The USA’s decades long war against China

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Part I

The USA’s decades long warfare against China

by Robert S. Rodvik

In the first part of his study of the low-intensity warfare carried out by the United States against communist China since the Cold War, Robert S. Rodvik focuses on the U.S. collaboration with the nationalist government of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek. As a rabid anti-communist, Washington knew it could count on the Generalissimo to be more preoccupied with anti-Communist extermination campaigns than with resisting the Japanese invaders, and complicitly turned a blind eye to Chiang’s massacres and unbridled corruption.

Voltaire Network | Vancouver (Canada) | 7 January 2013

Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek (L) appointed Allied Commander-in-Chief in the China theater in 1942, with his very influential wife, and U.S. General Joseph Stilwell (R) who served as Chiang’s Chief of Staff, and at the same time commanded US forces in the China Burma India Theater.

For as long as I can remember the US has been waging an undeclared war against China, the latter very lucky to have avoided being nuked when it joined North Korea in its battle against the Empire. Considering that millions of North Koreans were wiped out by the bombing, killing, murdering giant, its land devastated by the marauding monster, the mere fact that the Joint Chiefs were unable to get the OK to nuke China seems a rare non-happening of great importance. This doesn’t mean, however, that the US hasn’t continued its covert wars to actually destroy communist China over the years. So don’t be surprised when that scenario actually comes into play; sooner, I believe, rather than later.

At the end of WWII writes William Blum, "The ink on the Japanese surrender treaty was hardly dry when the United States began to use the Japanese soldiers still in China alongside American troops in a joint effort against the Chinese communists." [1]

Blum was referring to US collaboration with Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek and his Kuomintang (KMT) nationalist army and their plans to repel Mao Tse-Tung’s communist soldiers, at war with the rampantly corrupt KMT. Chiang’s nationalist army hoarded US aid monies, arms and material to such a degree that President Truman wrote that "the Chiangs, the Kungs and the Soongs (were) all thieves" having stolen some $750 million dollars of US funds. [2]

To understand the role of the Generalissimo and the KMT in the long, tortured history of modern China we need to go back in time and examine Chiang’s monstrous role in the country’s development.

Dr. Sun Yat-sen was the respected leader of modern China and the early leader of the KMT. His death in 1924 led to a scramble for power, which, in turn, led to the head of the Green Gang triad, Big Eared Tu (Tu Yueh-sheng) succeeding Sun as leader. Tu was the undeniable head of opium trafficking in China and also the head of worker suppression for the Chinese elites and their foreign counterparts in the International Settlement who found labour turmoil as anathema to profit. In 1925 worker and student unrest was such that police from the International Settlement were called in and a British detachment "fired into the crowd killing twelve workers and wounding fifty others. This ‘May 30th Incident’ precipitated strikes, boycotts, and demonstations," [resulting in the further killing of fifty-two protestors in Canton] murdered by "French and British machine gunners." [3] Big Eared Tu and his close drug trafficking sidekick Chiang Kai-shek were on their way to controlling all of China.

In February 1927 yet another worker’s strike took place in Shanghai and along with them student supporters were passing out leaflets on city streets. As Sterling Seagrave informs us in his valuable book The Soong Dynasty, "Police and soldiers fell upon them, dragging them into the middle of streets and beheading them on the spot. In the presumed sanctuary of the International Settlement and French Concession, British, American and French police arrested students handing out leaflets, and expelled them from the barricades into the waiting arms of warlord soldiers—who immediately beheaded them. Two hundred were decapitated that day...In an act of calculated treachery, Chiang ordered his army vanguard [alleged rescuers] to stop twenty-five miles outside Shanghai...The man whose troops carried out these beheadings, Li Pao-chang, was rewarded by Chiang a few weeks later with the command of the Eighth Nationalist Army." [4]

By now the Western leaders of the International Settlement were closely aligned with Big Eared Tu and the Green Gang with the French Concession becoming the heart of China’s opium and heroin trade-all of which was controlled by Big-eared Tu, Chiang, and the Green Gang. As Seagrave writes, "Each month Big-eared Tu was realizing profits of $6,500,000 and passing $150,000 of this on to French government officials and concession police to guarantee a happy working relationship between the Concessionaires and the Green Gang." [5] It also helped that the chief of detectives of the narcotics police was Green Gang honcho Pockmarked Huang (Huang Chih-jung). By now Chiang was the undisputed leader of the drug-dealing killer triad, as ruthless as any hoodlum in written history. As Seagrave informs us, "Chiang’s police record in the British-administered International Settlement grew over the years to include murder, extortion, numerous armed robberies, and assorted other crimes. He was indicted on all the listed charges, but was never brought to trial, or jailed." [6]

Shanghai 1927: Chiang’s execution squad beheading a communist worker.

April 1927 soon became infamous with Chiang’s ‘White Terror’ slaughters of leftists and communists (massacres that would accompany Chiang throughout his murderous career). Throughout April more than 12,000 were killed in Shanghai alone. Two Chinese scholars write that, "In the year after 1927, over 300,000 people died across China in anti-communist suppression campaigns executed by the KMT." [7] Other researchers estimate the deaths being in the millions, mostly in the rural areas where communists and leftists had retreated from Chiang’s terror.

Publisher Henry Booth Luce of Life and Time magazine fame (later the leading light, along with wife Clare Booth Luce, of the ‘China Lobby’) became an early apologist of Chiang’s butcher gang and of Chiang himself. In its April 25 edition of Time, Luce would have Time declare that the Shanghai Massacre was merely an example of Chiang "impeaching" the leftists. [8] As Luce was equally a rabid anti-communist I believe it is accurate to say that he was fully informed of the Generalissimo’s Nazi-like operations and therefore, with his defense of Chiang, approved of the massacres undertaken by Chiang and his KMT armies.

Chiang, meanwhile, was extorting massive payments from all segments of society and T.V. Soong, Minister of Finance, was aware that virtually none of this money was going to the national treasury, most of it going into Chiang’s endless pockets. T.V. knew that he was "no match for a military man whose troops enjoyed disemboweling young girls and winding their intestines around their naked bodies while they were still conscious." [9]

The illicit partnership was consummated when T.V.’s sister Mei-ling (Madame Chiang) married the Generalissimo in a royal wedding in Shanghai. Chiang now had an inroad into the wealth of China via T.V.’s role as head of the Central Bank and Soong stood by helplessly as the silver reserves vanished into Chiang’s personal accounts. Another of T.V.’s sisters, Ai-ling, married wealthy industrialist H.H. Kung, principal agent of the Standard Oil Company of China. Both Kung and wife Ai-ling happened to be personal intimates of Big Eared Tu and FBI reports stated that she was responsible for the assassinations of family enemies.

Now, in the 1930s, Chiang became enamored with Italy’s Benito Mussolini and Germany’s Adolf Hitler. Thus, when Hitler came to power in 1933 Chiang asked him for help in his ongoing war with Mao Tse-tung and the communists fighting against the massive corruption of Chiang and his warlord armies. Hitler dispatched his top military strategist, General Hans von Seect and his aide Lieutenant General George Wetzell. Together they devised a ‘Scorched earth’ policy for Chiang and the KMT, which brought famine to the mountain populations that provided shelter for the communists. Historian Edgar Snow estimated that "in all a million people were killed or starved to death." [10]

Chiang became so enthralled with Hitler and the Nazis that he sent his younger son, Wei-kuo, to be schooled by the Nazis. As Sterling Seagrave reports, "Wei-kuo became a second lieutenant in the 98th Jaeger Regiment and before returning to China took part in the invasion of Austria in 1938." [11]

By now, Chiang, T.V. Soong, H.H. Kung and Big Eared Tu were entirely in charge of China’s opium and heroin trade. "Shanghai police reports indicate that in 1930 T.V. Soong personally arranged with Tu to deliver 700 cases of Persian opium to Shanghai under KMT military protection to supplement depleted Chinese stocks." [12]

Then in 1931 came the ‘Mukden Incident’ by which the Japanese contrived (Like the Reichstag fire in Berlin) a self-inflicted event thus allowing them opportunity to invade northern China (Manchuria) where it established a puppet state called Manchukuo. Chiang was not eager to fight the Japanese, preferring to continue his war with the ill-equipped communists in their mountainous retreats. Even within his KMT army an uprising against Chiang and his policies gave rise to the ‘Xi’an Incident’ whereby the despised Generalissimo was kidnaped by some of his generals and held in confinement till he agreed to opening another front to fight the Japanese. Chiang agreed, took the generals with him to Shanghai, then had them executed. Killing communists was far more important.

The Second Sino-Japanese War broke out in July 1937 and Chiang’s leadership led to the retreat of the KMT towards the interior city of Wuhan. Prior to their flight however, Chiang ordered General Shang Chen to destroy the dams around Nanjing in order to impede the advace of the Japanese army. This resulted in the "killing of 500,000 people in the 1938 Yellow River flood." [13] Barbara Tuchman elaborates further: "Eleven cities and 4,000 villages were flooded, the crops and farms of three provinces ruined, two million people rendered homeless, and in that vast and sodden wasteland another fund of animosity stored up against the Government." [14] As Sterling Seagrave notes, "General Ku Chu-t’ung, the author of the atrocity, was eventually promoted to commander-in-chief of all KMT armies." [15]

Numerous secret files on Chiang et al from this time period seem to have disappeared from US Treasury and FBI archives, nevertheless still leaving a damning indictment via those files still in existence and which author Sterling Seagrave has meticulously researched. What the existing record shows is a continuation of horrifying atrocities that took place up to the time of his death.

With Chiang in virtual control of all of China (except for Mao’s mountainous retreats), the country’s most notorious gangster, drug trafficker, murderer and extortionist, Big Eared Tu, was now "respectable, the director of many banks, companies and exchanges, including the Bank of China." [16] Sort of like the fox being in charge of the henhouse, but with very sinister designs for the future of China’s wealth.

Mao recruited peasants to join his Red Army. He then trained them in guerrilla warfare. Nationalists attacked the Communists repeatedly but failed to drive them out.

Chiang’s KMT government was so thoroughly corrupt that masses of China’s peasant class willingly joined Mao’s communist army and after a protracted struggle Chiang’s nationalists were handily defeated on the fields of battle, resulting in preparations for the evacuation of KMT criminal forces to the Island of Formosa (renamed Taiwan by Chiang himself). The Generalissimo quickly made plans for the departure. As Sterling Seagrave informs us, "Chiang set his most trusted men to systematically emptying China’s banks, her arsenals, and her museums...[which included]...treasures collected by Chi’en Lung, the Fourth Emperor of the Manchu Dynasty. His reign, from 1735-96, had been a golden age of the arts...The Generalissimo regarded these as his dynastic heritage...[thus]...Nearly a quarter of a million paintings, porcelains, jades, and bronzes ultimately were spirited away to Taipei before the conclusion of the Battle of Huai-hai. Eleven days after the battle ended, on January 21, 1949, Chiang Kai-shek resigned as President of Nationalist China...That February, although he was no longer President of Nationalist China, Chiang Kai-shek arranged for the government’s remaining gold reserves to be removed urgently to Taipei." [17]

A study of the historical record shows that every ruthless dictator worldwide supported by the US; the Shah of Iran, Marcos of the Philippines, Somoza in Nicaragua and numerous others, all driven out of office, departed with their nation’s wealth, leaving the poor to pay the debts undertaken by these depraved gangsters - all with the approval of their US patrons.

"In Shanghai that April, Big Eared Tu saw Chiang one last time...Chiang’s real reason for coming to town was to get Big Eared Tu and the Green Gang to help him rob the Bank of China...Chiang’s plans for the Bank of China had been laid with considerable care. A dingy freighter was tied up on the Bund, opposite the Cathay Hotel. Its coolie crew, dressed in filthy rags, were hand-picked naval ratings in disguise. Several executives of the Bank of China had been given large bribes and a promise of passage to safety on the waiting freighter, in return for opening the vaults. Nationalist troops had cordoned off an area of several blocks around the bank." [18] The country’s wealth was being stolen by the leading bandit of the era. All with the USA’s approval.

Chiang Kai-shek, Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and Madame Chiang Kai-shek at the Cairo Conference in 1943.

(CNA 11/22/1943)

Native Formosans were appalled at what was happening to their island, suddenly beset by a million thugs in uniform descending unwanted upon them. After WWII "the allies had turned [the island] over to Chiang as part of a secret agreement made during the Cairo talks. [As with Formosa, the US also turned Palestine over to the Zionist thugs and we all know what has happened since, the massacres of thousands of Arabs by the Zionist terrorists] Chiang forced Taiwan to heel. There were massacres: in the first, 10,000 Taiwanese were slain by KMT troops in downtown Taipei. Twenty thousand more were put to death before Chiang was firmly established." [19]

American statesman George Kerr was in Taipei during this period and had a personal observation of the ongoing terror. He later wrote a book of his experience, Formosa Betrayed, which outlined the KMT’s murder spree against the native islanders. From an upper window in his refuge Kerr saw and reported the following:

"We saw Formosans bayoneted in the street without provocation. A man was robbed before our eyes - then cut down and run through. Another ran into the street in pursuit of soldiers dragging away a girl from his house and we saw him, too, cut down. This sickening spectacle was only the smallest sample of the slaughter taking place throughout the city, only what could be seen from one window on the upper floor of one isolated house. The city was full of troops." [20]

Kerr continues: "The roadways, the river banks and the harbor shores were strewn with bodies at that moment, and the Nationalist troops were spreading out through the countryside, to bring "peace and protection" a la Kuomintang. In later days when UNNRA members, missionaries, foreign businessmen and our consular staff men could come together to compare notes for that week, the stories were the same from every part of the island. For the government had decided on a policy of pure terrorism." [21]

"We saw students tied together, being driven to the execution grounds, usually along the river banks and ditches about Taipei, or at the waterfront in Keelung. One foreigner counted more than thirty young bodies - in student uniforms - lying along the roadside east of Taipei; they had had their noses and ears slit or hacked off, and many had been castrated. Two students were beheaded near my front gate. Bodies lay unclaimed on the roadside embankment near the Mission compound." [22]

The Corruption of USA Politics

Kerr continues: "I shall not forget the wordless appeal in the eyes of four well-dressed young men who passed my gate and my protective American flag at midday on March 13. They were tied together by ropes attached to wires twisted about their necks, their arms were bound, and they were being hurried along toward the execution place on the banks of the Keelung River nearby. The ragged Nationalist soldier prodding them along at bayonet point saw the American flag on my jeep, and gave me the smartest salute he could manage. Here was the betrayal in its most simple terms; the Formosans looked to us for help, we armed and financed the Nationalists, and the Nationalists were making sure, if they could, that there would be no more appeal to the United States and "democracy". [23] [A fantasy sold to the uneducated at home and abroad].

With Formosa/Taiwan completely under Chiang’s control and fully supported by Henry Booth Luce and General Douglas MacArthur (who in the late 30s was put in charge of unleashing War Plan Red - the invasion of Canada, mostly to take over the immense water resources), [24] the China Lobby promoted Chiang as a model "democrat" and a perfect partner in the US war against Mao and the communists. Scott Anderson and Jon Lee Anderson offer more detail about MacArthur and his role in promoting "the Peanut" as General Stilwell called him. Appearing before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, the General extolled the virtues of the Kuomintang government:

"I superficially went through Formosa. I was surprised by the contentment I found there. I found that the people were enjoying a standard of living which was quite comparable to what it was before the war...I found representative government being practiced...I went into their courts. I found a judicial system which I thought was better than a great many of the other countries in Asia. I went into their schools. I found that their primary instruction was fully on a standard with what was preval‎ent in the Far East...I found many things I could criticize too, but I believe sincerely that the standard of government that he [Chiang] is setting in Formosa compares favorably with many democracies in the world. [25]

Aside from the fact that he was lying through his teeth, one has to wonder how the members of the Senate Committee could accept that MacArthur accomplished all that he stated in the course of his one day visit. We should accept, rather, that he was speaking to a like-minded cast who cared not for the truth and were fully supportive of elevating Chiang into being the USA’s #1 Chinese hero. A glance at the historic record of the MacArthur family demonstrates a vicious set of cutthroats finding a home in US military life. General Arthur MacArthur, Douglas’s father, was, for a period of time, head of the US expeditionary forces invading the Philippines. US atrocities resembled those inflicted upon native American Indians in the US conquest of tribal lands, not surprising since Gen. Arthur MacArthur led military campaigns during the Indian Wars, most notably against Geronimo. Of the Philippine Campaign, MacArthur displayed his ruthless side, declaring that it would take "ten years of bayonet treatment" to subdue the Filipino people. [26]

Gen. Douglas MacArthur established his own appalling record early on in his military career. In 1932 WWI veterans who had been promised a bonus payment, but had not yet received payment, marched on Washington to demand their promised reward, setting up a tent city in the Capital. President Herbert Hoover ordered the estimated 40,000 protestors removed and Douglas MacArthur led troops and tanks to fulfil the job. In 1934 he sued journalists Drew Pearson and Robert Allen for defamation after they wrote that his treatment of the Bonus marchers as "unwarranted, unnecessary, insubordinate, harsh and brutal". [27]

South Korea’s first President Syngman Rhee, right, and General Douglas MacArthur attend a ceremony for the establishment of the Republic of Korea in Seoul on Aug. 15, 1948.

Pearson and Allen struck back harshly, adding the name Isabel Rosario Cooper to the witness list. MacArthur had met her in the Philippines and she became his mistress. Adding her name to the witness list caused him to withdraw his suit and the reality of his brutality became recorded in history. President Harry S. Truman relieved MacArthur from his command of the Korean War when it was known that the latter was advocating the dropping of nuclear weapons on China. US military entry into Korea took place to protect Syngman Rhee, another of America’s savage, murderous tyrants. And, contrary to most historical narratives, legendary journalist I.F. Stone pointed out in his book The Hidden History of the Korean War that Rhee and his military were the first offenders, attacking the North which led to their responding invasion of the South. Not a scenario that the propaganda press wanted known. Rhee and Chiang had hold of US foreign policy much the same as Israel’s vicious rulers have taken control of Arab destinies in order to rule their US-appointed land (Israel) and serve as America’s Jannisaries in the Middle East. Killers all. The US war in Korea killed some four million people and also involved numerous atrocities in which American forces massacred South Korean civilians, No Gun Ri [28] being but one of the savageries. Only Chiang, to date, could manage as many deaths.

Thus, along with his American pals and also having an abiding hatred of anything communist, Chiang, immediately on being in control of Taiwan, set up a Nazified academy of terror training designed to overthrow leftists across the world. Fellow assassins in numerous countries were invited to Taiwan to enrol in Chiang’s deadly World Anti-Communist League (WACL) in order to apply their terror education against unionists, scholars and civil rights activists, leading to further death and destruction that knew no end. That record is well delineated in the book Inside the League.

It is impossible to believe that the USA was not aware of the entirety of Chiang’s appalling record, what with the OSS and numerous agents reporting his bestiality at every turn (Which is likely why many records are still off limits to researchers, even to this late date). That the US government nevertheless promoted Chiang to all who would listen (as well as supporting dozens of the world’s worst killers and plunderers), tells us all we need to know about a hypocritical, depraved system that sets about bombing the world into submission, while simultaneously extolling their own revolting values to all who have been brainwashed through US media propaganda. USA#1 indeed.

On February 28, 1947, the KMT troops of the Republic of China began a repressive crackdown of a popular uprising on Formosa against the Chinese-imposed local government, which the United States permitted to rule following Japanese surrender at the end of World War II. Four decades of harsh martial law followed the 228 Massacre and subsequent White Terror period when it was even illegal to commemorate the anniversary of the 1947 tragedy.

Wiki Commons photo

Although Chiang and the majority of his KMT army took refuge on Formosa, massacring the indigenous peoples while doing so, a large number of Chinats (as opposed to Chicoms) fled into northern Burma to the resentment of the Burmese government. Here the CIA organized its drugs army into bands of marauders and sent them into China on various sabotage missions, some of the earliest campaigns against the Chinese people by the USA. Having had decades of involvement in the drugs schemes of Chiang and Big Eared Tu, these KMT leftovers also managed a new drugs empire being run out of the Golden Triangle, the CIA flying the finished product to new homes in the western world. [29]

As William Blum writes: "Burma was not the only jumping-off site for CIA-organized raids into China. The islands of Quemoy and Matsu, about five miles off the Chinese coast, were used as bases for hit-and-run attacks, often in battalion strength; for occasional bombing forays, and to block mainland ports...The Chinese retaliated several times with heavy artillery attacks on Quemoy, on one occasion killing two American military officers." [30]

In August 1954 the Chinats placed 58,000 troops on Quemoy and another 15,000 on Matsu on the basis of "recovering" mainland China; another of Chiang’s delusions. With the artillery attacks devastating the islands the Joint Chiefs of Staff recommended the use of nuclear bombs against China, an idea thankfully rejected by Dwight Eisenhower. During this period numerous CIA flights to gather intelligence were conducted against China and many were shot down, with many killed and a few captured, all for little gain.

"Beginning in 1957 or 1958," writes William Blum, "the CIA began to recruit Tibetan refugees and exiles in neighboring countries such as India and Nepal. Amongst their number were members of the Dalai Lama’s guard...Those selected were flown to the United States, to an unused military base high in the Colorado mountains, an altitude approximating that of their mountainous homeland...[where they were]...trained in the fine points of paramilitary warfare." [31]

(To be continued...)

Robert S. Rodvik

[1] Blum,William, The CIA: a forgotten history, Zed Books Ltd. (London and New Jersey) 1986, p.15. Reprinted under the title Killing Hope, Common Courage Press.

[2] Bagby, Wesley Marvin, The Eagle-Dragon Alliance: America’s Relations with China in World War II, University of Delaware Press, 1992, p.65.

[3] Seagrave, Sterling, The Soong Dynasty, Perennial Library-Harper&Row Publishers, New York, 1986, p.206.

[4] Seagrave, Soong Dynasty, pp.218-19.

[5] Seagrave, Ibid, p.222

[6] Seagrave, Ibid, p.156.

[7] Barnouin, Barbara and Yu Changgen. Zhou Enlai: A Political Life. Hong Kong: Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2006. P.38.

[8] Seagrave, op.cit., p.232.

[9] Seagrave, op.cit., p.237.

[10] Seagrave, op.cit., p.290.

[11] Seagrave, op.cit., p.320.

[12] Seagrave, op.cit., p.332.

[13] Wikipedia, Chiang Kai-shek

[14] Tuchman, Barbara, Stilwell and the American Experience in China, 1911-45. (The Macmillan Company, New York 1970). P.186.

[15] Seagrave, op.cit., p.374.

[16] Seagrave, op.cit., p.329.

[17] Seagrave, op.cit., pp. 437-9.

[18] Seagrave, op.cit., pp. 440-1.

[19] Seagrave, op.cit., p. 442.

[20] Kerr, George, Formosa Betrayed, (Cambridge, MA, Houghton Mifflin, 1965), p.293.

[21] Kerr, ibid, p.297.

[22] Kerr, ibid, pp.300-1.

[23] Kerr, ibid, pp.306-7.

[24] On MacArthur’s role in executing ’War Plan Red’, see Rudmin, Floyd, Bordering on Aggression: Evidence of US Military Preparations Against Canada, (Voyageur Publishing, Hull, Quebec) 1993.

[25] Anderson, Jon Lee and Scott, Inside the League, (Dodd, Mead & Company, New York 1986) p. 50.

[26] The Philippines Reader, Edited by Daniel B. Schirmer & Stephen Rosskamm Shalom, (South End Press, Boston 1987) p.14.

[27] Manchester, William, American Caesar: Douglas MacArthur 1880-1964, (Little Brown, Boston, 1978) p.156.

[28] Charles Hanley, Martha Mendoza and Sang-hun Choe, The Bridge at No Gun Ri: A Hidden Nightmare from the Korean War, Henry Holt & Co., New York

[29] On the CIA’s drugs operations, see McCoy, Alfred, The Politics of Heroin.

[30] Blum, op.cit., p.19.

[31] Blum, op. cit., p.21.

http://www.voltairenet.org/article177063.html

Part II

The USA’s decades long war against China

by Robert S. Rodvik

After decades of covert actions meant to overthrow the communist government of China, in 1989 the CIA launched the first of its so-called "colour" revolutions, which, being unsuccessful, did not achieve a designation of its own, those appellations coming later, in Eastern Europe and Georgia. This action took place in Beijing, where the CIA had trained a coterie of "students" to unseat the government.

Voltaire Network | Vancouver (Canada) | 13 January 2013

The iconic photo of the "tank man", taken by Jeff Widener of the Associated Press, which consecrated the account of the Tiananmen events peddled by the Western media, portraying them as a massacre of peaceful demonstrators.

Fast forward to 1989 and Tiananmen Square

In one of those fortuitous discoveries of the time I happened on a small sideline article buried on page A20 of The Vancouver Sun dated September 17, 1992 and attributed to the Associated Press. It was a one and only printing which obviously escaped the Gatekeepers that offer us "the only news fit to print." The article was titled: "TIANANMEN - CIA man misread reaction, sources say." [1]

Forget the title. All titles are created by someone other than the writer and often have little connection to the content of the story. In this case the story was extremely indispensable to truth, and this AP story was a real eye-opener, so far as truth is concerned. The article starts like this:

"The CIA STATION chief in China left the country two days before Chinese troops attacked demonstrators in the capital Beijing in 1989, after predicting the military would not act, U.S. officials said...The Central Intelligence Agency had sources among protestors, as well as within China’s intelligence services with which it enjoyed a close relationship since the 1970s, said the officials, who spoke this week on condition of anonymity."

Much more than "sources" however, were the methods being implemented to cause overthrow of the country’s communist leadership, continuing a decades long history.

Is this what a peaceful protestor looks like...?

Jeff Widener / Associated Press / June 3, 1989

The article continues:

"For months before the June 3 attack on the demonstrators, the CIA had been helping student activists form the anti-government movement, providing typewriters, facsimile machines and other equipment to help them spread their message, said one official. (Emphasis added) The CIA declined all comment."

A further article in The Vancouver Sun dated May 31, 1999 and attributed to the Washington Post [2] came shortly after US bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, Yugoslavia. It was an official response to constant US anti-China commentary surrounding the western version of events in Tiananmen. The article starts as follows:

"China accused the United States Sunday of inciting the massive democracy protests in Tiananmen Square, which rocked Beijing a decade ago, as part of a strategy to promote political chaos in China". (Emphasis added)

The Washington Post indicates what it thinks of such a statement, telling us that it had been made by China’s "rubber-stamp parliament." Naturally we all accept that anything printed by the Post originating from China surely must be delusional, while anything originating from Washington must be beyond doubt. The Post article continues with this statement from the Chinese parliamentary source:

"The United States ’played an inglorious role’ in the 1989 protests by ’directly master-minding schemes and giving money and goods to support those making the disturbance’ the statement said...America also spread ’horrifying rumours by using their media to cheat and hoodwink the international community’ it said.

The Post article seems to deplore any and every bit of information emanating from China, closing by saying,

"The government has continued unrelenting criticism of the United States for the May 7 bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, which it said was intended to destabilize China". [3]

Imagine that. The Chinese protesting merely because the US bombed its embassy and killed a number of its agents. Imagine a reversal of the situation with China bombing a US embassy somewhere in the world. How long do you think before the B2 bombers would be launched.

Burning vehicles in Beijing

Burned out Armored Personnel Carriers.

Chinese student protestors swarm over a captured PLA tank.

Which brings me to another amazing discovery, actual photos of the CIA’s "students" in their "democracy protest" activities, again disappeared from reality content and shortly thereafter the magazine that printed the photos, China Review, vanishing from the print world altogether. The July 1989 issue contained a number of photographs of violent activity undertaken by the "peaceful" participants - Tanks, personnel carriers, and army trucks demolished and lying in ruins; "students" carrying assault rifles etc. Apparently their CIA training involved more than facsimile machines. [4]

Outside a bus, the body of a soldier burned to death by the rioters.

Body of lynched and burned Chinese soldier hanged from a building by Tiananmen Square.

Burnt down bus and burned to a crisp Chinese soldier.

It so happens that I watched a PBS FRONTLINE documentary in 2006 titled "Tank Man."

Among its participants was Professor Timothy Brook, professor of Chinese History at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, BC. Professor Brook might as well have worked for the CIA since he was a stalwart promoter of China’s despicable (to him) malfeasance in that docudrama. I managed to reach professor Brook by telephone, certify that I was speaking to the right man, and asked if he knew of the CIA’s involvement in the whole woeful affair, and the destruction of a large part of the PLA’s forces. Professor Brook asserted that no such incident took place. I responded by saying I would mail him copies of my material, which I did. That was the last I would hear from the head of UBC’s China department, demonstrating that the disseminators of information in the university system are very often little but propagandists for western imperialism.

Bombing China’s Embassy

May 7, 1999: the Chinese embassy in Belgrade is bombed ; 3 persons are killed and 20 injured.

Two injured Chinese men sit in an ambulance outside the Chinese embassy after NATO air strikes.

Photo by Reuters

On the night of May 7, 1999, three NATO-launched missiles struck a critical corner of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, Yugoslavia which contained the intelligence gathering chamber dedicated to electronic eavesdropping. At first the atrocity was attributed by the US to faulty, outdated maps, which didn’t place the embassy in its proper location. That pathetic offering didn’t convince a single person, least of all the Chinese, who exploded in furious reaction over the 26 wounded and three killed in the deliberate attack. Turns out that the CIA had specifically chosen the target which, they claim, was purely accidental due to the outdated maps. It was a "pure coincidence" said an unnamed Pentagon official.

"The mistake here was the original data base. It was outdated. I believe it was a 1992 map when it should have been an up-to-date map." [5]

In Washington, Defense Secretary William Cohen and CIA Director George Tenet issued a joint statement saying that NATO believed the building housed a Yugoslav military facility, not the Chinese Embassy.

In further explanation of this obviously fraudulent story the reader is offered the following: "Only after the disaster did the C.I.A. turn up in its files two maps that accurately placed the embassy...A final backup also failed when several computerized databases of sites that were off-limits to bombing, including embassies, hospitals and churches, did not have the current location of the Chinese Embassy." [6] And if you believe any of that come see me. I’ve got a bridge to sell.

Commentary took a different track later in the same year, in October 1999, when The Observer of London challenged the official US account under the heading: Nato Bombed Chinese Deliberately. The article states, inter alia, the following info:

"Nato deliberately bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade during the war in Kosovo after discovering it was being used to transmit Yugoslav army communications.

According to senior military and intelligence sources in Europe and the US the Chinese embassy was removed from a prohibited targets list after Nato electronic intelligence (Elint) detected it sending army signals to Milosevic’s forces.

A NATO flight control officer in Naples also confirmed to us that a map of ‘non-targets’: churches, hospitals and embassies, including the Chinese, did exist. On this ‘don’t hit’ map, the Chinese embassy was correctly located at its current site, and not where it had been until 1996 - as claimed by the US and NATO." [7]

If, however, the NATO gang does have such a "non-target" list as earlier cited, then why did they bomb so many hospitals, rest homes, churches, schools and other civilian sites? A historic study of NATO-inflicted terror establishes beyond doubt its criminal contempt for civilians wherever its military apparatus is unleashed against the world. On the same day that the Chinese embassy was struck NATO bombers also struck Nis, the third largest city in Yugoslavia, bombing a hospital and an outdoor market filled with civilians, "killing 15 people and wounding 70."

The magnitude of a cluster bomb by the city of Nis, 1999

Journalists were taken to Nis, an industrial city 195 kilometres southeast of Belgrade, to view the devastation from the cluster-bomb attack, which hit a market and a hospital complex...Buildings were pockmarked from the bombs, which release explosives that then explode again [releasing smaller bomblets that fan out to kill over a wide radius, scattering the explosives indiscriminately and turning the bombing ground into a monstrous killing field]. [8]

After a lengthy study of the embassy bombing, I find the Observer account of why NATO struck the embassy to be lacking in authenticity. Why would the Chinese pass communications from the capital to Yugoslav troops in the field? What would they gain from so doing? I believe there is a more credible explanation.

The actual reason for the bombing was meant to cover-up NATO war crimes that were taking place almost daily, and the Chinese listening post located in the corner of the embassy that was bombed were intercepting orders issued by NATO which clearly revealed those crimes. The Chinese needed to be silenced and their operations ended, no matter the fallout. Take, for instance, that refugee column of Kosovo Albanians exiting the region on tractors and horse-carriages. The column that the US and NATO bombed, killing dozens. As the Toronto Globe and Mail reports:

Last Wednesday, Yugoslav authorities said NATO planes had killed more than 60 Kosovo Albanians in an attack on a refugee column. A road strewn with refugee bodies was shown on Serbian television and foreign journalists were escorted to the site to film the carnage.

Serb television last night revealed extracts of what it called a taped conversation of a NATO pilot being ordered to attack a civilian convoy in Kosovo last week despite seeing only cars and tractors. It said the conversation was between the pilot and an early warning radar plane [AWACS]. The extract covered the critical moment when the pilot identified the convoy. Asked if there were any tanks in the convoy, he said he could see only cars and tractors. But the other plane responds "This is a military target, a completely legitimate military target. Destroy the target..." [9].

That, I believe, is why the listening post was destroyed. The ability to intercept NATO communications was far more damaging to NATO’s credibility than any other purported reason. AWACS radar planes guide all NATO bombing runs and the ability to record those communications presents a serious predicament to the war criminals busily attacking those non-targets: hospitals, churches, markets, bridges, industry, TV stations, and virtually every target imaginable.

The Chinese, humbled due to their inability to respond, would pay attention and realize that the US and its satrap partners were giving notice that China was a paper tiger without substance, and that they were on the future chopping block of the imperialist aggressors. This, I believe, is when they began to seriously devote larger portions of the budget to develop their military forces. It was, Chinese analysts decided, a wake-up call whereby they realized the need for a far greater responsiveness, surely understanding that without a more effective military, their economy and sovereignty would suffer an attack that might even include nuclear weapons.

With Obama’s shift to the Pacific, I believe it’s only a matter of time!

Robert S. Rodvik

Attached documents

Scenes of devastation at the DIN tobacco factory in Nis after the NATO bombing. (JPEG - 39.9 kb)

[1] The Vancouver Sun, "TIANANMEN - CIA man misread reaction, sources say" September 17, 1992, p.A20.

[2] Michael Laris, "Beijing Blames America For Tiananmen Protests," The Washington Post, May 31, 1999.

[3] The Vancouver Sun, "U.S. had ‘inglorious role’ in 1989 protest, China says," May 31, 1999, p.A2.

[4] China Review, July 1989, pp. 31-43.

[5] US Senate intelligence committee chairman Richard Shelby, May 10, explaining why the Central Intelligence Agency directed NATO to bomb what turned out to be the Chinese embassy in Belgrade killing four (?) People. (Other accounts say three were killed.)

[6] The New York Times, "In Fatal Error, C.I.A. Picked a Bombing Target Only Once: The Chinese Embassy," July 23, 1999, P.A9.

[7] The Observer, "NATO bombed Chinese deliberately," John Sweeney and Jens Holsoe in Copenhagen and Ed Vulliamy in Washington, October 17, 1999.

[8] The Globe and Mail, "NATO bombs Chinese embassy," Julijana Mojsilovic, Reuters News Agency, Belgrade, May 8, 1999, p.A1.

[9] The Globe and Mail, "Reports on bombing cloud the picture," April 19, 1999, p.A7

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Robert S. Rodvik

Internet activist and the author of The Balkans: US Covert Activity and American Media Complicity" (1995).