphasis is not seeing the Generalissimo as a whole man, it is a view of him from one vantage point only. President Chiang Kai-shek has done far more than that for China and the Chinese. The reviewer will discuss only three other aspects: the military strengthening of China, the economic modernization of China and the achievement of political unity.
When the Generalissimo came on the political scene, military forces still belonged to individual commanders. Occasional lip service was done to the nation, but the nation always lost when competing for loyalty with the warlords. Until President Chiang came to fortify the central government and have all the armed forces owe allegiance to the nation, instead of one army, the Republic had a couple of dozen armies, two navies and three air forces--all under separate and sometimes conflicting commands. The contribution of having woven such elements into a single national organization of armed forces must be credited to President Chiang Kai-shek. In fact, there is no competing claimant.
In the choice between industrialization and the maintenance of the traditionalist economic technique, China lagged behind Japan by at least two generations. Not until the Generalissimo took over the reins of government was an attempt made to stress both the excellence of our traditional moral values and the excellence of the modern industrial technique. National plans for industrial development advocated by Dr. Sun Yat-sen were actually put into practice under the Generalissimo. This policy brooks of no debate now-a-days.
In the latter part of the Manchu Dynasty, localism was very much to the fore. In the early days of the Republic, combinations of provincial authorities were all at one another's throats. After many years of patient administration, the Generalissimo succeeded in welding the country into one unity. To have the outlying provinces respond to the will of the central government was not something that China came by easily. This fact has been so long taken for granted that the reviewer takes pleasure in emphasizing its significance.
The mention of the above points should not be taken as criticism of the book. As most of these points have been explained at length in very vivid language in the author's Preface to the First Edition, the reviewer brought them up as a suggestion in apportioning space and emphasis when a third revised edition is to be prepared. If the author will tolerate further suggestions for improvement, the reviewer would respectfully submit two more. One is: cannot a little more space be devoted to President Chiang's moral earnestness? Here is a model of straight, upright, four-square and earnest manhood. It would be a pity to let his statesmanship overshadow his moral leadership. The other suggestion is that some of the language may profit through closer attention and greater polish. On this latter point, the reviewer will be glad to correspond in some detail with the author.
That Dr. Hollington K. Tong is the qualified man to write such a biography cannot be questioned. He first knew Chiang Kai-shek in 1905 when the latter was enrolled as a pupil at Lung-ching High School at Fenghua where "the author was then a teacher" (p. XV). Dr. Hollington K. Tong has done an extremely difficult job extraordinarily well. The reviewer knows of no one who may be expected to do better. Students of the contemporary scene and of this era of world history can scarcely afford to do without this volume. Chao-ying Shih
A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF CHINESE COMMUNISM
By Conrad Brandt, Benjamin Schwartz and John K. Fairbank Harvard University Press 1952, 552 pages
This source book represents an able attempt at documentation of the development of Chinese Communism. Forty key documents have been selected to illustrate the party line over a period of thirty years, from 1921 to 1950. The rendering of so comprehensive a collection of documents must have been a stupendous task and, fortunately for the authors, a check against the Chinese original shows a fair degree of textual fidelity. There is no doubt that these documents, though making tedious reading by reason of their formal, stilted language, are a great help to those who make a serious study of Chinese Communism. The value of the volume is increased by the inclusion of a chronology, two bibliographies, a glossary, and extensive notes.
In explanation of the documents twenty-four commentaries together with an introduction and a conclusion are included. These represent the authors' interpretative views of Chinese Communism and are necessarily open to question. The authors make an effort to stress the national character of Chinese Communism under the Mao leadership. They apparently underscore the word Chinese rather than the word Communism. In an attempt to look for the native elements contributing to the rise of Communism in China, they point to a number of factors in the Chinese heritage. These include the ancient belief in the Mandate of Heaven, the old institution of the secret society, the traditional government of the ruler, by the officials and for the people, etc. These traditional factors reinforced by modern urges for the amelioration of life have, in the opinion of the authors, brought about the triumph of Mao, Tse-tung and what he stands for. (pp.19-23)
Common sense would compel one to concede that to credit Communist success primarily, if not solely, to traditional Chinese factors is to oversimplify an extremely delicate problem. The authors seem, for instance, to have belittled the fact that the ancient secret society and the Chinese Communist Party are incompatible with each other both in origin and in nature. The secret organizations of genuine Chinese peasants such as the Red Lances are a Communist taboo and even in wartime the comparatively lenient Communist attitude toward them was never one of sincere collaboration. The fact is that these secret organizations today are important forces operating against the Communist rule on the Chinese mainland.
As is natural in their way of thinking, the authors attempt to minimize, if not ignore, the importance of Mao's relation to Moscow. Not that the Kremlin has had nothing to do with the development of Chinese Communism. The authors' view is that the Comintern influence on the fortunes of the Chinese Communist Party became negligible after Mao came to power in the early thirties. (p.471) The authors suggest that it was only by breaking away from a basic dogma of Marxism-Leninism, namely, the urban proletarian base, that Communism under Mao became effective in China. (p. 472), The secret of Mao's success lies, according to them, in his substitution of the peasantry for the proletariat as the basic strength of revolution, and the "mass basis of the movement can be furnished by the peasantry just as effectively as by the industrial proletariat." (p.320)
As we know, the importance of the peasantry, as distinguished from the proletariat, in Oriental revolutionary movements is nothing new in Communist literature. Lenin and Stalin pointed this out in the first years of the Russian revolution and in practice Soviet policy in Asia has been based on this thought ever since. Indeed, there is no originality whatever in Mao's thought in this respect.
Likewise, as the authors admit, the claims made for the theoretical originality of Mao's New Democracy are also untenable. Those who know Russia must realize that the united front strategy set forth in Mao's New Democracy is copied from Stalin's strategy in his struggle against Trotsky. Mao is a notorious opportunist. He knows only power, but not principle. It is too much for the authors to say that the roots of Mao's originality lie in the realm of what might be called his realistic statesmanship.
Contrary to the generally accepted views, the authors do not think that the rise of Mao was planned in Moscow. (p.471) It is a pity that they produce no documentary evidence in support of their thesis. With the benefit of well-documented works like David Dallin's Soviet Russia and the Far East, the origin and nature of the Mao leadership as a Soviet stooge should not require conjecture. If there still remains any doubt in the authors' minds on this matter, it can only be explained by the presumption that for some reason or other they purposely close their eyes to plain facts. A case in point is furnished by their expressed doubt that many serious students of Chinese Communism were ensnared by the phrase "mere agrarian reformers." (p. 473) As we remember, the Chinese Communists were long viewed as essentially a party of agrarian reformers and it was on this view that American policy toward China was based during and immediately after the war. We do not remember just what the authors in particular thought of the Chinese Reds.
A ridiculous thing close at hand is the authors' verdict concerning the Chinese intelligentsia (pp.477-482), which has quickly been disproved by subsequent events. The authors seem to have no doubt about Mao's sincerity with respect to the intellectuals. They seem to have not doubt that Mao would not possibly become a successor to the First Emperor of the Chin Dynasty, who burned the books, condemned the scholars, and built the Great Wall by forced labor. But Mao thinks otherwise. He has given the authors a slap in the face by instituting the brain-washing of scholars on the Chinese mainland.
As is inevitable in a book of this nature, no favorable comment can be expected on the Kuomintang, the sworn enemy of the Chinese Communists. The interesting thing is that the authors's unequivocal disapproval of the Kuomintang contrasts sharply with their comparatively gracious attitude toward the Mao regime. That gives the impression that the authors have not been able to avoid injecting political passions into research. A detached reader would find it hard to understand just why the authors, while taking Mao's words at their face value almost without exception, should doubt his avowed commitment to the Soviet camp as shown in his policy of "leaning to one side." (p.483) An answer to this question would provide a clue to a very important motive of the authors for including the commentaries in the book. Hsiao Tso-liang
NO SECRET IS SAFE BEHIND THE BAMBOO CURTAIN
By Fathar Mark Tennien of Maryknoll Farrar,
Starus and Young, New York, 1952, 270 pages, US$ 3.50.
The reverend Mark Tennien began his missionary work in China in 1928. The Station he had been assigned since 1946 was Shum-kai, a county seat of Kwangsi Province, about fifty miles southwest of Wuchow and three hundred miles from Hongkong via the West River.
His book covers a period of two years, from November 1949 when the Chinese mainland, except a small corner in the Southwest, had fallen into Communist hands, to November 28, 1951, the day on which he crossed the frontier over to Hongkong. It is a day to day diary recording what he saw and heard during those two years.
Father Tennien braved the danger of being shot by trying to hide the manuscript of this book first on his body and then in a ledger book when he took it out of the mainland of China.
In Canton, he had a narrow escape from every punishment as the police who seized the manuscript could not understand its contents written in English. The manuscript containing valuable statistics, translations of documents, songs and other things would not have been made available to the reading public in the free world, had it not been for the fact that the duplicate copy, which he despatched in three big envelopes by mail, fortunately got through the Red censor and reached Brother Francis in Hongkong.
His book is divided into three parts.
Part One deals with the period from November 1949 to March 20, 1951, before Father Tennien was sent to jail. He personally witnessed the coming of the Communist troops and the installation of the Red regime later on.
Shortly before land reform was in full swing, he was held, on January 20, 1951, under house arrest, isolated and kept under guard in order to prevent him from causing any possible interference in the land reform program. During the following two months, he was able to watch, from the window on the Convent wing of the mission building, land reform meetings, public trials and brutal beatings in the chapel below.
Father Tennien understands, so does every Free Chinese, that land reform is a bait to attract the peasants to welcome Communism. The wealthy are despoiled first and their property is distributed to the poor who constitute the mass. Only at a later stage, when the poor themselves are hooked, they begin to realize that land distribution is a hoax that leaves them worse off than they were before.
In Chapter V, the author mentions a few things which he considers to be major achievements under the Communist regime such as 'discipline and order', 'elimination of graft', 'division of land', 'zeal for work' and 'suppression of opium'. In the eyes of the Free Chinese, these are no achievements at all. They are all brought about by force and oppression.
It is fallacious for the author to predict that, since the people everywhere on the Chinese mainland are under the same iron discipline enforced by ruthless punishment, a new kind of people will be made out of the Chinese with the passage of time. The Chinese people are confident that tyrannical oppression and regimentation can never reduce them to slavery. There is no doubt that the oppressed will revolt, at an opportune moment, against the Communist regime and regain their freedom which is as precious to them as their lives.
When the author crossed the border and stepped on the soil of Hongkong, he knelt to kiss the free earth and stamped the dust off his boots in protest against the Communists who had forced him out. He must be the man who knows what freedom really means, especially when it is lost.
Chapter VI reveals the economic predicament of the Communists when they gained control of the mainland of China with tremendous expenditure and meagre income. Inflation set in to push down the value of their printing-press currency. The Communist regime borrowed or requisitioned everything from the people, as they claimed that they were the people's "government." As the author points out, the tax collectors of the Communist regime, accompanied by armed guards, netted an amount of US$250,000,000 in the Three Anti Campaign in the first three months of 1952 and US$200,000,000 in the Five Anti Campaign from March to June 1952, in addition to many other exorbitant taxes.
Part Two of the book covers the period from March 20, 1951 when the author was sent to jail on a flimsy pretext to June 16 of the same year when he was sent back to the mission under house arrest. In these months, he underwent untold misery and sufferings. He was also subjected to regular indoctrination courses and brought before interrogators, each session lasting from one to three hours.
Interrogation, as the author points out, is of exceptional importance in the Communist system. Everyone is presumed guilty, and the task of interrogators is to dig out evidence or admission of guilt. They may use whatever method they think fit such as bluff, threat, inducement or coercion. The usual routine is to arrest people, indoctrinate them for months, and interrogate them periodically for information on themselves and others. Then the police will decide whether to liquidate or free the prisoners after they have been forces to sign confessions.
Part Three discusses Communist cruelty, deception, espionage, purge etc. As the author describes, newspapers are Communist mouth-pieces and are filled with speeches of Communist officials, decrees and directives, and confessions of former non-Communists who have been brainwashed. It always causes deep sorrow to find the difference between one prisoner who is called out without baggage and never returns, and the other who is ordered to pack up his baggage and come out to be released or assigned to the labor gangs. It is especially shocking to see a prisoner sent back to his native district for trial. That means that he is simply sent back home to be shot. Police accompany the prisoner on a one-way walk back to his native village, thus saving his folks the expense of carrying his body back home in a coffin. This bestial and inhuman practice on the part of the Communists will certainly make everyone's blood boil with indignation.
As regards the purge, according to the author, 180 to 190 thousand people were executed in the first six months in the province of Kwangsi which had a population of 13,000,000. That is to say that out of every thousand people nearly 14 were shot. If the same proportion holds, then nearly 7,000,000 people would have been liquidated in the first half year of land reform on the Chinese mainland.
When the Chinese Communists gained control of about one half on the mainland, it was claimed that they were planning to cut China's population down by 100,000,000. This sounded the wildest claim and the tallest tale propaganda could manufacture. But the fact is that it turned out to have been an understatement after the author had personally witnessed what had actually happened on the mainland.
Should Father Tennien's story contribute to the enlightenment of the appeasers as to what the Communists really stand for and what their ulterior motives are, then all the ordeal he suffered at the hands of the Communists would not have been in vain. Wang Hong
The way to judge of a son is to observe his ambition when his father is living and to watch his behavior when his father is dead. He is a filial son who does not deviate from the paternal ways in the three years after his father's death.
From The Confucian Analects.
Translated by Durham Chen.