18 The Downfall of the Chiang Regime
On 10 August 1945, Chiang Kai-shek, in Chongqing, learned about Japan's willingness to surrender in an unusual way. Tokyo made the announcement in a broadcast in English. As May-ling was in New York, he had no English-speaker with him who could listen to the radio and monitor the news. (Such was the man's isolation.) According to his diary, at about 8 p.m., he heard loud cheers and then firecrackers in the American army HQ near his residence. He sent a messenger (a relative) over to ask ‘what is the noise about', and this was how the historic news reached the Supreme Commander China Theater.
Chiang's reaction was not euphoria but extreme tension. The moment had come for his showdown with Mao over who would rule China. Stalin had just sent 1.5 million troops into northern China along a huge front stretching more than 4,600 kilometres. The territory they occupied (eventually larger than the entire land under their occupation in central and eastern Europe) could be turned over to Mao's men if Chiang did not act immediately. Mao's army had been tiny before the war, but was now over 1 million, nearly a third the size of Chiang's forces. Chiang wanted to deploy troops at once. That evening, he was entertaining the Mexican ambassador, and he felt tremendous irritation because the ambassador kept on talking rather than leaving him alone to cable his commanders.
America wanted peace in China and compelled Chiang to invite Mao to Chongqing for peace talks. Mao had no wish to set foot in Chiang's territory, knowing well the Generalissimo's track record of assassinations. But Stalin wanted Mao to play the negotiation game: he was not sure that Mao could beat Chiang militarily. After Stalin cabled him three times ordering him to go, Mao reluctantly departed his base, Yenan, on 28 August. He flew to Chongqing in an American plane accompanied by Ambassador Hurley – the Americans had also guaranteed his safety. Chiang was pleased that Mao had ‘come as summoned', as he put it in his diary of 31 August. He wrote that it was his ‘moral authority and powerful aura' that had done the trick, in addition to ‘God's will'. He felt confident that he could handle Mao.
Chiang had sent a plane to New York to fly his wife back. May-ling did not want to come, telling Emma: ‘I don't feel ready to go, Emma. But my husband needs me in the coming crisis with the Communists. I hope and pray the country can avoid armed conflict and achieve national unity. I will miss you. And might never see you again. The Communists might “get” me.' The first lady seemed to be already anticipating defeat. Still, she arrived in Chongqing on 5 September. Chiang met her at the airport. There was no expression of any emotion in his diary about the reunion after fourteen months, quite unlike after her trips to the US before.
Chiang was, of course, preoccupied with his meeting with Mao. In Chongqing, the Communist leader went around exclaiming ‘Long live Generalissimo Chiang!', but he was determined to unseat Chiang through war. Indeed, he had planned an offensive against Chiang's forces just before his departure, which was being fought while he was in Chongqing in September and October. This battle, at Shangdang in Shanxi province, was the overture to the CCP–Nationalist civil war. Chiang, gearing up to defend his reign tooth and nail, poured his hatred of Mao into the pages of his diary. During the whole time that Mao was in Chongqing, he never invited Mao to meet May-ling. The Generalissimo clearly decided he did not want Mao to be the recipient of his wife's charm.
After Mao had been in Chongqing for nearly a month, Chiang felt unable to suffer his guest any longer, and took May-ling to Xichang, a remote region of Sichuan on the eastern edge of the Himalayas. This was the place he had earlier earmarked to be his next capital if Chongqing fell to the Japanese. An airport on a narrow stretch of flat land 6,000 feet above sea level had been prepared, and a cluster of houses built.
Chiang's abrupt departure sent Mao into a panic; he suspected this was the prelude to a hit job targeting him. He sent Zhou En-lai to ask the Russian embassy to let him stay there – and was angry when the request was denied. People around Chiang had indeed urged him to assassinate Mao; but Chiang decided against it, as he was afraid of losing American aid.
The Chiangs spent a week in Xichang, a place of strange beauty. Frequent earthquakes had torn apart the surrounding rocky mountains, which made the canyon walls look like giants' bared teeth. These savage-looking canyons cradled a lake, as still as an immense mirror. The Chiangs reclined on a boat under a crystal-clear high sky, basking in the dazzling sunshine and crisp fresh air, so different from humid and stifling Chongqing. In those seven days, Chiang let himself relax totally, not even shaving, which was unusal for him. After his return to Chongqing, on 10 October, he signed an agreement with Mao. Neither man intended to keep it, and both escalated the preparations for all-out war.
Mao started to issue battle orders as soon as he returned to Yenan on 11 October. His army was not only much smaller than Chiang's, it had not had the experience of fighting tough battles against the Japanese as Chiang's had. It had only won conflicts against weak regional Nationalist units. Now it was facing the cream of Chiang's battle-hardened, US-trained forces. Before long Mao found to his dismay that the performance of his army fell far short of his hopes, and that Stalin, who was giving him covert backing, seemed to be keeping his options open. After a series of blows, in late November 1945 Mao collapsed with a nervous breakdown and took to his bed with cold sweats and convulsions.
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While Mao was laid low, Chiang toured the country as the victorious war leader. When he entered cities like Beijing, Shanghai and his old capital Nanjing, ‘it was as if Julius Caesar were entering Rome', eyewitnesses observed. He was greeted by crowds numbering tens of thousands, hailed as the man who had won the war against Japan. The atmosphere was heady, and the Generalissimo revelled in his glory, evidently agreeing with the crowds that it was he who had beaten the Japanese. Standing tall and waving majestically, he gave every impression that he was ‘infallible like God', his personal pilot commented. Those in the know felt he was seriously deluded. But no one levelled with him.
In triumphant mood, Chiang treated himself to a new presidential aircraft: the state-of-the-art C-54. One of these had been chartered to carry May-ling and Ei-ling to Rio in 1944, and it had wowed everyone who saw it. Chiang now ordered one for himself, even though his personal plane, the C-47 that was a gift from President Truman, had been in service barely a year. The new carrier, named China–America, was fitted out under the supervision of people who knew the Chiangs' taste. The cost, $1.8 million, was met by a reluctant finance ministry. Those who thought this extravagance inappropriate, given the crisis they were facing, kept their own counsel.
As if taking their cue from their leader, Nationalist officials sent to take over ex-Japanese-occupied cities and towns indulged themselves with little restraint. They had suffered deprivation for years; now they grabbed houses, cars and other valuables. Anyone unfortunate enough to own things they coveted could be designated a ‘collaborator' and have their belongings confiscated. Regarding themselves as victors, these officials often treated the locals with open contempt and called them ‘slaves who have no country of their own' – simply because the locals had lived under foreign occupation. People in large parts of China who only days before had welcomed the Nationalists as ‘liberators' now cursed them as ‘robbers' and ‘locusts'. Within a very short time, the enthusiasm and admiration for Chiang Kai-shek and his regime evaporated, replaced by powerful disgust. ‘The calamity of victory' was how the influential Ta Kung Pao described the takeover. In terms of popularity, Chiang stood at the peak of glory only briefly before the plunge began.
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In the war itself, Chiang fared better. For more than a year, his army was winning on almost all fronts. The most critical theatre was Manchuria on the border with the Soviet Union – if the Communists seized it, they would be able to receive vital Russian arms and military training. In June 1946, Chiang's troops were on the verge of driving out the Reds, when the Generalissimo made a fatal mistake. He suspended his pursuit and ordered a ceasefire that lasted four months – under pressure from General George Marshall, who had come to China to try to stop the civil war. The ceasefire allowed Mao's army to establish a solid base larger than Germany on the borders with Russia and Russian satellites North Korea and Outer Mongolia.*1 It was able to take full advantage of Stalin's priceless all-round backing, including, critically, repair of railways, which ensured speedy transport of heavy weapons and large numbers of troops. Chiang's disastrous decision changed the outcome of the war. By spring 1947, the tide had turned.
Chiang made this and other fatal errors partly because he did not have a team to assist him in decision-making. Whereas Mao had two able assistants, the strategist Liu Shao-qi and the first-rate administrator and diplomat Zhou En-lai, Chiang's remained a stubbornly one-man show. At this stage, he did not even have the counsel of Big Sister as he had alienated her by firing her husband.
Chiang never consulted his new prime minister T.V. Soong on military matters, and put him in charge of the economy. But although T.V. was a graduate of economics from Harvard and Columbia, and despite the fact that he was an outstanding diplomat, the economy fared disastrously under him. He was faced with an impossible task: a mammoth civil war was raging. His personal flaws did not help. T.V. was a foreigner in his native land. He had spent most of his life either abroad or in a privileged cocoon at home, and had never attempted to be in touch with the average Chinese person. Although he had a strong sense of duty for the country, he knew little about the real China. His economic policies may have looked fine on paper but in practice were unworkable.
Instead of making an effort to redress his weaknesses, T.V. almost flaunted his wilfulness and hauteur. At the time of the Japanese surrender, Wellington Koo, Chinese ambassador to Britain, gave a big reception in London to celebrate. Among the guests were the then British prime minister Clement Attlee and foreign ministers from major countries including the US and Russia (Vyacheslav Molotov), who were in London for a conference. The entire diplomatic corps was there. T.V., prime minister of China, was in the embassy itself, but he declined to show up. Ambassador Koo and the Chinese foreign minister tried hard to persuade him to come downstairs, but he refused to budge, or even give his excuses. Ambassador Koo, an old-school gentleman and diplomat, had felt great exhilaration at the news of Japan's surrender and had at once ordered the Chinese flag to be hoisted outside the embassy. He wrote in his diary that ‘at last the moment to which I had been looking forward and about which I had dreamed and worked has arrived'. He could not fathom why T.V. was behaving this way and in his memoirs permitted himself to vent his exasperation by remarking that ‘It must have been considered a little awkward that Dr Soong stayed away.' A less restrained diplomat wrote sarcastically that the prime minister ‘must have been fatigued from working too hard'.
More significantly, T.V. lost faith in Chiang and his regime just a year or so into the civil war. On 29 December 1946, very seriously and with obvious emotional emphasis, he spoke his mind to US adviser John Beal and told him, ‘we are in a blind alley…This isn't like America, where you can say, “All right, let the Republicans run the country for a while.” The alternative here is Communism. If China collapses, the Communists will take over.' He began contemplating an alternative to Chiang and sounded out Beal about America's position on a possible ‘liberal bloc'. This did not come to anything. In early 1947, when public opinion called on him to resign as prime minister, he stepped down promptly.*2 He was posted to Canton as the provincial governor. There he held secret discussions with Chiang's Nationalist opponents based nearby who were plotting to oust Chiang. He ultimately balked at joining them because they planned to collaborate with Mao. ‘We cannot work with the Communists,' he said.
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Ei-ling was apprehensive about the outcome of the civil war from the beginning. Knowing Chiang Kai-shek well, she did not think he would succeed. By spring 1947, she was in such despair that she felt she was terminally ill. Cancer was suspected and, although doctors told her there was no sign of it, Ei-ling remained gripped by a sense of her own impending death. In June, she wrote a will-like letter to her Red Sister, who had moved back to Shanghai when the war against Japan ended, telling her how much she loved her, now more than ever. Ei-ling seemed to be expecting a Communist takeover, and envisaging that life under the Communists would be hard, even for Mme Sun, she was making material preparations for Red Sister. In her role as the ‘provider' for her sisters, a function she believed was assigned to her by God, she said she had asked May-ling's pilot, who was flying to Shanghai, to take a parcel of shampoo and other daily necessities, which she hoped would sustain Ching-ling for a long while. She told Ching-ling that every night as she lay in bed, the thought that preoccupied her was whether her dear sister had everything necessary to make her life comfortable and pleasant. ‘If something happens to me, please remember that I love you very much.' Her other messengers brought Red Sister eyebrow pencils, textiles, chic jackets, handbags and jewellery, including gold earrings. There were also treatment sprays that promoted hair growth. Big Sister asked Red Sister to let her know the moment she needed money.
Under Big Sister's influence, May-ling also saw the writing on the wall fairly early on. While Chiang was relishing his victory tours just after the war against Japan, May-ling felt weary rather than elated. She complained to Emma: ‘The last few months have been nothing but travel, travel, travel and then more travel. We have just come back from my second visit to Manchuria. It is strange that, in spite of all these years of air travel, I have never become immune to air sickness.'
She behaved very differently in this war than in the last. Then, she had toured the front, comforted the wounded, made passionate speeches and acted as a superb public relations figure. As John Beal recalled, ‘She had addressed Congress, she charmed everyone she met. She talked fluent English and discussed with senators and representatives the substance of war and post-war problems in social conversation. To Americans she was a live, gracious, magnetic presence.' Now Beal noticed that she did not wish to do anything. He talked to her on 1 July 1946 about ‘what a lousy press' her husband's government was getting. She agreed, but said immediately, ‘I know what you want me to do. You want me to be there [at Chiang's meeting with the press] and interpret. I did that during the war, and I'm tired of it, and I'm not going to do it any more.' Beal wrote in his diary that May-ling ‘went off in such a rush it rather surprised me, especially since I hadn't been thinking of that role for her, though it would have been a good touch'.
All Little Sister hankered for was ‘dear old New York', and her American friends were constantly in her thoughts. A letter to Emma was full of nostalgia: ‘Just imagine, about a year ago I was in New York and we were having such fun together.' Another urged Emma to write to her: ‘What are you doing and how are you getting along Write and tell me all the news.' She craved letters from her friend: ‘This is just a short note to tell you to keep on writing to me although, Heaven knows, I treat you badly enough by not answering you adequately.' In the thick of a bloody civil war, she busied herself with pretty gifts to her friends on the other side of the ocean: ‘I am sending you [Emma] a kimono and also some kimonos to various other friends. I am enclosing a list of their names. Will you please address them and have them mailed or delivered?…I am again imposing on your good nature, but you are always so good to me and so sweet about doing things for me, that I know you will not mind attending to this'; ‘I am sending a check for US$100.00 for the Alumnae Fund and the Class Reunion Fund. Please give it in whatever proportion you think suitable.'
May-ling did willingly perform one service for her husband. At the end of 1947, she invited Red Sister for an outing to the nearby beauty spot Hangzhou. There, strolling alongside the great peaceful lake, she asked Ching-ling frankly what the Communists' bottom line was for a settlement to stop the war. This straightforward question took Ching-ling aback. The sisters had always avoided talking about their political division. At the same time as doing her best to help Mao beat Chiang, Red Sister was sending delicacies like freshwater prawns to the Generalissimo's wife, who returned the gesture with ginger cake and cheese biscuits. She offered remedies for Ei-ling's eye trouble, and airmailed books to T.L.'s daughter – as if the raging battles all round them were irrelevant to their lives. May-ling's question brought home the stark reality. What was more, Ching-ling had been keeping up the pretence that she was an independent sympathiser, and not a member of what was to the rest of the Soongs an evil organisation. Now Little Sister's question signalled that the pretence was over; all Ching-ling's brothers and sisters knew that she was a key member of the organisation that set out to destroy them all. Hurriedly, Red sister replied, sticking to the same old make-believe, that she had nothing to do with the Communists and how could she know what their bottom line was? She left her sister and boarded the next train to Shanghai, where she immediately informed the CCP of the conversation between her and Little Sister. She did not want the party to think that she was doing deals with her family behind its back.
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For his wife to enquire about their enemy's bottom line revealed Chiang Kai-shek's desperation. Indeed, throughout 1947–8, he suffered a series of catastrophic defeats. His chief US military adviser, General David Barr, put the responsibility squarely on the Generalissimo. In his report to Washington on 18 November 1948, Barr commented: ‘no battle has been lost…due to lack of ammunition or equipment. Their military debacles in my opinion can all be attributed to the world's worst leadership and many other morale-destroying factors that lead to a complete loss of will to fight'. Most morale destroying of all were perhaps some spectacular and miraculous Communist victories in key battlegrounds such as Manchuria and the region where Mao's HQ was. Red moles, who had gained Chiang's trust and top army positions, delivered Chiang's troops to the Reds to be wiped out piecemeal and en masse. Chiang Kai-shek rarely trusted people, but when he did, his trust was sometimes fatally misplaced – which is a comment on his judgement.
In summer 1948, the Generalissimo started preparing to ‘move house' to Taiwan, the island of 36,000 square kilometres and a population of 6 million. He made a plan to extract as much gold, silver and hard currency as possible to take to Taiwan. The extraction went under the name of a ‘currency reform': everyone was told to exchange their liquid assets for a new paper money called the ‘gold yuan'. Failure to comply was punishable by death. While petty officials in the provinces went from door to door trying to scare people into parting with their life's savings, Chiang's son Ching-kuo was sent to Shanghai. There he blamed the raging hyperinflation and the general economic crisis on the business community, and ordered them to register all their assets. This was a prelude to confiscation. Businessmen who declined to cooperate were called ‘tigers', and in an operation called ‘tiger-beating', they were harassed, arrested and even executed.
To browbeat the businessmen into toeing the line, Ching-kuo arrested a son of one of the biggest Shanghai gangsters, Big-Eared Du. When the son's photograph appeared on the front page of the Nationalist mouthpiece, the Central Daily, Big-Eared Du took to his bed for days. He had considered himself a friend of the Generalissimo and did not think he deserved this. He resolved to fight back. Before long, the press began to expose the Yangtze Trading Corp., the company that belonged to Ei-ling's son, David. It was accused of hoarding imported goods illegally. The police raided and sealed off its warehouse. David faced heavy fines, even imprisonment. In truth, thanks to his insider connections and his mother's financial acumen, David had registered those goods (which were in any event only a fraction of his wealth), and so strictly speaking he broke no law. But public anger boiled over. Even the Central Daily condemned the ‘capitalists with state power', in language that was normally seen in Communist propaganda. Ching-kuo felt like being in the middle of a tornado. If he pressed on with getting people to hand over their possessions, he just had to make an example of his cousin. And he was inclined to do so.
David pleaded with his aunt May-ling, who was outraged. She summoned her husband, who was away inspecting the military front in the north. Her words and tone left no room for hesitation, and he flew to Shanghai at once. May-ling confronted him with what amounted to an ultimatum: she would be with the Kungs against him if he were to sacrifice them. The Generalissimo told his son not to touch David. Ching-kuo left Shanghai and the ‘tiger-beating' stopped. Ching-kuo's job was – and still is – portrayed as an anti-corruption operation by the Chiang father and son; it was in fact the Generalissimo's extortion spree. Thanks to May-ling's determination to protect her nephew, it petered out – and the middle class managed to keep what remained of their assets (for now; soon Mao took them all). But Chiang had extracted a lot, and this, together with the government gold reserves, tided the Nationalists over the initial period in Taiwan after they fled there.
To the general public, the ‘tiger-beating' anti-corruption drive had failed because of May-ling, and people turned their anger on her. In November, Chiang noted in his diary several times that ‘all the Nationalist party members', as well as society at large, blamed his wife and the Kungs and Soongs. He mentioned an attack on himself and his son, but hastened to add that this was ‘entirely because [we] were tarnished by association with Kung senior and junior'.
May-ling had already been devastated by the impending collapse of the regime. Now she was bitterly upset that everyone was pointing the finger at her family. It was particularly galling that her husband and his son were ready to make her family the scapegoats, even sending her nephew to jail. She confronted Chiang, sobbing and yelling uncontrollably, which startled Chiang as he had never seen her like this before. He tried to calm her down, but Little Sister was inconsolable. She could not wait to get away from him, from the accusations, and from the mess the country was in. On 28 November 1948, she left China for New York. She was prepared never to see her husband again.
As she would soon learn, President Truman held the same abysmal view of her family and herself. The president later told the writer Merle Miller that ‘any money we spent to support them [China]…a good deal of it would end up in the pockets of Chiang and the Madame and the Soong and Kung families. They're all thieves, every damn one of them.'
May-ling was convinced that her family was not the cause of the downfall of Chiang's regime. ‘Time and God will vindicate them,' she believed fervently.
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On 21 January 1949, Chiang Kai-shek was forced to resign as president in favour of Vice President Li Tsung-jen. He ‘retired' to his birthplace at Xikou. There, he stayed by the mountain-sized tomb that he had built for his mother. On 23 April, the Communist army took Nanjing, in effect ending twenty-two years of Nationalist rule over the mainland. On 19 May, Chiang reached Taiwan. During his last months on the mainland, Chiang was without his wife's company. He had repeatedly asked her to return. Her excuses ranged from the usual health issues to the need for her to keep working on Washington. Ching-kuo wrote and told her that his father was facing the gravest moment in his life and depended on her to support him. She replied: ‘I wish I could fly back like an arrow. But right now my return does not help the difficult situation. So I plan to stay here for a while. I am sure this will benefit the party and the country.'
During this period, Ching-kuo, approaching forty, was with his father daily. Father and son developed an extremely close bond. When May-ling suggested – rashly, as she would soon realise – that Ching-kuo come to America to brief her about the exact situation in China and discuss what she could do in America, Ching-kuo replied that he could not possibly leave his father alone. The father–son relationship grew to replace the Generalissimo's attachment to May-ling.
Chiang's telegrams to May-ling became distant and businesslike. Sensing her husband's coolness – and feeling guilty about not being by his side at this ‘crisis hour' – May-ling acted somewhat ingratiatingly towards him, something she had not done before. She eagerly expressed concern about his safety and well-being, reported her lobbying work in America, and ever so gently suggested that Chiang come to her and travel the world with her. Chiang absolutely refused to go abroad, and vowed to live or die in Taiwan. Almost bluntly, he told May-ling to join him there (‘On which day do you plan to leave for Taiwan?').
Ei-ling advised Little Sister not to go. She would ‘protest' whenever May-ling suggested leaving New York. To her, Chiang did not deserve their loyalty for all the outrage he had committed towards their family, in addition to his disastrous incompetence. But above all, Ei-ling cared about her sister and did not want to see her flying into almost certain death. The Communists were making plans to seize Taiwan, and, with Stalin's help, aided by the strategically placed moles on the island, they would quite likely succeed. As the Generalissimo refused to leave Taiwan, Ei-ling did not want Little Sister to die with him. And yet, she was painfully aware that for a wife to desert her husband in need was bad form. She must also have known that Chiang would never forgive May-ling if she left him – and that Little Sister could well come to share the fate of the many whom Chiang did not forgive. Usually assured about her own mind, Ei-ling was now unusually torn.
May-ling was in turmoil. She felt guilty about even entertaining the thought of leaving her husband at this juncture – and she knew this would hand the Communists a propaganda coup. If she deserted him, she would never be able to forgive herself. On 1 December 1949, Chiang cabled May-ling to say that he regretted not being able to celebrate their twenty-second wedding anniversary with her. The reference to their marriage seems to have opened a floodgate of memories for May-ling about her life with the Generalissimo. She remembered that ‘I had accompanied my husband on his campaigns. We had lived in mud huts, in railway stations, in trains, through the hot stony sandy formations of the Northwest, in primitive barracks, and in tents…I had started schools, orphanages, hospitals and opium-cure clinics…I had even gone into military service as Secretary General of the Air Force.' Her full and exciting life would never have been possible without her marriage to Chiang. She asked herself: ‘How could I let my husband face the greatest setback of his life without me at his side?'
She could not sleep and was unable to stay still during the day. She tried to talk to Ei-ling and clear her mind. Big Sister told her, ‘Keep on praying and be patient. I am certain He will open a way.' May-ling had been praying hard for months, and had come to feel that ‘my prayers had become somewhat mechanical and repetitious'. Still she persevered. ‘Then one morning at dawn, unaware whether I was asleep or awake, I heard a Voice – an ethereal Voice saying distinctly: “All is right.”'
This slight variation on Browning's line had occurred to May-ling before. In December 1936, when Chiang Kai-shek was kidnapped, she had flown to Xian to share his fate. On that occasion, Chiang had told her that God had signalled her arrival through a passage in the Bible he was reading. She had then interpreted this ‘remarkable thing' as God sending her husband the message: ‘All is right.' Speaking these words to her now, it seemed to her God was making a comparison with 1936 and telling her to go to her husband again.
‘Fully awakened by the words, I immediately rose and went to my sister's room. She looked up from her bed. She was not surprised by such an early visit because during those troublous days when I was beset with insomnia, I often disturbed her, day or night.' Ei-ling saw that May-ling's face was ‘radiant', and understood immediately. ‘I told her that I had heard God speak to me…[and] announced that I was going home by the first available plane, she helped me to pack. No longer did she protest.'
May-ling arrived in Taiwan on 13 January 1950. In his diary that day, Chiang wrote blandly and formally that after she had a rest, he ‘listened to [her] report' about her work in America.
However, the significance of May-ling's return soon sank in. The situation in Taiwan was critical: 2 million troops and civilians had fled with him from the mainland, flooding an island with only 6 million inhabitants. Taiwan was facing a big economic crisis. The US was standing aloof. There was no US ambassador, only a second secretary. The Communists had announced their determination to take Taiwan. Everyone thought the island would fall before long. Everyone was in a state of panic. And anyone who could leave was rushing to do so. And yet, May-ling flew the other way. This was a huge boost for the Nationalists' morale. When the news that she was coming leaked out, crowds made their way to the airport. The Generalissimo came to appreciate what his wife did. In his diary, he compared May-ling to legendary heroes who came to the rescue at the most dangerous moment.
*1 Chiang had recognised the ‘independence' of Outer Mongolia in January 1946, in the vain hope that Stalin would hand over Manchuria and other Soviet-occupied territory to him, rather than to Mao.
*2 There were allegations that T.V. massively looted the till. But compared to those against H.H., the charges lacked telling detail, and people in financial institutions generally refrained from making the accusation. Still, by his own account, T.V. was worth more than $5 million in 1943, and this had much to do with his privileged positions.