Chiang Dares

(See front cover)

The general psychology of our Chinese people today can be described in one word: listlessness. Our officials tend to be dishonest and avaricious; the masses are undisciplined and callous; adults are ignorant and corrupt; youth becomes degraded and intemperate; the rich become extravagant and luxurious, the poor become mean and disorderly.

THE PREMIER OF CHINA* The Chinese people have such strong nerves and docile wisdom that they have taken Premier Chiang's scoldings in good part, and last week on his 50th birthday he was unquestionably the greatest man in the Far East, recognized joyfully as such by Chinese, and by Japanese as definitely Bogieman No. 1.

There is only one piece of news about China which the remainder of the world would be much interested to hear: that China had at last stiffened her backbone and was going to fight Japan. In the past six months the Japanese Government has shown a marked tendency to modify its truculence, and in the past two months the Chinese Government has begun to show itself astonishingly bolder. Drastic censorship in both Tokyo and Nanking has delayed and blurred this greatest Far East news story. By last week, however, it seemed clear that the present which her bantamweight Premier & Generalissimo was giving his country on his 50th birthday was a heavyweight and possibly a knockout blow of Chinese statecraft, ending the policy toward Japan which the Nanking Government has pursued for nearly a decade: the turn-the-other-cheek policy of accepting humiliation.

Humiliations of Chiang: To make clear how bold Premier Chiang & Cabinet had actually become on his 50th birthday last week required a review of the supreme humiliations to which the Nanking Government has even lately submitted. Not to mention Japan for the moment, it was humiliating that Admiral William Harrison Standley, Chief of U. S. Naval Operations, found it necessary to report officially in 1934 "China continues in a state of disruption, with internal strife, including Communist and bandit activities, engaging the wholesale attention of Chinese Government Forces." At this time 30,000 Japanese soldiers in North China had thoroughly beaten 300,000 Chinese soldiers, had approached within five miles of Peiping, and had, by a ruthless stratagem, made Chinese pride grovel in the thick dust of the little town of Tangku.

Chinese plenipotentiaries sent by Generalissimo Chiang to make peace or at least a truce with Japan arrived by special train at Tangku to find neither motor cars nor any other conveyance at the station.

It was necessary for these high ranking Chinese to go on foot through the dusty streets of Tangku, and stand humbly in the broiling sun before the heavy gates of the Japanese barracks in this Chinese town, until Japanese soldiers deigned to open. Inside, the Japanese plenipotentiaries were of insultingly lower rank than the Chinese they forced to sign on the dotted line.

In the slant eyes of the Far East, China appallingly "lost face" by this Tangku Truce, which has been stretched by Japan in the ensuing months to legalize any outrage Japanese or Koreans chose to commit in North China. In the spring of 1936, not only were Japanese-smuggled sugar, artificial-silk and cigaret paper selling openly in Peiping for less than the Chinese duty which should have been collected on them, but the Chinese state railways were each day running a "smugglers" freight car" coupled to the morning passenger train which entered North China from the Japanese puppet Empire of Manchukuo. If this was not the greatest possible humiliation fora Chinese Government claiming to be sovereign, the climax was capped when Japan forced Chinese officials to take away the revolvers of their own customs guards and the Japanese Navy announced that any interference by a Chinese revenue cutter with a Japanese or Korean smuggler's craft "will be regarded as an act of piracy on the high seas, and will be treated accordingly."* Though China's face was thus slapped again & again by Japan, Generalissimo Chiang did not waver in his policy of always turning the Christian other cheek. He even had Chinese police beat up and jail hundreds of Chinese students when they demonstrated in Peiping, Shanghai and Tientsin against Japan. At Tokyo's behest, Nanking has dissolved scores of local offices of the Kuomintang, which is the political party of the Generalissimo himself, the only party he permits to exist in China. Anti-Japanese passages have been expunged by Chinese historians from many Chinese schoolbooks on orders from Japan, and hard to find even a few weeks ago was an eminent Chinese bold enough to say with Peiping's great Historian-Philosopher Dr. Hu Shih: "It would be better to make a Belgium of North China and to make Peiping the Louvain of the nation, than to give up without a struggle!"

Labors of Chiang. Because he was born near Ningpo, small-boned, slender-waisted Dictator Chiang is sometimes called "The Ningpo Napoleon," and his right to dictate to 450 million people is based on the thumping fact that as the leader of the "National People's Party" Revolutionary Army he set out from Canton in 1926 and proceeded to conquer all China. In this adventure the Soviet Government helped with money, munitions, propaganda spread ahead of General Chiang's soldiers by secret agents under Moscow's ace propagandist Michael Borodin, and finally by sending to act as Chiang's Chief-of-Staff the ablest Bolshevik strategist, then called "General Galen," today Commander-in-Chief of Soviet Armies in the Far East under the name of General Blucher.

Between 1926 and 1931 occurred such dramatic events as General Chiang's break with Moscow, where his name is now execrated; resignation by Chiang of all his Chinese offices on two separate occasions; one visit by the General to Japan where years ago he got his original military training at Tokyo Military Academy; his marriage to Christian Miss Soong, and his baptism as a Southern Methodist after the Ningpo Napoleon had said, "I feel the need of a God such as Jesus Christ."

In the ensuing six years, which bring Chiang Kai-shek up to 1936, his face has been consistently red from Japanese slaps but his brain and will have driven the Chinese people to extraordinary achievements, few of which have made world headlines. In the past five years alone China has built a greater mileage of roads than in the previous 3,000 years. Motor trucks and buses now snort over a Chinese countryside in which the peasants are still too poor to buy even kerosene for their lamps, much less bus tickets. The buses are mainly for Chiang's soldiers and the trucks to rush food and supplies enabling the Government to nip floods and famines which have cursed China down the centuries. In times past Chinese have died not by the thousands but by the hundreds of thousands simply because their Government had no means to ship food over trackless wastes fast enough to let a province with a bumper crop feed a starving province.

Psychologically as well as materially Southern Methodist Chiang has performed prodigies. Into China's 2,250,000 strangely assorted soldiers he has rammed some rudiments of Christian conduct and morality. Privates are no longer supposed to cheer their officers if they announce they have sold out to the enemy for a good price and are disposed to pay a bonus all round if the troops will fight against Generalissimo Chiang. The troops are also not supposed to pick their noses, but to date it is no secret that whenever the Dictator's back is turned there is much reversion to many a nasty habit. The Premier has, however, about 250,000 Chinese soldiers who are actually crack troops, "Chiang's Own," trained to the snap of intelligent duty by German officers. In case of war with Japan these 250,000 expect to have the harrowing duty of driving as many as possible of the 2,000,000 miscellaneous "Chinese soldiers" ahead of them against the Japanese and shooting in the back the tens of thousands who will falter.

Just now leaking past Asia's censorship is the fact that Generalissimo Chiang has been building an elaborate line of cement pillboxes for machine guns and digging scores of miles of trenches so disposed as to make possible resistance to a Japanese attack launched from North China upon Central China in which are Shanghai and the capital, Nanking. South China, rebellious against Chiang only a few weeks ago, has now again acknowledged the Dictator's rule, but the great feature of Chiang's successful struggles during the past five years has been his way with Chinese Communists.

Instead of trying to fight Japan, which he considered hopeless, the Dictator has waged innumerable practice wars upon Chinese Communist forces. These organized themselves in the hinterland under those Soviet auspices which made possible the original conquest of China by the Ningpo Napoleon. In 1934 the bulk of China's insurgent Communists had been coralled by Chiang in Kiangsi Province, and the Generalissimo's officers awaited orders, the execution of which, they confidently told him, would drive the Reds "into the sea"--i. e. down to the South China seacoast where they could be conveniently slaughtered.

The Communists were not thus driven.

They retreated gradually inland and have been pursued by the Dictator's forces hither and thither for approximately 2,000 miles through seven provinces ending with Kansu where they now are, still unconquered. In many of these provinces the original local Chinese authorities were more or less at outs with Dictator Chiang, but, after they had been attacked by the Red armies and either badly frightened or overcome, they greeted the arrival of the Generalissimo's troops with unwonted enthusiasm.

All this, together with the inevitable reaction of the Chinese people against the humiliations imposed by Japan, has worked out so nicely that discerning Frank Hedges, Far-Easter for the Washington Post, recently was able to report that Dictator Chiang now heads "the strongest Central Government in that country since the death of the Empress Dowager, Tzu Hsi"*and has "succeeded in uniting the Chinese people in a way that has not been known for centuries." Japanese suspicions of China are always dire and last week Tokyo commentators opined that Dictator Chiang can only be taking his present strong line if he has recently secured from Dictator Stalin a secret treaty of Soviet-Chinese military assistance. No evidence of this had come to light, but the Japanese have believed for many months that the Chinese Communists were "leading the way for Chiang's troops" in their peculiar retreat through seven Chinese provinces and that this must have been by secret agreement between Moscow and Nanking. Chinese darkly suspect Japan and Germany of having a secret treaty of military assistance.

Surprised Japan. In Tokyo there is nearly always disagreement between the Foreign Office, the Fighting Services and Big Business on how Japan should handle China but everyone in Tokyo knows one thing. The longer Generalissimo Chiang successfully continues unifying China, buying U. S. war planes and quietly digging trenches, the less chance the Japanese War Machine will have for a steamroller victory. This summer the Japanese Militarists were eager to provoke a quick war and they got the Japanese Foreign Office to insult China further by sending to Nanking as Ambassador with sweeping demands a Mr. Shigeru Kawagoe. Chinese especially detest this person who only a few months ago, when he was a Japanese consular factotum in Tientsin, brazenly encouraged the Japanese and Korean smugglers by declaring: "I find we have a law making it a crime to smuggle goods into Japan but I do not find there is any Japanese law making it a crime for Japanese or Koreans to smuggle goods into China." When Ambassador Kawagoe truculently arrived in China on a Japanese warship, Premier Chiang was absent from Nanking regaining the allegiance of South China, and Japanese officers had plenty of time to bluster, "No more words! If China does not yield to all our demands, Japan will act!" To the astonishment of Ambassador Kawagoe, when he called to make demands on General Chang Chun, the Chinese Foreign Minister, he was met with counter demands-- something wholly unprecedented in all these years of China's meek humiliation. That a new Chinese spirit is up, the Japanese also discovered from the astonishing conduct in Chengtu of local Chinese authorities who were supposed to be facilitating a Japanese investigation of the killing of two Japanese who were stripped naked by a Chinese mob and horribly butchered. After Japanese consular officials had investigated, their chief was waited upon by Chinese dignitaries who with utmost blandness presented an itemized bill for the board and lodging of the Japanese investigators, for the Chinese robes in which the butchered naked bodies were wrapped, and finally for the cost of cremating these two Japanese victims of Chinese mob violence. This bill was certainly not cheek-turning but a sticking out of China's tongue. The Japanese official, haughtily but weakly accepting the bill, declared: "I am painfully surprised." An even more painful surprise was the refusal of Dictator Chiang, when he reached Nanking, to negotiate with Ambassador Kawagoe. The Generalissimo received Japan's envoy repeatedly and with utmost courtesy, but insisted that the Chinese Foreign Minister, General Chang, must of course conduct the foreign policy of China and all negotiations. In the pantomime of diplomacy, this was a slap in the face to Japan, though a polite one.

Negotiations were continuing in Nanking last week after nearly a month of Oriental haggling and they were secret.

This has always been the case between China and Japan, neither State ever being willing to let citizens of either country know what their betters are demanding or yielding. But Japanese demands are always intentionally drawn in a manner so loose that, if China accepts, her yielding can later be stretched to several times the length of a reasonable interpretation. The London Titties recently suggested that there might be some justice in Ambassador Kawagoe's reputed demand that "China must recognize the special position of Japan in North China" if only Foreign Minister General Chang could win a concession to his reputed counter demand that "Japan must recognize the special position of China in North China!" Demands & Deadlock. The basic Japanese demands upon China have been known for several years. They are in substance that Japan must have the right to send Japanese troops to wherever in China the Government's troops are fighting Communists; Japan must be permitted to advise, direct and furnish China with whatever capital she is permitted to raise and expend in schemes of Chinese economic development; and officials of the Chinese Government must submit to having at their elbows Japanese advisers like those in the puppet Empire of Manchukuo. This week Ambassador Kawagoe and Foreign Minister Chang were willing to admit publicly at Nanking that they had reached no agreement of importance and at Tokyo last week Japanese Big Business was in panic. The tycoons of the Empire do not want, just now, the crushing additional tax burden of another Japanese war. Their export business, stimulated when Japan took her yen off gold (TIME, Dec. 21, 1931) begun to find the effects of that shot in the arm wearing off. Several European countries have recently given themselves such shots in competition. Last week Czechoslovak firms, their currency freshly devalued, were reported to have got several big orders away from the Japanese.

In the Orient frightened men are quick to attempt to bribe, and the Japanese Army & Navy has its own peculiar morality. Last week Japanese Sugar Tycoon Hatsutaro Akashi suddenly announced that a group of wealthy and patriotic Japanese love their Army so much that they are going to give it $50,000,000 in installments during the next three years. This was only a small sop, but it tended to decrease rather than increase the likelihood that Japan's swashbucklers would force Premier Koki Hirota to throw down the gage of war in an effort to call the tremendous bluff of Generalissimo Chiang in refusing Japan's demands, if he was bluffing.

Birthday Bombers. In Nanking on the Premier's 50th birthday occurred the most warlike demonstrations and transports of popular enthusiasm which his Government has ever permitted itself the luxury of enjoying. If war could be declared by poster, China declared it last week with gaudy and gigantic stickers pasted up all over Nanking showing Generalissimo Chiang leaping to the top of China's Great Wall and beckoning with drawn sword for a Chinese army to follow him over the wall and into Japan's Manchukuo. The Christian birthday cake of the Dictator carried not 50 candles but replicas of 50 foreign-built bombing planes of the latest type which are the Chinese people's birthday present to Chiang Kaishek. Coolies have given coppers, bankers silver bars, and so much money was collected for the Birthday Airplane Fund that the Government last week expected to be able to buy an additional 50 war planes. Unconfirmed was an exuberant Nanking rumor that "Chiang has secretly erected the world's largest poison gas factory and the Japanese know it!" Solid Backing. The Congress of the Knomintane, had been scheduled to meet Nov. 12 in Nanking to adopt a new Constitution for China. Last month this date was abruptly postponed to Jan. 3, 1937.

As though preparing for war, Generalissimo Chiang had summoned a council of China's leading military provincial governors, no longer truly called "War Lords." Often before these sly fellows have refused to come and made extravagant excuses, but last week Dictator Chiang could boast that every province in China had answered his call. Notably the famed but for several years retired "Christian Marshal" Feng Yu-hsiang showed up. together with the Big Three of North China : the "Model Governor" of Shansi, General Yen Hsi-shan; Governor General Fu Tso-yi, provincial chairman of Suiyan; and the latest admirable and exemplary governor produced by unpredictable China, General Han Fu-chu of Shantung.* They were said by Nanking officials to have promised the Dictator they would stand by him in case of war with Japan.

With this solid backing the Premier of China celebrated his 50th birthday, and the peak of his career thus far, by hurling a kindling speech at his excited friends and countrymen: "My Government has overcome the twin menaces of Communism and Chinese disunion. We can wholly dismiss any insinuation that some exterior Great Power is needed to help China maintain order within her own borders. Forward, fellow citizens, to revive our old national traits of self-reliance, of self-government, temperance and self-consciousness. Show the world that the Chinese people can do great things!"

*English translation by Christian Premier Chiang Kai-shek's second-generation Christian wife, the former Miss Mei-ling ("Mayling") Soong, Wellesley '17. It took courage for Premier Kai-shek thus to scold his 450 million countrymen, courage for him to become a Christian, and supreme courage to launch the great Chinese national movement which last week seemed about to give Asiatic history a new twist. It was as though President Roosevelt should have become a Mohammedan and prefaced his New Deal with some such words as: "Our American people seem to me a nation of jazz-loving gum-chewers, profligate instalment-plan buyers, poltroon capitulators to racketeers, gasoline-wasters and coffee-addicts." *See the ablest recent Far East volume, Can China Survive?, by New York Times correspondents Hallett Abend & Anthony J. Billingham (Ives Washburn, Inc. New York, $3). *Died 1908. Her Majesty has just been made the subject of a brilliant biography, The Last Empress by His Excellency Daniele Vare who was then an Italian legation official at Peking (Doubleday, Doran, $3). *Shantung's previous satrap "The Monster," the late notorious General Chang Tsung-chang, overtaxed and robbed the province into starvation. He escaped to Japan with a fortune of millions, murdered a Chinese prince who flirted with one of his concubines, was eventually assassinated when he returned to Shantung seeking further loot. Since 1930 exemplary General Han has built 4,000 miles of motor roads in Shantung, set running 400 buses, installed a provincial telephone system at a cost so low as to suggest there was no graft, and put taxes on a reasonable basis. He maintains a private army of 70,000 and wherever he goes in Shantung deals out justice, sitting as judge and jury, then seizing a heavy whip and personally executing his own flogging sentences which have a local reputation for being fair.

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