While the Communists’ version traveled all over the world, other observations were sidetracked by friends that Moscow and the CCP had in America. Hemingway, who was in China just after the N4A Incident, made some sharp observations about the Reds: “… as good Communists they will attempt to expand their sphere of influence … no matter what territorial limits they may accept on paper.” Thanks to the Reds’ “excellent publicity,” he wrote, “America has an exaggerated idea of the part they have played in the war against Japan. Their part has been very considerable but that of the Central Government troops has been a hundred times greater.”
“Communists,” Hemingway noted, “in my experience in Spain, always try to give the impression that they are the only ones who really fight.”
Given Hemingway’s name, his assessment might have made a considerable impact on public opinion, but it did not see the light of day until 1965. He was dissuaded from publishing his views in 1941 by a Roosevelt aide called Lauchlin Currie, who told him “our policy was to discourage civil war.”
Currie, chief White House economic adviser, visited China right after the N4A Incident. US intercepts of Soviet intelligence traffic (Venona) name Currie as helping the Russians, and some consider that he was a Soviet agent. A judicious recent study of Roosevelt and intelligence describes Currie as “a manipulable sympathizer,” concluding that he was not a spy, but a “friend” of the Russians in the White House. On this trip to China, he certainly did the Reds sterling service. In Chongqing, he told Chiang that he had brought a verbal message from Roosevelt (as well as a written one). Currie opened the verbal message with this sentence: “It appears at ten thousand miles away that the Chinese Communists are what in our country we would call socialists. We like their attitude towards the peasants, towards women and towards Japan.”
In his report to Roosevelt, Currie mainly spoke ill of Chiang, and painted an extremely rosy picture of the Reds. He claimed that “the Communists have been the only party which has been able to attract mass support,” suggesting that this was the reason they had expanded. Currie gave Roosevelt the Communists’ version of the N4A crisis.
International pressure on Chiang was so strong that on 29 January he told his ambassador in Moscow to ask the Kremlin to intervene to help resolve the crisis with the Reds, effectively asking the Russians to dictate terms. Three days later, a jubilant Mao told his army chiefs: “No matter how hard Chiang Kai-shek tries to rebel, he can try this and that, but in the end will only get himself toppled.” Mao was using the word “rebel” as if Chiang were the outlaw and he himself already on the throne. Chiang acceded to Russian demands to let Mao’s men hang on to their territorial gains and stay in the heartland of China near Nanjing and Shanghai.
Mao had been quick to see how helpful Western journalists like Snow could be to his cause, but slow to appreciate how useful the British and American governments could be in tying Chiang’s hands. His hostility to both states had been extreme. On 25 October 1940 he had told his top brass how he hoped Britain could be occupied by the Nazis, and the Japanese would continue to occupy China: “the most difficult, most dangerous and darkest scenario,” he said, was Chiang “joining the AngloUS bloc”:
We must envisage this: that the Japanese are unable to take Singapore … which will be taken by the US navy; London does not fall … Japan surrenders to America; Japanese army leaves China; America finances and arms the pro-Anglo-American Chinese … It can’t be darker than this.
This scenario was to Mao worse than Japanese occupation. But all of a sudden there was a spectacular change in his attitude. On 6 November he wrote to Chou En-lai: “I have this morning just read the important intelligence in your cable of the 3rd. So Chiang joining the AngloUS bloc is only to our advantage … Let us oppose this no more … We must forge more links with Britain and America …”
Chou En-lai had clearly enlightened Mao about how useful the West could be to him. From now on, Chou devoted more energy to cultivating Westerners, particularly Americans. And his charm offensive intensified after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in December 1941 and America’s presence in China greatly increased.
ON 13 APRIL 1941 Russia signed a Neutrality Pact with Japan, which freed large numbers of Japanese troops to attack Southeast Asia and Pearl Harbor. But it did not include a carve-up of China between Russia and Japan. Mao did not get his Poland scenario.
