Chapter 2: Showing Off Literary Skills, Father and Son Gain Special Favor; The Specialists in Electrical Engineering Are Traitors to Two Countries (1940–1956)
Jiang Zemin likes to give people the impression he is skilled at song and dance. He can play several musical instruments, among which are the piano, the erhu, and the guitar. Such is Jiang’s drive to show off musical ability that he often loses sight of propriety. One such occasion was March 30, 1999, the date on which Jiang visited Mozart’s hometown of Salzburg accompanied by the President of Austria, Thomas Klestil. The most valuable item in Mozart’s former residence was a Vienna piano that was purchased by the maestro himself in 1785. After the president introduced the 200-year-old antique, Jiang dashed to the piano, plopped down on its stool, and opened the piano, eager to play. Now, had he played some of Mozart’s representative works, such as Don Giovanni or Marriage of Figaro, the scene could have been read as one of fond reminiscence or even tribute. But Jiang, much to everyone’s surprise, started to play, rather inappropriately, a Chinese song—“Wave Upon Wave in the Honghu Lake.” [1] President Klestil, visibly uncomfortable, clearly wished not to let Jiang touch the maestro’s precious antique but was bound by diplomatic etiquette to stand aside. Jiang obliviously played on, casting all the while furtive glances at the several Chinese dames then present, hoping to win their admiration.Intoxicated by his own show of musical prowess—a spell that drove him even to play Mozart’s grand piano—Jiang hardly seemed to realize that in his antics was suggested the true history he shared with his father: two generations of treachery.
A family that could afford piano lessons, much less sending their child to a private high school and then Nanjing Central University, during the years of Wang Jingwei’s puppet regime (1940-1944) was anything but typical.
Jiang Zemin’s father, Jiang Shijun, went to seek refuge in Nanjing in 1940. At that time the puppet government was run by three magnates: Wang Jingwei, Chen Gongbo, and Zhou Fohai. Among the three, Chen Gongbo and Zhou Fohai had both been founders of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and members of the CCP’s 1st Congress; both had ranked higher in the CCP than even Mao Zedong.
When in 1940 Wang Jingwei set up the puppet Japanese government in Nanjing, he was in need of much manpower and a range of talents, from ministers to clerks. It was for this reason that brazen intellectuals, crooked merchants, jobless has-been politicians, and former officials swarmed to Wang. Wang’s Nanjing residence was crowded in those days with cars of every sort, from trendy streamlined 1940s models in gray, blue, red, or green, to old-fashioned black and white cars with a sleeping spot. Visitors came from luxurious mansions along the Qinhuai River, from Xuanwu Lake in Nanjing, from West Lake in Hangzhou, from Shanghai, Suzhou, Wuxi, and Yangzhou. They gathered in Nanjing from all directions, appearing almost out of nowhere. Thus it was that the dregs of society gained the upper hand and vied fiercely to get ahead, seizing the opportunity afforded by Wang’s regime. Shamelessly they curried favor with the powerful. Among them was an intellectual figure from the business community named Jiang Shijun.
Jiang Shijun was a slick opportunist who played to the rich and the powerful. In those years the invading Japanese army was strong militarily, attacking China in the northeast, due north, and center and pressing all the way to Shanghai, Wuhan, and Guangzhou. Soon afterwards Hong Kong, Manila, and the South Pacific islands fell in turn to Japan. While towards the end of 1941 Japanese Admiral Yamamoto Isoroku had wiped out the bulk of the United States’ naval fleet and air force in Pearl Harbor, the central government of Chinese Nationalist (KMT) leader Chiang Kai-shek was using old Hanyang rifles and broadswords to fight Japanese airplanes and tanks. Many Chinese believed that the loss of national independence was imminent and thus sought work with the invading Japanese. Meanwhile Jiang Shijun, ever the shrewd businessman, was busy taking precautions lest the KMT stage a comeback and someday defeat the Japanese; he feared his work for the Japanese could come back to haunt him. Thus reasoning, Jiang abandoned his original name in favor of the alias “Jiang Guanqian.”
Jiang Shijun single-handedly organized a so-called “Exhibition of Military Successes in the Pacific Region of the Great Crusade in East Asia” in which he applied the propaganda techniques he had learned and his knowledge of electrical engineering so as to depict, fully with sound and light effects, air and naval warfare between the U.S. and Japan. The scenes vividly simulated Japanese troops opening fire and downing U.S. planes, which landed with a crash. A huge oil painting—“Striking Pearl Harbor”—occupied an entire wall in the exhibition hall. In the painting battle clouds covered the sky as Zero Fighter planes dived down, took off, and landed like a swarm of mosquitoes, suggesting the Japanese army’s Bushido spirit and symbolizing the “permanent military power” the army enjoyed, having been blessed by the goddess Amaterasu Omikami. Through all of this the audience would be given the impression that the Japanese invaders were unconquerable and would forever occupy China; “annihilation” of the United Kingdom and “destruction” of the United States seemed just around the corner.
Jiang Shijun also learned to employ folk-style propaganda, and found in it means to falsely suggest peace and prosperity in the aftermath of, and so as to help people forget, the terrible Nanjing Massacre [2] of only a few years before. One telling example is how he reworked a Buddhist folk tradition, the Feast of All Souls Festival, for his own purposes. Jiang organized one year a grand version of the festival that had, as usual, lanterns floated on local waters, but with this time newspapers making much fanfare of the lotus lanterns and flowers floating atop the green waves of the Qinhuai River and Xuanwu Lake. Nanjing residents flocked to the shores and to the Temple of Confucius to enjoy the sight. Spectators taking in the scene unwittingly played into Jiang’s hand, being anaesthetized and thus misled, as it were, to the grim historical realities, so recent still, perpetrated at the hands of the Japanese regime.
The propaganda department Jiang Shijun headed composed popular songs for children, knowing full well that brainwashing should start with the young. Jiang thus used lyrics such as “The sword is as powerful as lightening, the spirit as lofty as the rainbow—let us fight for prosperity” to teach children that killing was acceptable and war a valid means to prosperity and power. Meanwhile, lyrics like “Traveling thousands of miles, the wind blowing fierce” sought to extol the invading Japanese army for having surmounted countless challenges while advancing into Asia and traveling so far, amidst adversity, while bravely sacrificing their lives for the “liberation” of East Asia. He published a children’s picture book, titled “A History of British and American Aggression Against China,” intending to stir up hatred toward the two nations while eulogizing the “Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere” [3] and promoting the idea of “Together make great efforts, people of Asia, to annihilate Britain and destroy America and meet with complete success.”
Jiang Zemin matured relatively early, one could say, following closely Jiang Shijun’s steps in his youth. And it was at an early age that Jiang Zemin learned from his father the tactics of brainwashing. With a nature predisposed to scheming, young Jiang quickly picked up his father’s tricks, even at the slightest hint. Today those lessons find expression in a CCP that has exhausted the nation’s resources so as to build up but four token cities—Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, and Guangzhou—which are marked, fittingly, by debauchery and the life of luxury and dissipation. Celebrity singers, movie stars, and star comedians have each gone on the air to pitch in, building up the “Grand Celebration of the Great Prosperous Era.” [4] But consider that the United Nations defines the standard of poverty as an average annual income less than US$365, or about 3,000 yuan a person. China, then, where the average annual income of some 900 million peasants is but a mere 2,620 yuan, has nearly 1 billion people living in poverty. And then there are roughly 30 million urban unemployed and their families. One wonders if these groups would themselves, were it not for the hunger they face, almost buy into the dazzling image of a prosperous China, so inundated they are (as Chinese) with this message. All of this traces back to the seeds of propaganda strategy sown early in Jiang Zemin by his fascist, traitor father. Seeds, that is, nurtured by the CCP’s foul waters and Jiang Zemin’s deadly knack for propaganda. Seeds that have, to the detriment of a people, with time matured, sprouted, and born fruit.
The special agents of the invading Japanese army were headed up by a general named Kenji Doihara, and his right-hand man was Ding Mocun. Ding had gained acceptance, and, in turn, his position, with the Japanese upon submitting a strategic “Plan for special agents in Shanghai.” He created a secret police headquarters at 76 Jessfield Road (now Wanhangdu Road) in Shanghai. Ding was the director of the facility, while Li Shiqun served as its deputy director. As early as 1939 Ding was a member of the Central Committee as well as the Central Standing Committee of the Nationalist party—a position equivalent to membership in the CCP Politburo. He was also Minister of the Department of Social Affairs in the puppet government, a position similar to a Minister of National Security with the CCP.
Jiang Shijun hoped much for his son’s success. He knew well that only those who had served as special agents, such as Ding Mocun, would be trusted or promoted in rank by the Japanese army and enjoy good prospects for the future. When Ding was looking for a location in which to rebuild Nanjing Central University on behalf of the puppet government, he was determined to prevent any students hostile toward Japan from being educated in a Japanese-run university. It was thus a top priority for Jiang Shijun to train some “specialized students” who could blend in with regular students and thereby monitor them; in this capacity they could spot any traces of anti-Japanese sentiment or activities and have arrested and removed those involved. It was in this vein that Jiang established the “Nanjing University Young Leaders Training Session.” Borrowing a page from the tactics of the invading Japanese army, Jiang selected youngsters from among the sons, daughters, and next-generation offspring of high-ranking officials. The training, begun from a young age, would enable the youths to handle calmly, almost by nature, any crisis that should arise and respond properly to any emerging issues. The traitors in the ministries and bureaus of the Wang Jingwei puppet government bent over backwards to place their children in the training sessions, knowing what the opportunity would mean for their futures.
Ding Mocun conducted four such training sessions with varying numbers of participants each time. Jiang Shijun seized the opportunity of the sessions and strongly made the case for his son, Jiang Zemin, to attend the training; his argument was that young Jiang was a special talent who was adept at espionage.
Interestingly, the special agents also took political classes alongside those courses providing training in technical subjects, effecting something of a brainwashing program. All special agents were forbidden from having any mainstream religious beliefs. Nietzsche, the man who once claimed “God is dead” and who did much to advance the cause of atheism, thus made for a perfect read and became part of the agents’ indoctrination. After Germany, Italy, and Japan formed the Axis Powers they exchanged information gathered on special agents. One finding was that Nietzsche’s depraved thought was considered “cutting edge” by those involved in espionage, being easily adapted to an agent’s evolving professional needs.
Jiang Zemin attended the fourth training session. The session was held under the auspices of Nanjing Central University and taught by professors familiar with the relevant subjects in conjunction with special agents. After completing the session a student would be admitted directly to Central University, and so it was that Jiang enrolled. Jiang chose electrical engineering as his major. The subject of course had something to do with his father’s hobby, but gained particular interest for Jiang in that his father’s “Exhibition of Military Successes in the Pacific Region of the Great Crusade in East Asia” had captured his imagination and held him rapt.
Jiang Zemin was not only exempted from paying tuition, but further received a stipend. He led an extravagant life in college, often visiting whorehouses with a band of shady friends who sucked up to the rich and powerful. Jiang grew corrupt early due to his capacity as a special agent, explaining, in part, why he visited, and easily knew how to find, prostitutes on his first business trip to the United States as Minister of the Electronics Industry. Such behavior was rather rare among minister-level officials at the time.
Students from the Young Leaders Training Sessions had a keen sense of things, and as such fled upon the surrender of the Japanese troops. Those who fell into the CCP’s hands became part-time teachers for the regime’s public security departments, teaching classes to public security officials on a regular basis. Similarly, Jiang Zemin himself taught a class for the CCP. Although Jiang’s “ability to do real things doesn’t match even that of the head of a small division in a local business,” as it has been put, he managed still to fool his adversaries, new and veteran alike, in the irregular Eighth Route Army [5] by means of artifice learned as a special agent.
In October 2003, a call was issued publicly for those with inside knowledge of Jiang Zemin’s past to furnish a photo, described as “a group photo of Li Shiqun and Jiang Zemin,” taken in June 1942. A witness to the photo said that it was taken when Li Shiqun met with members of the fourth of the Young Leaders (secret) Training Sessions that the puppet Central University had put together. Twenty-three people were present in the group photo. Jiang Zemin was the fifth person from the left in the second row.
Li Shiqun, the man who would later become Chief of Intelligence in Wang Jingwei’s puppet government, joined the CCP in 1924. On April 12, 1927, Li was sent by the CCP to the Soviet Union for training as a special agent. He returned to Shanghai at the end of 1928 and worked for the CCP’s Special Task Forces. In 1938 Li sought refuge with the invading Japanese army and took up work with them, creating the secret police headquarters known as “Agency No. 76.” The group photo from the Young Leaders Training Sessions with Li Shiqun is ironclad evidence that Jiang Zemin was a traitor to China and a spy. This facet of his past continues to haunt Jiang to this day.
With the surrender of Japan’s forces on Sept. 3, 1945, China began to recover the territory it had lost. On Sept. 26, 1945, the KMT government issued a document, “Screening Measures for Students Pursuing Higher Education in Reclaimed Regions,” to sanction investigation of students attending public colleges in the former Japanese-occupied territory. In October 1945, the Ministry of Education of the KMT government issued a directive that would fuse Shanghai Jiaotong University, Chongqing Jiaotong University, and Nanjing Central University into one university; the official site was to be the location of Shanghai Jiaotong University, in Xujiahui. Since six universities, of which two were Nanjing Central University and Shanghai Jiaotong University, were classified as “traitor puppet schools,” students there enrolled were classified as “puppet students” and to be investigated without exception. Jiang Zemin was thus among the “puppet students” suspected of treason and marked for investigation. Before he was to be examined, however, Jiang fled.
Jiang fled having seen what had happened to Chen Gongbo. Immediately following Japan’s formal surrender on Sept. 9, 1945, China’s representative He Yingqin asked Japan’s representative, Okamura Yasuji, to extradite Chen Gongbo to China for trial. Chen Gongbo was escorted back to China on Oct. 3.
Aware of the harsh treatment the KMT government gave traitors, father Jiang Shijun sensed that he himself was in imminent danger and thus discarded his pseudonym, Jiang Guanqian, and switched his identity back to Jiang Shijun—the businessman, engineer, and lover of literature. He returned to his hometown and lived in hiding for some time.
Jiang Zemin, meanwhile, had left school and run away. He roamed about before finally settling in a place named Mianhuaping, located in Yongxin of Jiangxi Province. Gone were the days of singing “Chinese Nights,” the decadent music and dance he had once enjoyed along the Qinhuai River, the special agent operating funds, and a coveted life of excess. Jiang lived in hunger and cold, homeless. Only later did a local peasant give Jiang a place to stay; he would remain there for over half a year, waiting for his family to come for him.
Before he eventually left the countryside, Jiang Zemin wrote down in an old medical book in the peasant’s home that, should he ever rise to power some day, he would certainly come back to visit. He signed his name. After becoming General Secretary of the CCP, Jiang on one occasion visited Jinggangshan mountain area. En route to Jinggangshan he stayed over in Yongxin for a day and made a point of visiting Mianhuaping. None of Jiang’s entourage knew why he was so familiar with such a small place or why even he wanted to visit there. In 1997 a descendant of that peasant found the signed medical book, much to his own astonishment. He proceeded to locate a relative of the wife of powerful CCP member Wei Jianxing, who was native to Yongxin, wishing to get advice on what to do with the book. In the end he was persuaded to leave it alone.
Around the time of Jiang’s flight from college, the underground Chinese Communist Party’s student committee in Shanghai exploited many students’ dissatisfaction with the investigations and roused the students in six universities to form a student union. In the half year from October 1945 to March 1946 (the half year, notably, that Jiang hid out in Mianhuaping), the underground CCP organized the students of the six universities to mount seven marches, deliver eight petitions, and hold many a press conference to which both Chinese and foreign reporters were invited. (One of the best known marches took place on Nov. 6, and was later thus called the “11-6 March” for short.) Meanwhile, students from institutions in Nanjing and Beijing (then called Beiping) classified as “puppet schools” were stirred up and led by the local underground CCP. They were driven time and again to take action. The students took to the streets to march and protest, and in so doing evoked widespread public response.
If Jiang Zemin had really participated in such dramatic movements, he would have, with his glib tongue, by now have stretched the experience into a self-glorifying TV series of at least 20 to 30 episodes. Yet Jiang has never so much as mentioned his involvement. The reason being, of course, that he in fact has nothing to boast about. Had he, long ago would he have spilled his story. He was in neither Nanjing nor Shanghai at the time. Rather, he was off hiding in a remote, unknown nook, waiting eagerly for the investigation to end.
In order to conceal this chapter of his personal history, Jiang Zemin later claimed that he had participated in an alleged 1943 student movement that was organized by the underground CCP. That is an outright lie—a lie meant to deceive the layman who lacks knowledge of the historical background. The truth is, in the Japanese-occupied territory there was never any student movement led by the underground CCP at any school. There were only secret, underground counter-Japanese activities. Only in those regions ruled by the KMT were there student movements; the movements called for the KMT government to resist the Japanese. It is more accurate to say that the CCP mobilized student movements in the KMT regions, with the aim of destroying Chiang Kai-shek’s reputation and hastening the downfall of both the KMT and the Japanese; the point was not to resist Japan.
In the areas occupied by the Japanese army, Chinese people were ruled over with cruelty and bloodshed. Any Chinese students or teachers who attempted to organize activities and assemble, march, protest, demonstrate, or strike against the Japanese or their puppet government, or to promote resistance, would immediately meet with ruthless suppression.
Jiang Zemin transferred to Shanghai Jiaotong University and has always avoided the topic of his time in Shanghai in 1948 after graduating from college. In Jiang’s résumé (as supplied by the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party) his graduation from college in 1947 is immediately followed by experiences after the CCP came to power in 1949.
But truth be told, Jiang worked for Americans and the KMT during that gap of time. In the CCP’s jargon, they were “the exploiters” and “the counter-revolutionaries.” Nobody, save for a few non-Chinese scholars, has dared to mention this fact about Jiang. Under CCP rule Jiang would never dare to speak of his brief collaboration with an enemy of Marx.
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The CCP army entered Shanghai in 1949. The food factory where Jiang Zemin worked was at that time renamed Yimin No. 1 Foodstuff Factory, and Jiang became an engineer affiliated with the CCP. The CCP cadre who made an inspection of the factory was Wang Daohan, the man who would later become known as the “Teacher of the Red Dynasty’s Emperor.” [6] Wang’s wife was the Chair of the board of directors of the food factory.Jiang, ever ready to flatter, naturally didn’t want to let pass by an opportunity to build connections with Wang. He first tried to draw close to Wang by drawing upon their common ground as alumni of Shanghai Jiaotong University. Once while chatting, Jiang happened to learn that Wang was formerly a subordinate of his uncle Jiang Shangqing and that Wang liked poetry. Jiang promptly stated that he was “Jiang Shangqing’s foster son,” playing his best card. He also recited a Su Dongpo poem, “Song of a River City,” in which the poet mourned his late wife. One line from the poem, “Ten years, dead and living dim and drawn apart,” evoked an emotional sigh from Wang, as Jiang Shangqing, for whom he retained much affection, was at that time 10 years deceased. Jiang Zemin’s tactical advance succeeded, scoring a major victory. Wang, being a sensible person, was grateful for Jiang Shangqing’s early guidance and support, and as such he believed Jiang Zemin’s words. He decided at once to promote Jiang Zemin. This boosted much the confidence Jiang had in his new family history. From that time on Wang Daohan would serve as a witness to Jiang’s pseudo-past; at least half of Jiang’s career path through officialdom was made for by Wang.
Being different from an ordinary cadre, Jiang Zemin had to carefully handle ties with four parties. He had to maintain good ties with his subordinates, lest someone level accusations or report on him. He had to maintain good ties with all higher authorities, lest someone have a bad impression of him and grow suspicious of his background. He also had to get closer to his direct supervisor’s husband—that is, Wang Daohan—and further build close ties with the Wang family. Lastly, it was crucial that Jiang continue to invest emotionally in the widow and family of CCP martyr Jiang Shangqing. Jiang Zemin thus flattered his “foster mother,” Wang Zhelan, all the more enthusiastically, even marrying Wang Zhelan’s niece—Wang Yeping—and having two children with her.
Wang Daohan promoted Jiang Zemin from assistant engineer at Yimin Foodstuff Factory to, first, deputy director at Shanghai Soap Factory, and then, later, to Chief of the electrical machinery section of Shanghai No. 2 Design Division of the First Ministry of Machinery Industry. In November 1954, Jiang was transferred to No. 1 Auto Manufacturing Works in Changchun City of Jilin Province. Jiang traveled in this capacity to Moscow to learn how to operate the factory’s power supply system, and resided in Changchun for four months to study Russian. In March 1955, he traveled to Moscow with 12 technical staff.
While at Moscow’s Stalin Automobile Works, Jiang Zemin sat routinely on a small stool in the controlling center and patiently operated power supply equipment. The equipment was in fact similar to the electrical equipment displayed in the “Exhibition of Military Successes in the Pacific Region of the Great Crusade in East Asia” of 12 years before, only the scale was much greater this time. Jiang Zemin had by this time developed a fondness for electrical machinery, a passion stemming from Jiang Guanqian’s (Jiang Shijun’s) affinity for electrical apparatuses. It was this penchant that brought Jiang Zemin as far as the Soviet Union. However, as a Chinese proverb has it, “If it is supposed to be a blessing, it will not become misfortune; if misfortune is supposed to happen, it cannot be avoided.”
In 1945 the Soviet Red Army entered northeast China via three routes. While searching the city of Changchun they found the complete files of Kenji Doihara’s special agent system; surely the files included documents and photos of the Young Leaders Training Sessions. The Soviet KGB knew they had stumbled upon a treasure. They realized full well the value of the documents. And it was, in fact, these very documents that spurred the process by which Russia later managed to annex huge areas of fertile land from China.
In the CCP’s large-scale campaign to “suppress counterrevolutionaries” from 1950–1953 and its subsequent campaign to “eliminate counterrevolutionaries” from 1955–1957, the traitor Li Shiqun was not found. He was said to have fled upon seeing, thanks to his training as a special agent in the Soviet Union, the imminent defeat of the Japanese troops. At the time Chen Gongbo had escaped to Japan. As Li was preparing his escape, he laughed to himself over Chen’s lack of judgment: if the Japanese forces were defeated, Chen would not be safe in Japan; should the Japanese forces win, what would have been the point of fleeing? After mulling over the matter, Li came to believe that the Soviet Union was his best option. Were the Japanese troops to fall, the Soviet Union would be the victor, after all; and neither KMT leader Chiang Kai-shek nor the CCP would break openly with the Soviet Union over an obsolete spy.
In 1955 Sino-Russian relations took a turn for the worse, despite an ostensible friendliness. Each began to train spies recruited from the adversary’s nation. Zhou Enlai [7] took up this practice even earlier, however. Zhou built up a friendship with a Russian couple, both of whom were medical doctors and refugees who had escaped to Shanghai during the Soviet Union’s red terror. At Zhou’s prompting the couple used the occasion of providing medical treatment to Soviet Union experts who were staying in China as a means to steal highly-classified information. In the end, both husband and wife sacrificed their lives for the CCP: Shanghai Red Guards beat the couple to death during the Cultural Revolution. The couple would not disclose their true identities, even in their final hour. They said that they could disclose them only to Zhou Enlai.
Young Russian women typically have pronounced noses and deep-set eyes, and these features, part of their striking beauty, combined with their at-times-flirtatious ways can give them the charm of a movie star. Hardly did Jiang Zemin have his wife in mind while in Russia, though she had shared his hard lot for some time. Instead he threw himself in the bosom of the beautiful Klava. He was simply enraptured with the company of a Western girl. Jiang Zemin’s many affairs are by now well-known, but this is a topic to take up in later chapters.
While Jiang was deeply immersed in his affair with Klava, on one occasion his Russian mistress whispered softly the name “Li Shiqun” in Jiang’s ear. Jiang was shocked beyond measure—how could she have known the connection? The KGB then quickly moved in while Jiang was off balance. They gave Jiang a sum of money, promised not to disclose his treacherous past, and assured him that he could continue to enjoy the company of Klava before returning to China. On one condition, that is: that Jiang join the Far East Bureau of the KGB and gather intelligence on Chinese students living in the Soviet Union as well as provide certain information regarding China.
And so it was that Jiang did, indeed, continue to work for the KGB upon returning to China from Moscow. The government of the Soviet Union kept its promise and didn’t make the same mistake as had Stalin in the 1950s when he betrayed Party official Gao Gang, then head of the CCP in northeastern China. Jiang Zemin’s KGB identity was never revealed.
In May 1991, Jiang Zemin visited the Soviet Union in his capacity as General Secretary of the CCP Central Committee. Of course, at that time little could Jiang have imagined that in but a few months the Soviet Union, the world’s first communist nation, would collapse overnight. At that time the Soviet Communist Party was riddled with crises, but, having formerly been so mighty, it still appeared gigantic, as in the Chinese idiom, “A camel that has starved to death is still larger than a horse.” Thus, the KGB still managed to check and find, in advance of his visit, record of Jiang’s love affair and spy experiences.
After the Soviet Union was dismantled Jiang dared even less to slight or to refuse Russia. Even just subtle hints dropped by Russian figures—be it Yeltsin or former KGB member Putin—proved enough to keep a nervous Jiang awake at night for days. This explains why even in the absence of the Soviet Union Jiang was every bit as quick to betray China as before.
The CCP has yet to investigate the experiences of Jiang Shijun and Jiang Zemin—two generations of traitors who collaborated with the Japanese forces. The reason is that the CCP loves, in fact, the Japanese and their invasion. Were it not for the Marco Polo Bridge Incident, [9] general Chiang Kai-shek would have wiped out the CCP sooner or later; were it not for the Mukden Incident, [10] in which Zhang Xueliang lost northeast China, the CCP would not have managed to instigate the critical Xi‘an Incident. [11] And it was Mao Zedong himself who said at the 1959 Lushan Plenum that the CCP’s task during the War of Resistance against Japan was to cooperate with the Japanese army by helping to attack soldiers and civilians that were opposing Japan, and to allow the Japanese army to occupy a greater share of China’s territory. As a result, the CCP was able to stay in those Japanese-occupied areas that were safely beyond the reach of the KMT, and continue with its Yan’an “rectification” movement, the planting of opium, and the expansion of its troops. Thus it was that the CCP’s suppression of “traitors” who worked for the Japanese was far less severe than its suppression of former KMT subordinates; the latter was bloody and merciless. When Mao Zedong met with Sasaki, Kuroda, and Saihaku from the Socialist Party of Japan, he stated that the CCP could not have seized power had the Japanese Imperial Army failed to invade more than half of China’s territory.
This sent Jiang Zemin deep into thought: never had he considered how to maintain power should it one day be in his possession. Again it would be the Soviet Communist Party that served as Jiang’s teacher.
In February 1956, at the Soviet Communist Party’s 20th congressional meeting, Khrushchev issued a confidential report in which Stalin’s monstrous crimes were systematically disclosed. The contents of the document spread quickly throughout the Soviet Union. The public was enraged upon learning that Stalin had slaughtered tens of millions of his own people. In no time the streets were littered with shredded images of Stalin and pulverized bronze statues once in his likeness. Stalin worship took a complete about-face. With this drastic turn of events Jiang came to realize ever more so how terrible it would be were his own past to be made known.
As the overthrow of the formerly-enshrined Stalin stood to remind the Chinese people of their own worship of Mao Zedong not so long before, the CCP grew to fear that Chinese people living in the Soviet Union would be negatively affected by this new turn of events. Political needs overrode all else. All Chinese then in the Soviet Union were thus, save for diplomatic envoys, ordered to return to China immediately. Jiang gleaned from these dramatic events that Stalin had managed to stay in power through suppression and deception until his death; that he had committed monstrous crimes was, at least during his lifetime, without consequence. The value of artifice and its devices thus emblazoned itself deeply in Jiang’s mind. Over and over Jiang pondered the matter.
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[1] A song from the modern Chinese opera, “The Red Guards of Honghu”; the piece was adapted from a popular Hubei province folk song and made to serve CCP purposes. [2] Also known as the Rape of Nanking, this refers to the atrocities perpetrated by the Japanese army in China’s Nanjing city in December of 1937. [3] An attempt by Japan to create a bloc of Asian nations that would supply raw materials to Japan and serve as a market for Japanese goods. [4] A reference to the thus-themed 2005 Spring Festival Gala hosted by China’s state-run China Central Television (CCTV). [5] A loosely-used term referring to the CCP. [6] “Red Dynasty” referring to the CCP, and “Emperor” referring to Jiang Zemin. [7] Zhou Enlai (1898–1976) was a leading CCP figure second in prominence to perhaps only Mao; from 1949 until his death he served as Premier of China. [8] Typical of Stalinist Russia was to have living quarters present on the grounds of large companies, such as industrial factories—a model followed soon after in communist China under Mao. [9] Also known as the “July 7th Incident,” this refers to a 1937 battle that took place near Beijing and that marked the beginning of China’s war with Japan. [10] Also know as the “Manchurian Incident,” this refers to a disputed 1931 railroad explosion in northern China that provided a pretext for Japan’s military to annex Manchuria. [11] Referring to the kidnapping of KMT leader Chiang Kai-shek in 1936, which had the effect of delaying the KMT’s war with the communists and forcing a temporary allegiance that would set both groups against the invading Japanese.
