893.00P.R./23
The Minister in China (MacMurray) to the Secretary of State
[Received September 13.]
Sir: In accordance with the Department’s instruction No. 78, of October 9, 1925, I have the honor to submit the following summary, with index, of events and conditions in China during July, 1929.
In May it was generally felt that the elimination as a factor in Chinese political life of Marshal Feng Yu-hsiang, the most important of the quasi-independent militarists, would not be accomplished by General Chiang Kai-shek without renewed civil warfare. During [Page 168] June, General Yen Hsi-shan’s allegedly altruistic project to go abroad with Marshal Feng, as an alternative to hostilities, took definite shape; and the trend in the negotiations entered into among the three leaders, and/or their representatives, was such as to foreshadow a peaceful solution of the problem of their rivalries along those lines. The negotiations reached a successful conclusion early in July in the form of a compromise involving on the one hand the cancellation of all punitive measures against Feng Yu-hsiang and on the other the postponement for three months of Yen’s and Feng’s trip abroad. During this period, General Yen, in theory replacing Marshal Feng as the commander of the Kuominchun, was to occupy himself with the reorganization of Shansi and Kuominchun forces under the control of the Central Government. The joint trip may be destined not to take place. The thought of it has never appealed to Chiang Kai-shek, as Yen’s departure in Feng’s company would place Chiang in the unfortunate position of seeming, alone among the three important militarists, to have clung to his position of power and authority at the risk of a civil war from which only Yen’s exertions as a peace-maker would have saved the country.
Before the happy outcome of this domestic matter could bear fruit in increased national tranquillity, another problem of even greater potentiality for trouble arose in the seizure of the Chinese Eastern Railway by the Manchurian authorities;48 so that by the end of the month familiar clouds of uncertainty had again formed on the political horizon.
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Conditions in Eastern Shantung
Due to the strained relations existing between General Chen Tiao-yuan, Chairman of the Shantung Provincial Government at Tsinan, representing the Provincial and Central Government, and General Liu Chen-nien, in control of eastern Shantung, July was for that area a period of uncertainty in which factional fighting, however, was avoided.
After negotiations with General Chiang Kai-shek, General Liu, on July 26th, took oath of allegiance as a member of the Shantung Provincial Government at Tsinan and from there telegraphed instructions to Chefoo that from August first all the Nanking and Tsinan Nationalist appointees to civil posts were to be permitted to assume chargé and that all revenues were to be remitted to the Central and Provincial capitals, respectively, from that date. In spite of this [Page 169] adjustment, the Consul at Chefoo indicated that it was not possible to entertain hope for definitive peace as long as the military regime of Liu Chen-nien persisted since no holder of a civil post would risk defying his orders or those of his followers.
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I have [etc.]