Stilwell and the American Experience in China: 1911-1945

by Barbara W. Tuchman

Chou En-lai, second to Mao in the Communist hierarchy and its representative in Hankow, and with Yeh Chien-ying, the Communist Chief of Staff. He thought the Communists’ political demands for “liberation of military policy” and “mobilization of the masses” were “very vague—the usual slogans,” but personally, after visiting and dining with Chou En-lai and his entourage, he found them “uniformly frank, courteous, friendly and direct. In contrast to the fur-collared, spurred KMT new-style Napoleon—all pose and bumptiousness.” Handsome, cultivated and urbane, Chou En-lai was a favorite of foreigners. Yeh Chien-ying made the select category of “good egg, like most reds.” Talking to those intense and energetic men, pursuers of China’s old unsatisfied need of revolution and as yet uncorrupted by power, Stilwell realized the “wide chasm” between them and a man like General Liu. He felt sure that if China emerged from the war with Japan, “there will be trouble again internally.”