793.94/7476
The Ambassador in China (Johnson) to the Secretary of State
[Received December 4.]
Sir: I have the honor to refer to the Embassy’s despatch No. 15 of October 4, 1935,33 with reference to current Chinese and Japanese opinion regarding Sino-Japanese relations, and to enclose for the information of the Department a copy of despatch No. 49 of October 14, 1935, from the Amoy Consulate,33 reporting on one aspect of anti-Japanese feeling in China. The nationalistic manifesto forwarded with that despatch calls more particularly, it will be noticed, for resistance to the encroachment of “Japanese imperialism” on the province of Fukien.
It is generally agreed by observers that 1) the Japanese are pressing forward on various fronts for definitive settlements of outstanding Sino-Japanese problems, and 2) the National Government is extremely hard pressed to find a formula which will at one and the same time meet Japanese “aspirations” and leave the Government with sufficient prestige and power before the Chinese people for it to maintain its equilibrium. Feng Yü-hsiang, it is said, consented to go to Nanking to attend the Sixth Plenary Session of the Central Executive Committee and the Fifth National Kuomintang Congress only after having been pressed jointly to do so by Chiang Kai-shek, General Yen Hsi-shan of Shansi, and Chairman Han Fu-ch’ü of Shantung, and only when he had received substantial assurances that there would actually be discussions initiated at those meetings for the purpose of evolving means of “protecting the country and the people”. If the attendance of Feng Yü-hsiang and the Southwest delegates has any significance at all, it would seem to lie in the obvious inference that Japanese pressure has at last given rise to a situation wherein the several Chinese factions feel impelled to settle their differences for the purpose of presenting a united front to the opposition.
The necessity for the adoption of a common policy against foreign aggression must have become startlingly apparent to all Chinese groups in the period that had its beginning on September 24 of this year. Prior to that time, certain pro-Japanese elements had been cherishing a hope that Japanese rule of North China and domination of the rest of the country would be exercised in a sympathetic way for the ultimate good of the Chinese people. “Economic cooperation” in the development of the five provinces of North China was [Page 408] to have been the starting point for this new relationship. But the Tada Statement of September 24, the subsequent force applied by the Japanese at Swatow and Hankow to effect their will as regards provincial taxation, and the dismissal of Garrison Commander Yeh P’eng, respectively, the Dairen Conference of October 13–14, the Shanghai Conference of October 20–21 and subsequent peregrinations and utterances by responsible Japanese officials, the démarches of the Japanese Garrison Headquarters in North China on October 29 and October 30 and the threatening attitude adopted toward the Chinese side, the arbitrary arrests of Chinese on the charge of their belonging to nationalistic organizations, and the belligerency displayed by Japan regarding the question of China’s monetary measures of November 4, have apparently combined to remove from the mind of so-called pro-Japanese Chinese any last vestige of hope for prospective benefits to be derived from Japanese rule. The impatience of the Japanese Army with the characteristic Chinese procrastination has led the Army to show its hand. Chinese opinion in consequence is being disillusioned even where illusion continued to exist, and the problem confronting Chinese leadership is clearly seen to be one, not of evolving a scheme for political and economic cooperation within the framework of an equal partnership, but of deciding on the ways and means for resisting the continued advance of Japanese ambitions on the continent of Asia.
If there is agreement on that one point, Chinese councils are quite evidently divided on the question of where and when the resistance shall begin. It is probable that Chiang Kai-shek, who has consistently supported the policy of conciliation since the inception of the current phase of Sino-Japanese relations with the Tangku Truce of May 1933, labors under no misapprehensions regarding Japanese intentions towards him. It seems to have been a matter of common knowledge to Chinese and Japanese alike that the Generalissimo has been playing for time with the Japanese, hoping to be able to stave off a final settlement until he had built up a modern army whose power could be made manifest. A prominent economist and Kuomintang member stated in private conversation recently that Chiang Kai-shek’s policy, as expressed in private military councils, was given almost verbatim recently in an article by Dr. V. K. Ting (Secretary General of the Academia Sinica) in the Tu Li P’ing Lun (Independent Critic, Peiping) of August 21, 1935. According to Dr. Ting, China now stands where Soviet Russia stood in 1918, and would be forced, “for the preservation of the revolution”, to sign a treaty of surrender which would give the country a breathing-spell during which it could gather its scattered forces—in the mountainous West China if nowhere else—and grow to a new strength (and, by implication, a day of reckoning).
[Page 409]According to the analysis of the afore-mentioned economist, the primary interest of the Chinese State, as of any State, lies in its self-preservation. Its existence is closely linked with a financial structure which is bound indissolubly to foreign factors and rendered extraordinarily vulnerable by reason of this close relationship; as a result, the Chinese State would be endangered immediately by any strong action against its financial framework. The chief interest of the Chinese people, however, as distinguished from the State, lies not in the preservation of the existing political structure but in the maintenance of national sovereignty and popular liberties, with the result that the interests of the State and the people have become incompatible in so far as the State is prepared to surrender national sovereignty in return for its own existence. The people demand, he said, that they be armed for resistance to the national enemy regardless of consequences to the political structure; the State bargains for time in the hope that it will not be forced to renounce the stage.
The supine attitude of Chinese publicists, students and thinkers to date before the challenge offered by Japan’s spirit of “manifest destiny” is a matter of public knowledge: it is but rarely that more than a feeble protest has come from the Chinese side under the repeated threats of the Japanese Army. Nevertheless, it is also to be admitted that the attitude is one which has been largely fostered by the National Government itself, which has taken drastic measures, in the pursuit of its policy of “conciliation”, to suppress any movements of direct attack, economic boycott, or adverse criticism against the Japanese that might have exacerbated the Sino-Japanese relations which such heroic efforts were being made to better. The Government’s policy of suppression must be adjudged responsible in large part for the feeling of despair and lethargy which is so general in Chinese circles today. There are indications, however, that some Chinese elements, long restive under the Government’s restraints, in their desperation are developing a new courage. An example of the more radical type of manifestation is reported in the afore-mentioned despatch from Amoy. As an example of the indirect, more academic effort of a section of China’s population to become articulate in the present crisis there is enclosed a copy (in English translation) of an express letter34 sent recently from North China by the “Students’ Self-Government Association” to the Sixth Plenary Session of the CEC,35 and distributed besides to various publicity agencies and educational institutions. The express letter had its origin in Yenching University, but the other chief schools and colleges in North China participated, and the petition incorporated in that communication is said to represent the will of 40,000 students.
[Page 410]As will be noted, the students make a passionate protest against the Government’s method of smothering the forces of public opinion, and call for certain democratic liberties laid down in the Provisional Constitution, specifically, 1) freedom from illegal arrest and detention, 2) exemption of civilians from arbitrary court-martial proceedings, 3) freedom of assembly and of association, and 4) freedom of speech and of the press. The explanation given at the end for the petition is that, “as the general situation in the country is such, all citizens should share the responsibility and should burst forth to save the life of the country. The sooner the gyves and fetters are removed, the earlier we can perform our duties.” (It will be observed that this petition is consonant with the fact that the Kuomintang “Period of Tutelage” is technically due to terminate.)
The inherent weakness of the policy of “conciliation” has been clearly demonstrated in the past few months, and is becoming generally discredited as both ineffective and humiliatingly feckless. An adverse criticism of Dr. V. K. Ting’s particular argument was given by Dr. Hu Shih in the same issue of the Tu Li P’ing Lun, where the latter opened his attack on Dr. Ting’s Fabian thesis with the observation that the chief significance of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk36 was to be discovered not in the signing of the treaty but in subsequent events: “the preservation of the (Russian) revolution” was achieved not by surrender to the German arms but by the three years of sanguinary fighting against domestic and foreign enemies that followed upon the Brest-Litovsk tableau. Dr. Hu agreed with Dr. Ting that China had valuable lessons to learn from the history of revolutionary Russia’s foreign relations, but he could not agree that that history warranted counsels proposing further retreat “into the mountains of Kweichow and Yunnan”.
Writing in the China Weekly Review for August 17, 1935, under the heading “The Future of China’s Policy Toward Japan”, C. Y. W. Meng summarized the opposing points of view regarding the foreign policy to be adopted by China in its present straits, and threw his support to Dr. Hu’s thesis:
“By accepting the Japanese demands wholesale, by exerting more ‘friendly gestures’, such as the elevation of the status of legations to that of embassies, etc., by discussing with the ‘invaders’ the ‘economic bloc’, and lastly by agreeing to the Japanese ‘plans’ to develop the Northern Provinces, which, as every observer knows, are nothing short of the domination of North China by Japan politically, economically and militarily, and the loss of North China to China, China ‘hopes to have a glorious armistice’ or ‘democratic peace’ with Japan, so that China may go on with the task of ‘pacifying first the conditions within’ (the country). But the signing of the Peace Treaty of Brest-Litovsk [Page 411] should be a sufficient lesson to us that the aggressor would never let us have a glorious armistice or democratic peace, but would only force us to sign the most derogatory and humiliating treaty; and as soon as such treaty is signed, it is bound to stir up further internal political dissensions or (bring about) the downfall of the party in power, rather than ‘to make the revolution secure!’ …37
“We should never sign a ‘peace treaty of Brest-Litovsk’ with Japan. We should never prepare ourselves to flee to the ‘Kamchatka of China’, but we should change our past policy of ‘non-resistance’ and ‘compliance’ to a policy ‘to defend every inch of our territory until every drop of our blood is exhausted’!”
The events of the period subsequent to Major General Tada’s statement on September 24 have given the subject a new significance for the Chinese people. Whereas there are plenty of persons prepared to admit that cooperation and friendliness between China and Japan, if characterized by sincerity and a trustful spirit on both sides, would lead to obvious benefits for the peace and prosperity of the Far East, hope for such a happy eventuality has been largely lost. The question of “who struck the first blow” is of only academic significance beside the fact that Sino-Japanese relations have reached a crucial state—and possibly Chinese public temper a breaking point. There is evidently growing up a body of Chinese opinion that looks for its support to such factors as critical Japanese finances, the possible application of sanctions against an aggressor State, British intervention in the field of Chinese finance, and Soviet Russian sympathy, instead of depending hopefully but helplessly upon such bare comfort as may be derived from the vague promises of an “Asia for the Asiatics”—under Japanese hegemony. While the specific direction Chinese political thought will take depends upon developments directly ahead, and that thought may be subjected to pressure designed to shatter it completely, the present indications are that Chinese public opinion is entering new and deeper channels.
Respectfully yours,
Counselor of Embassy