WHOSE FAULT IS CHINA?
Wallick, Franklin & Gilbert, Rodney
Whose Fault Is China? A Debate Kuomintang Demoralization Led to Communist Triumph from FRANKLIN WALLICK I WAS DISAPPOINTED to see the interpretation of events in China written by Rodney...
...It halted a Nationalist advance on Harbin and a Communist retreat...
...The facilities at Chinwangtao (a one dock "port") and undeveloped Hulutao are simply piffling compared with the great installations at Dairen...
...To begin with, the effect on morale in Chinese officialdom, civilian and military, was devastating...
...Once the Communists got into Manchuria, there was no question of their military superiority, and they quickly advanced along the excellent Manchurian railroads...
...Under men of the caliber of VMItrained General Sun Li-jen, China was getting a well-equipped army, led by intelligent, human officers, which could have stopped the Communists, if it had ' not been hamstrung by inept cliques - around Chiang...
...The Catholic father wrung his hands and told me: "What can we do...
...General Wei Li-huang was in supreme command throughout the successive defeats...
...I can offhand name a dozen modern-minded friends, whose integrity is above reproach, who have held high office in Nanking since V-J Day...
...As for the generals, Mr...
...A Debate Kuomintang Demoralization Led to Communist Triumph from FRANKLIN WALLICK I WAS DISAPPOINTED to see the interpretation of events in China written by Rodney Gilbert (New Leader, May 21...
...The strategic fall of Mukden, the pivot of Nationalist collapse, can be traced almost directly to the return to power In Manchuria of a corrupt general whose only virtue was his personal loyalty to Chiang...
...What support are his friends in the Department mustering, by word or deed, for those forces which can still be encouraged to light for their country's freedom from Muscovite hegemony...
...I know highly qualified observers who think it was of decisive value...
...The well-fed and disciplined troops who came out of these training camps were such a personal threat to Chiang's power and the cliques around him that they were never permitted the field generalship they deserved...
...WALUCK follows this same nauseating State Department line about supporting the "liberals" In Chins, which Is Just a backhanded way of smearing all of the National...
...Yingkow was closed from the start...
...For a few months their advance was kept relatively static as Marshall's mediation efforts secured cease-fire agreements from both sides...
...Sun Lijen was not pushed into the discard by any, means...
...The Nationalist government had three excellent Manchurian ports at its disposal, in spite of \he Russian control of Port Arthur'ahd Dairen...
...I know of no more vivid example of this than what I heard from the lips of a leading Catholic educator in Peiping a few weeks before the" Communists took that city...
...WaUIek spent two-and-a-half years in China working fee UHRBA...
...Well...
...renai disss mi paint of view...
...THEN MR...
...Indeed, no American military observer in China was ever impressed by the military strength, added to the Communist army by Japanese arms gotten from the Russians in Manchuria...
...1st government personnel as vicious reactionaries...
...One gets the impression from reading The New Leader's articles on China, that the Far Eastern Affairs Division of our State Department is colonized by misty-eyed fellowtravelers just waiting to shake hands with stalwart Communist revolutionaries...
...These adequate Nationalist ports were Chingwantao, Hulatao, and Yingkow...
...All had the same line...
...Wallick's defense of the State Department impresses me not at all...
...Some types of such equipment were never supplied to the Nationalists, but were supplied in great quantities to Russia...
...IT IS A GREAT MISTAKE to think the State Department was never worried about what the Communists were doing in China...
...About ports...
...Although America should he properly ashamed of Yalta-style diplomacy, what happened to Manchuria is by no means analagous to the Chechoslovakian sell-out...
...All quoted the same grossly .exaggerated figures on post-war aid to China...
...A vast area of China is still free...
...General Tu Yu-mlng was sent back to save Manchuria after his incredible blunders had long since discredited him for military leadership...
...He is right now in charge of the business of reshaping the armies on Formosa under Chiang Kai-shek's personal patronage...
...It was largely because assurances of proper generalship were missing that few responsible Americans in China ever became enthusiastic about requests for more military support to Nationalist China...
...Where Americans were able to observe full Communist armies in the field, American equipment, either captured from or sold by Nationalists, was more conspicuous...
...Dear Editor: The New Lemier welcomes ceenaeast from Us readers...
...and that the value of captured American equipment, paraded by the Reds for propaganda purposes, has been greatly exaggerated...
...Wallick has met no American military men who think that the handsome equipment of Japan's Kwantung (Manchurian) army was of any importance to the Communists...
...Wallick says we must get busy mustering support for "the remaining free parts of Asia...
...Petty rivalry between military factions within the Nationalist army soon neutralized its striking power...
...Confidence in this country's good faith was shaken to such an extent that for three years no effective appeal was made to the Chinese people against Soviet Russian policy or influence, for fear that if Moscow resented it effectively, the United States would leave China in the lurch...
...Nothing could be further from the truth...
...Because it might have been construed in China as a hopeful expression of sympathy with Chiang Kai-shek, and might have checked the collapse of civilian morale...
...Detroit, Mich...
...Consequently, all the American training and equipment which had been so assiduously organized by General Joe Stillwell's staff in Burma and Southwest China, was squandered by insignificant expeditions outside the hamlets and cities of Manchuria, with no serious attempt ever made to take Harbin, the center of Communist Manchuria...
...Once such troops were trained, they were all too frequently put undor the command of carpetbaggers who stole rice rations from the men and demoralized them to the point of mutiny...
...He did have more to do with the Suchow debacle, and is supposed to have paid for his blunders with his life...
...What happened in China is no reflection on the State Department, so much as a reflection on our democratic inadequacy to deal effectively with new political and economic forces in Asia...
...Dual control of Manchurian railroads, once the Nationalists took over Mukden, was never realized...
...The man has apparently seen a lot of China, but I think his article is an unfair, misleading appraisal of what is taking place in that unfortunate country...
...The widespread demoralization in Nationalist China has never been fully appreciated by anti-Communists in the United States...
...If any highly placed person in the Department ever publicly deplored the conquest of China by a horde of puppets under ,the Kremlin's direction, it never got published...
...Few American ventures in China since V-J Day have prospered...
...Tu Yu-ming did not go to save Manchuria and lose it...
...The Generalissimo could not tolerate expert generalship from a rival who was not his personal crony...
...Wallick's information isn't quite what it should be...
...The next time any reader gets that line of twaddle in conversation, let him demand that the peddler of it name three "liberals", competent to participate in government councils, who have been excluded from them...
...What really happened to weaken the Nationalists is what has consistently plagued them during much of Chiang Kai-shek's waning years...
...This Is year department — let's Heir item yen...
...Blames State Department For Nationalist Collapse From RODNEY GILBERT THE EFFECTS QF THE YALTA AGREEMENT on post-war events in China cannot be overestimated...
...I've done lots of gossiping in Washington with newspapermen whose only source of information about China was the Department...
...So why waste anything on them...
...One of the most successful American attempts to work effectively in China, oddly enough, was the training of troops under Stillwell...
...and serving as eanespsnisas lor Isdstssatoaal Mews lerviee and Wer leaver Press...
...We were talking about what resistance could be mustered...
...I THINK MR...
...however, please Umit year toilets to SM words or toss...
...If these lads (meaning his own students, most of whom were anti-Communists) will not fight for their country's independence, then there is nothing we can do...
...But there was no depletion of manpower or equipment by the Nationalists to put the Nationalists at a disadvantageous position during this period...
...leaching in Peiping...
...We waded into Asia after the war with enormous prestige and power, but little conception of how to cope with the peculiar circumstances of Asia...
...Chiang Kai-shek and his disreputable gang had forfeited the confidence of "the people", and could not stop the Communists with any amount of support...
...While the Russians assisted the Communists by handing over Japanese military equipment, the Communists were confronted by initial psychological handicaps, as a result of Russian looting and congenital Chinese hostility towards Russia, on which the Nationalists were never able to capitalize...
...But more important: It was the exclusive Russian use of Dairen which enabled the Communists in Shantung to convert scattered forces of guerrillas into a well equipped army capable of taking Tsinan...
...Communists entrenched on the beaches threatened to fire on American transports carrying Chinese troops...
...Most of the State Department people whom I've known, and I've discussed this with many, from the Ambassador (to China) to clerks, have endeavored to promote the liberal democratic forces within China whose views were consistent with American traditions...
...Per space reasons...
...Tu Yu-ming was a deputy and had little to do with the debacle there...
...Then send those names to me...
...It will serve the cause of freedom in Asia better today if, instead of making spurious charges about State Department inaction, we got busy mustering political and economic support for the remaining free parts of Asia...
...It is, first, a mistake to overestimate the effects of Yalta...
...Now the question as to the amount of such equipment that was captured is being raised...
...The extravagant efforts of UNRRA badly floundered...
...WALLICK'8 MEMORY of the sequence of events is at fault when he suggests that General Marshall's intervention halted a Communist advance...
Vol. 32 • July 1949 • No. 30
