How many soldiers and how much equipment should be sent to fight against Japan? Likewise, how many soldiers and how much equipment should be sent to defend the country from the communists?
In December 1936, Chiang was in the city of Xi’an. Suddenly, two of his own bodyguards kidnapped him.
In return for the release of Chiang, they demanded not money, but rather a change in government policy. They insisted that China’s government use more resources for the defense against Japan, and fewer resources for the defense against Mao’s communists.
The net effect of the incident was that a temporary truce or ceasefire was declared between the Chinese people and Mao’s communists. The legitimate Chinese government and the communist terrorists would temporarily work together to fight against the attacking Japanese.
The two individuals who seem to have been most directly responsible for physically keeping Chiang Kai-shek under house arrest were his bodyguards. But the leading minds behind the operation were members of Mao’s communist gang.
One of the leaders of the operation, and one of the negotiators who presented the communist demands to the government, was Zhou Enlai. During the following decades, Zhou Enlai would rise with the communists, and inside the communist hierarchy, to be second only to Mao himself.
This made Zhou Enlai responsible for millions of deaths.
During Chiang’s captivity, he got to know Zhou. Suffering perhaps from a bit of Stockholm Syndrome, Chiang developed a trust in Zhou. Years after the incident, Chiang would indicate that he felt that Zhou was a trustworthy individual, as historian Jay Taylor writes:
In 1941, Chiang would tell Owen Lattimore that he considered Zhou “personally trustworthy although he was of course under Yan’an’s control.” Years later, Chiang, obviously referring to Zhou, wrote that at Xi’an he believed that the Communists, meaning of course Zhou, had “repented and were sincere.” Although sometimes Zhou echoed Mao’s cynicism about Chiang’s belief in his own sincerity, later events would suggest that Zhou did believe and would argue within the CCP that if Chiang lived up to his commitments at Xi’an, the Communists should give priority to fighting the Japanese under the broad but real leadership of Chiang Kai-shek.
Sadly, Chiang had confided this view with Owen Lattimore, who turned out to be a Soviet asset.
Historians debate about the ambiguous aspects of Lattimore’s status: Was he a paid operative for a Soviet intelligence agency? Or was he unwittingly manipulated into acting in ways that benefitted the Soviet Socialists? Was he an actual spy? Or did the USSR simply trick him, exploiting Lattimore’s socialist sympathies?
In either case, Chiang’s admission to Lattimore was doubtless quickly transmitted to Moscow, and from there to Mao’s communist roughians. Mao would exploit Chiang’s weakness for Zhou.
In any event, Chiang was in a difficult situation: to adequately defend the nation against Japan, he would need to reduce his defenses against Mao’s communist bandits; in order to adequately defend China against Mao’s communist raiders, he would have to reduce his defenses against Japan.
China seemed doomed.
Chiang did not know that when he spoke to Owen Lattimore, he was speaking to an agent working — wittingly or unwittingly — for the Soviet Socialists.
In the final outcome, it may not have made a huge difference: the communists seemed destined to dominate China.
This much is clear: when the communists, under the leadership of Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai, conquered China, the result was 20,000,000 deaths within the first decade, and several million more deaths in the next decade.
A note on spelling: because these names are transliterated into the Roman alphabet, alternate spellings abound: Mao Zedong is Mao Tse-Tung; Zhou Enlai is Chou En-lai; Chiang Kai-shek is Jiang Jieshi or Chiang Chieh-shih or Chiang Chung-cheng; Xi’an is Sian. Variations in spelling have no impact on meaning.
