China Background - The tumultuous 1930s
Mood:  d'oh
Now Playing: maybe
Topic: Cold Front Passing Hokkai

The competition is fierce - Phillies in World's Series - Elections 16 days away.

To recap - why China Background? Max Blue's novel COLD FRONT PASSING HOKKAIDO is concerned with a small piece of 20th century Chinese history from 1950 to 1955. For a better appreciation of the events described in the novel, some knowledge of how China arrived at these mid-century crises seemed helpful.

The last post ended in 1932 with the entry of Japanese soldiers in Manchuria and Shanghai, and Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek's reluctance to engage them. The Japanese of course had been in China for a long time, involved, among other things, with the narcotics trade - opium, heroin, morphine. "Big Eared" Tu has been mentioned before in these posts, so it is no surprise that he was a prime-player in this trade. Just about everything related to anything related to money in China at this time had his mark on them - banks, commerce, legal and illegal - everything. In 1936, this epitome of evil was convinced by his pal, Ai-ling Soong, that his only hope for a peaceful eternity in heaven was to become a Christian, and agreed to be baptized in Charlie Soong's Shanghai Methodist Church.

Sterling Seagrave's THE SOONG DYNASTY is where all this is discussed in great detail - here only in tiny snips - The relations of T.V. Soong, H.H."Daddy" Kung, Ai-ling Soong's husband, and Chiang Kai-shek. The romantic view of China under Chiang popularized in the U.S. by Henry Luce, publisher of TIME and FORTUNE magazines.

China Background - Enter Japan
Mood:  blue
Now Playing: why not?
Topic: Cold Front Passing Hokkai
  Let it be clear, China was always a country with rich resources and great wealth. In the 20th century it was agriculture, minerals of all kinds (iron, coal, gold, silver, copper, manganese, and on and on), manufac-turing, opium (lots of opium), imports, exports, commerce of all kinds, foreign and domestic. Most of the wealth was in the hands of Shanghai Bankers who happily paid protection money to Big-eared Tu and his pitiless followers. The wealth trickled in tiny, oft-broken streams to the poor, uneducated masses of peasants.
          In 1931 Japanese Militarists began to move in. Japan had taken Korea in 1895, China was next, beginning with Manchuria in the North. Chiang Kai-shek declined to engage the invaders, urging his people to "maintain a quiet dignity." Chinese patriots had other ideas - rioters in Shanghai attacked Japanese businesses and demanded that war be declared. Chiang refused. It seems that during the 1927 Shanghai Massacres he had struck a secret deal with Japan to support his takeover. In present day America everyone is familiar with so-called Chinatowns in many large cities. In 1931 Shanghai there was what might be called a Japantown which now suffered the burden of the Manchurian invasion - not only were Japanese businesses boycotted but crowds of Japanese fought back against Chinese rioters resulting in death, destruction, and ultimately the arrival of the Japanese Imperial Fleet with brigades of Japanese Marines. The Chinese 19th Army was in Shanghai at the time helping "Major General" Big-eared Tu in this and that odd job, mostly related to drug running, but to everyone's surprise they put up a spirited fight against the invading Japanese Marines. A cease-fire was at last arranged in March 1932. The fighting brought trade to a dead stop and resulted in 600,000 refugess and destruction of 900 factories and businesses. 
                China under Chiang was faced with a serious dilemma - which would it be? Fight the invading Japanese, or fight the internal threat of the Chinese Communists? T.V. Soong wanted to fight the Japanese. Chiang Kai-shek thought different.  

China Background - Chiang veers right
Mood:  sad
Now Playing: Perhaps
Topic: Cold Front Passing Hokkai

            1933 - Hitler comes to power in Germany, Chiang Kai-shek asks him for military assistance; Hitler sends General Hans von Seeckt, one of the best-known strategists in Nazi Germany. Chiang is determined to eliminate the Communists, the Nazi general will tell him how to do it. The problem is that the 1st China Workers and Peasants Red Army was established by Chu Teh in August, 1927 and has gathered strength in the mountainous area of Kiangsi Province, south of the Yangzte River in Central-Eastern China. Von Seeckt directed 700,000 KMT troops in a merciless ground and air attack against  150,000 Communist guerrillas. The campaign resulted in nearly one million civilian deaths but "only" 60,000 guerrilla casualties under the leadership of Chu Teh.
             Chiang's fascism was modeled on Hitler and Mussolini - they had their Brown Shirts and Black Shirts, Chiang had his Blue Shirts and two secret services - the gestapo and the military secret police. Every government agency was touched with a spy network trained by the Green Gang. Soong May-ling set up what she called The New Life Movement determined, among other things to teach the peasants not to spit. Madame Chiang charmed the missionaries and organized Chinese Boy Scouts to help teach peasants about cleanliness and such. 
                 Chinese intellectuals speaking out against Chiang's tactics were treated harshly - a group of six young writers were burried alive.

China Background- Timeout for October baseball
Mood:  celebratory
Now Playing: In South Philly
Topic: Baseball
Phillies win game one of NLCS - National League Championship - beat LA Dodgers 3-2 - sorry, but Chinese history must wait.

China Background - Chiang takes charge
Mood:  celebratory
Now Playing: yes
Topic: Cold Front Passing Hokkai

          Celebrating Phillies win over Milwaukee in Division Series - next up: League championship series against LA Dodgers.

           China - 1925. A power struggle after the death of Sun Yat-sen - who would lead the Kuomintang? The KMT was divided into left, center, and right political groups. With the presence of the crafty and powerful Russian advisors it looked like the left would win it. Liao Chung-k'ai was the leading leftist candidate, he believed that capitalism should be restrained and the peasant farmers should be allowed to own their own land and have access to manufactured goods through consumer cooperatives. He was the one who had convinced Sun Yat-sen to seek aid from Russia. He was assassinated by Green Gang thugs seting up the election on July 7, 1926 of Chiang Kai-shek as president of the Nationalist Government. There was no lookiing back.
           The Communists were still part of the Kuomintang and they thought Chiang was with them. It was a mark of Chiang's cleverness that they thought so - they couldn't have been more wrong. In hindsight it is hard to believe that he was able to maintain the ruse as long as he did. On February 19, 1927 he publicly announced his intention of eliminating the Communists from the Kumonitang. Over the next several months, with the help of Big-eared Tu and his Green Gang, Chiang directed the slaughter of thousands of Chinese peasants, students, intellectuals, even businessmen who resisted his rise to become the Dictator of all things Chinese - History has called it "The Shanghai Massacre". Soong Ai-ling, in cahoots with her long-time pal, Big-eared Tu, and her husband H.H. Kung
was in it up to her ears even if they weren't big. Three weeks after the massacre, Chiang Kai-shek proposed marriage to Soong May-ling. She accepted over the objections of her mother, "Mammy Soong". In the end, Chiang overcame the objections by agreeing to become a Christian.
            President/Dictator Chiang was riding high, but not higher than Big-eared Tu who he never stopped paying protection money to. Soong Ching-ling, in the face of threats to her life, refused to abandon the principles of the now legendary Sun Yat-sen, and escaped to Moscow. Also escaping the KMT terror were Chou En-lai and Mao Tse-tung.      

 

China Background - Death of Sun Yat-sen
Mood:  down
Now Playing: There's always hope
Topic: Cold Front Passing Hokkai

               Mood is down because Phillies lost game three to Milwaukee, and because in the China story we come to the death of a man who's dream of leading China to a glorious future was only beginning. At the age of 59 Sun Yat-sen had accomplished much with the establishment of the Nationalist Kuomintang govenment, and the enthusiastic support of millions. His premature death provided academics fuel for the oft-debated hot question: how would Chinese history have developed if he had lived?

                1924 - The fiercely capitalist Old Guard Canton Merchants Association and their British Govenment supporters are uneasy at the leftward tilt of Sun Yat-sen and his KMT government . The merchants are terrified of the Communists. They form a well-paid militia of fifty thousand men with the slogan "Save Canton from the Bolshevists". Sun Yat-sen, with urging from his Russian advisors declares martial law, but is surprised when Chiang Kai-shek moves boldly with his Whampoa Cadets and other units to put down the Canton Merchants. One contingent of Chiang's force is the Workers' Militia and Peasants' Corps trained by Mao Tse -tung. Chiang's attack is a stupendous success - the Merchants' Militia is routed and the KMT Army is established as the strongest force in the land.

                And then, on March 12, 1925, Sun Yat-sen died of liver cancer. He wrote a farewell letter to the Central Executive Committee of the Soviet Union which closed with a plea: "In bidding farewell to you, dear comrades, I wish to express the fervent hope that the day may soon dawn when the U.S.S.R. will greet, as a friend and ally, a strong and independent China and the two allies may together advance to victory in the great struggle for the liberation of the oppressed peoples of the world." 

   

              

China Background - T.V. Soong to the rescue & Whampoa Military Academy
Mood:  a-ok
Now Playing: Maybe not
Topic: Cold Front Passing Hokkai
               1923 - Chiang Kai-shek, badgered KMT leader Sun Yat-sen into sending him to Moscow to learn about security and discipline from the Soviets. Chiang stayed three months at a time when Lenin was dying. Trotsky, in a battle with Stalin for power, found time for long conversations with Chiang who returned to China convinced that the Communists were the number one enemy of the KMT and the right wing Green Gang in the fight to rule China. Chiang nominally answered to Sun Yat-sen, but his real loyalties were to Green Gang kingpins Pock-marked Huang, Big-eared Tu, and Curio Chang.
                With the help of Russian military advisors, the KMT set up  the Whampoa Military Academy on an island in the Pearl River 10 miles south of Canton, where a real army could be trained and equipped  with Soviet weapons. Chiang Kai-shek prevailed on Sun Yat-sen to become military commandant of Whampoa in spite of strenuous objections from the Russians and the Chinese Communist members of the KMT. Of three thousand qualified applicants to the first class, only five hundred could be admitted, all highly literate, and most members of the Shanghai Green Gang. Classes began on May 5, 1924. Chiang, following the principles of Sun Tzu's Art of War was allowing the Russian Bolsheviks and Chinese Communists to build a modern army for him.
                In October, 1923, the 1915 Harvard graduate, T.V. Soong, after quickly establishing a reputation as a financial genius by straightening out the books and financial operations of a Shanghai industrial complex of coal mines, iron mines, and steel mills, was called to Canton by Sun Yat-sen at the suggestion of Ching-ling, to solve KMT financial worries. T.V. used a Russian loan of $10 million to set up the Central Bank of China with himself as manager and quickly built the bank's reputation for reliability to the point where money printed by the bank was accepted all over China. 

China background - Sun tilts left
Mood:  a-ok
Now Playing: Sunny South Jersey
Topic: Cold Front Passing Hokkai

               1921 - The first Congress of the Chinese Communist party - they met in Shanghai on Joyful Undertaking Street -  thirteen men including Mao Tse-tung, they were enamored by the success of the 1917 Russian revolution, and convinced that the doctrines of Marx and Lenin were just what was needed in China.  But guess what- they were observed by the most militant anti-communist organization in China, a new gangster syndicate called the Green Gang, led by the pure criminal mastermind, Tu Yueh-sheng - "Big-eared" Tu, who got where he was through the patronage of the great detective, Huang Chi-jung -"Pockmarked" Huang. Big-eared Tu, though ugly as a fence post with a lumpy face from childhood beatings, was a man of quick wit, energy, and resourcefulness. He was well-liked by everyone because of his easy manner, generosity, and genuine willingness to help even a downtrodden street vendor. He became a legend for his support of widows, orphans, and men who had lost everything. He also controlled the opium market, and never hesitated to assassinate members of the rival Blue Gang or Red Gang. When Big-eared Tu asked, people answered. 
                 1922 - Sun Yat-sen and Ching-ling are in the south China city of Canton, where to say things were in a chaotic mess would be a gross understatement. Sun had a poorly organized Koumintang army that was up against at least two powerful warlords, as well as a protection force organized by Canton merchants of some 50,000 men. Sun needed help and he got it from Soviet Russia. The Soviet Bolsheviks were hell-bent on
spreading their revolution worldwide and they saw an opportunity in China. Czarist Russia had exploited the Chinese for years and the Bolsheviks made a grand impression by renouncing all Czarist concessions in China including all treaties and agreements between Imperial Russia and Imperial China.  Sun Yat-sen was pleased to accept Soviet promises to finance and support Sun's Kuomintang in exchange for an agreement to admit China's fledgling Communist party to th Kuomintang.        
              

China Background - Ching-ling elopes-Charlie dies.
Mood:  a-ok
Now Playing: Maybe
Topic: Cold Front Passing Hokkai

          Charlie was beside himself with anger and frustration - Ching-ling was ready to throw her 21-year-old self into the arms of a man who he had considered for more than 20 years, before Ching-ling was born, to be his best friend. He literally kidnapped his own daughter, whisked her from Japan back to Shanghai and locked her in a upstairs room. The Soongs then announced the formal engagement of Ching-ling to a young man of good family. No use, Charlie, with the help of her Amah, Ching-ling climbed down a ladder, jumped on a steamer bound for Kobe, Japan, and married the already married Dr.Sun before Charlie could get there to stop it. Woe is Charlie.
           1917 - May-ling returned to Shanghai after graduating from Wellesley with a major in English Literature. She entered easily into the active Shanghai social life and pressed her father to buy a larger house with a modern bathroom. Less than a year of her return, her father, Charlie Soong, died. He was 52. It was announced that he died of stomach cancer although there was no evidence of a protracted illness. 
Charlies' children were well prepared to get on with their lives.
          
           

China background - Enter Chiang kai-shek
Mood:  a-ok
Now Playing: We can only hope
Topic: Cold Front Passing Hokkai

  1912 - Charlie got over his outrage and continued to work with Sun - they were both slated for early death when they came out against President/Dictator Yuan so packed up their families and escaped to Japan just ahead of the assassins. Don't forget, they had lots of support from the secret societies, and other revolutionary comrades. One was a 25-year-old, hot-headed, short-tempered, astonishingly addicted to the Shanghai brothel society, zealot named Chiang Kai-shek. Chiang, it should be duly noted, was a follower of the fourteenth century Chinese military scholar Sun Tzu, who, in his classic work, The Art of War, wrote, among other things, "The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting."
          Chiang was closely tied to the violent criminal element of Shanghai society, in particular to "Big-eared" Tu, head of the Green Gang who cruised the after-dark Shanghai streets in an open roadster,with a full-complement of heavily-armed bodyguards.
           In 1915, the "second revolution" ended with the death of President/Dictator Yuan, it was said, from the blood poisoning condition called uremia. Sun Yat-sen and his Kuomintang Nationalists were the rulers of China. Well, sort of. The truth was that local Warlords were pretty much in control all over the vast country, and nobody was paying much attention to the poor, deprived, millions of Chinese peasants.
           Along the way, Ai-ling married the wealthy pawn-broker fortune heir, H.H. Kung, and Ching-ling, back fom America, took her sister's place as secretary to Sun Yat-sen. Ching-ling was described as "Dewey-eyed", and romantic - she saw Dr. Sun in a much different way than did Ai-ling.