Echoes of a distant airlift (2)<\/p>\n
The world's first great airlift first entwined the United
\nStates in a complex triangular relationship with the Chinese
\ncommunists and the Chinese Nationalists which still causes
\ncomplications today. The Jakarta Post's Asia correspondent Harvey
\nStockwin, in the second of two articles, analyses the lasting
\nimpact of the \"over the Hump\" airlift on Sino-American relations.<\/p>\n
HONG KONG (JP): As a U.S. Air Force C-17 Globemaster III
\ncommemorated the 1942-1945 \"over the Hump\" airlift between India
\nand China by flying from eastern India into Kunming in
\nsouthwestern China on May 28, it was just like the old days,
\nfifty years ago.<\/p>\n
As in World War II, the Chinese were wondering what the
\nAmericans were up to, and the Americans were wondering what
\nreception they would get. Then, as now, the Chinese communists
\nwere unhappy over U.S. ties with the Chinese Nationalists, while
\nthe Americans were shrugging their shoulders over nit-picking by
\nthe Chinese bureaucracy.<\/p>\n
Immediately, it should have been newsworthy that the
\ncommemoration flight took place at all. Following the May 22
\ndecision of the Clinton Administration to grant a visit visa to
\nTaiwan President Lee Teng-hui, a seven-man delegation from the
\nPeople's Liberation Army air force, led by the air force
\ncommander, had cut short a ten-day visit to the United States in
\nprotest. Later, Chinese Defense Minister Chi Haotian similarly
\ncanceled a June visit to the U.S. for the same reason.<\/p>\n
Yet the People's Liberation Army air force has continued to
\nhost the 19 U.S. veterans of the Hump airlift, accompanied by the
\nUndersecretary of the Air Force, and the commander of the United
\nStates Air Force Transport Command. On May 29 there was a
\nceremony at the memorial in Kunming to the pilots who flew \"over
\nthe Hump\" in the epic airlift. Then the American party moved on
\nto Beijing, before returning home.<\/p>\n
So far, the Chinese protest gestures over the visa for Lee to
\nvisit have hurt the Chinese side more than the American. A
\nriposte which hurts U.S. interests more than China's may still be
\nforthcoming. To have canceled the Hump commemoration would have
\nbeen petty -- and the People's Liberation Army air force was
\nprobably very interested in taking a look at the C-17 and its
\naccompanying KC-10 tanker on their first sortie into East Asia.<\/p>\n
Earlier there was one example of Chinese bureaucratic nit-
\npicking of the type so well known to those in charge of the Hump
\nairlift during World War II. Naturally the American idea was that
\nthe C-17 would fly the old dangerous and direct India-China route
\nalong which so many pilots died bringing help to China. But that
\nis not a regularly permitted air-lane these days -- and the
\nChinese would only permit the C-17 to follow today's regular
\nflying route rather than the historical one.<\/p>\n
Of course, the Chinese President Chiang Kai-shek and his
\nNationalist government was the recognized government of China
\nduring World War II, controlling that territory not occupied
\neither by the Japanese or by the Chinese communists. The nit-
\npicking -- and worse in the eyes of the U.S. military, the
\ncorruption -- was sometimes so bad that the Americans inevitably
\nended up wondering whose side the Chinese Nationalists were
\nactually on. It didn't help Sino-American relations when, at one
\nstage, Nationalist officials threatened to do a deal with the
\nJapanese invaders unless the Americans were more supportive.<\/p>\n
The \"over the hump\" airlift operation survived despite ever
\nincreasing American disillusion with Chiang Kai-shek's
\ngovernment, but the strategic purpose behind the airlift changed
\nas a result of U.S. disenchantment. The original idea was for the
\nU.S. to support Chiang's forces in their land campaign against
\nthe Japanese.<\/p>\n
This gave way to the more realistic objective of supporting
\nU.S. air operations against Japan from bases in China. Chiang
\nhimself even preferred this objective because it was less likely
\nto place his own forces at risk.<\/p>\n
In this and other ways, the Americans soon learned that Chiang
\nand his generals were often more anxious to destroy the Chinese
\ncommunists than to defeat Japanese aggression. As late as 1944,
\nthe Japanese were actually expanding their conquests within China
\nwhen they were on the retreat everywhere else in the Pacific.<\/p>\n
Several U.S. air bases within China were then captured by the
\nJapanese. There was even a brief period when it was feared that
\nthe Japanese forces might take the terminus of the Hump airlift,
\nKunming, or even capture the Nationalist wartime capital at
\nChungking -- though neither fear was actually realized.<\/p>\n
It was in the wake of the Hump airlift, and the consequent
\nU.S. military involvement with China, that the Americans
\ninevitably developed a relationship with the Chinese communists,
\nin the hope that the nationalists and the communists could come
\ntogether to defeat the Japanese.<\/p>\n
The suspicion with which Chiang Kai-shek and his officials
\nthen regarded these American overtures to the communists in Yenan
\nis reflected today in the suspicion with which Chinese communist
\nleaders regard continuing U.S. ties with the nationalists on
\nTaiwan.<\/p>\n
As the Americans spent a great deal of blood and treasure
\nsustaining the hazardous India-China airlift throughout World War
\nII, they inadvertently flew into the heart of the Chinese civil
\nwar -- an involvement they have been unable to end, since,
\npolitically, that civil war still continues.<\/p>\n
The commemoration provokes memory of two other strands from
\nthe past. First, had the current commemoration taken place in the
\ninitial stages of the Chinese communist revolution, it is certain
\nthat the government would have used the occasion to stress the
\nwidespread corruption which brought down Chiang Kai-shek's regime
\non the mainland, and led to the new communist order.<\/p>\n
It is no longer possible for the communist regime to do this,
\nsince history has in this sense come full circle: corruption
\nwithin Chinese officialdom is just as pervasive -- some would say
\neven worse -- as it was 50 years ago.<\/p>\n
A good example of the practices which the Americans had to
\ntolerate as part of their war effort came when the Hump airlift
\nwas given its most challenging task -- that of sustaining an
\naerial offensive by the newly-developed B-29 four-engined bombers
\nagainst the Japanese homeland.<\/p>\n
The bombers were based at Kharagpur in India, but actually
\nset out to bomb Japan and Japanese shipping from China. The Hump
\nairlift had to get all the necessary logistical support across
\nthe Himalayas to those bases.<\/p>\n
On the one hand, airpower historian Walter Boyne notes,
\nNationalist Chinese officials \"refused to get serious about the
\nconstruction of the U.S. B-29 bases until sufficient money had
\nbeen paid to permit embezzlement on a massive scale\". Army
\nGeneral \"Vinegar Joe\" Stilwell estimated that at least half of
\nthe US$100 million in gold required by the Chinese to build the
\nbases was siphoned off by corrupt officials.<\/p>\n
On the other hand, \"the bases themselves were a monument to
\nthe patience and industry of the Chinese people who literally
\nbuilt them by hand, without power equipment of any sort, using
\nthe most primitive tools to move earth or chip stones\".<\/p>\n
In this contrast, one sees a duality still observable today --
\nthe frequent tendency of foreigners, not only Americans, to have
\nthe highest respect for the long-suffering Chinese people, while
\nreserving a good deal of skepticism and disdain for those few
\nChinese who presume to misgovern and exploit them.<\/p>\n
In the end, the courage, tenacity and sacrifice that went into
\nthe wartime airlift over previously inaccessible areas had a
\nlasting and significant impact: the Hump operation opened
\nmilitary eyes to the vast possibilities in air transportation.<\/p>\n
As one commander of the Hump operation in 1945, Gen. William
\nTunner later wrote: \"Halfway around the world in a forgotten
\noperation over high mountains and dangerous terrain, we pioneered
\nand established it. There were areas in the world where air
\ntransport might have been tested more easily but the Hump was
\ndesignated as the great proving ground by the exigencies of war.
\nAfter that, we knew air transport would work anywhere\".<\/p>\n
In 1948-49 the famous Berlin Airlift saved West Berlin because
\nall West Berliners had a strong will to endure.<\/p>\n
In 1942-45 the often forgotten India-China Airlift helped but
\ncould not save China -- because China, then as now, had a weak
\nwill to save itself from its own shortcomings.<\/p>",
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