TWENTIETH CENTURY CHINA
By O. Edmund Clubb
Columbia University Press, New York, 1964,
470 pp., U.S.$7.95
Reviewed by Charles C. Clayton
In the foreword to this historical review of China in the first half of this century, the author emphasizes two conclusions that are already quite obvious. China, he avers, "shows a clear potential for again playing a major role in history." The Asian situation, he adds, "is one both of great complexity and great instability, and it is impossible to foresee the situation as it will exist in the year 2000." The moral of these observations is that the world, and particularly, the western world, needs to know more about Asian history and whatever lessons it can provide for the future.
Taiwan readers probably will disagree violently with some of Clubb's predictions, and perhaps with his version of some of the events of recent decades. Although this book was not completed until last September, subsequent events have altered the picture and underscore the hazards of historical prophecy. While it has been written primarily for American readers, it deserves attention in Taiwan, if for no other reason than to indicate some of the problems the Republic of China faces today.
The author is an old China hand. He served in the U.S. Foreign Service in China, Indo-China, and Manchuria for nearly 20 years and he was the last U.S. Consul General in Peiping. Since then he has lectured on Chinese history at Columbia University, New York University, and Brooklyn College.
In Part I, "Collapse of the Confucian Order", he traces the decline of the Manchu dynasty and the events which set the stage for its overthrow. Here he follows the conventional pattern and offers little that is new.
Part II, "The Nationalist Interregnum", covers the period from 1911 through World War II and the final stages of the Kuomintang-Communist struggle on the mainland. Here the author tends to adhere rather rigidly to the official American line of that period.
The final division is entitled "The Communist Era in China", and seeks to appraise the progress made under Mao Tse-tung. Here Clubb is more conservative than most recent writers in passing judgment on the shortcomings of the "Great Leap Forward". However, he concedes the serious failure of the agricultural program. With a population that threatens to reach one billion by 1980, he writes, "China's communes promise no more than a communization of hunger". Until China is able to feed its people at whatever population level, he adds, "it has a fundamental weakness—a true Achilles heel."
Clubb is inclined to discount the rift between Moscow and Peiping, in spite of the growing evidence to the contrary. He does not believe Russia will seek a defensive alliance with the West, and particularly not with the United States. If Moscow is forced to look for aid against Red China, he believes it will seek friends from countries in the "disputed zone", that is India, Japan or Indonesia. By the same token, he insists the nations most important to Red China are India, Japan and the new nations in the Malay archipelago. He warns, however, that the whole picture could change, if and when China becomes a nuclear power.
In the judgment of this reviewer the author is in greatest error in his evaluation of the Republic of China and the progress made in Taiwan. Clubb charges, for example, that the economy of Taiwan is far from self-sustaining, in spite of the more recent reports of American AID officials. He notes reports of a "secret" agreement with China's Communist leaders, and fails to take into account the latest political changes in the Nationalist cabinet. He suggests that the next stage of the so-called "Formosa problem" will take place at the United Nations, though he gives no hint as to the outcome.
His concluding paragraphs are interesting. "(Red) China," he writes, "is economically weak and it has left itself nowhere else to go for a more profitable economic cooperation ... (Red) China will, therefore, probably fit in with bloc plans for the present, so as to be able to borrow in the greatest measure possible the bloc's military, political and economic power."
This book represents an honest attempt to evaluate the weaknesses and strengths of Chinese Communism. One of its weaknesses is its lack of understanding of Taiwan. It ignores the significance of Taiwan in the Far East—a role which certainly has not escaped recent American visitors to Nationalist China. The fact is, as has been pointed out, Taiwan and the offshore islands are Asia's symbol of democratic freedom as much as West Berlin is a thorn in the side of the Soviet nations. Nationalist China is democracy's showcase in the Far East and at the same time the front line in the fight against Communism in Asia.
There is much to commend Clubb's history of modern China—if for no other reason than the fact that it emphasizes the need for better world understanding of Asia.
CHINA AND THE HELPING HAND
1937-1945
Arthur N. Young
Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass.
With appendices and notes, 477 pp., US$10.00
Reviewed by Geraldine Fitch
Dr. Arthur N. Young has been a financial adviser to the government of Mexico (1918), Honduras (1920-21), his own country (1922-28), China (1929-47) and Saudi Arabia (1951-52). With this experience, especially his 19 years in China, he is eminently qualified to analyze and appraise China's economic and financial policies and problems before, during, and after World War II.
China's disastrous inflation is the least understood of China's wartime and postwar problems. The author presents a great deal of new material throwing light on the problem, partly from his own records, partly because he has had access to the greater part of the Morgenthau diaries, to U.S. intelligence reports and foreign relations papers, the Henry Wallace and Wedemeyer reports, and the Finance and Commerce Weekly of Shanghai, as well as such books as F. F. Liu's Military History of China, Milovan Djilas' Conversations With Stalin, Chennault's Way of a Fighter, the official war records of S. W. Kirby for Great Britain and Romanus and Sunderland for America, and Takushiro Hattori's Complete History of the Greater East Asia War.
Had Dr. Young's book been available in the early postwar years (an impossibility, of course), it might have prevented America's desertion of the Republic of China during the crucial postwar struggle with the Chinese Communists, and certainly would have made for better American understanding of the war problems and the nature of the forces that finally overwhelmed war-weary China. It may go even now toward better understanding.
The author is eminently fair, criticizing both the Chinese and American authorities for ineptness, obstruction, and blunders in their wartime cooperation. This is one conclusion he reaches:
"Many Americans expected far too much of China. They did not sufficiently, appreciate China's exhaustion; the suffering inflicted by the Japanese armies; the disorganization caused by fighting the enemy alone for seven years; the inability to do much against a modern, mechanized army, without adequate equipment and training; possible subconscious reaction in China that American oil and scrap iron had helped Japan to fight China; the need to gird against the Communist threat; and the subtle but fundamental damage from inflation."
It is this last-named problem that the author deals with at greatest length.
Because of 1935 currency reforms, China's credit had never stood higher than when Japan attacked:
"But Japanese seizure of ports and territory raised difficult issues about the customs and salt revenues—on which regular payments on debts, both external and internal, depended. Maintenance of payments abroad involved paying in foreign currencies, while foreign assets were dwindling. It remained the firm policy of the government to meet her obligations arising from both foreign and domestic loans."
The first aid from America was Morgenthau's purchase of China's silver. Total purchases, including prewar amounts, carne to about US$252 million. On a silver basis, China could not have found a flexible method to finance a prolonged struggle, says Young, and resistance might have been a matter of months rather than of years. The second aid (other than Russia's) was the credit from France to build a railroad from the Indo-China border to Nanning, a veritable lifeline after the fall of Canton. The first small credits from the United States and Britain carne near the end of 1938 and could not be used "for implements of war or munitions". China's chief needs were for currency support and military purchases, especially planes. Britain made a credit of about US$23 million available in 1939, but it was delayed because the United States would not take parallel action. Young says China needed US$100 or $125 million more for currency support at that time. American aid for this purpose, finally promised in late 1940, was not available until August 18, 1941. The U.S. Treasury did not understand the importance of currency support to check inflation and retain the confidence of the Chinese people, and advocated exchange control. The delay was disastrous.
The author says the use of the American credit when it carne involved fault on both sides. China failed to pressure the well-to-do to subscribe dollar securities based on the US$500 million credit, instead of hoarding necessities. But the U.S. Treasury (specifically Harry Dexter White of Communist affiliation) blocked the sending of gold to China in violation of a written agreement with T. V. Soong that $200 million (of the $500) would be sent whenever China requested shipments of gold. China was handling gold sales well; the people liked to buy for emergency use (such as leaving occupied areas); the price was kept in line with the free market. Morgenthau wanted to help China, and thought there had been delay with an earlier $20 million only. When he learned that the United States was selling gold to help Russia, the Middle East, and India, and that China had been put off, despite the written agreement and the urgent cables from China, he was very angry. But the damage was done. The foot-dragging carne at a time inflation was growing dangerously in China, and when Japanese troops were seizing the East China airbases and threatening Chungking.
After Pearl Harbor when the United States began to help China with military aid and Lend Lease supplies, a controversy arose over the rate of settlement in American dollars for the Chinese currency, which kept the printing presses running to pay for labor and other local expenses of the American military in China. Roosevelt had promised Chiang at Cairo to pay these costs. China expected this to be at the official rate of 20-1, and was long in agreeing to any compromise. When Churchill persuaded Roosevelt to renege on another Cairo promise—of an amphibious landing in Burma to coincide with Chiang's land attack—China was resentful and rigid about the settlement rate. Chiang bad ample reason to feel badly let down, but the Chinese insistence on an unrealistic rate of settlement built up considerable ill-will on the part of the U.S. military in China and affected American attitudes after the war. Controversy about this time over the meager Lend Lease aid and other matters caused the removal of Stilwell, and Wedemeyer was sent to China. On the diplomatic side, Ambassador Gauss was replaced by Hurley.
Roosevelt thought having the big B-29s based in China to bomb Japan would go a long way toward making up for "no amphibious landing" and be "a spur to China's war effort". But the airfields for them near Chengtu were costly for America at the agreed rate, the American spending and waste aggravated inflation, and their operation took too much of the precious Hump tonnage. They did little significant damage to Japan, and their flights stung the Japanese into making the near-fatal attacks on East China bases. When the Chinese aided downed American fliers, Japanese reprisals on individuals and whole villages caused great suffering. Finally the big planes were withdrawn from China.
Dr. Young sums up his findings in eight points. Noting the inadequacy of planning for postwar arrangements, he says that in 1943 China proposed plans for postwar monetary arrangements but that these were ignored in Washington. It was the same shortsightedness that made America demobilize too quickly all over the world.
In another point, he writes:
"Time worked against China in the more than eight years of hostilities. Given the attitudes of China and her friends, Japan's defeat came too late to allow China to be saved from the consequences of long suffering and exhaustion, rampaging inflation, the errors of omission and commission by China and her allies, Russia's occupation of Manchuria, and the continuing aggression of the Chinese Communists."
Dr. Young ably describes the challenge of the Communists, and says: "Postwar charges that disloyalty of certain Americans was a major cause of the Nationalist downfall on the mainland" is too simple an explanation. He found serious foot-dragging in the U.S. Treasury on shipping the US$220 million in gold allocated to meet China's wartime monetary needs, and rightly lays this to White's "strong pro-Russia, anti-China bias." This reviewer feels that the author was less aware of obstruction in other departments. What of the export licenses held up by Michael Lee and others in the Commerce Department? Some urgent orders for ammunition were held up 15 months, others for 17. What of the 100 files of secret documents stolen from Naval Intelligence and the State Department for the pro-Communist Amerasia magazine? Or of military men like Brig. Gen. Carlson, first chairman of the subversive Committee for a Far Eastern Policy, whose program on China was identical to that of the Communist Party; of Alger Hiss and "the four Johns" in the State Department; and others in the OPA, the OWI, the FEA and other organizations of government?
The effective honeycombing of government and press was called by Korea's first foreign minister: "Russia's greatest victory to date—her propaganda victory in the USA that made Americans believe Nationalist China was not worth saving." Nonetheless, Dr. Young's book is the only authoritative non-technical analysis of China's financial problems. All interested in a more technical study will look forward to his forthcoming China's Wartime Finance, 1937-45.