(4) Self-binding armistice negotiations
According to Truman’s policy statement on China, Marshall’s primary mission to China was to stop the Communist military confrontation and pave the way for the Political Consultative Conference and the integration of the army. Less than a month after his arrival in China, he brokered the first armistice agreement between the Communists and the Kuomintang, which became an instant legend. However, it was this first armistice that started the tragic journey of the Nationalist government, which wanted to fight but couldn’t stop, and was confronted by the enemy on both sides and struggled to make progress, and was eventually defeated.
After the negotiations in Chongqing, the communists abandoned political consultation and adjusted their strategy to overthrow the National Government to “develop to the north and defend to the south”, i.e. to control North China and compete with the government for the Northeast. Under the pretext of surrender, the Communists occupied cities and major transportation routes in northern China and seized weapons and resources. During the negotiation period in Chongqing, the Communist Party launched the Shangdang Campaign, followed by the Ping-Han Campaign, the Ping-Sui Campaign, and the Jin-Pu Campaign, in order to stall the national army by tangling and fighting with the surrendered national army.
In order to prevent the Nationalists from entering North China, the Communists sabotaged railroad traffic. According to the report of Ling Hongxun, Undersecretary of the Ministry of Communications, “most of the track sleepers were removed. The roadbed was also dug up and broken. The destruction of bridges was especially huge. Steel and cement construction of strong piers, were blown up, and poles are more flat sawed away.” Everywhere the Communists went, stations, platforms, all locomotives, vehicles, and running gear were completely destroyed. In fact, the government had enough reasons to destroy the communists just by destroying traffic. The prolonged paralysis of transportation was also a major cause of the subsequent economic collapse.
In the northeast, the Soviet Union, in response to the invitation of the Yalta agreement, declared war on Japan before The Japanese surrendered and invaded and occupied Manchuria in force. Taking advantage of the fact that the main forces of the Chinese Communist Party were far away in the Great Southwest, the Chinese Communist Party urgently deployed more than 100,000 bandits and bandit soldiers day and night, and swarmed into Manchuria by land and water, with the covert cooperation of the Soviet troops, to collect Japanese weapons, seize strategic locations, establish rebel bases and gain a few months’ head start. In addition, Chifeng and Duolun, which were part of the Jehol and Chahar provinces as a strategic link between North China and Northeast China, were also taken over by the Chinese Communist Party from the Soviets.
Before the Republic of China could catch its breath after the victory of the war, it was plunged into a national crisis caused by the CCP’s full-scale rebellion. Jiang Zhongzheng therefore decided to eliminate the Communist bandits militarily to eliminate future problems forever. Before Marshall’s arrival in China, he had issued mobilization orders to all the war zones, requesting the governors at all levels to follow the manuals for the suppression of the Communists and to encourage their subordinates to work hard to suppress them, and those who delayed and delayed would be punished by law. However, at that Time, he could not have imagined that the person who really delayed the national army and missed the opportunity to fight was none other than General Marshall from the Allied States.
Despite Truman’s statement that U.S. troops would not be directly involved in the civil war, the Communist Party had some initial concerns about Marshall, as the U.S. recognized and supported the Nationalist government and was helping to transport troops to the Northeast. However, the CCP soon discovered that they were overly concerned.
The first armistice was Marshall’s meet-and-greet gift to the Communists. The Nationalist government would have had no intention of negotiating an armistice with the Communists if the United States had not forced the issue. One side was the legitimate government and the other was a rebel group. At a time of national crisis, it was the government’s responsibility to defend the land and the people, and to eliminate violence. The armistice order was like a replica of the Munich Agreement in China, appeasing the communists and causing multiple specific injuries to the national government.
First, by forcibly restricting the government’s exercise of legitimate force, it disrupted the Nationalist government’s overall strategy of fighting the Communists and building the nation, and became the first rope by which the United States tied up its Anti-Communist allies. It was like forcing the police to make peace with the bandits, which amounted to connivance and encouragement of evil and sowed the seeds of America’s eventual loss of China.
Specifically, the Communists’ illegal bases in northern China were effectively protected, and their various crimes of terror and destruction could not be sanctioned by the government. Had it not been for the 50,000 U.S. Marines on guard at Qinhuangdao, Tianjin, Beiping, and Qingdao to assist the Nationalists in their surrender, all of North China would have fallen into the hands of the Communists.
Before the Armistice was issued, the Nationalist Army received sovereignty by force outside Guanzhou, while advancing westward along the Chengjin Line in an attempt to recover the important town of Chengde in Jehol, which was occupied by the communist rebels, in order to cut off the connection between the communists in North China and the Northeast. The Nationalist Army was in an offensive posture with the strength and morale of its victory in the war. The communists were in a weak position because they had not yet gained a firm foothold and were poorly trained. After the armistice came into effect, the superior force of the Nationalist Army came to an abrupt halt, and the planned battle plan was scrapped halfway.
The armistice negotiations themselves were also the result of unilateral concessions to the communists. The State Government had insisted on taking over Chifeng and Duolun, which had been assigned to the pseudo-Manchu and later controlled by the Soviet Army, and under the Treaty of Friendship and Alliance between China and the Soviet Union, the Soviet Union promised not to support the Communist Party and to transfer sovereignty to the government of the Republic of China. The state government would have been the justified party. However, Zhou Enlai refused and Marshall did not support it, and Chiang was forced to give up.
The second article of the armistice originally read, “All movements of troops in China and Manchuria shall cease; the Republic of China national army shall enter and move within Manchuria in order to re-establish the sovereignty of Manchuria, with the exception of the Republic of China.” However, Zhou Enlai objected to the formal provision giving the green light to the national army and changed it to “all movements of troops in China shall be stopped”, and the exception for the national army was moved to a note in the regulations. [17] This concession set the stage for the Communists to deceive the nation and discredit the government afterwards.
What is even more tragic is that the communists benefited from the armistice but did not comply with its provisions. More than a month after the armistice order was issued, they succeeded in ambushing the national army at Xiushuihezi in the northeast, leading to an escalation of the military conflict between the Communists and the Chinese in the northeast.
In fact, the Communists did not have a legitimate reason to fight the Nationalists for the Northeast; they had no so-called “liberated areas” there, nor were they qualified to receive sovereignty. But the Northeast was the ideal base for a communist insurgency. It was industrially developed, fertile, rich in natural and human resources, and especially strategically located, with the Soviet Union at its back, Korea and Outer Mongolia in close proximity, and with easy access to foreign aid, so that they could advance to the Central Plains and retreat to the Soviet Union. As a result, the communists ignored the armistice order and resisted the entry of the national army into the Northeast with arms. The National Government and Marshall disagreed on how to deal with this situation.
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