Dear Editor,
I am a Chinese living and studying in the US. I like Sinorama very much because it extols traditional Chinese culture and is thus a source of pride for Chinese people overseas. However, there were two points in a recent article about the "Young Marshal" Zhang Xueliang and the Xi'an Incident which I found baffling:
The first was Mr. Su Deng-chi's assessment of Zhang Xueliang based on a "moral view of history." Su states: ". . . holding the position as commander-in-chief in charge of blockading the communist insurgency he held secret peace talks with the leaders of the CPC and negotiated a truce. This. . . does not stand up to argument morally." I do not accept this view.
In terms of traditional morality, both the CPC and the KMT were brother Chinese, and with the country facing a crisis of survival they should have joined forces to combat the aggressor together. If I had been Marshal Zhang Xueliang, when I heard that the Japanese army was killing our brothers, raping our sisters and committing other atrocities, I would not have obeyed the government's orders to go on pursuing the communists. In fact it was not just Zhang Xueliang who had the idea of joining forces with the communists against the Japanese. Many leading members of the KMT and other people of conscience shared the same view. Let us imagine for a moment that some country were to attack Taiwan today, at a time when Taiwan happened to be in the middle of an internal political crisis. Would you put aside your differences and resist the invaders? Or would you first let them invade, and wait until the internal political crisis was resolved before trying to drive them out?
As for whether the Xi'an Incident directly or indirectly helped the communists, so that they were finally able to gain political power, that is another matter. If the US had not used nuclear weapons against Japan, and the Japanese had continued to increase their forces in China, the communists might well have been wiped out by the Japanese. Can we, then, accuse the Americans of having immorally aided the communists?
The second point on which I disagree is Su's assertion that the Xi'an Incident "caused large numbers of the Northeast Army troops to defect to the communists, planting the seeds of the civil war and the eventual fall of the mainland to the communists." Zhang Xueliang should not be held responsible for this either, for history shows that that was the popular wish. Just think about it: At that time the communists had no artillery, and their soldiers wore grass sandals and ate wild plants. But they could still fight. Why?
Next, Su says: ". . . after the Communist Party of China had won power, if they had governed well [and] developed China. . . , then even if Zhang had acted traitoriously [and his actions] were morally flawed, the result of these actions would have been that China became rich and strong and he would still be a national hero. . . . However, this has not been the reality." Mainland China has many problems, from a lack of democracy to failed policies, but surely these are the problems of its communist government, and not the result of Zhang Xueliang having misjudged people all those years ago. Even without the Xi'an Incident, it is by no means certain that the communists would have been eradicated, and even if Chiang Kai-shek's government had been able to wipe them out, it is not certain either that it would have made a better job of ruling the mainland. After all, when was it that Taiwan finally began moving towards democracy?
The historical facts show that the communists were able to win political power because they first won people's hearts. Today, they are gradually losing popular support. In the end, people on the mainland will understand history and the present. If the PRC government were to order some general to lead forces against Taiwan, might this lead to a new "Xi'an Incident"?
Reviewer's response:
In theory, a country should be unified in the face of an external enemy. But when there are both external and internal threats, how should the government choose? Zhang Xueliang's strategy of cooperating with the communists was motivated by more factors than, and cannot be rationalized as, just resisting Japan. History must be understood through the circumstances as they existed at the time, and cannot be reassessed based on the situation today.
