Made in China: Remembering the Young Marshal

Twenty years ago, on my first trip to China, my parents took us kids to the Huaqing Hot Spring near Xi'an. These were the baths of a famous Tang concubine, we were told. It seemed like just another in a long line of boring sights for a boy of 15 -- more gardens and tile-roofed pavilions, and an unimpressive marble- lined pool where a rather fleshy Precious Consort Yang once splashed about.

But the Huaqing Hot Springs had more recent and less frivolous claims to historical import, we were assured. The story my father told us then has stayed with me since. "This is the place," he said, pointing up at a cluster of buildings in the hillside, "where the 'Young Marshal' Chang Hsueh-liang arrested Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek in December 1936. Chiang Kai-shek ran naked from that pavilion up into those hills behind it, and even left his dentures behind. The Young Marshal's soldiers shouted up to him, 'Please, General, come down from there before you catch cold!' They finally caught him stuck in a crevice."

It was years before I understood the importance of those events: How Chiang's kidnapping in the "Xi'an Incident" led to a nominal alliance with the communists to resist Japan; thereby allowing the ragtag Reds to avoid annihilation by Chiang's Kuomintang (KMT) forces; to lay claim the mantle of Chinese nationalism during the war; and to defeat the KMT in the civil war that followed Japan's surrender.

Chang Hsueh-liang, the "Young Marshal" who ordered Chiang's kidnapping, died in Honolulu last week at the age of 100. He was 35 -- my present age -- when he staged the Xi'an Incident and changed the course of Chinese history. His one moment of historical greatness was followed by a long, quiet dénouement: He would spend most of his remaining years under house arrest, first on the mainland and then, after 1949, in Taiwan. He was formally released only in 1990, having earned the dubious distinction of being the world's longest-serving political prisoner. He emigrated to Hawaii a few years later, where he lived out the rest of his years.

Chang Hsueh-liang was the son of Chang Tso-lin, an illiterate bandit and opium smoker who rose to power in Manchuria during the turbulent Warlord Period of 1916-1928. The "Old Marshal" Chang Tso-lin was a power unto his own in the northeast, playing off rivalries between the Japanese, the Soviets and the Kuomintang. When he was assassinated by Japanese rightists in 1928, command of his 600,000-strong army passed to his son. The Young Marshal, now staunchly anti-Japanese, immediately threw in his lot with the Kuomintang and continued to rule Manchuria in the name of the nationalists.

Like his father before him, the Young Marshal was addicted to gambling and to opiates. He led a life of frivolity, and his penchant for dancing earned him the epithet of the "Dancing Despot." But after Japan seized Manchuria in 1931 and established the puppet kingdom of "Manchukuo," Chang Hsueh-liang found his calling and became a leading figure in the movement to resist Japan. Against Chiang's orders to stand down, his forces engaged the Japanese in a few desperate battles before withdrawing in defeat from Manchuria altogether in 1935.

Though chafing at the loss of his homeland, Chang was ordered to redirect his armies against the communists, who had established bases in Shaanxi Province after their famous Long March. "The Japanese are a disease of the skin; the communists are a disease of the heart," said Chiang Kai-shek famously. But in initial encounters, his communist adversaries impressed Chang -- as they would "Vinegar Joe" Stillwell and other American officers -- with their discipline, nationalism, and high morale. Prisoners taken by the Reds were given anti- Japanese propaganda, treated well, and released. Chang made up his mind to do what was necessary to form an alliance between the nationalists and communists to fight Japan. He flew in secret to the communist headquarters at Yan'an, where he signed a truce with the Reds, then prepared to snare Chiang Kai-shek in Xi'an.

During his two-week captivity, Chiang came to understand that public opinion overwhelmingly favored resistance to Japan. He was released unharmed -- his captors and the communists recognized that doing him in would ignite a political crisis that would only benefit Japan -- on the strength of a verbal commitment to ally with Mao's forces and yield no more territory to Japan. Chang gave up his own freedom when he granted Chiang Kai-shek his. But true to his word, Chiang did resist Japanese forces after the "Marco Polo Bridge" incident of June 1937. But in the popular mind, his credibility as a nationalist had been eroded; it had taken a kidnapping and a gun to his head to make him see the light. The perception, accurate or not, that the communists had been at the forefront of resistance to Japan was a critical factor in their rise to power.

Chang Hsueh-liang was one of those rare characters in 20th century China who is held in high esteem by Chinese on both sides of the Taiwan Strait. President Jiang Zemin in Beijing and his counterpart Chen Shui-bian in Taipei both sent condolences to his family, and he has been eulogized in the press from both the PRC and Taiwan. In a time when cross-Strait ties are beset by squabbles over Taipei's APEC delegation and a host of other issues, both sides would do well to take a moment to remember a man who did so much to unite Chinese of different political persuasions.