Dyed-In-The-Wool History
Imperial Japan and the China Lobby
Coming out of WWI Japan had risen to be a regional power largely with American support and was now free of a British maritime alliance that acted as a constraint on regional geo-politics. China, thanks largely to nearly two centuries of western intervention, had descended into a failed state ruled by warlords. From this would arise two factions; one of which would be deeply tied to America and the other would align with Russia. While the European and Asian theaters of the conflict would develop as two largely separate conflicts Russia did have borders with both Germany (after the partitioning of the buffer states) and Japan and had already fought both of these since 1900.
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When Commodore Perry first came to Japan in 1853 ready to wage war against the Japanese, Japan opted to take an entirely different path in dealing with the western sea people than that taken by other Asian nations. They adopted western ways including the creation of a military-industrial complex. They donned Brooks Brother suites and sent their most talented young men to America for higher education (1 pp. 50-5). It has been suggested that they elevated their emperor to god status in an attempt to replicate Jesus in Christianity. These policies led the Japanese to be referred to as the “Yankees of the East”. One commentator observed it was as if we had “unmoored Japan from the coast of Asia, and towed it across the Pacific, to place it alongside of the New World, to have the same course of life and progress.”5
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At the end of the previous century a major prize in the region was the railroad concession that was pursued by the American China development corporation. The company was founded in 1895 and represented a consortium of American financial interests including, the Morgan’s, the Rockefeller’s and Kuhn, Loeb, and Co (2). The prize was a Peking-Hankow rail route across Manchuria. This was ultimately unsuccessful, however, as a Russian and Belgian syndicate backed by France and Russia won the concession for the project. This then led to a more aggressive U.S Asian policy where the US hoped to push the Russians out of Manchuria. Theodore Roosevelt saw the Japanese as being culturally and ethnically superior to both the Chinese and the Slavs (Russia) along with the rest of Asia (1 p. 63) and used them as a US surrogate to accomplish this objective. He encouraged and assisted the Japanese to attack Russia in the Russo - Japanese War which was decisively won by Japan preventing Russia from extending their naval presence to the Pacific. Roosevelt was ecstatic at this outcome and then working with the Japanese leaders encouraged them to sue for peace before the full size and force of Russia could be brought against them as Japan lacked the resources and economic strength to sustain such a fight (1 pp. 67-71). For this, Roosevelt earned a Nobel Prize. With American support Korea was effectively turned over to the Japanese as a colony and Japanese economic interests in Manchuria were widely acknowledged and not discouraged.
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Following Versailles the victorious powers of Japan, England, and the United states became less coupled and became competitors in Asia and China along with Russia which had always been an Anglo-American adversary in this region. This, along with changes in military technology and mission, created a naval arms race[1]. Anglo-American Rapprochement ebbed following Theodore Roosevelt with the Harding administration in particular being less inclined to act as an instrument of British elite foreign policy and the American public broadly rejecting this sort of deep association. The Wilson administration was resentful of France and England for the outcome of Versailles and the rejection of his 14 point plan and was the first to start expanding their fleet. Both English bases off the coast of Central America along with the American policy of absolute freedom of navigation were points of contention between America and England (3 pp. 287-90). The first conflict between the US and Japan arose when the US disputed Japan’s control of former Germany colonies that England had promised it as a reward for their entry into the war against Germany (3 p. 287)
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The Soong Dynasty and Julian Carr
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In the era between the wars, multiple generations of merchants and missionaries to China coalesced into what came to be known as the China Lobby which grew stronger and more popular due to their control of print media and linkage to American Protestant churches. This created within the American political arena competing ideas on how Asia in general and China in particular should be shaped. The Missionaries were generally not able to penetrate into the interior and what success they had appeared to be heavily distributed around Canton and along the Yangtze River where the concentration of missionaries was also the densest. One of these was revolutionary leader Dr. Sun Yat-sen who had led two failed uprisings in 1905 and was a wanted man whose political objectives were “Nationalism, democracy, and people’s livelihood.” Nationalism in this case meant the dominance of the Han over the Manchu who were the ethnic majority in Manchuria. Democracy also meant eventual participation in the government as he didn’t believe that the population was ready for any significant role at that time (1 pp. 97-98). This was the foundation of what would be the Nationalist Chinese movement. Sun’s major early challenge was fundraising which led to a partnership with publisher and mill owner Charlie Soong whose story was somewhat improbable. At age 15 he came to the U.S. as a laborer but instead of going to the west coast were there where strong anti-Chinese sentiments fanned by labor unrest, he went to the South. There were few Asians there and he fit in nicely and even became a bit of a celebrity. Southern Methodists took him in and theorized that through Charlie they could possibly win China for Christ.(1 pp. 85-87)
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Julian Carr took the lead in developing Charlie Song as a tool to spread the faith. Carr was a devout Southern Methodist, a partner in the company that produced Bull Durham tobacco products, and the creator of the advertising behind the product that utilized huge signs painted on barns which became part of our cultural memory. Carr mentored Song spiritually and in business. He was first accepted into Trinity University (later renamed to Duke) where he received a degree in theology and then moved on to Vanderbilt in Nashville which was the premier Southern Methodist University of the time (1 pp. 88-89). After graduating he approached the American Bible Society with a proposal to print Bibles in Shanghai where he established his company that would act as the principal publisher of Christian materials for distribution in China. He became wealthy through the publishing business but later diversified into wheat and cotton milling under the guidance of Carr (1 p. 90). Song met Dr. Sun for the first time 1894 and the two men found they had a great deal in common. Most importantly, Song would become a financier for the Chinese nationalist movement using his own personal wealth and his contact with many wealthy Americans. Song would travel back and forth to America with Carr arranging audiences with prominent American patrons to raise funds for the cause. Song married and the couple had three daughters (Ailing, Chinling, and Mayling) and one son (Tse-ven or T.V.) Three of the four would become key to the Chinese Nationalist movement. The children were American educated and lived between two cultures. (1 pp. 92-93)
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The picture to the left is of a young Charlie Soong after arriving in America. The picture to the right is of his three daughters who were in different ways to have a major and lingering impact on the history of the world
This is a short video that provides an overview of the remarkable and unlikely life of Charlie Soong that includes his relationship with Julian Carr. it starts out with Madam Chiang Kai-Shek (Soong's daughter Meiling) addressing Congress in 1943.
Chiang Kai-Shek, Mao Zedong, and the Roots of the Cold War
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After a failed uprising in 1912 the country descended into chaos ruled over by warlords. In 1913 Sun and Song with their families fled to Japan for their safety. Ailing Song was Sun’s personal assistant but she left this post (reportedly of unwanted sexual advances) and was succeeded by Chinling (1 p. 93). Sun initiated a relationship with her and when Charlie Song became aware of this the two old friends split up and apparently never spoke to each other again. Song died three years later in 1918. Sun, who was 49 at the time, left his wife and married the 23 year old daughter of his former best friend. Ailing took over her father’s financial empire after his death.(1 p. 94)
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A new revolutionary player was Mao Zedong who was a communist but fundamentally different from other classical Marxists in that his message was focused on rural peasants as opposed to urban industrial workers. He also felt that China was betrayed by the United States and Woodrow Wilson at the end of WWI. The Soviets established a relationship with key Chinese officials and agreed to finance two small factions, those being Mao’s communists and Sun’s Nationalists. Chiang Kai-Shek was the rising star to succeed the aging Sun as the leader of the nationalists (1 pp. 94-97). He had been trained and educated in Japan and per his own writing saw the west and the principal cause of China’s problems. Chaing Kai-Shek was a traditional Confucian thinker and Mao Zedong was not. Chiang was aligned principally with Chinese warlords and banks while Mao was aligned with rural peasants. Chiang’s power base was in coastal cities while Mao’s was in the interior. Chiangs’s officer core came from warlord families while Mao’s again were peasants. Chiang’s and Mao’s combined forces were referred to as the United Front which targeted warlords and other factions within China and embarked upon the “Northern Expedition” to capture the Yangtze River.(1 pp. 97-99)
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When Sun died Ailing formed a plan to get rid of Mao who she saw as a danger and proposed a three point plan to Chiang Kai-Shek that would reshape 20th century history. Ailing told Chiang to appoint her husband H.H. Kung as Prime Minister which would ensure she had political control. Chiang was to appoint her younger brother T.V Song as finance minister. Lastly Ailing offered Chiang Mayling in marriage creating a merger with the Song family (1 pp. 103-10). Mayling was 26 years old, considered one of the most desirable women in China, and was a recent graduate of Wesleyan University having spent about half her life in America. Son Tat-Sen’s widow Chingling was strongly opposed to this plan. Chiang would profess to be a Southern Methodist and Chiang would have to separate from his current wife Jeanne. In April of 1927 Chiang moved to crush Mao (1 pp. 103-10). 20,000 to 30,000 of Mao’s followers were killed in Shanghai and the death toll throughout China is thought to have been in the hundreds of thousands but Mao and his forces continued to elude the nationalists in the vast rural areas where Chiang had limited reach. The Soviet Union maintained close ties to the Roosevelt administration throughout all of this and communism really wasn’t a fringe concept in America during this time but this event was the start of the factional ideological fighting that would characterize the cold war era.
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The picture on the left is of Dr. Sun Yat-sen and Soong's daughter Chinling. Sun left his wife to marry Chinling and Charlie Soong never spoke again. Soong died three years later.
The picture on the right is a wedding picture of Chiang Kai-Shek and Soong's daughter Mayling that created an alliance between the two families that was arranged Ailing Soong
The American Media War
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Chiang didn’t speak fluent English when he was joined to the Song family and the Song’s, most notably Mayling, became the face of the new “Christianized” and westernized China united under the Nationalist banner. The general conditions for the missionaries and western merchants improved significantly under Chiang. American Protestants generally celebrated this apparent victory in what was otherwise a difficult and trying era. The Nationalist message wasn’t dependent on the Song family or thousands of missionaries or the congregations that sponsored them and gave them an audience. There were prominent media figures and the two most notable of which were Henry Luce and Pearl Buck (1 p. 110). Luce was a Yale educated son of a missionary family whose father was largely unsuccessful at generating converts but was a very successful fundraiser. Luce went on to establish Time, Life, and Fortune which he used to hammer home the message of the China Lobby. This was in a time period where sources of information were very limited and the influence of these publications can hardly be overstated (1 pp. 111-14). They had the power to define an alternate reality to the American public and in this case that’s exactly what happened. Pearl Buck was the daughter of Reverend Sydenstricker whose dispatches from the field had been the primary source of American perceptions about China prior to Luce. Pearl Buck’s novel “The Good Earth” was first published in 1931and was the best seller for both 1931 and 32 which was an accomplishment not equaled before or since. It was a Jeffersonian sort of tale set in rural China that was more of an idealized view of American history than it was a representation of Chinese reality yet for so many these became the images of China they accepted. (1 pp. 115-16)
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Below is the original theatrical to the movie release of "The Good Earth" in 1937
Building support for the Nationalist in the Roosevelt Administration
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In 1931 the Japanese started to move north from Korea into China. Both the Nationalist Chinese and the Japanese were creations of the United States in slightly different time periods. One had developed a mastery of American politics and media and the other clearly had not. Within the Roosevelt administration two factions started to take shape. One followed a course of neutrality which principally consisted of Secretary of State Hull and some high ranking officers while the “wise men”, consisting of Dean Acheson (Secretary of State), George Kennan (intellectual and widely admired Washington insider) and Averell Harriman (diplomat and special envoy),Robert Lovett (Asst. Sec. of War), John McCloy (prominent private citizen), and Charles Bohlen (Ambassador to the Soviet Union) (4) increasingly sided with the Nationalist Chinese and the China Lobby. Two other prominent administration figures that aligned with the wise men were Henry Stinson who was Sec. of War, a Republican, and frequently referred to as the “first wise man” and Henry Morgenthau, Sec of the Treasury. The wise men also thought that any potential conflict with Japan could be resolved through economic pressure (1 pp. 240-7). Acheson agreed with Henry Morgenthau that the wise men should control foreign policy and that this area of policy should be removed from political debate mush as monetary had been removed from public debate (1 p. 247) with the creation of the Federal Reserve but they were more than willing to use public opinion when it was favorable and in this instance it was. As the war in China gradually became more intense, Chiang and his followers were portrayed as and seen as the resistance to Japanese aggression while Chiang avoided the Japanese and focused his military on eliminating Mao. Mao on the other hand was actively engaging the Japanese however the American public had little knowledge of this. Chiang’s long term plan was to get the US to provide him with an Air Force and then get the US into a war with Japan where Japan would be defeated and his forces would eliminate Mao and his followers.
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In the form of the Flying Tigers he to a certain extent got his Air Force but it was at best marginally effective. The idea that air power alone can decide a military land battle is a military fantasy and many have yet to fully grasp. Besides Chiang and T.V. Song, the other key player in creating a foreign air force for the Nationalists, was 43 year old (in 1937) former Army Air Corp captain Claire Chennault. He left the Army Air Corps (or was drummed out) after continued conflicts with his superiors. While still on active duty he reached out to Chiang’s representatives and supported “Generalissimo Chiang’s” contention that a 500 plane air force could defeat the Japanese. In October 1940 T.V. Song determined that it was time to make a play for the Americans to fund this plan but Chennault’s reputation was such that they had to carefully select who to approach. To help present their pitch they employed former Roosevelt turned defense industry lobbyist Tommy Corcoran (Tommy the Cork) who then sold Morgenthau and FDR on the plan. The plan presented to Morgenthau and the president involved both fighters and four engine bombers that would be used to bomb Japanese cities. Ironically the US was accusing Japan of bombing Chinese civilians and would later in the war employ this sort of bombing campaign against Japanese residential targets. Chief of Staff George Marshall was given the task of implementing the plan which was being hidden from the American public but he was well aware of the checkered history of the plan’s author, Chennault, and the lack of logistics necessary to put it in place. He spoke to Morgenthau to try to convince him to limit the scope of the effort and what Chiang’s ultimately got were one hundred older fighters (P-40’s) and no bombers. A private company was established to take delivery of these that were then staffed with US pilots.
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During the run up to war in the Pacific the China lobby’s media and political influence continued to increase and showed a good deal of creativity creating the largest propaganda organization for a foreign interest in US history. This was spearheaded by Henry Luce who had a Yankee vision of US global domination stating that it would be very much in line with modern globalism. He saw, “America as the dynamic center of ever widening spheres of enterprise, America as the training center of skilled servants of mankind, America as the Good Samaritan, really believing again that it is more blessed to give than to receive and America as the powerhouse of the ideas of Freedom and Justice.… We are, for a fact, in the war.… We are not in a war to defend American territory. We are in a war to defend and even to promote, encourage and incite so-called democratic principles throughout the world” (5 pp. 108-9). The American public, while not supporting entry into the European war that Roosevelt was very much committed to by 1940, did favor acting against Japan to defend the idealized image of a free China as portrayed by the China Lobby based on the belief that this could be done without initiating an American war. There was an increasing awareness, however, that Japan could turn their attention to Southeast Asia which could threaten American economic interests to a much greater extent than Manchuria.
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The event that finally led to war with Japan was the cutoff in oil supplies from California which was the lifeblood of the Japanese economy and military. The wise men and other supporters of the China Lobby in the administration had gradually moved US policy towards restricting trade to Japan and then freezing Japanese assets but Hull and Roosevelt had always stopped short of an oil embargo. When Roosevelt traveled to Europe in August of 1941 following the German invasion of Russia Hull was also on vacation which left Acheson and the wise men effectively in charge and through bureaucracy they created an effective oil embargo changing FDR’s long standing policy. When Hull returned to work it took him a while to understand what had happened and the situation had degraded to the point where it couldn’t be reversed. (1 pp. 270-2) The idea that the US could take this action and Japan would simply capitulate and leave China was soon proven wrong yet many felt that the Pacific war could proceed as a managed conflict that would eventually be resolved without the level of destruction that followed. Throughout the course of the war the influence of the China lobby, if anything, increased as did the flow of resources to Chiang. The American public remained generally supportive of the vision created by the China lobby and was more supportive of the Asian war than the European war. FDR readily armed communists in Russia and the bulk of German losses were inflicted by the Russians well before the Americans were fighting on the European continent. Roosevelt along with Marshall and others in the administration who were not supportive of the China lobby were interested in arming Mao in China in a similar manner but Chiang and the China lobby did everything possible to obstruct this (1 p. 308). Meanwhile the Chiang-Song alliance started to fall apart around 1943 and some US journalists started to sound an alarm that this might not turn out the way it had been presented. The official American policy, however, remained to support only Chiang and the Nationalist as the government of China even as Chiang’s limited grasp on power was unraveling. By January of 1949, Mao had won the war and Chiang had to flee to Formosa (Taiwan).
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Footnotes
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[1] The Panama Canal in particular posed a problem to the US in light of the ever larger naval vessels that were being produced
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Bibliography
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1. Bradley, James. The China Mirage. New York, New York : Little Brown and Company, 2015. 978-0-316-19667-3.
2. Rothbard, Murray N. Wall Street, Banks, and American Foreign Policy. Lew Rockwell. [Online] 1984. https://www.lewrockwell.com/1970/01/murray-n-rothbard/wall-street-wars/.
3. Schultze-Rhonhof, Gerd. 1939 - The War the had Many Fathers. Munchen, Germany : Olzag Verlag GmBh, 2011.
4. Issacson, Walter and Thomas, Evan. The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made. New York, New York : Simon & Schuster, 1986.
5. Jessup, John K. The Ideas of Henry Luce. s.l. : Antheneum Press, 1969.