FTR#1204 The Narco-Fascism of Chiang Kai-shek and the Kuomintang, Part 11
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.
(Mr. Emory gets no money from said purchases of the book.)
We begin with further discussion of the influence of Time Inc.–the Henry Luce publishing empire–on American perceptions of Chiang Kai-shek’s regime. Theodore White, who wrote for Time magazine had this observation on the journal’s editorial policy: “ . . . . Theodore White posted the following sign in the shack that served as the Time office in Chungking: ‘Any resemblance to what is written here and what is printed in Time Magazine is purely coincidental.’ This reflected his increasingly pessimistic attitude about his ability, if not to change the course of China’s destiny, at least to keep the American public informed of the events as he and observers like [General Joseph] Stilwell, [State Department Officer Jack] Service and [State Department official John Paton] Davies saw them . . . .”
When White lodged his complaints with Henry Luce, the foreign news editor for Time was Whitaker Chambers, best known as the accuser of Alger Hiss in the proceedings which helped elevate Richard Nixon’s political career.
(In AFA#1, we noted that Chambers displayed a life-size portrait of Adolf Hitler in his living room. In AFA#2, we highlighted vehement criticism of Chambers from a former writer for Time, who spun stories from reporters in the field to the far right, making stories of the liberation of European countries by Allied soldiers look like a creeping Communist manifestation. The commentary was in a letter protesting Ronald Reagan’s awarding of a medal to Chambers. Reagan also elevated Albert C. Wedemeyer to a position of special military advisor.)
During the last year of the war, Chiang Kai-shek retreated into a world of debauchery, Green Gang camaraderie and ideological delusion. The debacle created by Chiang is embodied in the starvation of his own army conscripts and his refusal to believe accounts of what was taking place: “ . . . . So totally removed from reality did Chiang become that he was struck with disbelief one day by rumors that his own soldiers were dropping dead of starvation in the streets. Corruption was keeping them from being fed the barest rations. He sent his eldest son, CCK, to investigate. When CCK reported back that it was true, Chiang insisted on seeing for himself. CCK showed him army conscripts who had died in their bedrolls because of neglect. . . . The starvation deaths continued. In August 1944, the corpses of 138 stared soldiers were removed from the streets of Chungking. Chiang did not come out again to see. . . .”
Key Points of Discussion and analysis include: Chambers’ complete perversion of a story written by Theodore White about the circumstances surrounding the removal of General Stilwell (discussed in FTR#1203); T.V. Soong’s continued presence in China, the only member of the family to remain in the country after a failed “palace coup” discussed in FTR#1203; T.V.‘s effective control of Chiang Kai-shek’s public persona and statements; T.V.‘s use of his position as Premier to manipulate the disposition of American aid to his own benefit.
The scale of the corruption characterizing Chiang’s regime and the Soong clan that continued to control it was enormous. In addition to the pirating of American Lend-Lease material shipped to China by the Soong family, as well as Chiang and his generals (who sold much of what they did not keep for themselves to the Japanese invaders), post war United Nations Relief suffered a similar disposition.
“ . . . . After T.V. [Soong] was named Premier, he created a special agency, the Chinese National Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (CNRRA) to oversee the distribution of UN relief goods. The deal he struck with the U.S. government and the United Nations was that UNRRA would relinquish all title to supplies the moment the goods touched down on any Chinese wharf. . . . The wharfs where most of these goods landed, the warehouses where the goods were stored and the transportation companies that moved them (including China Merchants Steam Navigation Company) were owned by Big-eared Tu [Tu Yueh-sheng]. This was a situation ready-made for abuse. . . .”
Like many other foreign regimes, as well as domestic elements of the power elite, the Chiang/Soong/Green Gang kleptocracy used the fear of Communism to bilk the U.S. out of vast sums: “ . . . . Chiang was using the fear of a Communist takeover to obtain millions from the United States. Fear served him well. . . .”
Key Points of Discussion and Analysis Include: The monumental rip-off of Chinese investors and financial institutions engineered by T.V. Soong with a scam launching a gold-backed currency; the panic that gripped Shanghai and much of the rest of China as a result of the “gold yuan” scam; the gobbling up of much of that wealth by the Soong and Kung families.
When Chiang made a woefully belated anti-corruption drive—headed up by his son, CCK made the mistake of arresting David Kung (son of H.H. Kung and Ai-ling [Soong] and the nephew of Mme. Chiang Kai-shek [nee Mae-ling Soong]) and the M.I.T.-educated stock broker son of Green Gang boss Tu Yueh-sheng: “ . . . . The son of Big-eared Tu, a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was tried and sentenced by CCK so fast that it was all over before anyone was dimly aware even that he had been arrested. . . . He did not serve time, for that would have been pressing his father a bit much. . . .”
Presaging Hong Kong’s emergence as an augmented epicenter of high-level intrigue, Tu Yueh-sheng moved his assets there after the war: “ . . . . It was hard to concentrate on reorganizing the old Shanghai operations when the reds were steamrolling across Manchuria and moving ever southward. Tu began shifting his assets to Hong Kong. . . .”
In the case of David Kung, Mme. Chiang intervened on his behalf and his Yangtze Development Corporation—a major focal point of corruption–moved to Florida: “ . . . . Prudently, Mae ling hurried David onto a plane for Hong Kong, with continuing connections to Florida. He was not to come back. Yangtze Development Corporation’s offices in China were closed down overnight and reopened in Miami Beach. . . .”
Chiang then decamped to Taiwan, where he subdued the island’s inhabitants with characteristic brutality: “ . . . . The island did not welcome the KMT. It was driven into submission by terror. . . . Chiang forced Taiwan to heel. There were massacres; in the first, ten thousand Taiwanese were slain by KMT troops in riots in downtown Taipei. Twenty thousand more were put to death before Chiang was firmly established. . . .”
FTR#1203 The Narco-Fascism of Chiang Kai-shek and The Kuomintang, Part 10
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.
(Mr. Emory gets no money from said purchases of the book.)
We begin by resuming analysis of the political and professional destruction of U.S. military and State Department elements that correctly gauged Chiang Kai-shek and the [inevitable, downward] trajectory of his regime.
Just as General Stillwell was removed as top military officer in the China/Burma theater because of his appropriate, accurate, vehement criticism of Chiang Kai-shek’s prioritization of fighting the Communists over fighting the Japanese, State Department officers who accurately forecast the decisive ascent of the Chinese Communist Party over the KMT were punished for their stance.
(Stilwell’s replacement by General Wedemeyer was noteworthy—particularly in light of the background and behavior of Wedemeyer.
In addition to being part of a political and military milieu that infused isolationist orientation toward involvement in World War II with pro-fascist sentiment, Wedemeyer appears to have presided over an act of consummate treason—the leak of the Rainbow Five American mobilization plan for World War II to anti-FDR publisher Robert J. McCormick, of the Chicago Tribune.)
The China watchers’ advice was not only ignored, but cast as “subversive” during the anti-Communist witch hunts of the McCarthy period.
“ . . . . The eyes and ears of the U.S. Government in Chunking were a handful of old China hands . . . . The China watchers’ message essentially was that no matter how much Washington wanted Chiang Kai-shek to ‘run’ China, he was about to lose it to the Communists. . . . The observers in Chungking were accused of being in favor of what they predicted—in favor of communism. In fact, they were only warning their government of a course of events that now seemed certain. . . . Washington reacted with deep suspicion and hostility and insisted on nailing the American flag the more tightly to the mast of Chiang’s sinking ship . . . .”
As we shall further explore, the cognitive perception of China in this country was shaped by the Soong family.
The China watchers’ advice was not only ignored, but cast as “subversive” during the anti-Communist witch hunts of the McCarthy period.
“ . . . . American policy was thus based upon the personalities of the Chiangs, the Soongs and the Kungs, rather than upon the events, the nation or the people. This was a tribute to the Soongs’ extraordinary stagecraft. . . .”
Sterling Seagrave filed a Freedom of Information Act request, which obtained an FBI report on the Soongs. Heavily redacted—even in 1985—it revealed the Soongs machinations on both sides of the Pacific.
“ . . . . The Soong family . . . . ‘practically had a death grip.’ The Soongs ‘have always been money mad and every move they made was prompted by their desire to secure funds.’ . . . . ‘there was a gigantic conspiracy to defraud the Chinese from materials they would ordinarily receive through [Lend-Lease] and to divert considerable of this money to the Soong family.’. . .”
After discussing the extreme marital difficulties of Chiang Kai-shek and Mme. Chiang Kai-shek (the former Mae-ling Soong, whose marriage to Chiang had been arranged by H. H. Kung and his Machiavellian wife Ai-ling—the former Ai-ling Soong), the informant identifies Mrs. Kung as the sinister, deadly and manipulative figure that she was.
Exemplifying the scale of the treacherous, corrupt practices of the clan was a diversion of Lend-Lease aid: “ . . . . The informant then told the FBI that one of the ways T.V. diverted Lend-Lease funds into his own pocket was illustrated by reports reaching Chunking that a freighter carrying sixty new American battle tanks and other very expensive war materiel furnished by Lend-Lease had been sunk. As a matter of fact this ‘freighter never left the West Coast with any tanks; the tanks were never made . . . . this is a positive illustration of the manner in which the Soongs have been diverting funds from Lend-Lease inasmuch as the money was allocated for the 60 tanks. . . .”
Again, a key factor in the political clout wielded by the Soongs was their extreme wealth, greatly augmented by institutionalized corruption, including (and especially) T.V. Soong’s appropriation of much of the Lend-Lease material designated for China.
In addition to the outright theft of Lend-Lease material by Chiang Kai-shek’s Green Gang general staff and their sale of much of that to the Japanese enemy they were supposedly fighting, T.V. Soong—using his brother T.L Soong’s administrative control of the Lend-Lease program for China—maneuvered hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of U.S. aid into the private coffers of the Soong family.
As the KMT regime decayed and relations between the Soongs and Chiang followed suit, T. V. increasingly turned his energies to the American side of the Pacific, and appointed T.L. to oversee the American side of Lend-Lease! “ . . . . T.V. used his position as Foreign Minister to issue his brother T.L. Soong a special diplomatic passport, and sent him hurriedly to New York. T. L. was actually being whisked out of China to take over as chief purchasing agent and administrator of all U.S. Lend-Lease supplies before they left for China. Since the very beginning, T.L. had been in charge of Lend-Lease at the Chinese end. . . .”
Next, we review the fact that T.L. Soong—T.V.’s younger brother: “ . . . . who had been in charge of Lend Lease during World II, and whose American roots were in New York City, became something of an enigma. Sources in Washington said T.L. worked as a secret consultant to the Treasury Department in the 1950’s, engaged in what they would not say. Treasury claims it has no record of a T.L. Soong whatever. . . .”
Next, we review the fact that T.L. Soong—T.V.’s younger brother: “ . . . . who had been in charge of Lend Lease during World II, and whose American roots were in New York City, became something of an enigma. Sources in Washington said T.L. worked as a secret consultant to the Treasury Department in the 1950’s, engaged in what they would not say. Treasury claims it has no record of a T.L. Soong whatever. . . .”
The concluding segments of the program are drawn on another magnificent work by the Seagraves: Gold Warriors.
Before winding up the broadcast, we “dolly out” to synopsize the relationship between the Japanese invaders of China, the Green Gang gangsters, the Kuomintang regime of Chiang Kai-shek which fronted for the Green Gang and collaborated with the Japanese, Japanese corporations and Japanese colonial interests in Korea and Taiwan.
This overview foreshadows the political consortium that—in the postwar period, became the Asian Peoples’ Anti-Communist League, a key component of what was to become the World Anti-Communist League.
Key Points of Discussion and Analysis Include: Green Gang boss Tu Yueh-sheng’s control of Shanghai’s booming gambling and overlapping brothel businesses; synoptic review of the relationship between Tu Yueh-sheng and the Green Gang and Chiang Kai-shek; Chiang’s sanctioning of Tu to control the KMT’s drug trafficking; the symbiotic, cooperative relationship between the invading Japanese and the Green Gang, cemented by General Doihara and Kodama Yoshio on the side of the invaders and Green Gang/KMT operatives the Ku brothers (one of whom was Tu’s harbor boss in Shanghai and the other of whom was a top KMT general); review of the Japanese development of the narcotics business in Manchuria; the Japanese use of their Manchurian narcotics enterprise to subvert China by increasing the population’s addiction rate; review of Chiang Kai-shek’s collaboration with the Manchurian/Japanese narcotics enterprise; the role of Japanese zaibatsu and other colonized areas in the Japanese narcotics business.
“ . . . . The [opium] was converted into morphine and heroin at factories in Manchuria, Korea and Taiwan, then smuggled directly across the strait on motorized junks, to mainland warehouses owned by Mitsui, Mitsubishi and other conglomerates. An army factory in Seoul that produced over 2,600 kilos of heroin in 1938–1939 was only one of several hundred factories in Manchuria, Korea, Taiwan, and in Japanese concessions in mainland cities like Hankow. . . .”
We conclude the program with analysis of power broker–Kodama Yoshio who helped institutionalize the collaboration between Chinese KMT, Korean and Japanese fascists. Noteworthy, as well is Kodama’s close relationship between with the CIA and the Japanese Imperial family in the postwar/Cold War period.
Kodama Yoshio epitomizes and embodies the operational and ideological structure of the Asian People’s Anti-Communist League, the Asian branch of what was to become the World Anti-Communist League.
Key Points of Discussion and Analysis Include: Kodama’s accumulated fortune of 13 billion dollars in World War II dollars; Kodama’s close relationship with Japanese Emperor Hirohito, who allowed him to stash some of his wealth in the Imperial Palace; Kodama’s dominant position in the narcotics traffic, during and after World War II; Kodama’s donation of 100 million dollars to the CIA (equivalent to 1 billion dollars in today’s currency); Kodama’s continued dominance in the global narcotics traffic, during the time he was on the CIA’s payroll; Kodama’s cozy relationship with Prince Higashikuni, Emperor Hirohito’s uncle, who facilitated Kodama’s operations, including his close relationship with the U.S.
FTR#1202 The Narco-Fascism of Chiang Kai-shek and the Kuomintang, Part 9
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.
(Mr. Emory gets no money from said purchases of the book.)
Tackling American ideological delusion vis a vis Chiang Kai-shek and the Kuomintang, the broadcast resumes analysis of the embrace of Chiang by the State Department and the allied U.S. press and the schism with the War Department (later the Department of Defense.)
Chiang’s anti-Communism endeared him to elements of State, even–as we have seen–his obsession with fighting the CCP instead of the invading Japanese was correctly forecast by T.V. Soong, among others as driving the Chinese people into the arms of the communists.
” . . . . Washington–not as represented by Chief-of-Staff George C. Marshall but as typified by FDR’s advisor Harry Hopkins–increasingly shared Chiang’s fixation with the postwar threat of Communism. To please the Generalissimo and his supporters in America, the Washington of Hopkins and the Department of State was prepared to sacrifice any number of its own people. . . .”
Further developing the circumstances leading to the replacement of the skilled, heroic American General Joseph Stilwell and the political defenestration of the State Department’s best “China Watchers,” we note the role of the consummately powerful Soong family in shaping U.S. ideological delusion concerning Chiang Kai-shek.
It is a consummate irony that the dogmatic anti-Communists allied with Chiang and the Soongs were the ones who “Lost China,” as the McCarthyites and the China Lobby put it. (Of course Chiang and the KMT themselves were the principal agencies involved in said loss.)
The War Department as embodied by Chief-of-Staff General George C. Marshall did not share the infatuation with Chiang, and sided with Chiang’s nemesis, General Joseph Stilwell–the top U.S. military officer in the China/Burma theater.
” . . . . America failed to understand the trap it was falling into because the State Department was not listening to its China Watchers. Very few of their secret reports actually reached the Secretary of State, because the rest were being intercepted by partisans inside the department hierarchy. . . . According to information gathered by the FBI at the time, someone high in the department was passing this secret information straight over to China Defense Supplies, to be read by T V. Soong and to be acted upon as he saw fit. So the Americans sent to China to watch Chiang’s regime were reporting to the Soong family, not to President Roosevelt. . . . At the War Department, the situation was quite different. General Marshall was suspicious of Chiang, and listened to Stilwell’s warnings. . . .”
Key elements of analysis and discussion include: Joseph Alsop’s role as a Chiang/Soong partisan; Alsop’s World War II role as the Chungking representative of Lend-Lease program; Introductory discussion of T.L. Soong (younger brother of T.V.) and his role as first, administrator of U.S. Lend-Lease in China and, later, administrator of Lend-Lease in the U.S. (this will be dealt with at greater length later in the series); Alsop’s postwar career as a noted journalist, closely linked to the CIA; General Claire Chennault’s hatred of Stilwell; review of Chennault’s role as leader of the Flying Tigers (the American Volunteer Group); Chennault’s assertion to FDR that his Fourteenth Air Force could use forward bases to decimate Japanese shipping; Stilwell’s correct counter-assertion that the Japanese would simply destroy the forward air bases upon which Chennault based his assertions; the 1944 Japanese offensive known as Operation Ichigo; the resounding success of the Japanese offensive; review (from our previous program) of KMT General T’ang En-po’s disastrous command of the Chinese forces opposing the Japanese Ichigo offensive; the view of the State Department’s China watchers and Vice-President Henry Wallace that Chiang Kai-shek could not successfully rule postwar China; the War Department’s temporary elevation of General Stilwell to command the KMT armies in China; Chiang’s fierce and successful resistance of Chiang to Stilwell’s elevation; Chiang’s insistence on a quid-pro-quo for agreeing to allow U.S. observers into the Communist-controlled areas of China—an agreement that featured the replacement of Stilwell with Major General Albert C. Wedemeyer; Chiang’s insistence on the replacement of Ambassador Clarence Gauss; the decisive appointment of Major General Patrick J. Hurley as Roosevelt’s personal representative to Chiang—an appointment which led to Stilwell’s replacement with Wedemeyer.
Stilwell’s replacement by General Wedemeyer was noteworthy—particularly in light of the background and behavior of Wedemeyer.
The program recaps information presented in AFA#11.
In addition to being part of a political and military milieu that infused isolationist orientation toward involvement in World War II with pro-fascist sentiment, Wedemeyer was a chief suspect in an act of consummate treason—the leak of the Rainbow Five American mobilization plan for World War II to anti-FDR publisher Robert J. McCormick (of the Chicago Tribune.) (As celebrated anti-fascist journalist and researcher George Seldes has documented, the “isolationist” America First organization received financing from the Abwehr [German intelligence during the Third Reich.])
Key points of discussion and analysis include:
1.–Wedemeyer’s background: “ . . . . he himself had been educated in part at the German War College, in Berlin. He rented his apartment from a member of the Nazi Party, Gerhard Rossbach, and during his sojourn became a great friend of General Ludwig Beck, chief of the German General Staff. . . . (Rossbach was, in fact, the number two man in the SA behind Ernst Rolm. As discussed in AFA#11, Rossbach went to work for the CIA after the war.–D.E.) . . . .Rightly or wrongly, he was regarded by the German embasssy in Washington as part of the pro-German military clique in teh War Department. . . .”
2.–Wedemeyer’s association with key personnel on the German General staff: ” . . . . His introductions to Beck were arranged by Lieutenant General Friedrich von Boetticher, German military attache in Washington. He corresponded regularly withy his German contacts until the advent of World War II in Europe. . . .”
3.–The Third Reich’s development of a Fifth Column within its American counterpart: ” . . . . The numerous memoranda of Hans Thomsen and Boetticher to Berlin at the time indicate that a series of contacts had been established in this group held meetings at the home of former American military attache in Berlin Colonel Truman Smith. Although pro-German and a sympathizer of America First, Smith had the ear of General Marshall. . . .”
4.–The theft of the Rainbow Five manuscript by a U.S. military officer. ” . . . . On the night of December 3, 1941, an office attached to the War Plans Division decided on his own account to consult some of the documents at home. It was a simple matter to unlock the steel cabinet and remove the large expanding folder of several hundred pages. That he was not authorized to do so is indicated by the fact that he found it necessary to wrap the file in heavy brown paper, to make it look like a parcel for mailing. . . .”
5.–The fact that Wedemeyer underlined the same passages in his copy of the manuscript as eventually found their way into the Chicago Tribune piece: ” . . . . . Back in his office, Wedemeyer faced a very unpleasant situation. [J. Edgar] Hoover had dispatched his number-one man, Edward Tamm, to the office, and Tamm was standing by an open filing cabinet while Wedemeyer’s secretary was sobbing into her hands. One of Tamm’s men was holding a copy of the Victory Program. The same passages were underlined in red by Wedemeyer as appeared in the newspapers . . . .”
The program concludes with a look at the fate of the Third Force or Third Option formed by Mme. Sun Yat-sen (nee Ching-ling Soong) and Teng Yen-ta, a persistent critic of Chiang Kai-shek.
Disillusioned with Communism after a sojourn in Moscow, Mme. Sun Yat-sen partnered with Teng Yen-ta, who recognized Chiang’s fascism and, yet, felt that the Chinese Communist Party (at that point in time) was overly loyal to Moscow and wasn’t doing enough for the Chinese peasantry.
Both Ching-ling and Teng Yen-ta sought an alternative to both Kuomintang fascism and the Chinese Communist Party.
Finding the democratic socialism proposed by Ching-ling and Teng Yen-ta unacceptable, Chiang had the British and American police authorities arrest him in the International Concession in Shanghai, after which he was tortured for many months.
Ching-ling was reported to have visited Chiang to plead for Teng Yen-ta’s release. Chiang had already dealt with him in characteristic fashion: “ . . . . Days earlier, on November 29, 1931, nearly a year after his arrest, Ten Yen-ta had been taken from his cell at Chiang’s command and was slowly strangled with a wire. The executioner was said to be famous for keeping victims alive for half an hour while he tightened his grip. In his office, Chiang had remained silent while Ching-ling pleaded for a man already dead, enjoying the spectacle of her momentary vulnerability. . . .”
FTR#1201 The Narco-Fascism of Chiang Kai-shek and the Kuomintang, Part 8
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.
(Mr. Emory gets no money from said purchases of the book.)
The broadcast begins with review of the denouement of the Siang incident, detailed in FTR#1200.
Points of analysis and discussion include:
1.–Eventually, Chiang grudgingly agreed to the coalition, apparently after T.V. Soong saw to it that Chiang got a significant amount of money. “ . . . . The Young Marshal gallantly accepted all blame for the Sian Incident, allowing Chiang to wash his hands in public and wipe them on him. (Interestingly he was put up at T.V. Soong’s home in Nanking.) He had done China a historic service by bringing about the long-sought united front, whatever its later failings. . . .”
2.–Chiang’s reluctant agreement was trumpeted by Henry Luce: “ . . . . He put them [Chiang and Mme. Chiang] on the cover of Time’s first issue of 1938 as ‘Man and Wife of the Year.’ May-ling Soong Chiang now became an even bigger international celebrity. . . .”
3.–As was his wont, Chiang broke his promise to the Young Marshal and General Yang. Lauded by Henry Luce and his associates as an Exemplary Christian, Chiang promised an amnesty on Good Friday—a promise he promptly broke. “ . . . . In his Good Friday message to China that spring of 1937, Chiang referred to the Sian Incident and said piously, ‘Remembering that Christ enjoined us to forgive those who sin against us until seventy times seven and upon their repentance, I felt that that they should be allowed to start life anew. . . .”
3.–Similar treatment was afforded General Yang: “ . . . . The Young Marshal’s co-conspirator, General Yang, despite the Good Friday amnesty, was imprisoned when he came back from European exile and languished for eleven years in one of Tai Li’s special detention camps near Chungking. His wife went on a hunger strike in protest and was allowed to starve herself to death. . . .”
On his last trip through China before decamping to Taiwan, Chiang ordered the execution of General Yang and his surviving family: “ . . . . As long as he was in Chunking anyway, the Generalissimo stopped by police headquarters to finish off one remaining bit of ‘personal’ business. In the Chunking prison, there was still a prisoner who was very special. It was Yang Hu-Cheng, the warlord who had joined the Young Marshal to kidnap Chiang in the Sian Incident. . . . For eleven years, Yang, a son, and a daughter (along with a loyal secretary and his wife) languished in Tai-Li’s concentration camp outside Chunking. Now, before leaving China for good, Chiang made this special trip just to sign Yang’s death warrant. The old man, his son, his daughter, his secretary, and the secretary’s wife were all taken out and shot. . . .”
A signature episode in China’s World War II history is what became known as the New Fourth Army Incident.
Key points of analysis and discussion include:
1.–When the Chinese Communist Fourth Army, acting under the auspices of the accord wrested from Chiang at Sian, was preparing a campaign that would have disturbed a symbiotic relationship between the Japanese and Tu Yueh-sheng, it was ambushed by Kuomintang general Ku Chu‑t’ung. Ku Chu‑t’ung was the brother of Tu Yueh-sheng’s powerful harbor boss Ku Tsu-chuan. “ . . . . Chiang’s defense of China was being portrayed by T.V. Soong as a valiant defiance against Japanese hordes carried out assiduously by KMT generals. If so, it was proceeding in a curious fashion. Chiang was engaging in as little actual fighting as possible. . . . Chiang was husbanding his resources for a renewal of his war with the Communists. Once holed up in Chungking, he let the people fend for themselves. . . .”
2.–Worth noting in this context is the fact that Chinese troops were capable of defeating the Japanese in battle and enjoyed celebratory support from the country’s populace when they did so. This dynamic became central to the entreaties made (in vain) by General Joseph Stilwell later in the war and his subsequent dismissal and replacement: “ . . . . On only one occasion, a KMT army under General Li Tsung-jen proved that Chinese soldiers could whip the Japanese when they had the will to do so, in the battle of Taierchuang in April 1938. Th Japanese in this instance were badly beaten and the people of China were elated. But Chiang ordered the army not to pursue, and within weeks of Taierchuang the Japanese had recovered the initiative. . . .”
3.–Typical of the lethally incompetent conduct of the war by Chiang’s KMT armies was the Yellow River dikes incident. “ . . . . One of Chiang’s few attempts to slow the Japanese led him to dynamite the dikes on the Yellow River. Without warning of any kind, three provinces, eleven cities, and four thousand villages were flooded, two million people were made homeless, and all their crops were destroyed. The Japanese were only bogged down for three months. . . . Chiang’s government tried to put the blame on the Japanese and the Taiwan government continues to do so today. [1985—D.E.] . . .”
4.–Taking precedence over fighting the Japanese was Chiang’s political/military prioritization of waging civil war against the Communists: “. . . . By 1940–41, Chiang’s sphere of influence had shrunk while the Communists’ area had, expanded at the expense of the Japanese. In the red area, soldiers, guerillas, and peasants were fighting furiously and with results. But, each time the reds enlarged their perimeter, Chiang had his army attack the Communists instead of the Japanese, to keep his rivals from making territorial gains. It was a war within a war. Chiang had half a million soldiers occupied blockading the red area in the Northwest. . . .”
5.–Chiang’s anti-communist strategy reached an extreme with the New Fourth Army Incident. When a communist army moved into an area in which the Green Gang and Japanese had established a cooperative relationship, it was ambushed: “ . . . . Part of the United Front agreement involved putting Mao’s Red Army under joint KMT command. . . . In 1941, the [Communist] New Fourth Army was assigned to operate under joint KMT-CCP command along the south bank of the Yangtze River within the orbit of the Green Gang. . . .”
6.–Green Gang’s dope rackets had continued in the area: “ . . . . The gang’s operations had not seriously diminished because of the war. The gang operated under the Japanese occupation much as it had before, although Big-eared Tu, bearing the rank of general in the KMTR, widely moved to Chunking. In his absence, the Shanghai gang headquarters was left in the hands of Tu’s harbor boss, Ku Tsu-chuan. As a complement Generalissimo Chiang gave all military responsibilities for the lower Yangtze river to Ku’s brother, General Ku Chu‑t’ung. . . .”
7.–The New Fourth Army was going to move against a railway. “ . . . . This was an area in which there was cooperation between the Green Gang and the Japanese. In return for permitting its opium smuggling and underworld operations to go on uninterrupted, the Green Gang guaranteed the security of Japanese garrisons and enterprises in the Yangtze Valley. . . .”
7.–“ . . . . General Ku, in consultation with Chiang Kai-shek, decided that the New Fourth Army was a threat to this fiefdom. . . .”
8.–Taking a safer route—to avoid being sent to an area which would have fed them into a Japanese ambush, the New Fourth Army left key parts of its troops and support personnel behind.
9.–“ . . . . suddenly, early in January, 1941, General Ku fell upon it with a much greater force and massacred all but the headquarters contingent and its women cadres and nurses. All five thousand combat soldiers left behind as a guard were slain. According to survivors, the men of the headquarters staff were then butchered. The KMT general who had been commanding the New Fourth was arrested, while the CCP political commissar of the unit—who had escaped the 1927 Shanghai Massacre—was brutally murdered. Meanwhile the Communist nurses and women political cadres, many of them schoolgirls, were being and raped repeatedly by hundreds of soldiers. They were kept in army brothels near the attack site for a year and a half. The women contracted venereal diseases and some committed suicide, singly and with each other’s help. . . .”
10.–General Ku Chu‑t’ung was rewarded for this by Chiang, who made him commander-in-chief of al KMT armies.
The program then reviews General Ku Chu-t’ung’s collaboration with Kodama Yoshio and the Japanese to–among other things–re-sell them American Lend Lease goods that were flown Over the Hump or traveling via the equally perilous Burma Road.
T.V. Soong’s brother T.L. Soong was in charge of the Lend-Lease program to China during World War II.
The collaboration between the Japanese and the Kuomintang officer corps—who, it must be remembered, were also kingpins of the Green Gang criminal syndicate—was a consistent pattern. The KMT avoided fighting the Japanese whenever possible, and formed commercial relationships with the invaders: “ . . . . bartering American Lend-Lease materials for Japanese consumer goods. Fortunes were made. The only KMT armies that did fight were those under Stilwell’s control in Burma . . . .”
Embodying the corruption that was part and parcel to the Kuomintang military’s officer corps (minted at the Whampoa academy), was General T’ang En-po. In addition to his collaboration with the Japanese invaders, he viewed his military commission as license to steal and betray the men under his command, as well as China and the American and other Allies with which Chiang was officially arrayed.
Key points of discussion and analysis:
1.–General Tang En-po’s close association with the Ku brothers and the Green Gang.
2.–General Tang En-po’s role in blowing up the Yellow River dikes.
3.–His bartering of American Lend-Lease materials to the Japanese.
4.–His plundering of the peasants in areas under his military command.
5.–His theft of pay from the troops under his command.
6.–His army’s total capitulation to the Japanese when the invaders launched their Operation Ichigo offensive of 1944.
7.–General Tang En-po was rewarded by Chiang with the command of 14 KMT divisions comprising the Third Front Army.
8.–His cozy relationship with the Japanese who surrendered to his army at the war’s end.
Although the U.S. political leadership—as a whole—were blind to Chiang’s fascism, anti-democratic behavior and the institutionalized corruption of his regime, the same was not true of many U.S. fighting men.
One of Chiang’s detractors was a celebrated Marine Corps flier and member of Claire Chennault’s Flying Tigers named Gregory “Pappy” Boyington.
Boyington despised Chiang, Mme. Chiang and was loath to die in a P‑40 for someone he recognized as a tyrant.
When the Generalissimo and Mme. Chiang visited the base of the American Volunteer Corps (“The Flying Tigers”), Boyington and several of his fellow “Tigers” got liquored up and buzzed Chiang and wife, forcing both to “hit the deck.”
There was a prime-time TV series crafted on the template of Boyington’s Marine Corps squadron called “Ba, Ba Black Sheep” with the late Robert Conrad playing Pappy Boyington.
Among the vehement critics of Chiang Kai-shek and Mme. Chiang Kai-shek were U.S. flyers who had to make the run “Over the Hump”—the dangerous air supply route that crossed the Himalayas.
(As we have already seen, U.S. Lend Lease material that was flow through that route into China was often sold to the Japanese enemy by corrupt Kuomintang officers, politicians and Green Gang functionaries.)
Flying “Over the Hump” caused high casualties among Army Air Corps flyers, and when they discovered the luxury items that Mme. Chiang included in her personal baggage, they were outraged. That outrage found expression.
FTR#1200 The Narco-Fascism of Chiang Kai-shek and the Kuomintang, Part 7
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.
(Mr. Emory gets no money from said purchases of the book.)
The program begins with review of the structure of Chiang’s fascist infrastructure, his secret police cadres in particular.
Key points of analysis and discussion include:
1.–Chiang translated his admiration of Hitler and Mussolini into the most sincere form of flattery—imitation: “ . . . . Chiang believed that fascism stood on three legs—nationalism, absolute faith in the Maximum Leader, and the spartan militarization of the citizens. The New Life Movement [the chief promoter of which was Madame Chiang Kai-shek] was the popular manifestation of Chiang’s fascism—a toy for his wife and the missionaries—and it was comic enough not to be taken seriously by foreigners in general. The missionaries . . . . were now eagerly climbing aboard the New Life bandwagon. . . .”
2.–There were three overlapping organizational elements to Chiang’s fascist cadres—the Blue Shirts, the CBIS (Central Bureau of Investigation and Statistics) which was run by the Ch’en brothers and the MBIS (the Military Bureau of Investigation and Statistics which was run by Tai Li. Both Ch’en brothers and Tai Li were Green Gang associates of Chiang Kai-shek: “ . . . . Chiang’s fascination with Hitler resulted in the creation of a new secret society modeled on Hitler’s Brown Shirts and Mussolini’s Black Shirts. Chiang called his the Blue Shirts, though he denied their existence repeatedly. They were an offshoot of his two secret services, the party gestapo under the Ch’en brothers, and the military secret police under Tai Li. . . .”
3.–The CBIS was the Kuomintang’s secret political police: “ . . . . Chiang came to depend heavily on the two nephews of his Green Gang mentor . . . . Ch’en Ch’i‑mei. The older nephew, Ch’en Kuo-fu, who had organized and headed the drive that recruited seven thousand Green Gang youths for the Whampoa Military Academy had since then been given the responsibility of setting up a gestapo organization within the KMT. As head of the KMT’s Organization Department, his job was to purify the party and the Nanking government continually. To guarantee the loyalty of each party member, Ch’en Kuo-fu built a spy network that touched every government agency. To run this new apparatus, he selected his younger brother, Ch’en Li-fu [educated at the University of Pittsburgh in the U.S.—D.E.]. Both the Ch-en brothers were “blood brothers” of Chiang Kai-shek, having taken part in a Green Gang ceremony after the death of their uncle. . . . Li-fu . . . . became the director of Chiang’s secret service—the Central Bureau of Investigation and Statistics (CBIS), the euphemism chosen for the KMT’s political secret police. . . .”
4.–“China’s Himmler”—Tai Li—headed the MBIS: “ . . . . While the CBIS spied, conducted purges and political executions within the party, large-scale public terrorism was the province of its military counterpart the Military Bureau of Investigation and Statistics (MBIS) was run by “China’s Himmler,” Tai Li—for twenty years the most dreaded man in China. . . . Tai Li had spent his youth as a Green Gang aide to Big-eared Tu and was educated at Tu’s persona expense. In 1926, he was one of the Green Gang recruits enrolled at Whampoa Academy. . . . All clandestine operations in China, except those conducted by the Ch’ens, were his responsibility during the 1930’s. . . .”
5.–Supplementing and overlapping both CBIS and MBIS were the Blue Shirts: “ . . . . Both of these secret police organizations were supplemented by the Blue Shirts. Although it was a replica of the European fascist cults, the Blue Shirts also emulated Japan’s dreaded Black Dragon Society, the most militant secret cult of the Imperial Army. [The organization that helped spawn Kodama Yoshio—D.E.] The Blue Shirts job was to reform China the hard way, by knocking heads together, carrying out political assassinations, liquidating corrupt bureaucrats and “enemies of the state.” . . . . They were officered by old Green Gang classmates from Whampoa. . . .”
6.–Exemplifying the homicidal brutality of Chiang’s secret police cadres was the liquidation of six of China’s most important writers: “ . . . . The extreme was soon reached with the horrific end of six of China’s foremost writers, all followers of the leading literary figure of the [1911] revolution [led by Dr. Sun Yat-sen], Lu Hsun. . . . He [Chiang] ordered his secret police to arrest the writers. Lu Hsun eluded arrest but six young leaders of the group—including Feng Kung, China’s best-known woman writer—were taken into custody and forced to dig a large pit. They were tied hand and foot, thrown into the pit, and buried alive. . . .”
A fundamental dynamic of Chiang Kai-shek’s regime was his steadfast refusal to use his military forces to fight the invading Japanese. (Japan invaded Manchuria in 1931 and the Sino-Japanese War preceded—and then overlapped—World War II.)
Chiang and his forces frequently collaborated with the Japanese and “the Generalissimo” steadfastly refused to commit Kuomintang armies against them, preferring to husband his combatants for use against the Chinese Communists. (This ideological manifestation of Chiang’s dictatorship won him favor with the Axis powers, as well as dominant elements of the American power elite. As will be seen in future programs, Chiang’s stance led to the replacement of General Joseph Stilwell with Albert C. Wedemeyer as chief military adviser to the KMT.)
Chief among Chiang’s critics was T.V. Soong, who—correctly—forecast that Chiang’s military posture would propel the Chinese populace into alignment with the Chinese Communist Party whose fierce, successful military resistance to the Japanese was recognized as manifest patriotism.)
“ . . . . Shaken by what he had observed of the Japanese assault, T.V. Soong began to draw some dangerous conclusions. ‘If China is placed before the alternative of communism and Japanese militarism with its military domination, then China will choose communism.’ This rather daring statement, given during an interview with Karl H. von Wiegand in March, 1932, placed T.V. in direct opposition to Chiang Kai-shek. It was all the more iconoclastic for being made by a rich financier and Finance Minister. . . .”
T.V. Soong—in that same interview—noted that the Western powers had passively collaborated with the Japanese attacks on Manchuria and Shanghai: “ . . . . ‘The League [of Nations—D.E.] and the big powers looked on. They even permitted the International Settlement to be used as a base of operations. Can you be surprised that China would turn to Communism or Sovietism, if that were to unite the country, rather than submit to foreign military domination?’ . . . .”
We conclude with discussion of a major event in the history of Chiang Kai-shek’s conservation of his military resources to fight the Communists–what has become known as the Sian incident.
The Sian Incident was very important—though little recognized—event in the history of China: the “kidnapping” of Chiang Kai-shek by Kuomintang military officers who were intent on forming an anti-Japanese coalition called for by Madame Sun Yat-Sen (Dr. Sun Yat-sen’s widow and the former Ching-ling Soong.)
This became known as the Sian incident, named after the locale in which Chiang was taken into custody and held.
Inspired by the success of Mao Tse-Tung’s forces in fighting the Japanese, a mass student protest movement precipitated the call by Mme. Sun Yat-sen, which was put into action by “The Young Marshal,” Chang Hsueh-liang. He was supported in this by the forces of General Yang Hu-cheng. “ . . . . Meanwhile, Mao Tse-Tung’s Communist forces reached Yenan at the end of the Long March, and began rallying anti-Japanese nationalism to their side. To many students, the authentic heroism of the Red Army combined with this blunt stand against Tokyo was a siren call. On December 9, 1935, ten thousand Peking students demonstrated against Japan. The protest drew nationwide attention and Madame Sun Yat-sen emerged from seclusion in Shanghai to support the students by launching a National Salvation League. . . .”
Key points of analysis and discussion include:
1.–The Young Marshal’s return to China after kicking narcotics administered to him Tai-li’s secret police (this during a recuperative sojourn in Europe): “ . . . . When the Young Marshal returned to China in 1934„ he was transformed. Gone were the narcotics, and in their place was a tough new nationalism. He decided that China’s salvation lay in persuading Chiang to stand firm against Tokyo. He had long talks with T.V. Soong in Shanghai about how to engineer this, and T. V., who must have realized that a powerful military lever had fallen into his hands, burned the midnight oil with the dapper Manchurian general, exploring all possible maneuvers against Chiang . . . .”
2.–“ . . . . Early in 1936, the Young Marshal quietly instructed his troops on the frontier to stop shooting at red guerrillas. He had reached the conclusion that most of China’s Communists were driven into the arms of the CCP by the degradation of the country at the hands of Chiang and the foreign powers. Chinese, he decided, should no longer fight Chinese while the nation was being ravished by foreign invaders. . . .”
3.–The Young Marshal then met, and reached agreement with Chou En-Lai, later the Foreign Minister of China under Mao Tse-tung. “ . . . . That June, he met privately with Chou En-Lai to see if they could put aside differences and develop a joint strategy. He came away with his conviction reaffirmed that the answer lay in a united front He was good to his word. All military action halted, liaison was set up between their two headquarters, and bureaus of the National Salvation League were organized throughout northwestern China. . . . Word of this ‘treachery’ reached Chiang Kai-shek at Nanking. . . .”
4.–Chiang refused to join the nationalist coalition: “ . . . . When the Generalissimo arrived, the Young Marshal told Chiang that his anti-red campaign that his anti-red campaign should be scrapped and a united front formed with Mao Tse-Tung. The time had come for a patriotic war, not a civil war. Chiang hotly rejected the argument . . . .”
Chiang publicized his determination to continue with his anti-communist annihilation campaign: “ . . . . On December 4, 1936, the Generalissimo returned to Sian to announce that he was going ahead with the annihilation campaign, to begin on December 12. . . .”
5.–In combination with General Yang, the Young Marshal decided to take Chiang hostage and extract his consent to a nationalist coalition: “ . . . . At 5:30 in the morning of December 12—the day the new annihilation campaign was to begin—Chiang Kai-shek was staring out the back window of his bedroom at the mountain beyond the garden wall. In the darkness, four trucks loaded with 120 armed soldiers rumbled to a halt at the gates. The battalion commander in the lead truck demanded that the gates be opened. The sentries refused. The men in the trucks opened fire. . . .”
6.–Despite being taken captive, Chiang refused to form a nationalist coalition: “ . . . . At Sian, Chiang stubbornly resisted the Eight Demands. ‘He refused to turn our guns against the enemy,’ the Young Marshal explained in a public address to a huge crowd in a Sian park on December 16, ‘but reserved the for use against our own people.’ . . .”
7.–Eventually, Chiang grudgingly agreed to the coalition, apparently after T.V. Soong saw to it that Chiang got a significant amount of money. “ . . . . The Young Marshal gallantly accepted all blame for the Sian Incident, allowing Chiang to wash his hands in public and wipe them on him. (Interestingly he was put up at T.V. Soong’s home in Nanking.) He had done China a historic service by bringing about the long-sought united front, whatever its later failings. . . .”
7.–Chiang’s reluctant agreement was trumpeted by Henry Luce: “ . . . . He put them [Chiang and Mme. Chiang] on the cover of Time’s first issue of 1938 as ‘Man and Wife of the Year.’ May-ling Soong Chiang now became an even bigger international celebrity. . . .”
8.–As was his wont, Chiang broke his promise to the Young Marshal and General Yang. Lauded by Henry Luce and his associates as an Exemplary Christian, Chiang promised an amnesty on Good Friday—a promise he promptly broke. “ . . . . In his Good Friday message to China that spring of 1937, Chiang referred to the Sian Incident and said piously, ‘Remembering that Christ enjoined us to forgive those who sin against us until seventy times seven and upon their repentance, I felt that that they should be allowed to start life anew. . . .”
9.–Similar treatment was afforded General Yang: “ . . . . The Young Marshal’s co-conspirator, General Yang, despite the Good Friday amnesty, was imprisoned when he came back from European exile and languished for eleven years in one of Tai Li’s special detention camps near Chungking. His wife went on a hunger strike in protest and was allowed to starve herself to death. . . .”
FTR#1199 The Narco-Fascism of Chiang Kai-shek and the Kuomintang, Part 6
In this program we continue our analysis and historical discussion of Chiang Kai-shek’s narco-fascist government.
Encapsulating the nature of Chiang Kai-shek’s regime and the public relations personae constructed for it by the Soong family, Sterling Seagrave appropriately describes it as a “Trojan horse.” ” . . . . . . . . The Nanking government was quite simply a Trojan horse, painted in bright colors by the Soong clan [and Henry Luce—D.E.]. In its belly were hidden the generals, secret policemen, and Green Gang who actually wielded power in China. It was skillfully done, and one of T.V.’s major accomplishments. Americans, more so than other Westerners, were taken in. . . .”
Lionized as a successful tycoon and giant of international finance and commerce, T.V. Soong (who also served as Finance Minister and other cabinet posts for Chiang Kai-shek) was deeply involved with the Green Gang/Kuomintang narco-fascist operation: “. . . . Shanghai police reports indicate that in 1930, T.V. Soong personally arranged with Tu to deliver 700 cases of Persian opium to Shanghai under KMT military protection to supplement depleted Chinese stocks. All parties involved in setting up the shipment and protecting it during transit—including T.V.—received fees. . . .”
American publishing giant Henry Luce of Time, Inc. was the son of American missionaries in China, where he spent much of his youth.
His position toward China might be said to embody “the Missionary Position.”
A doctrinaire fascist himself, he saw the business tycoon as an American iteration of the fascist strongman, exemplified by his idol Benito Mussolini.
Luce’s portrayal of Chiang Kai-shek, Mme. Chiang and their regime are utterly fantastic in nature, bearing no relation whatsoever to the reality of the Kuomintang. Luce’s portrayal could be said to have set the template for coverage of Chiang’s regime in the U.S.
As we contemplate the coverage of contemporary China in this country, it is worth recalling the depth of deception in which our journalists have indulged.
Key points of analysis and discussion include:
1.–The influence of Henry Luce’s missionary parenting in China on his perspective on Chiang: “ . . . . ‘The trouble with Harry,’ observed the writer Laura Z. Hobson, wife of one of his classmates at Yale, ‘is that he’s torn between wanting to be a Chinese missionary like his parents and a Chinese warlord like Chiang Kai-shek.’ . . . .”
2.–Luce compromised: “ . . . . he could do the next best thing—he could adopt the Soongs and make Chiang over into a missionary-warlord. . . .”
3.–“ . . . . By the spring of 1933, when T.V. was ready to visit America, Luce was rapidly becoming the world’s most powerful publisher. With him [Luce] to take care of their public relations and image building in America, the Soongs, Chiangs and Kungs were in for a sensational ride. . . .”
4.–For Luce, T.V. Soong’s professional business persona manifested in the same manner as the fascist strongmen he idolized. “. . . . The business tycoon, Luce believed, was America’s answer to the need for fascism. . . . He found justice in the survival of the fittest, and saw quite clearly that a society build on greed was more dynamic than one based on charity. . . . ‘The moral force of Fascism,’ Luce pronounced, ‘appearing in totally different forms in different nations, may be the inspiration for the next general march of mankind.’. . .”
5.–For Luce, therefore, T.V. Soong served the same function as Mussolini: “. . . . Luce characterized T.V. as a cartoon super-tycoon. Luce had a soft spot for superheroes that enabled him practically to venerate Chiang Kai-shek. ‘The hero-worshipper in him,’ said his biographer W.A. Swanberg, ‘responded to the Fascist superman who could inspire the allegiance and cooperation of the masses. . . . He pointed to the success of Mussolini in revitalizing the aristocratic principle in Italy, ‘a state reborn by virtue of Fascist symbols, Fascist rank and hence Fascist enterprise.’ . . . . Luce admired strong regimes in which the ‘best people’ ruled for the good of all . . . . In Mussolini, he saw such greatness and in Fascism, such dramatic political innovations that he could not contain his excitement. . . .’”
Next, we examine the sordid, Machiavellian, kleptocratic nature of the Soong family.
Key points of discussion and analysis include:
1.–H.Kung (Chiang’s Finance Minister at the time and the brother-in-law of T.V. Soong) and his financial coup‑d’etat, realizing a takeover of much of China’s financial infrastructure and the banks comprising it. He did so in collaboration with T.V. Soong, his wife (the former Ai-ling Soong) and Green Gang kingpin Tu Yueh-sheng.
2.–The banking coup was representative of the dizzying corruption with which the Chiang/Tu/Soong axis dominated the Chinese economy: “ . . . . The Bank of China’s new board [of directors] was elected on March 30. Among the new directors were T.V. Soong, [his brother] T.L. Soong, and Big Eared Tu [Yueh-sheng]. When the Bank of Communications held its first meeting after the coup, T.L. Soong was on its board. Both T.V. and T. L. acquired seats on the board of the Central Bank. The Bank coup of March [1935] was followed by the methodical subversion of three other important Shanghai commercial banks that June. . . . All three banks were placed under the supervision of H.H. Kung’s Manufacturers’ Bank, on the board of which sat T.L. Soong, T.A. Soong, and T.V. Soong. Big-eared Tu became the new chairman of the board of the Commercial Bank. . . . The list went on and on, as bank after bank, then company after company, came under control of the clan. . . .”
3.–In addition to T.V. Soong’s younger brothers T.L. and T.A., the Green Gang hierarchy comprised another, vital component of the Kuomintang economic axis: “ . . . . L. was also the head of the Whampoo Conservancy Board with jurisdiction over Shanghai harbor, which was dominated by the Green Gang. Everything that happened on the waterfront was the business of Big-eared Tu’s man Ku Tsu-chuan. . . . Although it was not widely known, and certainly not talked about, this waterfront gangster was the older brother of one of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek’s senior military officers—General Ku Chu‑t’ung, who eventually rose to be chief of the general staff and, because of the New Fourth Army Incident, one of the most hated men in China. (We will say more about this topic later. It was highlighted in FTR#1142.) . . . .”
Having been born in 1949, I grew up with World War II as a critical element of my political, civic and cognitive upbringing. I vividly remember watching the documentary “Victory at Sea” on television as a child. As I have grown older, more knowledgeable and wiser, learning the truth about World War II has been very sad and painful.
In FTR #1095, we noted the historical background to the ongoing conflict with China–the brutal Japanese onslaught and the collaboration of Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang narco-dictatorship with Japan’s attack and occupation.
As a boy, I was awed and moved by the heroism of American and Allied service personnel who braved the dangers of flying over the Hump to bring U.S. supplies to Chiang Kai-shek’s forces. Although officially allied with the U.S., Chiang Kai-shek’s forces were actually working “both sides of the street.”
We have encountered nothing more grotesquely tragic and disillusioning than the awareness that American military supplies flown over the Hump and/or sent along the Burma Road found their way into the hands of the Japanese, courtesy of KMT general Ku Chu-tung and his organized crime brother.
Collaborating with Kodama Yoshio, the Japanese crime boss and Admiral of the Imperial Japanese Navy, the brothers swapped U.S. lend lease supplies for drugs.
In the passage below, it is important to note the role of the Black Dragon Society in the ascent of Kodama Yoshio. Black Dragon, along with Black Ocean, are key Japanese ultra-nationalist societies and the apparent forerunners of the Unification Church and, possibly the overlapping Shincheonji cult.
Kodama played a key role in the Unification Church, as discussed in FTR #‘s 291 and 970.
. . . . He [Kodama] was sprung from jail by [General] Doihara in April 1937, on the condition that he devoted his violent energies to looting China’s underworld. This epiphany, the transformation of Kodama from thug to super-patriot, was suggested by Black Dragon’s Toyama [Mitsuru], whose own stature as a patriot was affirmed in 1924 when he was a guest at Emperor Hirohito’s wedding. . . .
. . . . All proceeds were diverted from Chinese racketeers to Golden Lily, minus a handling charge for Kodama himself. Ultimately, Kodama was responsible to Prince Chichibu, and to the throne.
Princes were not equipped to deal with gangsters. Kodama saved them from soiling their hands. He converted narcotics into bullion by the simple method of trading heroin to gangsters for gold ingots. How brokers got the ingots was not his concern. He closed a deal with waterfront boss Ku Tsu-chuan to swap heroin for gold throughout the Yangtze Valley. Thanks to Ku’s brother, KMT senior general Ku Chu-tung, Japan also gained access to U.S. Lend-Lease supplies reaching western China by way of the Burma road, or on aircraft flying over the Hump from India. Once in warehouses in Kunming or Chungking, the Lend-Lease was re-sold to the Japanese Army, with Kodama as purchasing agent. . . .
T.L. Soong—T.V.’s younger brother: “ . . . . who had been in charge of Lend Lease during World II, and whose American roots were in New York City, became something of an enigma. Sources in Washington said T.L. worked as a secret consultant to the Treasury Department in the 1950’s, engaged in what they would not say. Treasury claims it has no record of a T.L. Soong whatever. . . .”
Next, we highlight the central role of German general Hans Von Seeckt in Chiang Kai-shek’s military campaign against the Chinese Communists.
Key points of analysis and discussion include:
1.–“ . . . . The military campaign . . . . was engineered for Chiang Kai-shek by one of the best-known strategists of Nazi Germany—General Hans von Seeckt. When Hitler came to power in 1933, Chiang asked for military help. Hitler sent von Seeckt and Lieutenant General Georg Wetzell. The Generalissimo’s determination to fight Communists, rather than Japanese, was to Hitler’s liking. . . .”
2.–Unsurprisingly, the von Seeckt-engineered campaign was a slaughter: “ . . . . [noted journalist] Edgar Snow said the Communists suffered 60,000 casualties, and that in all a million people were killed or starved to death. Of that million dead, therefore, at least 940,000 were not ‘Communist bandits.’ . . . .”
Chiang Kai-shek’s regime networked extensively with the fascist dictatorships of Europe. Commercial networking between Hitler, Mussolini and Chiang involved Kuomintang Finance Minister H.H. Kung and his wife, the former Ai-ling Soong.
Key points of analysis and discussion include:
1.–” . . . . The Kungs then sailed to Europe and the most important part of their trip, the booming German arms industry. H.H. arranged to purchase $25 million U.S. in weapons from Germany. Then, since fascism was fashionable, and his brother-in-law [Chiang Kai-shek] was one of its leading exponents, H. H. decided to visit Mussolini . . .”
2.–The Kungs’ mission to Italy was successful: “ . . . . When H.H. arrived, he cut a deal whereby the $2 million U.S. balance of Boxer [Rebellion] indemnities still owed to Italy would be used to buy Fiat war planes. Mussolini left it to his handsome, swarthy son-in-law, count Ciano, his Minister to China, to arrange the details. Italian assistance to the infant Chinese air force was expanded to include a school to train pilots at Loyang and a Fiat aircraft assembly plant in Nanchang. . . .”
3.–Chiang’s tactic of using his military to fight the Chinese Communists instead of the Japanese was viewed favorably by the Axis—Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and Imperial Japan. Not even T.V. Soong could influence Chiang to change strategy, one which Soong felt—correctly–would drive the Chinese people into the arms of the Communists. (Chiang’s anti-Communism was a major selling point used to cultivate support in the U.S.: “ . . . . While T.V. Soong was trying to persuade Chiang to forget the Chinese Communists and defend China against Japanese aggression, the Japanese, Germans, and Italians were all encouraging Chiang to love Japan and kill reds. . . .”
4.–Chiang’s fascist infatuation with Hitler’s Germany influenced his dispatching of his son to join the Wehrmacht: “ . . . . The Generalissimo daily became more enamored of the Nazi military and police state. Eventually, he sent his younger son, Wei-kuo, to be schooled by the Nazis. . . . (Wei-kuo became a second lieutenant in the 98th Jaeger Regiment and before returning to China took part in the invasion of Austria in 1938. . . .)
The program concludes by setting forth the structure of Chiang’s fascist infrastructure, his secret police cadres in particular.
Key points of analysis and discussion include:
1.–Chiang translated his admiration of Hitler and Mussolini into the most sincere form of flattery—imitation: “ . . . . Chiang believed that fascism stood on three legs—nationalism, absolute faith in the Maximum Leader, and the spartan militarization of the citizens. The New Life Movement [the chief promoter of which was Madame Chiang Kai-shek] was the popular manifestation of Chiang’s fascism—a toy for his wife and the missionaries—and it was comic enough not to be taken seriously by foreigners in general. The missionaries . . . . were now eagerly climbing aboard the New Life bandwagon. . . .”
2.–There were three overlapping organizational elements to Chiang’s fascist cadres—the Blue Shirts, the CBIS (Central Bureau of Investigation and Statistics) which was run by the Ch’en brothers and the MBIS (the Military Bureau of Investigation and Statistics which was run by Tai Li. Both Ch’en brothers and Tai Li were Green Gang associates of Chiang Kai-shek: “ . . . . Chiang’s fascination with Hitler resulted in the creation of a new secret society modeled on Hitler’s Brown Shirts and Mussolini’s Black Shirts. Chiang called his the Blue Shirts, though he denied their existence repeatedly. They were an offshoot of his two secret services, the party gestapo under the Ch’en brothers, and the military secret police under Tai Li. . . .”
3.–The CBIS was the Kuomintang’s secret political police: “ . . . . Chiang came to depend heavily on the two nephews of his Green Gang mentor . . . . Ch’en Ch’i‑mei. The older nephew, Ch’en Kuo-fu, who had organized and headed the drive that recruited seven thousand Green Gang youths for the Whampoa Military Academy had since then been given the responsibility of setting up a gestapo organization within the KMT. As head of the KMT’s Organization Department, his job was to purify the party and the Nanking government continually. To guarantee the loyalty of each party member, Ch’en Kuo-fu built a spy network that touched every government agency. To run this new apparatus, he selected his younger brother, Ch’en Li-fu [educated at the University of Pittsburgh in the U.S.—D.E.]. Both the Ch-en brothers were “blood brothers” of Chiang Kai-shek, having taken part in a Green Gang ceremony after the death of their uncle. . . . Li-fu . . . . became the director of Chiang’s secret service—the Central Bureau of Investigation and Statistics (CBIS), the euphemism chosen for the KMT’s political secret police. . . .”
4.–“China’s Himmler”—Tai Li—headed the MBIS: “ . . . . While the CBIS spied, conducted purges and political executions within the party, large-scale public terrorism was the province of its military counterpart the Military Bureau of Investigation and Statistics (MBIS) was run by “China’s Himmler,” Tai Li—for twenty years the most dreaded man in China. . . . Tai Li had spent his youth as a Green Gang aide to Big-eared Tu and was educated at Tu’s persona expense. In 1926, he was one of the Green Gang recruits enrolled at Whampoa Academy. . . . All clandestine operations in China, except those conducted by the Ch’ens, were his responsibility during the 1930’s. . . .”
5.–Supplementing and overlapping both CBIS and MBIS were the Blue Shirts: “ . . . . Both of these secret police organizations were supplemented by the Blue Shirts. Although it was a replica of the European fascist cults, the Blue Shirts also emulated Japan’s dreaded Black Dragon Society, the most militant secret cult of the Imperial Army. [The organization that helped spawn Kodama Yoshio—D.E.] The Blue Shirts job was to reform China the hard way, by knocking heads together, carrying out political assassinations, liquidating corrupt bureaucrats and ‘enemies of the state.’ . . . . They were officered by old Green Gang classmates from Whampoa. . . .”
6.–Exemplifying the homicidal brutality of Chiang’s secret police cadres was the liquidation of six of China’s most important writers: “ . . . . The extreme was soon reached with the horrific end of six of China’s foremost writers, all followers of the leading literary figure of the [1911] revolution [led by Dr. Sun Yat-sen], Lu Hsun. . . . He [Chiang] ordered his secret police to arrest the writers. Lu Hsun eluded arrest but six young leaders of the group—including Feng Kung, China’s best-known woman writer—were taken into custody and forced to dig a large pit. They were tied hand and foot, thrown into the pit, and buried alive. . . .”
FTR#1198 The Narco-Fascism of Chiang Kai-shek and the Kuomintang, Part 5
Reviewing a summary analysis of Chiang Kai-shek’s narco-fascist regime by the brilliant Douglas Valentine, we cite key aspects of the Kuomintang’s operations.
Key points of discussion and analysis of this relationship include: The decisive role of the Green Gang of Shanghai crime lord Du (sometimes ‘Tu”) Yue-sheng in both financing Chiang’s forces and supplying muscle and intelligence to Tai Li, Chiang’s intelligence chief and interior minister, nicknamed “The Himmler of China;” the important role of Chiang’s drug traffic in supplying American t’ongs who, in turned, supplied the Mafia with their narcotics; the role of Chiang’s finance minister as Du Yue-sheng’s protector; the collaboration of Du and Chaing Kai-shek’s Kuomintang apparatus with the Japanese occupation government of Manchuria in the narcotics traffic; the role of Chaing’s head of Narcotics Control in supplying Chinese officials with drugs; the role of the Superintendent of Maritime Customs in Shanghai in supervising the trafficking of drugs to the U.S.; Du Yueh-sheng’s flight to Hong Kong after the Japanese occupation of Shanghai; Du’s collaboration with Hong Kong-based British financiers in selling drugs to the Chinese population; the deliberate deception on the part of Anslinger and kingpins in the US China Lobby, who knowingly misled the American public by blaming the U.S. drug traffic on the Communist Chinese; the narcotics kickbacks to U.S. China Lobby figures by Chiang’s dope trafficking infrastructure; the overlap of the Kuomintang dope trade with arms sales by China Lobby luminaries; the support of the CIA for Chiang’s narcotics traffic; the destruction of the career of Foreign Service officer John Service, who noted that “the Nationalists were totally dependent on opium and ‘incapable of solving China’s problems;’ ” the central role of Tai Li’s agents in the U.S. in framing John Service.
Another volume which will figure prominently in this series is Gold Warriors by Sterling and Peggy Seagrave.
We present a review of the book by the aforementioned Douglas Valentine.
An incisive, eloquent review and encapsulation of the book is provided by Doug Valentine, providing further insight into the political and historical memory of the Chinese government and resulting stance toward any pressure to be mounted against that nation by the U.S. and the West.
Of particular note is the detailed analysis of the Japanese development of occupied Manchuria as an epicenter of the opium traffic with which to enrich their operations and to help subjugate the Chinese. Chinese sensitivity to the Japanese, Kuomintang, American and British roles in using drugs to enslave the Chinese people is very much in the forefront of Japanese political consciousness.
” . . . . .They [the Japanese] build roads and create industries and, more importantly, they work with corrupt warlords and Chinese gangsters associated with Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang Party to transform Manchuria into a vast poppy field. By 1937 the Japanese and their gangster and Kuomintang associates are responsible for 90% of the world’s illicit narcotics. They turn Manchu emperor Pu Yi into an addict, and open thousands of opium dens as a way of suppressing the Chinese. . . .”
Far from being a peripheral political and economic consideration; the Golden Lily plunder is fundamental to postwar Western reality.
” . . . . The Seagraves conclude their exciting and excellent book by taking us down the Money Trail, and explaining, in layman’s terms, how the Gold Warriors have been able to cover their tracks. Emperor Hirohito, for example, worked directly with Pope Pius XII to launder money through the Vatican bank. In another instance, Japan’s Ministry of Finance produced gold certificates that were slightly different than ordinary Japanese bonds. The Seagraves interview persons defrauded in this scam, and other scams involving the Union Bank of Switzerland and Citibank. . . . ”
” . . . . the banks that maintain the US government’s stolen gold are above the law, and if they stonewall long enough, anyone trying to sue them will eventually fade away. The Seagraves asked the Treasury Department, Defense Department, and the CIA for records on Yamashita’s gold in 1987, but were told the records were exempt from release. During the 1990s, the records mysteriously went missing. Other records were destroyed in what the Seagraves caustically call ‘history laundering.’ . . . . .”
Key Points of Analysis and Discussion Include: Discussion of the war crimes committed by the Japanese against the Chinese; the roles of the Japanese army, the Japanese royal family and yakuza gangster Kodama Yoshio (later the CIA’s top contact in Japan and a key official with the Unification Church) in extracting the liquid wealth of China; the restoration of the Japanese fascists in the “new,” postwar Japanese government by Douglas MacArthur’s occupation forces; the fusion of the Golden Lily loot with Nazi World War II plunder to form the Black Eagle Trust; the use of the Golden Lily plunder to finance funds to reinforce the renascent fascists in Japan, to finance U.S. covert operations in the postwar period and to suppress political dissidence in Japan; the use of the M‑Fund to finance the Japanese Liberal Democratic Party and Richard Nixon’s transfer of control of that fund to the Japanese government in exchange for clandestine financial help in his 1960 election campaign; the use of Golden Lily loot by the U.S. to purchase the support of Pacific ally nations for the Vietnam War; the use of Golden Lily treasure by Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos; the suppression and criminal prosecution of individuals attempting to penetrate the elite, selective use of Golden Lily gold by the world’s large banks.
Encapsulating the nature of Chiang Kai-shek’s regime and the public relations personae constructed for it by the Soong family, Sterling Seagrave appropriately describes it as a “Trojan horse.” “. . . . The Nanking government was quite simply a Trojan horse, painted in bright colors by the Soong clan [and Henry Luce—D.E.]. In its belly were hidden the generals, secret policemen, and Green Gang who actually wielded power in China. It was skillfully done, and one of T.V.’s major accomplishments. Americans, more so than other Westerners, were taken in. . . .”
Next, we further chronicle the power political economics of the Chinese narcotics trafficking landscaping.
Key points of analysis and discussion include:
1.–Japan’s conquest of North China in the early 1930’s and the “narco-realpolitik” that Chiang Kai-shek realized. Chiang outlawed the importation of morphine and heroin and then concluded a treaty with the Japanese to purchase opium from them, preserving his government’s revenue from the opium trade.
2.–The superseding of the opium trade by the use of morphine and heroin by the Chinese.
3.–Western missionaries’ use of morphine to wean Chinese opium addicts off of opium: “ . . . . Morphine had been widely used by Western missionaries . . . . to cure Chinese opium addicts, so in China the drug became known as ‘Jesus Opium.’ . . . .”
4.–China’s importation of heroin from Japan: “ . . . . By 1924, China was importing enough heroin from Japan each year to provide four strong doses of the drug to evert one of the nation’s 400 million inhabitants. . . .”
5.–Big-eared Tu (Tu Yueh-sheng) and the huge celebration he held to commemorate the inauguration of an ancestral temple in his native village. That temple became Tu’s largest heroin and morphine factory.
6.–Tu’s domination of the prolific Chinese heroin trade, marketing the drug in pills to be taken orally and pink tablets that could be smoked in a pipe.
7.–The “cutting” of heroin and how that necessitated intravenous use: “ . . . . In America it was necessary to inject heroin directly into the veins because the drug, by then, was so ruinously diluted by dealers in order to increase their profit margin; it was impossible to get an effect from the drug any other way. . . .”
8.–The spectacular roster of titles and honors bestowed upon Tu Yueh-sheng by commercial, financial, civic and medical institutions in Shanghai.
9.–Chiang Kai-shek’s promotion of the Green Gang leadership to the position of Major General in the Kuomintang Army: “ . . . . Chiang had made Big-eared Tu, Pockmarked Huang, and the third member of that Green Gang troika, Chang Hsiao-lin, ‘Honorary Advisors’ with the rank of Major General in the KMT army. . . .”
Next, we examine the role of the Green Gang, the Kuomintang and the interlocked Soong clan in the narcotics trade into the U.S.
Key points of analysis and discussion include:
1.–7/8ths of the world’s heroin supply came from China by the late 1940’s.
2.–Tu Yueh-sheng’s use of “bodyguards” and diplomatic immunity to facilitate the importing of heroin into the U.S. Under diplomatic cover, the baggage of these operatives was not inspected by
3.–The Green Gang/Tu Yueh-sheng/Kuomintang’s employment of the “bodyguard” of T.V. Soong, Chiang’s finance minister and the richest man in the world at one time. “ . . . . For many years, the person who filled this role with T.V. Soong was ‘Tommy’ Tong (Tong Hai-ong). He became Soong’s ‘bodyguard’ and ‘chauffeur’ and went along on T.V.’s foreign travels. . . . Tong was a major link to the U.S. heroin trade run by the crime syndicate of Charles “Lucky” Luciano. . . . Tommy Tong was later appointed China’s Chief of Customs for Shanghai which gave him the best of all covers for narcotics smuggling. . . .”
4.–Tu Yueh-sheng’s use of the mails to smuggle drugs.
5.–Tu Yueh-sheng’s conversion to Christianity, which, along with Chiang Kai-shek’s earlier taking up of the cross, became a major public relations selling point for the narco-fascist Green Gang/Kuomintang axis in the U.S. Henry Luce of Time Inc. was particularly moved by the Christian personae of the KMT kingpins.
6.–The pivotal role of both Ai-ling Soong (married to KMT Minister H.H. Kung) and Mae-ling Soong (Mme. Chiang Kai-shek) in the conversions of both Chiang and Big-Eared Tu.
The conversion to Christianity of Chiang Kai-shek is highlighted next. As illustrated below, Chiang’s Christian persona was a major selling point for publishing magnate Henry Luce, one of Chiang’s most important promoters.
Next, we set forth Luce’s beatification of Chiang Kai-shek in Life magazine: “ . . . . Chiang Kai-shek has heretofore shown himself a man of remarkable courage and resolution. . . . He is a converted Methodist who has now for solace the examples of tribulation in the Christian bible. . . .”
Lionized as a successful tycoon and giant of international finance and commerce, T.V. Soong (who also served as Finance Minister and other cabinet posts for Chiang Kai-shek) was deeply involved with the Green Gang/Kuomintang narco-fascist operation: “. . . . Shanghai police reports indicate that in 1930, T.V. Soong personally arranged with Tu to deliver 700 cases of Persian opium to Shanghai under KMT military protection to supplement depleted Chinese stocks. All parties involved in setting up the shipment and protecting it during transit—including T.V.—received fees. . . .”
FTR#1197 The Narco-Fascism of Chiang Kai-shek and the Kuomintang, Part 4
This program continues with discussion of the foundation of Chiang Kai-shek’s “narco-fascism,”–the opium and narcotics trade in China.
One cannot understand contemporary China and the political history of that country over the last couple of centuries without a comprehensive grasp of the effect of the Opium Wars on that nation and its people.
Indeed, one cannot grasp Chinese history and politics without an understanding of the narcotics trade’s central position in that country’s politics.
Key points of analysis and discussion of the Opium Wars include:
1.–The economic imperative for the conflicts were the trade imbalance between China and Britain: “ . . . . In the 18th century the demand for Chinese luxury goods (particularly silk, porcelain, and tea) created a trade imbalance between China and Britain. European silver flowed into Chinathrough the Canton System, which confined incoming foreign trade to the southern port city of Canton. . . .”
2.–To alter that dynamic, the British East India Company turned to the opium trade: “ . . . . To counter this imbalance, the British East India Company began to grow opium in Bengal and allowed private British merchants to sell opium to Chinese smugglers for illegal sale in China. The influx of narcotics reversed the Chinese trade surplus, drained the economy of silver, and increased the numbers of opium addicts inside the country, outcomes that seriously worried Chinese officials. . . .”
3.–The Chinese attempt at interdicting the opium trade was countered with force of arms: “ . . . . In 1839, the Daoguang Emperor, rejecting proposals to legalize and tax opium, appointed ViceroyLin Zexu to go to Canton to halt the opium trade completely.[8] Lin wrote an open letter to Queen Victoria, which she never saw, appealing to her moral responsibility to stop the opium trade.[9] Lin then resorted to using force in the western merchants’ enclave. He confiscated all supplies and ordered a blockade of foreign ships on the Pearl River. Lin also confiscated and destroyed a significant quantity of European opium.[10] The British government responded by dispatching a military force to China and in the ensuing conflict, the Royal Navy used its naval and gunnery power to inflict a series of decisive defeats on the Chinese Empire,[11] a tactic later referred to as gunboat diplomacy. . . .”
4.–Forced to sign the Treaty of Nanking, China experienced: “ . . . . In 1842, the Qing dynasty was forced to sign the Treaty of Nanking—the first of what the Chinese later called the unequal treaties—which granted an indemnity and extraterritoriality to British subjects in China . . . . The 1842 Treaty of Nanking not only opened the way for further opium trade, but ceded the territory of Hong Kong . . . . ”
5.–The trade imbalance between China and Britain worsened, and the expense of maintain new colonial territories—including Hong Kong (appropriated through the first Opium War)—led to the second Opium War. Note that the “extraterritoriality” granted to British subjects exempted them from Chinese law, including the official prohibition against opium trafficking: “ . . . . Despite the new ports available for trade under the Treaty of Nanking, by 1854 Britain’s imports from China had reached nine times their exports to the country. At the same time British imperial finances came under further pressure from the expense of administering the burgeoning colonies of Hong Kong and Singapore in addition to India. Only the latter’s opium could balance the deficit. [30]Along with various complaints about the treatment of British merchants in Chinese ports and the Qing government’s refusal to accept further foreign ambassadors, the relatively minor ‘Arrow Incident’ provided the pretext the British needed to once more resort to military force to ensure the opium kept flowing. . . . Matters quickly escalated and led to the Second Opium War . . . .”
6.–As a result of the Second Opium War, China was obliged to Cede No.1 District of Kowloon (south of present-day Boundary Street) to Britain; grant “freedom of religion,” which led to an influx of Western Missionaries, U.S. in particular; British ships were allowed to carry indentured Chinese to the Americas; legalization of the opium trade.”
7.–Fierce, eloquent condemnation of the Opium Wars was voiced by British Prime Minister Gladstone: “ . . . . The opium trade incurred intense enmity from the later British Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone.[34] As a member of Parliament, Gladstone called it ‘most infamous and atrocious’, referring to the opium trade between China and British India in particular.[35] Gladstone was fiercely against both of the Opium Wars, was ardently opposed to the British trade in opium to China, and denounced British violence against Chinese.[36] Gladstone lambasted it as ‘Palmerston’s Opium War’ and said that he felt ‘in dread of the judgments of God upon England for our national iniquity towards China’ in May 1840.[37] A famous speech was made by Gladstone in Parliament against the First Opium War.[38][39] Gladstone criticized it as ‘a war more unjust in its origin, a war more calculated in its progress to cover this country with permanent disgrace’. . . .”
Among the outgrowths of the Opium Wars was an end to the Qing dynasty’s ban on Chinese emigration and the resultant “coolie trade.”
The Chinese have a long-standing and deserved reputation as good workers. The U.S. and British embrace of the “coolie trade” permitted large numbers of Chinese laborers to be imported into the U.S., where they were widely employed in the silver mining industry and the railroads.
This led to widespread, deadly retaliation by the white establishment against Chinese workers, encouraged by the media and political establishments.
Beheadings, scalping, castration and cannibalism were among the deadly outgrowths of the White Terror against Chinese.
The violence was accompanied by legal restrictions on the immigration by Chinese into the U.S.
With opium having developed into a major scourge of Chinese society and legalized through the Second Opium War, the opium trade became the foundation for the ascent of the brilliant, charismatic, treacherous and altogether deadly Shanghai organized crime boss Tu Yueh-Sheng (“Big Eared Tu”).
Convincing Pockmarked Huang–leader of China’s Red Gang–to join with him in organizing the opium trade into a cartel, Big-Eared Tu consolidated and maximized the enormous profits of that trade into a power base that made him the most powerful figure in China.
He further augmented his influence by terrorizing the management of numerous commercial enterprises, while consolidating the workers of those firms into what became–in effect–Green Gang labor cadres.
Eventually, Tu brought a carousing buddy–the young Chiang Kai-shek–into his fold and made Chiang and his Kuomintang into a political front for the Green Gang’s vast criminal empire and its doctrinaire anti-Communism.
The latter became a key element of ideological affinity became Chiang’s Kuomintang and the U.S.
The Green Gang/Chiang Kai-shek/Kuomintang alliance also embraced the powerful Soong family, which gave that milieu tremendous gravitas with the U.S.
T.V. Soong, his brothers and–in particular–his sisters Ai-ling and Mae-ling Soong played dominant roles in both China and the US.
(Ai-ling married wealthy Chinese finance minister H.H. Kung and arranged for her sister Mae-ling to marry Chiang Kai-shek.)
Much more will be said about the members of this family later in this series of programs.
One of the principal vehicles for the Green Gang’s control of China was its successful infiltration of the Whampoa Military Academy, which gave that criminal syndicate decisive leverage over the Kuomintang Army.
That army’s leadership were simultaneously officers and leaders of the army and gangsters of the first order.
Much more will be said about the synthesis of the Green Gang and the Kuomintang army later in this series.
We conclude with review of research by the brilliant Douglas Valentine, presented in FTR#1095. Valentine’s analysis is a good synoptic view of Chiang’s regime.
In addition to the European colonization of China and Britain’s violent imposition of the opium drug trade through the Opium Wars, China’s political and historical memory is vividly animated by the drug-financed fascist dictatorship of Nationalist Chinese Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek. Dubbed “the Peanut” by General Joseph Stilwell during World War II, Chiang was compared by Stilwell (the chief American military adviser and liaison to the Kuomintang forces during World War II) to Mussolini.
Chiang’s entire government and brutal national security apparatus rested on the foundation of the narcotics traffic, as was well known by the US Commissioner Bureau of Narcotics, Harry Anslinger.
Key points of discussion and analysis of this relationship include: The decisive role of the Green Gang of Shanghai crime lord Du (sometimes ‘Tu”) Yue-sheng in both financing Chiang’s forces and supplying muscle and intelligence to Tai Li, Chiang’s intelligence chief and interior minister, nicknamed “The Himmler of China;” the important role of Chiang’s drug traffic in supplying American t’ongs who, in turned, supplied the Mafia with their narcotics; the role of Chiang’s finance minister as Du Yue-sheng’s protector; the collaboration of Du and Chaing Kai-shek’s Kuomintang apparatus with the Japanese occupation government of Manchuria in the narcotics traffic; the role of Chaing’s head of Narcotics Control in supplying Chinese officials with drugs; the role of the Superintendent of Maritime Customs in Shanghai in supervising the trafficking of drugs to the U.S.; Du Yueh-sheng’s flight to Hong Kong after the Japanese occupation of Shanghai; Du’s collaboration with Hong Kong-based British financiers in selling drugs to the Chinese population; the deliberate deception on the part of Anslinger and kingpins in the US China Lobby, who knowingly misled the American public by blaming the U.S. drug traffic on the Communist Chinese; the narcotics kickbacks to U.S. China Lobby figures by Chiang’s dope trafficking infrastructure; the overlap of the Kuomintang dope trade with arms sales by China Lobby luminaries; the support of the CIA for Chiang’s narcotics traffic; the destruction of the career of Foreign Service officer John Service, who noted that “the Nationalists were totally dependent on opium and ‘incapable of solving China’s problems;’ ” the central role of Tai Li’s agents in the U.S. in framing John Service.
Supplemental information about these topics is contained in AFA #11 and AFA #24.
FTR#1196 The Narco-Fascism of Chiang Kai-shek and the Kuomintang, Part 3
The program begins with discussion of two articles that frame the analysis of the New Cold War with China.
” . . . . ‘the political-economic system of the People’s Republic is precisely that what no one expects, in the West — where agitational reporting usually only confirms resentful clichés about China. . . .”
Much journalistic bloviating and diplomatic and military posturing in the U.S. has been devoted to China’s occupation of uninhabited atolls in the South China Sea and waters around China.
In addition to failure to understand this in the historical context of China’s experience during the Opium Wars and the conflict with the Japanese during World War II, the coverage in the West has omitted discussion of similar occupation and (in some cases) militarization of such islands in those waters by other countries in the region: ” . . . . Officially, Berlin justifies the frigate Bayern’s deployment to East Asia with its intention to promote the implementation of international law. This pertains particularly to conflicts over numerous islands and atolls in the South China Sea that are contested by the riparians and where China claims 28 of them and uses some militarily, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). According to CSIS, the Philippines control nine, Malaysia, five and Taiwan, one island, whereas Vietnam has established around 50 outposts of various sorts. All four countries also have a military presence on some of the islands and atolls they are occupying. . . .”
As noted in the German Foreign Policy article, the German (and U.S. and U.K.) position is blatantly hypocritical: ” . . . . The frigate Bayern, which set sail for East Asia yesterday, will soon make a port call at Diego Garcia, an island under occupation, in violation of international law, and serving military purposes. It is the main island of the Chagos Archipelago in the middle of the Indian Ocean and the site of a strategically important US military base. The Chagos Archipelago is an old British colonial possession that had once belonged to Mauritius. It was detached, in violation of international law, during the decolonization of Mauritius, to allow the United States to construct a military base. The population was deported to impoverished regions on Mauritius. In the meantime, several international court rulings have been handed down and a UN General Assembly resolution has been passed on this issue — all concluding that Mauritius has sovereignty over Diego Garcia and calling on the United Kingdom to hand back the illegally occupied Chagos Archipelago. To this day, London and Washington refuse to comply. . . .”
Another German Foreign Policy article sets forth many of Mr. Emory’s fears and observations concerning contemporary China and the U.S.
Among those concerns and fears:
1.–” . . . . the major shift in the global balance of power, shaping our present, with China’s rise and the USA seeking to hold the People’s Republic of China down, to preserve its global dominance. The consequences are a dangerous escalation of the conflict, which could lead to a Third World War. . . .”
2.–” . . . . At the beginning of the 19th century, the Middle Kingdom (China) — which had one-third of the world’s population — was still generating a third of the world’s economic output. Therefore, it was the world’s greatest economic power — as it had already been for many centuries. . . .”
3.–” . . . . China’s resurgence, following the devastation brought on particularly by the western colonial powers was possible, Baron explains, not least because ‘the political-economic system of the People’s Republic is precisely that what no one expects, in the West — where agitational reporting usually only confirms resentful clichés about China. It is ‘highly flexible, adventurous, and adaptable.’ Baron quotes Sebastian Heilmann and Elizabeth Perry, both experts on China, saying politics is explicitly understood as a ‘process of constant transformations and conflict management, with trial runs and ad hoc adaptations.’ The Chinese system is a far cry from being a rigid, inflexible authoritarianism. . . .”
4.–” . . . . Baron depicts the foreign policy the USA — at home increasingly decaying — has been indulging in since the end of the cold war: an extremely aggressive approach toward Russia, grueling wars — such as in Iraq — in addition to ‘regime change operations’ and unscrupulous extra-territorial sanctions. ‘The military-industrial-complex and the intelligence services (...) have seized an enormous amount of power,’ notes the publicist, and warns that only external aggression can hold the country together: ‘The conviction that America must be at the top in the world,’ is, at the moment, ‘almost the only thing that the deeply antagonistic Democrats and Republicans can still agree on.’ Baron speaks of ‘imperial arrogance.’ . . .”
5.–” . . . . ‘To defend its lost hegemonic position’ the United States ‘is not primarily seeking to regain its competitiveness,’ Baron observes, but rather it is striving ‘by any means and on all fronts, to prevent — or at least restrain — China’s progress.’ . . . . Ultimately, ‘the threat of a Third World War’ looms large. . . .”
One cannot understand contemporary China and the political history of that country over the last couple of centuries without a comprehensive grasp of the effect of the Opium Wars on that nation and its people.
Indeed, one cannot grasp Chinese history and politics without an understanding of the narcotics trade’s central position in that country’s politics.
A viable understanding of China’s past yields understanding of its present.
Key points of analysis and discussion of the Opium Wars include:
1.–The economic imperative for the conflicts were the trade imbalance between China and Britain: “ . . . . In the 18th century the demand for Chinese luxury goods (particularly silk, porcelain, and tea) created a trade imbalance between China and Britain. European silver flowed into China through the Canton System, which confined incoming foreign trade to the southern port city of Canton. . . .”
2.–To alter that dynamic, the British East India Company turned to the opium trade: “ . . . . To counter this imbalance, the British East India Company began to grow opium in Bengal and allowed private British merchants to sell opium to Chinese smugglers for illegal sale in China. The influx of narcotics reversed the Chinese trade surplus, drained the economy of silver, and increased the numbers of opium addicts inside the country, outcomes that seriously worried Chinese officials. . . .”
3.–The Chinese attempt at interdicting the opium trade was countered with force of arms: “ . . . . In 1839, the Daoguang Emperor, rejecting proposals to legalize and tax opium, appointed ViceroyLin Zexu to go to Canton to halt the opium trade completely.[8] Lin wrote an open letter to Queen Victoria, which she never saw, appealing to her moral responsibility to stop the opium trade.[9] Lin then resorted to using force in the western merchants’ enclave. He confiscated all supplies and ordered a blockade of foreign ships on the Pearl River. Lin also confiscated and destroyed a significant quantity of European opium.[10] The British government responded by dispatching a military force to China and in the ensuing conflict, the Royal Navy used its naval and gunnery power to inflict a series of decisive defeats on the Chinese Empire,[11] a tactic later referred to as gunboat diplomacy. . . .”
4.–Forced to sign the Treaty of Nanking, China experienced: “ . . . . In 1842, the Qing dynasty was forced to sign the Treaty of Nanking—the first of what the Chinese later called the unequal treaties—which granted an indemnity and extraterritoriality to British subjects in China . . . . The 1842 Treaty of Nanking not only opened the way for further opium trade, but ceded the territory of Hong Kong . . . . ”
5.–The trade imbalance between China and Britain worsened, and the expense of maintain new colonial territories—including Hong Kong (appropriated through the first Opium War)—led to the second Opium War. Note that the “extraterritoriality” granted to British subjects exempted them from Chinese law, including the official prohibition against opium trafficking: “ . . . . Despite the new ports available for trade under the Treaty of Nanking, by 1854 Britain’s imports from China had reached nine times their exports to the country. At the same time British imperial finances came under further pressure from the expense of administering the burgeoning colonies of Hong Kong and Singapore in addition to India. Only the latter’s opium could balance the deficit. [30]Along with various complaints about the treatment of British merchants in Chinese ports and the Qing government’s refusal to accept further foreign ambassadors, the relatively minor ‘Arrow Incident’ provided the pretext the British needed to once more resort to military force to ensure the opium kept flowing. . . . Matters quickly escalated and led to the Second Opium War . . . .”
6.–As a result of the Second Opium War, China was obliged to Cede No.1 District of Kowloon (south of present-day Boundary Street) to Britain; grant “freedom of religion,” which led to an influx of Western Missionaries, U.S. in particular; British ships were allowed to carry indentured Chinese to the Americas; legalization of the opium trade.”
7.–Fierce, eloquent condemnation of the Opium Wars was voiced by British Prime Minister Gladstone: “ . . . . The opium trade incurred intense enmity from the later British Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone.[34] As a member of Parliament, Gladstone called it ‘most infamous and atrocious’, referring to the opium trade between China and British India in particular.[35] Gladstone was fiercely against both of the Opium Wars, was ardently opposed to the British trade in opium to China, and denounced British violence against Chinese.[36] Gladstone lambasted it as ‘Palmerston’s Opium War’ and said that he felt ‘in dread of the judgments of God upon England for our national iniquity towards China’ in May 1840.[37] A famous speech was made by Gladstone in Parliament against the First Opium War.[38][39] Gladstone criticized it as ‘a war more unjust in its origin, a war more calculated in its progress to cover this country with permanent disgrace’. . . .”
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.
FTR BACK STORY
Even MORE Fun With Science: Earthquake Weaponry FTR #69: Tesla technology used by U.S. and U.S.S.R. to alter the weather and cause earthquakes. Read more »- Spitfire List is licensed under Creative Commons.
Recent Comments