If we had peace today, Chiang Kai-shek, and for that matter, Syngman Rhee, would be replaced as rulers. For when people see progress in neighboring countries and areas, they question: why can't they enjoy a more wholesome life? Their desire for improvement, of an assurance of a full rice bowl and protection from the pestilence and floods, can not be realized under corrupt rulers like Chiang or Rhee.
Rulers like them protect the landlords in predominantly agrarian and feudalistic countries. They also get their support from compradors, the economic puppets of foreign exploiters. For this reason, the landlords, the compradors and the foreign businessmen support them. Until not too long ago it was a general practice for landlords, as in China, to have their own soldiers in the countryside, and the compradors and foreign businessmen in the port cities to have foreign garrisons to protect their interests. The U. S. occupation troops in Japan serve such a purpose today.
Yenan Was Censored
The people cannot be fooled for long, particularly when they see examples of something better in neighboring areas. It was so in China during the last war when news of the northern Liberated Areas under the leadership of the Chinese Communists got to the ears of the people in Chiang Kai-shek's area. Chiang did everything to keep people in his territory from becoming familiar with conditions in Yenan.
I noticed that the people in Chungking were very much interested. Whenever I flew out of Yenan in 1945 and 1946 to report to my superiors in Chungking and Shanghai, my Chinese friends at the OWI would warn me that I was being watched by the Tai Li secret agents. But my fellow-workers would ask me about the conditions in North China and when I talked to them, it seemed that what I said only confirmed what they felt to be true. They were disgusted with Chiang's regime.
The people of Korea were likewise disgusted with Syngman Rhee's regime two years ago when the Korean war started. Rhee, like Chiang, opposed Korean unity. He attacked the assemblymen who advocated unity with their countrymen north of the 38th Parallel. The presidential election was coming up and the assembly had on a test vote on an issue at the end of May, 1950, voted him down. War kept him in the saddle for two more years and today he is in the same situation.
Red Bogey — Device of Oppressors
For a Chiang or a Rhee or a Bao Dai or a Quirino, who are traitors to the people practically composed of peasants, workers, Intellectuals and small shopkeepers, the life of his regime depends on how successfully he can win support from abroad on the single issue of anti-communism.
And at home, they use repression. In the Far East and in many colonial and semi-colonial countries, among the downtrodden people, the red bogey does not work. The people want full rice bowls and when they see land reform in North Korea or in New China, they say they want that, too. They can see the issues clearly, in terms of a full stomach.
Where the red bogey does not work, the example of a better life becomes dangerous to the existence of corrupt and feudalistic regimes, squeezed by foreign capitalists who throw crumbs to the compradors. And that is why there has been such a systematic and wanton destruction in North Korea. That is the same reason, one of the dominant reasons, behind the pressure to bomb China. For New China is opening the eyes of Indians, Burmese, and even the Japanese who have visited it.
And independent, industrialized nations cannot be economically exploited as a colony.
At this late date, when Chiang is sinking on the offshore island of Formosa, his emissaries in Washington are trying to step up the tempo of the War in Asia. Their secret messages to Chiang, translated by the Library of Congress only recently, expose how Chiang and his clique hope to return to the Asian mainland by drawing the U. S. further into a larger war.
"Our Hope of a World War ..."
The cable sent from the Chinese embassy in Washington Dec. 5, 1949, says: "Our hope of a world war so as to rehabilitate our country is unpalatable to the (American) people."
In other cables, the Nationalists indicated that they were waiting for some of their American friends to spread the war to China and the cables make clear that MacArthur is such a friend.
Today, Admiral Arthur W. Radford is plugging to "rehabilitate" Chiang by giving him more arms. The U. S. has spent more than $5 billion in military supplies on Chiang since V-J Day, and most of the help was given when he ruled a large part of China. Chiang was repudiated by the Chinese people and only U. S. dollars and assistance have kept him in the global political picture.
With Chiang went the leeches, warlords and compradors, and on the tiny island of Formosa, they are living out of U. S. taxpayers' pockets.
The Liaos' History of Patriotism
The true patriots of China remained, and they are reconstructing the great nation. Floods are being controlled today; food is ample for the first time, and surplus grain was shipped to India last year during the famine.
Some of those patriots I knew, as for example, Cynthia Liao. Among the Chinese families persecuted by Chiang, I believe the Liao family is outstanding.
I met Cynthia through Kaji Wataru, the anti-Japanese militarist writer, in Chungking. A few of us Nisei GIs were invited to Cynthia's home, a small bamboo shack with walls covered with mud and whitewashed, like most houses in the Nationalist wartime capital.
Cynthia was young in spirit but looked much older than she actually was. She lived very simply and frugally with her adolescent daughter. She spoke Chinese, Japanese and English. Her American-born father, Liao Chung-kai, had been one of the leading figures in China during the first quarter of this century. He had been one of Dr. Sun Yat-sen's associates, going into exile in Japan with Dr. Sun, where Cynthia learned her Japanese.
Chiang Was Given a Break
After Dr. Sun's death, Liao became a top leader of the Kuomintang. It was Liao who had recommended to Dr. Sun that Chiang be made president of the Whampoa Military Academy, and later, it was the Whampoa clique which played a vital role in helping Chiang into the driver's seat. When Chiang once dismissed cadets at the Academy, sent them home and went to Shanghai to enjoy its good, life, it was Liao who called back the cadets. He then persuaded Chiang to return. Whampoa was then essential in training military leaders for the Northern Expedition of the mid-twenties to crush the warlords.
Had Liao put someone else in Chiang's place, Cynthia told me, Chiang's star might never have risen in China. Liao was assassinated by his political enemies shortly after Dr. Sun's death in 1924.
Chiang had never liked the Liao family, according to Cynthia. After Cynthia's brother and husband were arrested by Chiang's secret police in the early thirties, her mother, who is an eminent woman leader along with Mme. Sun Yat-sen, reminded Chiang that he owed his present position to Liao. In a strongly-worded letter, she asked Chiang whether he hated Liao's family to the extent of exterminating it.
The Generalissimo Gets Mme. Liao's Skirt
Cynthia loved to tell the story about her mother sending her skirt to Chiang in the early thirties when the generalissimo appeased Japanese aggression. Madame Liao, who regarded Chiang as her junior in the Kuomintang at that time, because he was relatively a newcomer compared to her, wrote him: "If you don't want to fight the Japanese, let's change uniforms." She told Chiang that her skirt would be becoming on him.
When I saw Cynthia the first time, her brother was still in a Nationalist concentration camp. Her husband had died a few months before. It was said that he was killed accidentally by a Nationalist soldier.
I did not know that Cynthia was Mme. Sun Yat-sen's secretary. Through her I met Mme. Sun, whose residence was set fan in from the road I walked to and from work at the OWI office. Her neighborhood had a common touch, with chickens and children running around.
There were Nationalist guards around the house all the time, unwelcome guards placed there by the Chiang regime to watch her and her visitors. Under such a condition, liberal Chinese friends of hers evidently found it unsafe to visit her. Mme. Chiang is her sister and Chiang, her brother-in-law. Chiang's regime tried to isolate her, for she is the widow of Dr. Sun and a symbol that! encouraged the people to strive for independence and social progress.
Mme. Sun Loyal To People
Once, in the late twenties, she fled China when Chiang attacked the Communists and liberals who wanted to rid China of foreign imperialism and institute land reform. I heard from old-timers in China that Mme. Sun was constantly under pressure from her relatives to come to their side. She remained loyal to the people.
Thus, Ralf Sues, who wrote "Sharks' Fins and Millet," told of the popular saying among the poor in China, that of the three Soong sisters, "One loves money, one loves power and one loves China." Mme. Sun loves China, and I saw, during my travels in the rural hinterland during the difficult war years when supplies were short, how her efforts brought medical supplies and instruments to the people who needed them most.
I walked past the guards in front of Mme. Sun's house and her maid was standing inside the gate to welcome me. I waited awhile in a neatly furnished room and saw Mme. Sun come in. I sensed the warmth of her personality as she kept conversation flowing, for she had many questions in her mind. She asked me about the people in the rural areas, and of the medical supplies.
But she seemed most interested in the Nisei during our conversation. She knew a great deal about the evacuation and about the AJA 100th Infantry Battalion and the 442nd Combat team. She was proud of the Nisei role in the war of liberation, as she called it. She said it was remarkable that my people were coming through the evacuation experiences with dignity and new strength.