From the Soongs to the Nicolsons
Back to my reading again.
The Soong family ran China, or were the figureheads for the criminal gang that ran China, from the 20s to the 40s. Chiang made it to Generalissimo partly because he had cut his teeth with the Green Gang at a young age, and partly because he married May-Ling Soong (and converted to Christianity). Ching-Ling, widow of Sun Yat Sen, was an important figurehead who was encouraged not to go far, but her sympathies were with the peasants, and eventually with the Communists. Big sister Ai Ling married a rich man, H.H. Kung, and helped him get even richer. The Soong brothers also got rich.
Much of the "Lend Lease" money from the U.S. that was intended to help fight the Japanese almost certainly went into the pockets of these people and their more subterranean allies. Chiang saw the peasants as either sheep to be plucked, or obstacles to be destroyed: he sacked or starved out more than one significant area of China. Did they cause the disappearance and murder of a lot of people, even those they had worked closely with, to maintain their own position? Sterling Seagrave suggests they probably did.
What concerns him most is that these people knew how to manipulate American public opinion, and keep the dollars flowing. May-Ling spoke English with an accent from the U.S. south (a bit like her father before her). She was heard to say there was nothing Chinese about her except her face. Yet for many magazine-reading Americans, the Soongs were the real China, nobly opposing both the bad old Communists and the Japanese.
This is a gloomy book. Even if the U.S. in some sense chose the wrong pony, what was the alternative? The idea seems to be, once again, that some of the Communists might have been quite moderate, and even held an election or two, if only the U.S. hadn't been so mean to them.
And didn't Chiang or his heirs eventually build something decent in Taiwan?
Meanwhile I've started Harold Nicolson's diary--abridged in one volume, with some stuff that didn't appear in the larger work.
Nicolson had a career as a diplomat, then as a literary person, then kind of in politics--he was probably seen as a dilettante in all these fields. He saw every Brit who was famous in the 30s socially.
His son says in an introduction that his father, unlike more famous and maybe greater diarists, lacked meanness. But there are some shots. Churchill comments on what it's like to tour the U.S.: "The difficulty of drink and food. One never got real food, only chicken." (Later Nicolson and his wife go on a speaking tour, and are served only water to drink--they are told this would be true even without Prohibition. Nicolson likes the health benefit, proving what a hippie he was compared to Churchill).
A large party gathers at Chequers, the PM's country place. PM Ramsay MacDonald is called away to London, and then rushes back. Already exhausted, he struggles to introduce the Prime Minister of Canada (R.B. Bennett), and then says "my brain is going." Those damn colonials; who the hell can remember them, anyway?
On the other hand, Nigel Nicolson, the son and editor, or a junior person who made up the index, mixes up two wives of Sir Oswald Mosley, the famous fascist. Lady Cynthia or Cimmie appears in the early pages, dies by p. 57, and yet is somehow back on p. 208. No, this is wife no. 2, Diana, one of the famous Mitfords.
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