Mr Xin Haonian's huanghuagang.org had carried an article rebutting Li Zongren's criticism of Chiang Kai-shek the self-likened Chinese Bismark.
Though we live in the 21st century now, historical events that had occurred and doomed China during the first half of the 20th century were still in debates. Thanks to Chi-com's imprisoning thousands of high-level KMT officials and officers instead of butchering them as was the fate of millions of the KMT 'bandits', we could manage to read through the self-criticism format memoirs to derive some coherent historical accounts and restore the truth of history. Recent declassification of the Russian and Chinese communist archives as well as the revelation of the American VENONA wiretap transcripts had shed new light on i) the Russian/Comintern conspiracies against China, and ii) the American manipulation of Chinese politics, e.g., Stilwell's instigating General Bai Chongxi, Stuart's instigating Li Zongren, and McArthurs' instigating General Sun Liren.
The loss of China could not simply be explained by the faults of Chiang Kai-shek alone. However, this webmaster would add some notes to the "criticism of Li Zongren's criticism of Chiang Kai-shek" for sake of historical clarification.
Li Zongren's oral history recitals, not published before either his death or Chiang Kai-shek's death, had been written by Tang Degang at the request of Columbia University. Similar to Wellington Koo's memoirs or Chen Jieru's memoirs, the Chinese communists and their leftist fellows in HK had published or translated the scripts without obtaining the copyright of either the owner or his/her descendant or the Columbia University. There was no pre-meditated motive in all cases other than the expression and opinions of the hero or heroine involved.
Chen Jieru's memoirs could be altered and forged after Chen Jieru's death as there were numerous records that did not square with the known historical truth such as the time the Bank of China was created, etc.
What Li Wangshu criticized as to Li Zongren's claim about Chiang Kai-shek conferral of provincial governorship was out-of-context since Li Zongren was talking about the communist insurgency prior to the Wars of the Central Plains of 1930 and/or prior to the eruption of the 1937-1945 resistance war.
The number of 7000 communist prisoners of war was related to the battle against the Xiao Ke's herald troops in Sept-Oct 1934, not the 80,000 Central Red Army.
Communist General Xiao Ke led the herald 10,000 column into Guangxi Province. Bai Chongxi counter-charged against the Red Army, inflicted a casualty of 10000 on Red Army led by General Xiao Ke, and captured 7000 prisoners of war. Xiao Ke managed to bring about 1000 remnant soldiers of the Red Army 2nd Corps-Conglomerate to a union with Heh Long in western Hunan Province after incurring defeats in Guangxi Province.
(There was a repeat of the Guangxi army defeating the Red Army at the Xiang-jiang River when the communists, possibly breaking some undertable deals with the Guangxi clique, changed course to attack towards the Guilin direction.)
Li Zongren, like the rest of military contenders [Feng Yuxiang and Yan Xishan], had their rights to maintaining their influence and domain after the unification of China by objecting to drastic demilitarization. Chiang Kai-shek, though self-likening himself to China's Bismark, did not actually enjoy much reputation and feats than the contenders. The first shot from the Wuhan Incident might not have anything to do with Li Zongren who was the only group army commander staying on in Nanking the capital in lieu of returning to his power base as Yan and Feng did. There was nothing particularly wrong about Chiang Kai-shek's aspiration for the centralization of politics, economy and military other than Chiang Kai-shek's innate disadvantages in comparison with predecessor Yuan Shi-kai or successor Mao Tse-tung. Incidentally, the combined headcounts of four group armies at the time of the Chinese reunification in 1928 was not too much out-of-par should we look around to see how big Japan's standing army was percentage-wise against the population.
The direct consequence of Chiang Kai-shek's selfishness and intolerance would be: i) the Communist disturbance in multiple provinces; ii) the Japanese invasion of Manchuria on Sept 18th 1931.
(After the end of WWII, Chiang Kai-shek repeated a same blunder when he ordered the military shrinkage in accordance with George Marshal's mediation of the Chinese civil wars.)
Chiang Kai-shek's agents from both military statistics & investigation and central statistics & investigation bureaus did resort to assassinations and political assassinations against the communists, political enemies and Japanese collaborators. Li Zongren was wrong in pointing fingers at Chiang Kai-shek for the deaths of former warlords like Sun Chuanfang & Zhang Zongchang, but was not too much off in counting the deaths of Li Gongpu & Wen Yiduo since the boss must bear responsibility for the faults of the subordinates any way. Li Zongren might not have full knowledge of Tang Shaoyi's collusion with Japanese, while Chiang Kai-shek's agents had indeed taken out potential collaborators as a preemptive strike.
Looking in hindsight, it was already agreed-upon by many scholars, including elements from KMT "central statistics & investigation bureau" that "bodily extinction" policy against the communists did not route out the communist base in Shanghai in early 1930s but the new policy of converting Chinese communists, yielding to the fact that almost majority of KMT agents in central statistics & investigation bureau had been "communist converts".
The April 12th 1927 Purge of communists in Shanghai was drastic, dramatic, harsh and bloody in the opinion of this webmaster.
Li Zongren's "collusion" with the Japanese prior to 1937 resistance war should be looked upon in a similar perspective to Dr Sun Yat-sen's collusion with the Japanese governor in Taiwan during the 1900 boxer turmoil. The proof of Li Zongren's loyalty to China could lie in the repeated attempts by communist-infiltrated Weng Zhaoyuan's 61st Division in provoking a Sino-Japanese War:
On Aug 22nd, 1936, Bai Chongxi & Li Zongren declared that the 19th Route was restored by assigning a division to Division Chief Weng Zhaoyuan; Weng Zhaoyuan's 61st Division was dispatched to the Beihai city [near southern Guangdong Prov] where they murdered a Japanese-born merchant [Nakamura Jyunzo (zhongye shunsan)] who was long suspected of being a Japanese spy. (Xie Hegeng's memoirs stated that a communist member named Zhang Meisheng was the secretary to division chief Weng Zhaoyuan and that this execution on Sept 3rd, 1936 was approved by Cai Tingcai the war hero in Shanghai's Jan-28-1932 Campaign against Japan. In any case, generals of Southern China did not merely intend to provoke a Sino-Japanese war for capsizing Chiang Kai-shek's government.
However, the Chinese communists had a strategy to provoke a war between Japan and China, with the Marco Polo Bridge Incident a result of such a provocation.
Similar to Weng Zhaoyuan's 61st Division, the Chinese communists penetrated Soong Zheyuan's army and the predecessor Northeastern Army that stationed the Peking-Tientsin army.)
Chiang Kai-shek indeed went into every bit and piece in issuing decrees and commands, often giving handwritten notes as authoritative decree and making phonecalls to as low as the regiment command centers. Numerous memoirs pointed out that Chiang Kai-shek devoted his time around-the-clock, sleepless, during the 1937-1945 resistance war time period. This, however, was Chiang Kai-shek's personal weakness since he dared not to delegate authorities and command to non-Whampoa and non-Zhejiang-nativity officers and officials. American manipulations of Chinese politics, e.g., Stilwell's instigating General Bai Chongxi, Stuart/Marshal/Truman's instigating Li Zongren, and McArthurs' instigating General Sun Liren, had stemmed from the very recognition of Chiang Kai-shek's personal weakness.
Li Zongren & Bai Chongxi, possibly knowing that Liu Zhongrong & Liu Zhonghua were communists, nevertheless had naivety as to the cruelty of politics.
What Li Zongren & Bai Chongxi or Chiang Kai-shek did not understand was that Chinese communists, after numerous rounds of political purge, had become a clique which operates mechanically and mercilessly in lieu of tolerating enemies on basis of acquaintanceship.
Li Zongren & Bai Chongxi certainly would not know that Guo Rugui & Liu Fei were undercover communists, and they would not know of Wei Lihuang's collusion with communists unless communists disclosed it on their own accord throughout the cultural revolution of 1960s. Understandably so in light of the fact that communists had converted sons and daughters of numerous KMT officers and officials from the very beginning and corrupted senior KMT generals and officials with women.
The scale of international communism, as exhibited by tens of thousands of volunteer fighters mustered by Comintern against Franco in Spain from 1936 to 1939, portended the torrents that could sweep through the world of the time.
Alternative memoirs and explorations had proven that Li Zongren & Bai Chongxi, though gloating at Chiang Kai-shek's downfall from power, would never submit themselves to the communists. Whatever strategy and tactics Li Zongren & Bai Chongxi had adopted in dealing with Chinese communists in 1948/1949 should be construed as a 'delay play' to ward off the Chinese communists. Mao Tse-tung outsmarted them all, and insisted in crossing the Yangtze.
Mao certainly outwitted Li Zongren & Bai Chongxi in fetching Li Jishen to Peking from HK one step ahead, shattering their dream of creating a coalition government.
(Dozen years later, KMT government officials were still debating whether Liu Fei was a communist and/or when Liu Fei had become a communist [since Zheng Jiemin confirmed that Liu Fei had attempted to instigate him for the communist camp in HK in 1949], not knowing that Liu Fei had been converted while having overseas studies in Japan. This webmaster does not know how Liu Fei was converted, but does point out in Terror how communists had married a 15-year-old girl to General Yang Hucheng and sent a young nurse to General He Yaozu, a practice adopted as recently as in 1971-2 when Mao Tse-tung repeatedly offered Henry Kissinger any number of Chinese women his guest might desire.
Should you ask what's the big deal here about Liu Fei, then this webmaster want to remind you that dozens of millions of Chinese had died in vain in 20th century, and many more will continue to become victims absent a correct cognizance of true historical events.)
Li Zongren & Bai Chongxi, like Chiang Kai-shek, were absolutely wrong in assuming that American aid would come to China once Chiang Kai-shek was to resign his presidency. They never knew that Comintern agents, like Currie, Acheson or closet communists like Marshall, had played the game to make sure that Chinese nationalist regime capsize in the interests of the Russians and the Chinese communists.
Prevalent writings by Chinese communists and their leftist HK proxies had flooded the market with books about the American involvement in Chinese civil wars, i) fabricating the theory of American support of Chiang Kai-shek's war against the communists, and ii) exaggerating the non-existent American military supplies.
(A simple way to filter through commie junk books published in HK [and in Taipei] would be to look for a common style, i.e., scripting of paragraphs and pages of dialogues between the political figures as if some tape recorder was present.)
Li ZOngren Memoirs devoted less than 20% to the civil wars in content coverage. This shows that Li Zongren had really nothing to write about his role during the collapse of the Nationalist Regime in 1948-1950.
Chiang Kai-shek, with control of Tang Enbo's army group, had full responsibility for not assisting Li Zongren & Bai Chongxi in defending the Yangtze River, not to mention the transport of China's only gold and foreign exchange at a time of final duel against a powerful and ferocious enemy who dared to challenge the colonialist warships like those of Britain.
Further, Chiang Kai-shek was responsible for the demise of Guangdong-Guangxi defence line by relocating Whampoa lineage troops to the Hainan Island before the loss of Hunan Province.
Li Zongren & Bai Chongxi's debacle in native Guangxi Province could be attributable to one important factor: the so-called steel army of 7th Corps had dissipated once they returned to hometown, similar to the dissipation of Bai Lang [white wolf] banditry once they returned to native Henan province from Shenxi-Gansu provinces in early republican years.
Li Zongren, knowing nothing about George Marshall's trickery,
was used by the Chinese Communists and pro-communist Americans as the so-called 'democratic' force to replace Chiang Kai-shek.
As disclosed by the documents at the George Marshall foundation, George Marshall, possibly the most hideous agent working on behalf of Stalin and the Soviet Union, saved the ass of the Chinese Communists with a threat to withhold the economic aid that was supposedly coming from the U.S. export-import bank, which never materialized.
G Marshall, from 1946 to 1948, repeatedly probed numerous Chinese officials and generals as to who could be Chiang's successor.
The U.S. Department of State, run by the Russian agents, were repeatedly sending out rumors about getting a successor for Chiang.
Li Zongren certainly fell into the American trap by going to a meeting with President Truman. Before that, Li Zongren, without understanding the motive of American manipulation of Chinese politics as well as the Comintern/Russian takeover of the US government, had written a letter of criticism against Chiang Kai-shek, which was incorporated into Acheson's China White Paper as 'evidence'. After the United States, controlled by Republican Dwight David Eisenhower, re-instated the policy of support for Chiang Kai-shek in Dec 1952, Li Zongren had colluded with Mao Bangchu in avenging on Chiang Kai-shek by continuing to claim his "official presidency" of the Republic of China while not recognizing that the United States government was purely pragmatic in discerning the utility of leaders of foreign countries, not excluding the case of Saddam Hussein.
Mao Bangchu, a former airforce official, was a fugitive in Mexico for his collusion with his White-woman mistress-secretary in embezzlement of the funds of the Republic of China.
Li Zongren of course believed in Mao Bangchu's 'innocence'.
The flipover in the instigation and betrayal of Wu Guozhen and Sun Liren should serve as a caution to any future Chinese statesmen. All in all, nobody could escape from the spider-web knit by the powerful hands.
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Korean/Chinese Communists & the 1931 Japanese Invasion of Manchuria