CHINA: The Ivory Tower

U.S. policy toward China had been stalled at dead center for nine months. Last January George Marshall’s parting advice, after 13 months in China, had called for major Chinese self-reform before any further U.S. assistance to the Chinese Government. When President Truman sent Lieut. General Albert C. Wedemeyer to China in Marshall’s footsteps this summer, the Chinese thought that the U.S. might be getting ready to act. But last week, U.S. policy still seemed stuck.

Names for a General. In Nanking, Chinese leaders turned over in their minds Wedemeyer’s parting advice:

“The existing Central Government can win and retain the undivided, enthusiastic support of the bulk of the Chinese people by removing incompetent and/or corrupt people who now occupy many positions of responsibility. . . . The Central Government will have to put into effect immediately drastic and far-reaching political and economic reforms. … It should be accepted that military force in itself will not eliminate Communism. . . .”

Chinese Communists, of course, were delighted. Shanghai’s Communist Newsletter offered a straight-faced explanation of Wedemeyer’s stern talk: “His name is pronounced wo-ti-mai-ya, which means ‘my stepfather.’ “Actually, the official transliteration stood for something many Chinese thought just as apt: “lofty surpassing virtue.”

Many Chinese officials believed that General Wedemeyer had spent too much of his month’s inspection trip talking with Government critics. Said Premier Chang Chun last week: “There were many things General Wedemeyer did not know and did not find out.” Premier Chang said that he himself had not been granted a really thorough interview with Wedemeyer.

The chairmen of 17 Shanghai business and industrial organizations sent a protest to President Truman: “We had no opportunity of presenting our views. . . . We have no intention to whitewash . . . but … it helps no one to adopt the pontifical attitude of the denizen of an ivory tower.”

Music for Cows. One man whose liberalism and incorruptibility was accepted by all non-Communist Americans in China was Dr. Hu Shih, president of the University of Peking and former Ambassador to the U.S. Last week Dr. Hu Shih said of the U.S.: “Don’t they see there’s a fire raging here, a fire they helped start?” The liberal president of the Legislative Yuan in Nanking, Sun Fo, scoffed at the Wedemeyer suggestion that Chinese Communists show their devotion to China by laying down their arms. Said Sun: “It’s like playing music before a cow.”

Prescription for Austerity. One man who publicly neither complained nor scoffed was Generalissimo Chiang Kaishek. Both the Government and the Kuomintang, he told the San Min Chu I Youth Corps, were suffering from “corruption and deterioration of spirit.”

In Nanking, the Government announced “thrift and austerity” decrees to save dwindling foreign exchange and increase efficiency. The Government payroll (on which, a Cabinet spokesman estimated, some 18 million Chinese, including Army and students, now depend) would be reduced immediately. Food, cloth, gasoline and newsprint would come under new rationing and conservation restrictions. The number of official banquets would be reduced, and official meetings would start on time.

The Government, from Chiang down, was at least trying to do what Marshall & Co. wanted. Official Washington, however, continued to judge China by standards of political morality higher than those applied to Greece, Turkey or Russia—to whom the U.S. gave billions without inquiring whether their officials were competent and politically pure.