4 “Point Counter Point”

During the next three months most of the political involutions created at Sian were completely unraveled, and in the end the scene was radically altered. Great conquests were made and victories won. Great losses and retreats were recorded too. But the duels fought were like those in a Chinese theater betweeen two warriors of old. They fling out bloodcurdling yells, viciously slashing the air but never actually touching each other. In the end, after the loser has acknowledged his demise by languidly draping himself on the floor for a moment, he pulls himself together and stalks from the stage under his own locomotion, a dignified walking corpse.

Such was the fascinating shadowboxing that went on at Nanking. Everybody "won, "and only history was cheated——of a victim.

"Blushing with shame, I have followed you to the capital for the appropriate punishment I deserve, so as to vindicate discipline, "said Chang Hsueh-liang to the Generalissimo, immediately after reaching Nanking.

"Due to my lack of virtue and defects in my training of subordinates, "gallantly responds Chiang, "an unprecedented revolt broke out. …… Now that you have expressed repentance, I will request the central authorities to adopt suitable measures for rehabilitation of the situation."

And what were the rehabilitation measures? How superbly all acts of severity were commuted by acts of conciliation, how fine the adjustment of punishment and compensation. Here was the work of a master in the strategy of compromise, of perfect knowledge of how to split the difference between what the Chinese call yu shih wu ming, the "reality without the name, "and yu ming wu shih, the "name without the reality."

As Chiang's first move on returning to Nanking he issued a long statement confessing his inability to prevent the revolt, and his failure as Premier. He immediately ordered the withdrawal of all government troops from Shensi——thus fulfilling his promise to prevent civil war——and offered his resignation (he was to repeat it the traditional three times). In reality he took his resignation no more seriously than did his government, for on December 29 he called an emergency meeting of the standing committee of the Central Executive Committee, and "requested"this highest organ of the Kuomintang to do four important things：to hand over to the Military Affairs Commission (of which he was chairman) the punishment of Chang Hsueh-liang; to delegate to the Military Affairs Commission the settlement of the Northwest problem; to terminate military operations against the rebels; and to abolish "punitive expedition"headquarters which had been set up, during Chiang's absence, to attack Sian. His "recommendations"were "obeyed."

On December 31 Chang Hsueh-liang was sentenced by tribunal (at which Chiang was not present) to ten years' imprisonment and deprivation of civil rights for five years. On the following day he was pardoned.^[1] And all the time he was the personal guest of Chiang Kai-shek's brother-in-law and recent envoy to Sian, T. V. Soong. On January 6 the Generalissimo's Sian headquarters for Bandit Suppression (Anti-Communist Campaign) was abolished. Two days later it was already known that the skids were under Japanese-speaking, Japanese-educated Foreign Minister Chang Chun, important leader of the "political-science clique"in the Kuomintang. Chang Chun had been the principal target of the Northwest in its charges of "pro-Japanese"officials at Nanking. He was replaced by Dr. Wang Chung-hui, British-educated barrister, and a leader of the Ou-Mei P'ai, the anti-Japanese "European-American"clique of Kuomintang politicians, whom the Northwest junta regarded with favor.

Again at Chiang's request, a plenary session of the Kuomintang Central Executive Committee was summoned for February 15. In the past its functions had been easily predictable, and confined to legalizing important changes in Party policy decided in advance by the ruling cliques, which in coalition were the Chiang Kai-shek dictatorship. What were the important changes of policy now to be introduced? Hundreds of resolutions were prepared for presentation to that august body. The great majority dealt with "national salvation."

During January and early February, Chiang Kai-shek took "sick leave."He retired, with Chang Hsueh-liang, to rest in the Generalissimo's country home near Fenghua, his native place in Chekiang. His first resignation rejected, Chiang repeated it. Meanwhile, ostensibly freed from official duties, he had complete command of the settlement of the Northwest issue, complete control of the conversations going on with the Tungpei, Hsipei, and Red Army commanders. Chang Hsueh-liang, "in disgrace, "was at his side, still a virtual prisoner.

On February 10 the Central Executive Committee of the Communist Party addressed to the National Government at Nanking, and to the Third Plenary Session, a historic telegram.^[*] It congratulated the government on the peaceful settlement of the Sian affair, and on the "impending peaceful unification"of the country. To the Plenary Session it proposed four important changes in policies：to end civil war; to guarantee freedom of speech, press, and assembly, and to release political prisoners; to invoke a national plan of resistance to Japanese aggression; and to return to the "three principles"of Dr. Sun Yat-sen's will.

If these proposals were adopted, in form or in substance, the Communists stated they were prepared, for the purpose of "hastening national unification and resistance to Japan, "to suspend all attempts to overthrow the government and to adopt the following policies：(1) change the name of the Red Army to the "National Revolutionary Army, "and place it -under the command of Chiang Kai-shek's Military Affairs Commission; (2) change the name of the Soviet Government to the "Special Area Government of the Repubic of China"; (3) realize a "completely democratic"(representative) form of government within the soviet districts; and (4) suspend the policy of land confiscation and concentrate the efforts of the people on the tasks of national salvation——that is, anti-Nipponism.

But the Plenary Session, when it convened on February 15, took no formal notice of the bandits' telegram. There was much more important business to be accomplished. Chiang Kai-shek in his first speech to the Session once more recounted, in complete and (for him) impassioned utterance, the whole story of his captivity in Sian. Dramatically he described how he refused to sign any pledge to carry out the rebels' demands. He told also how the rebels were converted to his own point of view, and were moved to tears by the revelations of patriotism in his confiscated diary. And not until he had said all this did he at last, in a very offhand and contemptuous manner, submit the rebels' eight demands to the Session. Reiterating its complete confidence in the Generalissimo, the Session rejected his third resignation, condemned Chang Hsueh-liang, and just as casually and contemptuously rejected the impertinent demands.

Meanwhile, however, in its well-trained way, the Central Executive Committee was accomplishing things on its own initiative. Significant above everything else, perhaps, was the opening statement of Wang Ching-wei, second only to Chiang Kai-shek in party leadership. For the first time since the beginning of the anti-Red wars, Comrade Wang made a speech in which he did not say that "internal pacification"(eradication of communism) was the most important problem before the country, in which he did not repeat his famous phrase, "resistance after unification."The "foremost question"before the country now, he said, was "recovery of the lost territories."Moreover, the Session actually adopted resolutions to begin by recovering east Hopei and northern Chahar, and abolishing the Japan-made "autonomous"Hopei-Chahar Council. Of course that did not mean that Nanking was to launch a war against Japan. Its significance was simply that further Japanese military aggression in China would meet with armed resistance from Nanking. But that was a real leap forward.

Second, the CEC, again on the Premier's recommendation, decided to convene on November 12 the long-delayed "People's Congress, "which was supposed to inaugurate "democracy"in China. More important, the standing committee was authorized to revise the organic laws of the Congress to increase representation of "all groups."The Generalissimo——through Wang Ching-wei again——announced that the second great problem before the nation was the speedy realization of democracy.

Finally, on the last day of the Session, Chiang Kai-shek made a statement in which he promised greater liberty of speech to all but traitors——and he said nothing about the "intellectual bandits."He also promised "release of political prisoners who repent."Very quietly an order went out to the press that no longer were the epithets "Red bandit"and "Communist bandit"to be used. A few prisons began to pour out a trickle of their less important victims.

Then, as if in afterthought, on February 21, last day of the historic Session, a long manifesto was issued, ostensibly to denounce the Communists. The history of ten years of crime and vandalism was recapitulated. Was it not obvious that any talk of "reconciliation"with brigands, thieves, and murderers was out of the question? But all that explosion of wind, it turned out, was actual preparation for the terms of peace which, to the extreme distaste of Tories who still opposed peace at any price, concluded the manifesto.

What were these proposals? The Session offered the Communists a chance "to make a new start in life, "on four conditions：(1) abolition of the Red Army and its incorporation into the national army; (2) dissolution of the "Soviet Republic"; (3) cessation of Communist propaganda that was diametrically opposed to Dr. Sun Yat-sen's "three principles"; and (4) abandonment of the class struggle. Thus, though phrased in terms of "surrender"instead of "cooperation, "the Kuomintang had accepted the Reds' basis for negotiation of a "reconciliation."^[*] Note that those terms still left the Reds in possession of their little autonomous state, their own army, their organizations, their Party, and their "maximum program"for the future. Or so, at least, the Reds could hope. And so, indeed, they did. For on March 15 the Communist Party, the Soviet Government, and the Red Army issued a long manifesto requesting the opening of negotiations with Nanking.

What was the purpose of all these complex maneuvers by Chiang? Obviously they were skillfully interwoven in such a manner as to conciliate the Opposition without weakening the prestige either of himself or of Nanking. Read in their proper sequence, his orders and statements, and the resolutions of the Plenary Session, showed that he partly satisfied the political demands of all groups of the Opposition——just enough to shatter their solidarity and resolution in defying him, but not enough to cause a revolt in the Kuomintang. Civil war had been stopped, and it was clear that Nanking had at last shouldered the task of armed resistance to Japan. Promises of greater political freedom had been made, and a definite date had been set for the realization of "democracy."Finally, a formula had been proposed by which the Kuomintang and the Communists might at least live together in armed truce, if not in "cooperation."At the same time the government had nominally rejected the rebels' demands and the Communists' proposals for "cooperation."It was all very wonderful.

One should not fail to note that these conciliatory gestures were forced through by Chiang Kai-shek in the face of considerable antagonism to them in Nanking, and at the conclusion of a terrific personal shock which might have embittered and unbalanced a man less gifted with foresight, and hastened him into precipitate actions of revenge——which, in fact, Chiang's outraged followers in Nanking demanded. But Chiang was shrewder than they. It was real genius of political strategy that he did not ignore the promises made in Sian, that he took no immediate overt revenge against his captors, that he tactfully employed a policy combining just the right weight of threat with the necessary softening of concession. In that way he eventually succeeded in breaking up the Northwest bloc (his first objective), and peacefully transferred the Tungpei Army from Shensi into Anhui and Honan, while the Hsipei Army of General Yang Hu-ch'eng was reorganized under the central command. In February, Nanking troops were able to occupy Sian and its environs without disturbance or opposition, and in the following month——with his guns at their frontiers——Chiang opened negotiations with the Communists.^[2]

^[*]See New China, a Communist publication (Yenan), March 15, 1937.

^[*]For full text of these important resolutions see The China Year Book (Shanghai, 1938).