CHAPTER 13 THE KMT-CCP CONFLICT 1945-1949 NEGOTIATIONS AND AMERICAN INVOLVEMENT By 1944 the American government had become increasingly anxious to quell the dissension that was undermining the anti-Japanese war effort in China, and forestall a possible civil war that might involve the Soviet Union on the side of the CCP once the Japanese surrendered. The negotiations between the KMT and CCP, broken off after the New Fourth Army incident in 1941, had been resumed by 1943. The Americans became actively involved with the arrival in China of Major General Patrick J. Hurley, President Roosevelt's personal representative to Chiang Kai- shek, in September 1944. Appointed US Ambassador a few months later, Hurley's mission was, among other things,' to unify all the military forces in China for the purpose of defeating Japan'. The Hurley mission: 1944-194j Optimistic interludes to the contrary notwithstanding, the first year of Hurley's efforts to promote reconciliation between the leaders of China's 'two great military establishments' bore little fruit. The Communist position announced by Mao at the Seventh Party Congress in April 1945 called for an end to KMT one-party rule and the inauguration of a coalition government in which the CCP would share power. This proposal gained the enthusiastic support of the nascent peace movement in the KMT areas, where fears of renewed civil conflict were mounting as the fortunes of the Japanese aggressor declined. But it was not the sort of proposal that the KMT government was inclined to favour. Then on the day Japan surrendered, 14 August, Chiang Kai-shek invited Mao to journey to Chungking to discuss the outstanding issues between them. Mao eventually accepted, and Ambassador Hurley personally escorted him to the government's wartime capital from his own at Yenan. The ambassador continued to play his mediator's role in the subsequent negotiations. 723 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008 724 THE KMT-CCP CONFLICT I945-I949 Mao returned to Yenan on n October. General principles had been agreed upon, but the details of implementation had yet to be devised. Chou En-lai remained in Chungking to work toward that end. The general principles announced in their 10 October agreement, at the close of the talks between Chiang and Mao, included democratization, unification of military forces, and the recognition that the CCP and all political parties were equal before the law. The government agreed further to guarantee the freedoms of person, religion, speech, publication and assembly ;• agreed to release political prisoners; and agreed that only the police and law courts should be permitted to make arrests, conduct trials, and impose punishments. According to the agreement, a political consultative conference repre- senting all parties was to be convened to consider the reorganization of the government and approve a new constitution. The Communists agreed to a gradual reduction of their troop strength by divisions to match a proportional reduction of the government's armed forces. The Communists also agreed to withdraw from eight of their southernmost and weakest base areas.' The government had bowed to the Communist demand for an end to one-party KMT rule; the Communists had abandoned their demand for the immediate formation of a coalition government. In so doing, both sides were acknowledging the widespread desire for peace on the part of a war-weary public, and the political advantages to be gained from apparent deference to it. A key issue on which not even superficial agreement could be reached, however, was that of the legality of the remaining ten Communist base areas and their governments. Chiang Kai-shek demanded that they be unified under the administrative authority of the central government; the Communists not surprisingly demurred. Even more crucial: while their leaders were thus engaged in talking peace, the Communist and government armies were engaged in a competitive race to take over Japanese-occupied territory north of the Yangtze. That territory included the strategic North-east provinces (Manchuria, as they were then known), where the Communists were rushing to create a new base area. General Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers (SCAP), in his General Order Number One, authorized the Chinese government to accept the Japanese surrender in China proper, the island of Taiwan, and northern Indo-China. The forces of the Soviet Union were to do the same in Manchuria. But the government, from its wartime retreat in the south-west, was at a clear disadvantage in taking 1 China white paper. 2.577-81; Mao Tse-tung, 'On the Chungking negotiations', Selected works, hereafter Mao, SW, 4.53-63. Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008 a\ *-i V> 3 00 3 < C ~5 v- C o D Vi 'H 3 E E o u c M (fl -O 3 (A hi -uo c 3 so cU o N fi. < 2 3 ^1 III i 8H |1 -8 O UJ Z (A If . 5 I * < JI . ±5 ^1 o- o Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008 7*6 THE KMT-CCP CONFLICT I945-I949 over from the Japanese north of the Yangtze, since the Communists already controlled much of the North China countryside. Anticipating Japan's surrender, Chiang Kai-shek had ordered Com- munist forces on 11 August 1945 to maintain their positions. But in accordance with conflicting orders from Yenan, Communist troops launched an offensive on all fronts against Japanese-held keypoints and communications lines to compel their surrender. Mao and the commander of the Communist armies, Chu Teh, cabled a rejection of Chiang's 11 August order five days later. On 23 August, therefore, the commander-in-chief of government forces, General Ho Ying-ch'in, ordered General Okamura Yasuji, com- mander of Japanese forces in China, to defend Japanese positions against Communist troops if necessary, pending the arrival of government troops. The Japanese were also ordered to recover territory recently lost or surrendered to Communist forces, and offensive operations were under- taken following this order. From late August to the end of September, more than 100 clashes were reported between Communist forces on the one hand, and those of the Japanese and their collaborators on the other, acting as surrogate for the KMT government. As a result of these operations, the Communists lost some twenty cities and towns in Anhwei, Honan, Hopei, Kiangsu, Shansi, Shantung and Suiyuan.2 Among their gains was Kalgan (Changchiak'ou), then a medium-sized city with a population of 150,000—200,000, and capital of Chahar province. Taken from the Japanese during the final week of August 1945, Kalgan was a key trade and communications centre for goods and traffic moving north and south of the Great Wall. Because of its size and strategic location not far from Peiping, Kalgan became something of a model in urban administration for the Communists and a second capital for them until it was captured by government forces one year later. The United States also intervened on the government's behalf, trans- porting approximately half a million of its troops into North China, Taiwan and Manchuria. A force of 53,000 US marines occupied Peiping, Tientsin and other points in the north pending the arrival of government troops. The US War Department order authorizing such assistance had instructed that the principle of non-involvement in the KMT-CCP conflict not be infringed. Yet the order contained an implicit contradiction, since the two parties to the conflict viewed their race to take over from the Japanese as part of their mutual rivalry. The US thus compromised the principle of 'non-involvement' from the start in a manner that would 2 Hsia-hua jib-pao (New China daily news), Chungking, 17 and 20 Sept., 5, 6 and 22 Oct. 1945 (translated in Chinese Press Review, hereafter CPR, same dates except Oct. 23 for the last cited). Also Foreign relations of the United States, hereafter FRUS, 194}, 7.567-68. Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008 NEGOTIATIONS AND AMERICAN INVOLVEMENT 727 characterize the American role in China throughout the period. The Chinese Communists began at once to protest the American garrison duties and troop movements as US interference in China's domestic affairs.3 The presence of the Russians further complicated the clash of interests in China at the end of the Second World War. The Soviet Union entered the war against Japan on 9 August 1945, in accordance with the Yalta Agreements of 11 February 1945. Soviet troops had just begun entering Manchuria when the Japanese surrendered on 14 August, the same day that the Soviet and Chinese governments announced the conclusion of a treaty of friendship and alliance between their two countries. During the negotiations, Stalin had conveyed assurances to the Chinese representative, T. V. Soong, that Soviet forces would complete their withdrawal from the North-east within three months after a Japanese surrender.4 The deadline for Soviet withdrawal was thus set for 15 November 1945. The Chinese Communists were in a position to take maximum advantage of those three months during which the Russians occupied the cities and major lines of communications in the North-east, and no one controlled the countryside. During this time, while government forces were leap-frogging over and around them in American transport planes and ships, elements of the Communist Eighth Route and New Fourth Armies were entering Manchuria by junk from Shantung and overland on foot from several northern provinces. They were joined by a small force of North-eastern troops led by Chang Hsueh-szu, a son of the Manchurian warlord Chang Tso-lin, which had been cooperating with the Communists' guerrilla activities against the Japanese in North China.