FTR#1208 The Narco-Fascism of Chiang Kai-shek and the Kuomintang, Part 15
Continuing our series on the regime of Chiang Kai-shek–all but beatified during the Cold War–we begin by drawing still more on a magnificent book–The Soong Dynasty by Sterling Seagrave.
Although sadly out of print, the book is still available through used book services, and we emphatically encourage listeners to take advantage of those and obtain it. Several listeners have said that they were able to obtain the book because it is still in print!
I hope so! PLEASE buy it, read it, and tell others about it, either through conventional means and/or through social media. (Mr. Emory gets no money from said purchases of the book.) It is apparently available from Amazon on Kindle.
We also draw on another, altogether remarkable work by Peggy and Sterling Seagrave–Gold Warriors.
As we approach the close of this series, we “dolly out” and present aspects of how U.S. policy in Asia during the Cold War grew directly out of the “missionary position” that America took toward China–a position that led directly to war in Korea and Vietnam.
Introducing the expansion of American experience with Chiang and his Kuomintang fascists into U.S. Cold War policy in Asia, we present Sterling Seagrave’s rumination about Stanley Hornbeck, a State Department flack who became: “. . . . the doyen of State’s Far Eastern Division. . . .”
Hornbeck “ . . . . had only the most abbreviated and stilted knowledge of China, and had been out of touch personally for many years. . . . He withheld cables from the Secretary of State that were critical of Chiang, and once stated that ‘the United States Far Eastern policy is like a train running on a railroad track. It has been clearly laid out and where it is going is plain to all.’ It was in fact bound for Saigon in 1975, with whistle stops along the way at Peking, Quemoy, Matsu, and the Yalu River. . . .”
The program continues with review of the obituary of general Paik Sun-yup of Korea, whose service in the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II has been a focal point of controversy in South Korea. General Sun-yup embodied the ongoing controversy in Korea over Japan’s occupation and the subsequent unfolding of events leading up to, and including the Korean War. “. . . . In 1941, he joined the army of Manchukuo, a puppet state that imperial Japan had established in Manchuria, and served in a unit known for hunting down Korean guerrillas fighting for independence . . .”
A post by German Foreign Policy sets forth Cold War history involving the BND/Gehlen “Org” and China.
Documenting plans to launch a nuclear strike against Peking and Moscow during the Korean War, following up with Nazi-aided Kuomintang tank warfare to finish the conflict and spawning a long Gehlen-Nazi advisory role with Chiang Kai-Shek’s military, the post provides historical context in which the Covid-19 pandemic and the full-court press against China.
“When, during the war on Korea, a nuclear strike against Peking (and Moscow) had been relocated (site of deployment Guam, max. 34 Mark 4 atomic bombs), the successor of the Nazi espionage (Organization Gehlen) in Munich, ensured direct contacts with the Kuomintang. Following the dropping of the atomic bombs, Kuomintang troops were supposed to march, as occupying forces, through contaminated terrain towards Peking. To support the offensive of Kuomintang tanks, considered necessary by Chiang Kai-shek, Gehlen could offer specialists from Munich: from the Reichswehr and Nazi military. . . .”
” . . . . Leo Geyr von Schweppenburg was working with the Organization Gehlen . . . . The Nazi General, who, as hero of the Nazi tank divisions’ advance towards Moscow, had been awarded the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross, was now in action for Taiwan and the Kuomintang in the battle against Peking. He personally instructed the staffs of the nationalist forces with original documents of the Nazi’s ‘Operation Barbarossa.’ He was personally answerable to Chiang Kai-shek. . . .”
” . . . . In Taiwan, Munzel’s BND group, disguised as a delegation of DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service, Bonn) received Chiang Kai-shek’s son Wego, formerly a cadet in the Nazi military, now an armaments expert with connections to the West German war industry. Chiang Wego’s assignment was comprehensive and clear: to train new recruits for the offensive against Peking by drawing on the German experience gained during ‘Operation Barbarossa’ (followed by Munzel’s testing in Cairo) — and to provide the appropriate weapons. . . .”
” . . . . While Munzel, under BND command, set up a secret ‘experimental battalion’ against China (1968), staff officers of the Taiwan dictatorship studied at the German Armed Forces Staff College in Hamburg, quite officially. . . .”
Noteworthy for our purposes, is the exterminationist tactical approach undertaken by the West and drawing on Nazi expertise in drawing up operational plans.
Noteworthy, also, is the continuity of SS activity in, or in connection with, Asia:
1.–In the 1950’s and 1960’s, German television went “retro” with Goebbels’ Propaganda Ministry, broadcasting SS footage of an anthropological expedition to Tibet. ” . . . . The Nazi propaganda’s imaginary projection of a people, weaker than ‘inner Asians,’ who still had maintained their purity and must be protected was seamlessly transmitted. The notorious SS-produced film (‘Geheimnis Tibet,’– ‘Secret Tibet,’ 1943) about Aryan genes in the Himalayan Highlands returned to the big screen of the movies. . . .”
2.–The broadcast material featured SS war criminal and member of the Tibetan Government-in-Exile Bruno Beger. ” . . . . The West German state was barely a year old, and a nuclear strike against Peking was in the planning stages (1950), when graphically identical cinema posters promoted the relaunch: ‘The original film about the German Tibet expedition.’ The film contains scenes with the Auschwitz criminal Bruno Beger (see Part II). The scenes with Beger, who measures the heads and bodies of the indigenous people comparing them to those of Aryans, conveys racism as a stimulus for murder, seemingly harmless and interchangeable . . . . as the Aryan heritage in Tibetan Asia, threatened with dilution by the yellow peril (from the Chinese state and Han Chinese) . . . .”
3.–In addition, the film featured voice-over narration by the Dalai Lama’s SS tutor Heinrich Harrer: ” . . . . In the evening program, millions learned how, several years earlier, the omnipresent TV moderator and alpinist hero had met the Dalai Lama — as the godly king in Lhasa, Tibet, who had offered his friendship to the white man from distant Europe and who now finds himself on the run from ‘Red China’ — without his indigenous people. The white visitor, the omnipresent TV moderator was Heinrich Harrer, former SS Oberscharfürer. . . .”
3.–The Uighurs (also transliterated as “Uyghurs”) also draw on Waffen SS heritage and institutional momentum: ” . . . . The new Uighur generation traveled via Turkey and filled the Muslim ranks of Gehlen’s agents in Munich, who had made their living for decades at Radio Free Europe (RFE), the intelligence operation in the Oettinger Strasse. . . . The elders of the Uighur community in Munich (today the World Uyghur Congress, WUC) are very familiar with the blood propaganda, through their service in the ‘Eastland-Legions’ of the Waffen SS (Turkestan 162nd Infantry Division). Berlin had promised them their own nation with the inclusion of Xinjiang (‘Great Turkestan’), ‘identity,’ and Muslim law, to be able to position the great German ‘Reich’ at China’s borders with Turkmen help. With the defeated rest of the SS division stranded in Bavaria, they still had their hopes and are once again used against China . . . .”
Networking with Isa Yusuf Alptekin at the Bandung (Indonesia) conference was Ruzi (or “Ruzy”) Nazar, an Uzbek national who fought in various Third Reich military formations, including the SS Dirlewanger Brigade. (Alptekin was a key Kuominang associate and the patriarch of the Uighur separatist movementAfter the war.) Nazar was a CIA operative networking with the National Action Party (or National Movement Party) of Alparslan Turkes.
FTR#1207 The Narco-Fascism of Chiang Kai-shek and the Kuomintang, Part 14
Continuing our series on the regime of Chiang Kai-shek–all but beatified during the Cold War–we draw still more on a magnificent book–The Soong Dynasty by Sterling Seagrave.
Although sadly out of print, the book is still available through used book services, and we emphatically encourage listeners to take advantage of those and obtain it. Several listeners have said that they were able to obtain the book because it is still in print!
I hope so! PLEASE buy it, read it, and tell others about it, either through conventional means and/or through social media. (Mr. Emory gets no money from said purchases of the book.) It is apparently available from Amazon on Kindle.
We also draw on another, altogether remarkable work by Peggy and Sterling Seagrave–Gold Warriors.
When the failures of Chiang’s regime led to scorn toward, and pivoting away from the Nationalist Chinese cause, the amalgam of corporate, criminal, journalistic and political interests that had empowered the Kuomintang counterattacked: “ . . . . the Chiang government poured millions of dollars into a counteroffensive. Zealous Americans who joined the pro-Taiwan crusade became the fund-raisers, the organizers, the telephoners, the legmen, the gofers, the publicists, the congressmen, the tycoons, the hosts and hostesses of the shadowy society called ‘the China Lobby.’ Its management, its direction, and its primary finances were not American. The China Lobby belonged to the Soong clan and the Nationalist Chinese government. The people involved thought they were working for the greater glory of God, or for ‘the survival of the democratic system.’ They were really working for a Chinese public-relations campaign. . . . the Kungs and Soongs remained the primary pipeline connecting American special interests with Taiwan. Ai-ling and H.H. Kung, T.V. Soong and May-ling Soong Chiang devoted considerable energies to the lobby and sometimes gathered for strategy sessions at the Kung estate in Riverdale. . . .”
The domestic political result in the U.S. was summed by Sterling Seagrave: “ . . . . Small wonder that a large segment of the American public believed that Chiang was the essence of virtue and his cause was a joint one. Similar amounts were spent during the Korean War and the periodic crises over the defense of the Formosa Strait. Guesses at the grand total spent by Taiwan to stupefy Americans ran as high as $1 billion a year. . . .”
The unique nature of the manifest China Lobby was summed up: “ . . . . Marquis Childs wrote ‘. . . . Nationalist China has used the techniques of direct intervention on a scale rarely, if ever, seen.’ Part of the campaign was to pour gasoline on the McCarthy witch hunts. . . .”
The component elements of the China Lobby:
1.–“ . . . . Chiang’s government used existing American corporations headed by men who shared its viewpoint. . . .”
2.–“ . . . . it hired advertising agencies . . . . Allied Syndicates counted among its clients the bank of China (with H.H. Kung as director). . . . Hamilton Wright, worked for six years as a registered agent for Nationalist China, writing and distributing stories, news articles, photographs, and movies to create a favorable image of Chiang Kai-shek and his regime. . . .”
3.–“. . . . T.V.’s wartime Universal Trading Corporation was listed in 1949 as a foreign agent working for the Chinese government, with assets of nearly $22 million. The Chinese News Service based in Taiwan established branches in Washington, New York, Chicago, and San Francisco. . . .”
4.–“ . . . . Taiwan exercised a particularly strong influence on American newspapers. . . .”
5.–“ . . . . ‘Henry Luce now saw the most grandiose project of his lifetime in danger of ruin. Wrapped up in the ruin was not only the fate of China and of Christianity and the Asian hegemony of the United States, but also his own peace of mind and reputation. Chiang-in-China was to have been the crowning of a decade and a half of planning in the Chrysler building and Rockefeller Center and of countless thousands of words of Lucepress propaganda. The nightmare rise of Mao-in-Chiina brought a powerful Luce counter-strategy.’. . .”
6.–“ . . . . Newscaster Robert S. Allen reported, . . . . Luce has been propagandizing and agitating for another two-billion dollar U.S. handout for Chiang for a long time. . . . And in Washington, practically the whole Luce bureau has been working full blast as part of the Chiang lobby.’. . .”
7.–“ . . . . Many of the activists in the lobby were people whose families had worked in China as missionaries, and now thought their heritage was being thrown away. Among them were the directors of the American China Policy Association and the Committee to Defend America by Aiding Anti-Communist China . . . . .”
8.–“ . . . . These groups were periodically supported by campaigns waged on Chiang’s behalf by the executive council of the AFL-CIO, the American Legion, the American Security Council, the American Conservative Union, and Young Americans for Freedom. To many conservative organizations, Taiwan became synonymous with anti-Communism. In the atmosphere of the 1950s, the fear of Red China kept normally sensible people from wondering where all the money was coming from. . . .”
9.–“ . . . . As principal director of the Bank of China’s New York City branch, H.H. [Kung] was driven to Wall Street two or three days a week . . . . Columnist Drew Pearson, one of the few journalists who maintained an interest in the Soongs after they went into exile, called the Bank of China the “nerve center of the China Lobby . . . .”
10.–“ . . . . ‘Dr. Kung’s knowledge of American politics is almost as astute as his knowledge of Chinese finance, and well before he entered the Truman cabinet, Kung picked Louis Johnson as his personal attorney. It may or may not be significant that, later, when Johnson became Secretary of Defense, he was one of the staunchest advocates of American support for Formosa. . . .”
11.–“ . . . . [From a Drew Pearson column—D.E.] A move by a Chiang brother-in-law. . . . to corner the soybean market at the expense of the American public . . . The brother-in-law is T.L. Soong, brother of Foreign Minister T.V. Soong, who formerly handled much of the three and a half billion dollars worth of supplies which the United States sent to China during the War. The soybean pool netted a profit of $30,000,000 and shot up the cost to the American consumer $1 as bushel [much more money in 1950 than now—D.E.] One of the strange things about the soybean manipulation was that its operators knew exactly the right time to buy up the world’s soybean supply—a few weeks before the communists invaded Korea. . . .”
12.–“ . . . . Louis Kung [son of Ai-ling and H.H. who had become a Dallas oil man—D.E.] had become one of the busiest members of the clan. During Richard Nixon’s 1950 senatorial campaign, Daddy Kung dispatched Younger Son to Los Angeles to give the senator donations and encouragement. . . . Louis took an active role in the Soong-Kung petroleum holdings, with oil properties across Texas, Oklahoma, and Louisiana. At the (Nationalist) Chinese embassy in Washington in 1956, Louis organized the Cheyenne Oil Company. . . . If one of Louis’s wells (leased for example, to John Daly, then vice-president for news of the (ABC Network), did poorly, Louis guaranteed that Daly would have his investment back; if the well turned out to be a success, then the profits were divided with Daly. . . .”
Presenting an overview updating the operations of T.V. Soong, Sterling Seagrave recounts his ascent to the pinnacles of power, his corporate largesse in America derived from clever investment and his major participation in the criminal underworld of Kuomintang narcotics trafficking and kleptocracy and his purloining of massive amounts of U.S. aid to China during World War II.
Note, T.V.’s role in the China Lobby: “ . . . . Although T.V. avoided Taiwan, and devoted most of his attention to his expanding financial empire, he did back the China Lobby financially because it was in his interest to do so. The levers of the China Lobby could be worked in many directions. . . .”
Note, also, his gravitas with the lethal, powerful Chinese organized crime milieu in the U.S.: “ . . . . It was not so much implied that T.V. himself was dangerous but that the slightest word from him could bring about terrible consequences from the Chinese tongs or syndicates, the Chinese banks, and nameless other objects of fear. . . .”
The remainder of the program recaps information from FTR#1142 about some of the circumstances surrounding the outbreak of the Korean War.
This is presented as context for T.L. Soong’s remarkably prescient cornering of the soybean market on the eve of the outbreak of that conflict: ” . . . . The soybean pool netted a profit of $30,000,000 and shot up the cost to the American consumer $1 as bushel [much more money in 1950 than now—D.E.] One of the strange things about the soybean manipulation was that its operators knew exactly the right time to buy up the world’s soybean supply—a few weeks before the communists invaded Korea. . . .”
In FTR#1142, we detailed the little-known involvement of Chiang Kai-shek and Mme. Chiang Kai-shek in the 1943 conferences at Cairo and Teheran. (Mme. Chiang Kai-shek was the sister of T.V. Soong, one of Chiang’s finance ministers and the richest man in the world at one time.)
This low-profile involvement apparently gave them considerable gravitas in helping to shape the postwar geopolitical agenda.
In that context and in relation to the ongoing series on Chiang Kai-shek’s narco-fascist government, it is worth noting the deep political agenda that was governing U.S. national security policy by September 2, 1945–the day on which the treaty ending World War II in the Pacific was signed on board the deck of the U.S. S. Missouri.
While in Okinawa during Japan’s surrender in World War II, Colonel L. Fletcher Prouty was witness to the early commitment of decisive military resources to the wars that were to take place in Korea and Indochina/Vietnam. ” . . . . I was on Okinawa at that time, and during some business in the harbor area I asked the harbormaster if all that new material was being returned to the States. His response was direct and surprising: ‘Hell, no! They ain’t never goin’ to see it again. One-half of this stuff, enough to equip and supply at least a hundred and fifty thousand men, is going to Korea, and the other half is going to Indochina.’ In 1945, none of us had any idea that the first battles of the Cold War were going to be fought by U.S. military units in those two regions beginning in 1950 and 1965–yet that is precisely what had been planned, and it is precisely what happened. Who made that decision back in 1943–45? . . . .”
In FTR#1142, we highlighted the 1951 “Peace” Treaty between the Allies and Japan, an agreement which falsely maintained that Japan had not stolen any wealth from the nations it occupied during World War II and that the (already) booming nation was bankrupt and would not be able to pay reparations to the slave laborers and “comfort women” it had pressed into service during the conflict.
In the context of the fantastic sums looted by Japan under the auspices of Golden Lily and the incorporation of that wealth with Nazi Gold to form the Black Eagle Trust, that 1951 treaty and the advent of the Korean War raise some interesting, unresolved questions.
One of the principal figures in the looting of occupied Asia during World War II was the remarkable Kodama Yoshio. Networked with the powerful Yakuza Japanese organized crime milieu, the Black Dragon society (the most powerful of the patriotic and ultra-nationalist societies), the Imperial Japanese military and the Royal family of Emperor Hirohito, Kodama looted the Chinese underworld and trafficked in narcotics with Chiang Kai-shek’s fascist narco-dictatorship.
We can but wonder about Kodama Yoshio’s presence along with 1951 “Peace” Treaty author John Foster Dulles at negotiations in Seoul on the eve of the outbreak of the Korean War.
As discussed in numerous programs in an interview with Daniel Junas, the Korean War was a huge economic boom for Japan, and generated considerable profit for German firms as well. Thyssen, for example, won lucrative contracts for making steel for the war effort. Is there some connection between the Kodama/Dulles presence in Seoul on the eve of the outbreak of war linked to the Golden Lily/Black Eagle/1951 “Peace” Treaty nexus and/or T.L. Soong’s cornering of the soybean market on the outbreak of the war?
Interestingly, and perhaps significantly, John Foster Dulles made a startlingly prescient speech in South Korea, auguring North Korea’s invasion shortly thereafter.
It would be interesting to know if Dulles and Kodama had been involved in deliberately luring the North Koreans to invade, in a manner not unlike that in which U.S. Ambassador to Iraq April Glaspie appears to have baited Saddam Hussein into invading Kuwait.
Note, also, Dulles’s characterization of Syngman Rhee and Chiang Kai-shek as Christian gentlemen. Chiang Kai-shek’s Christian credentials are recorded in detail in the ongoing series.
Foster Dulles’s role in the 1951 Peace Treaty with Japan, his curious presence in Seoul with Kodama Yoshio on the eve of the outbreak of the Korean War, his prescient foreshadowing of the conflict just before the North Korean invasion and the role of these events in shaping the post World War II global economic and political landscapes may well have been designed to help jumpstart the Japanese and German economies.
“. . . . A substantial infusion of money into this new Federal Republic economy resulted from the Korean War in 1950. The United States was not geared to supplying all its needs for armies in Korea, so the Pentagon placed huge orders in West Germany and in Japan; from that point on, both nations winged into an era of booming good times. . . .”
The program concludes with the obituary of general Paik Sun-yup of Korea, whose service in the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II has been a focal point of controversy in South Korea. General Sun-yup embodied the ongoing controversy in Korea over Japan’s occupation and the subsequent unfolding of events leading up to, and including the Korean War. “. . . . In 1941, he joined the army of Manchukuo, a puppet state that imperial Japan had established in Manchuria, and served in a unit known for hunting down Korean guerrillas fighting for independence . . .”
FTR#1206 The Narco-Fascism of Chiang Kai-shek and the Kuomintang, Part 13
Continuing our series on the regime of Chiang Kai-shek–all but beatified during the Cold War–we draw still more on a magnificent book–The Soong Dynasty by Sterling Seagrave. Although sadly out of print, the book is still available through used book services, and we emphatically encourage listeners to take advantage of those and obtain it.
Several listeners have said that they were able to obtain the book because it is still in print! I hope so! PLEASE buy it, read it, and tell others about it, either through conventional means and/or through social media. (Mr. Emory gets no money from said purchases of the book.)
It is apparently available from Amazon on Kindle.
First, we highlight Fred J. Cook’s analytical account of the McCarthy period, The Nightmare Decade. One of the focal points of Cook’s book is McCarthy’s theme that State Department [Communist] treachery had “lost” China to Mao and his forces.
Exploiting the meme that “pinko” State Department officials were responsible for Mao’s ascendance, McCarthy and his team successfully purged the State Department of officials whose outlook on Chiang Kai-shek was realistic.
The fate of John Service–described in the excerpt of The CIA as Organized Crime as well as in earlier programs in this series, illustrates this kind of activity.
In FTR #s 932 and 933 (among other programs), we noted the pivotal influence of Joe McCarthy’s right-hand man Roy Cohn on the professional development of Donald Trump. We wonder what influence Cohn and the McCarthy legacy may have had on Trump’s policy toward China.
Aside from the airy presumption that China was “ours” to “lose,” McCarthy’s thesis ignored the effects of U.S. policy in that country before, during and after, World War II. (This transgression is, of course, supplemental to Tailgunner Joe’s fabrication of evidence against those he targeted.)
In addition to support for Chiang Kai-Shek, whom General Joseph Stilwell compared to Mussolini, U.S. policy of using scores of thousands of Japanese soldiers as anti-Communist combatants was loathsome to the Chinese population, who had felt the full measure of Japanese atrocity during years of warfare.
Leafing through Nightmare Decade for the first time in years, we came across a passage read into the record in AFA #11.
More than 16 months after V‑J Day (the official conclusion of the hostilities of World War II in Asia) the U.S. was countenancing the use of 80,000 Japanese troops (roughly eight divisions) as anti-Communist combatants in eastern and northwestern Manchuria alone!
The transition to the Cold War from the Second World War also saw the incident that became the signature element of the John Birch Society.
In AFA#11, we set forth the event: ” . . . . Society figurehead John Birch was the intelligence officer for General Claire Chenault’s Flying Tigers in World War II, subsequently serving with the OSS China contingent. Birch was killed recruiting Chinese collaborationst troops to fight the Chinese communists. (These collaborationist forces had served the Japanese during World War II.) Coming little more than a week after the end of the war in the Pacific, his death was heralded by the American right as ‘the beginning of World War III.’ . . . .”
One of the signature propaganda gambits in the New Cold War against China is the Uighur Genocide myth. A political fantasy, rooted in decades of manipulation of the Chinese Uighur minority, the destabilization effort in Xinjiang province, the destabilization effort derives from dynamics dating to the Chinese civil war overlapping and following the Second World War.
(We have covered the Uighur destabilization campaigns in numerous programs, including [most recently] FTR#’s 1143, 1144, 1145, 1178, 1179 and 1180.)
Isa Yusuf Alptekin is the patriarch of the Uighur separatist movement. He was aligned with Chiang Kai-shek during the Chinese civil war, espousing the doctrinaire Anti-Communism characterizing the Kuomintang milieu and endearing Alptekin’s movement and successors to American and Western Cold Warriors.
“ . . . . The founding father of this separatist movement was Isa Yusuf Alptekin. His son, Erkin Alptekin, founded the WUC and served as the organization’s inaugural president. The senior Alptekin is referred to as “our late leader” by the WUC and current President Dolkun Isa. . . . During the Chinese Civil War that raged between the nationalists and communists from 1945 to ’49, Alptekin served under the nationalist Kuomintang (KMT) administration in Xinjiang. Throughout this period, the KMT received massive military and economic backing from the United States — including billions of dollars in cash and military hardware, along with the deployment of tens of thousands of US marines — in an effort to quash the Chinese revolution. . . .”
As noted in past programs, the Uighur separatist milieu incorporates Islamists allied with both Al-Qaeda and elements of ISIS, as well as Pan-Turkists allied with the National Action (also National Movement) Party—a doctrinaire fascist, revanchist body whose youth wing—the Grey Wolves—constitute the “Stay Behind” NATO cadre in Turkey.
When the failures of Chiang’s regime led to scorn toward, and pivoting away from the Nationalist Chinese cause, the amalgam of corporate, criminal, journalistic and political interests that had empowered the Kuomintang counterattacked: “ . . . . the Chiang government poured millions of dollars into a counteroffensive. Zealous Americans who joined the pro-Taiwan crusade became the fund-raisers, the organizers, the telephoners, the legmen, the gofers, the publicists, the congressmen, the tycoons, the hosts and hostesses of the shadowy society called ‘the China Lobby.’ Its management, its direction, and its primary finances were not American. The China Lobby belonged to the Soong clan and the Nationalist Chinese government. The people involved thought they were working for the greater glory of God, or for ‘the survival of the democratic system.’ They were really working for a Chinese public-relations campaign. . . . the Kungs and Soongs remained the primary pipeline connecting American special interests with Taiwan. Ai-ling and H.H. Kung, T.V. Soong and May-ling Soong Chiang devoted considerable energies to the lobby and sometimes gathered for strategy sessions at the Kung estate in Riverdale. . . .”
The domestic political result in the U.S. was summed by Sterling Seagrave: “ . . . . Small wonder that a large segment of the American public believed that Chiang was the essence of virtue and his cause was a joint one. Similar amounts were spent during the Korean War and the periodic crises over the defense of the Formosa Strait. Guesses at the grand total spent by Taiwan to stupefy Americans ran as high as $1 billion a year. . . .”
The unique nature of the manifest China Lobby was summed up: “ . . . . Marquis Childs wrote ‘. . . . Nationalist China has used the techniques of direct intervention on a scale rarely, if ever, seen.’ Part of the campaign was to pour gasoline on the McCarthy witch hunts. . . .”
The component elements of the China Lobby:
1.–“ . . . . Chiang’s government used existing American corporations headed by men who shared its viewpoint. . . .”
2.–“ . . . . it hired advertising agencies . . . . Allied Syndicates counted among its clients the bank of China (with H.H. Kung as director). . . . Hamilton Wright, worked for six years as a registered agent for Nationalist China, writing and distributing stories, news articles, photographs, and movies to create a favorable image of Chiang Kai-shek and his regime. . . .”
3.–“. . . . T.V.’s wartime Universal Trading Corporation was listed in 1949 as a foreign agent working for the Chinese government, with assets of nearly $22 million. The Chinese News Service based in Taiwan established branches in Washington, New York, Chicago, and San Francisco. . . .”
4.–“ . . . . Taiwan exercised a particularly strong influence on American newspapers. . . .”
5.–“ . . . . ‘Henry Luce now saw the most grandiose project of his lifetime in danger of ruin. Wrapped up in the ruin was not only the fate of China and of Christianity and the Asian hegemony of the United States, but also his own peace of mind and reputation. Chiang-in-China was to have been the crowning of a decade and a half of planning in the Chrysler building and Rockefeller Center and of countless thousands of words of Lucepress propaganda. The nightmare rise of Mao-in-Chiina brought a powerful Luce counter-strategy.’. . .”
6.–“ . . . . Newscaster Robert S. Allen reported, . . . . Luce has been propagandizing and agitating for another two-billion dollar U.S. handout for Chiang for a long time. . . . And in Washington, practically the whole Luce bureau has been working full blast as part of the Chiang lobby.’. . .”
7.–“ . . . . Many of the activists in the lobby were people whose families had worked in China as missionaries, and now thought their heritage was being thrown away. Among them were the directors of the American China Policy Association and the Committee to Defend America by Aiding Anti-Communist China . . . . .”
8.–“ . . . . These groups were periodically supported by campaigns waged on Chiang’s behalf by the executive council of the AFL-CIO, the American Legion, the American Security Council, the American Conservative Union, and Young Americans for Freedom. To many conservative organizations, Taiwan became synonymous with anti-Communism. In the atmosphere of the 1950s, the fear of Red China kept normally sensible people from wondering where all the money was coming from. . . .”
9.–“ . . . . As principal director of the Bank of China’s New York City branch, H.H. [Kung] was driven to Wall Street two or three days a week . . . . Columnist Drew Pearson, one of the few journalists who maintained an interest in the Soongs after they went into exile, called the Bank of China the “nerve center of the China Lobby . . . .”
10.–“ . . . . ‘Dr. Kung’s knowledge of American politics is almost as astute as his knowledge of Chinese finance, and well before he entered the Truman cabinet, Kung picked Louis Johnson as his personal attorney. It may or may not be significant that, later, when Johnson became Secretary of Defense, he was one of the staunchest advocates of American support for Formosa. . . .”
11.–“ . . . . [From a Drew Pearson column—D.E.] A move by a Chiang brother-in-law. . . . to corner the soybean market at the expense of the American public . . . The brother-in-law is T.L. Soong, brother of Foreign Minister T.V. Soong, who formerly handled much of the three and a half billion dollars worth of supplies which the United States sent to China during the War. The soybean pool netted a profit of $30,000,000 and shot up the cost to the American consumer $1 as bushel [much more money in 1950 than now—D.E.] One of the strange things about the soybean manipulation was that its operators knew exactly the right time to buy up the world’s soybean supply—a few weeks before the communists invaded Korea. . . .”
12.–“ . . . . Louis Kung [son of Ai-ling and H.H. who had become a Dallas oil man—D.E.] had become one of the busiest members of the clan. During Richard Nixon’s 1950 senatorial campaign, Daddy Kung dispatched Younger Son to Los Angeles to give the senator donations and encouragement. . . . Louis took an active role in the Soong-Kung petroleum holdings, with oil properties across Texas, Oklahoma, and Louisiana. At the (Nationalist) Chinese embassy in Washington in 1956, Louis organized the Cheyenne Oil Company. . . . If one of Louis’s wells (leased for example, to John Daly, then vice-president for news of the (ABC Network), did poorly, Louis guaranteed that Daly would have his investment back; if the well turned out to be a success, then the profits were divided with Daly. . . .”
September 2, 1945: The American Deep State Rolls the Dice
In FTR#1142, we detailed the little-known involvement of Chiang Kai-shek and Mme. Chiang Kai-shek in the 1943 conferences at Cairo and Teheran. (Mme. Chiang Kai-shek was the sister of T.V. Soong, one of Chiang’s finance ministers and the richest man in the world at one time.) This low-profile involvement apparently gave them considerable gravitas in helping to shape the postwar geopolitical agenda. While in Okinawa during Japan’s surrender in World War II, Colonel L. Fletcher Prouty was witness to the early commitment of decisive military resources to the wars that were to take place in Korea and Indochina/Vietnam. ” . . . . I was on Okinawa at that time, and during some business in the harbor area I asked the harbormaster if all that new material was being returned to the States. His response was direct and surprising: ‘Hell, no! They ain’t never goin’ to see it again. One-half of this stuff, enough to equip and supply at least a hundred and fifty thousand men, is going to Korea, and the other half is going to Indochina.’ In 1945, none of us had any idea that the first battles of the Cold War were going to be fought by U.S. military units in those two regions beginning in 1950 and 1965–yet that is precisely what had been planned, and it is precisely what happened. Who made that decision back in 1943–45? . . . .” WFMU-FM is podcasting For The Record–You can subscribe to the podcast HERE.
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