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Gareth Jones and Chang Hsueh-liang

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An Appraisal as to who murdered Gareth Richard Vaughan Jones

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Gareth's death may have been linked with the ongoing dispute between the Soviet Union and Japan. There had long been antagonism between the two countries after the Russo-Japanese war of 1905 when Russia was heavily defeated and yet although at the Treaty of Portsmouth Japan gained a great deal from the treaty, it was not nearly as much as the Japanese public had been led to expect. Following this conflict, Japan emerged as the strongest power in the area of East Asia.[i]

In 1931 the strongly anti-Communist Major-General Araki Sadao was made Japan’s War Minister. He had urged the high command send an army to overrun Manchuria. He also promoted the Strike-North rather than Strike-South movement and favoured expansion into Communist Russia rather than southwards into China and other Asiatic countries where there were raw materials in which Japan was lacking[ii]. The Japanese were devastated by the Depression of the early thirties possessing little in the way of raw materials - hence their desire to expand north into Siberia. The economic crisis was so great that in some regions there, malnutrition was amounting to starvation, as Gareth was to report when in Japan.[iii]Following the Mukden Incident with the invasion of Manchuria in 1931 and the adoption of the State of Manchukuo on March 1^st, 1932 the border problems between Japan and Siberia intensified. To quote Eli Amo who stated at his press conference which Gareth attended: "We are concerned about any communist presence in East Asia, but we have no intention of interfering with Chinese internal affairs. Manchukuo will separate China and Soviet Russia. We estimate there are 200,000 Soviet troops on the border. We have no intention to fight, but if the Soviets interfere with Machukuo Affairs, we will fight. We Must defend Manchukuo."[iv}

The Soviets had similar concerns and built up a formidable army on the borders with Manchukuo much at the expense of Stalin's Industrialization Policy and his Five-Year Plan and his endeavour to bleed the bread basket of the U.S.S.R. of food. Due to the global slump of the Depression the Soviet Union was finding it difficult to export her wheat, timber and other goods to an ever-diminishing market with a decreasing financial return to pay for imports of machinery for her newly-founded industries and for armaments to combat an anticipated invasion by the Japanese from the recently established Manchukuo. Despite starvation in the Soviet Union, the ruthless Stalin continued to sell grain on the open market endeavouring to convince the outside world that peasants, particularly in Ukraine, were not suffering nor dying of starvation. The Soviet fears are echoed in this statement that Gareth took from the Soviet Commissar for Foreign Affairs, Maxim Litvinov whom he interviewed in Moscow on March 23^rd 1933.[v]

"Up to the advent of Hitler I believed it possible that Europe would remain peaceful and that the only danger of war lay in the East. There, Manchukuo is a Japanese province and Japan wants to go further. This expansion may lead to a conflict with the United States on one hand and with the U.S.S.R. on the other hand, if the expansion is towards our frontier. “The refusal of Japan to sign the pact of non-aggression with us means that war with the Soviet Union is within the practical plans of Japan.[vi]  In this respect we must admire the sincerity of Japan. They don’t veil their intentions.  They say: ‘We don’t want to tie our hands.  We may attack you.’”

 Gareth sent the full contents of the interview to David Lloyd George and following this he was placed on the Black List of the secret Police and accused of espionage by Litvinov.

My critique is one which proposes possibility that Marshal Chang Hsueh-Liang had a hand in Gareth’s death.  Chang’s father had been War Lord and Governor of Manchuria and it was alleged that the Japanese had killed him in 1928.[vii] Chang, the Young Marshall succeeded his father, but following the Mukden Incident, he lost Manchuria to the Japanese.[viii] Chang became close to Chiang Kai-Shek and became his deputy Commander-in-chief. [ix]

In Nanking Gareth interviewed the Young Marshall, but realised that he had obviously 'dropped a brick' when he asked whether Japanese aggression made any change in the Central Government's policy of co­operation towards the Japanese. The rather embarrassed Young Marshall replied very coldly in Chinese and to this the Consul translated: "I could reply, but that is a question on which I would rather not speak."[x]

Subsequent to the Changpei Incident of June 5^th 1935 when the Chinese apprehended four members of the Japanese Secret Special Service Agency, General Sung Che-yuan was dismissed by the Nanking Government from the post of Governor of Chahar and replaced by General Chin Te-chun. On June 27^th he and Major-General Doihara met and formed what was known as the Chin-Doihara agreement. The terms of the agreement included the dissolution of anti-Japanese organs in Chahar, an end to Chinese immigration into the province and, significantly, the withdrawal of Sung's army.[1]   Though he had once been a strong supporter the Young Marshall, Chang Hsueh-liang, lost faith in Chiang Kai-shek following the He-Umetsu Agreement of July 9^th. 1933[xi]. This agreed to the withdrawal of Chinese armies including the 51^st Army in Hebei which was Chang’s army. He vehemently hated the Japanese.  Both he and Chiang were well aware that they could not hold the Kwantung - the Japanese army at bay.[xii] By late summer in 1935 Chang had become favourable to the Communists and by 1936 it is a known fact he was in contact with Zhou En-lai.[xiii]

North China was now in a position of military weakness. Into this volatile area Gareth ventured in order to find what the Japanese where planning and investigate their intentions of territorial expansion.  Gareth with Baron von Plessen and Dr Herbert Mueller first visited the court of Prince Teh Wang in a vehicle owned by Wostwag, supposedly a German Company, but which was really a Russian Company for trading with Mongolia and a cover for the NKVD.

 Returning to Kalgan (Zhangjiakou) Gareth in the company of Dr Herbert Mueller, found to be a Soviet Secret Agent, made an adventurous journey in the vehicle, lent to them by Wostwag and eventually they reached a town, Dolonor, previously Chinese, but which they found to be occupied by Japanese troops - between 15,000 to 40,000 in number and more were arriving with armed vehicles.[xiv]

On Friday morning July 26. [1935]Gareth wrote of Dolonor:

“What luck! There are great events here. The streets are full of Japanese and Manchukuo flags. The Japanese have decided to make this Chinese town and region a part of Manchukuo. The town has 15,000 soldiers here. Thousands of Japanese soldiers have assembled here and many have left on the road which we will travel along to-morrow. I am witnessing the change over of a big district from China to Manchukuo. …

“There are two roads to Kalgan to where we go back; over one 200 Japanese lorries have travelled; the other is infested by bad bandits.

Released after being apprehended by the Japanese, the pair started back to back to Kalgan, but on the following day they were captured by bandits. A ransom of £8,000 was asked.  Within two days Dr Mueller was freed leaving Gareth on his own. At this point Major Takahashi Tan, the Japanese Military Attaché, flew into Dolonor and after this, the bandits changed hands. Though the ransom was said to be forthcoming the bandits were extremely obdurate and on August 12 Gareth was killed on the eve of his thirtieth birthday.[xv]

The Cowherd who observed Gareth’s death told the story that, “about four or five Li east of Meng Chia Ying, looking after my cows, when 60 or 70 armed mounted men arrived from the north.  They were not dressed in uniform.  They came to within a few hundred yards of where I was standing, dismounted, and formed a circle, I was afraid, and so lay down.  I then heard three shots in rapid succession.  The men then mounted and rode away towards the south through T'ou Ta-kou.” [xvi]

A lieutenant from the Pao Ch’ang Pao An-tui who arrived some hours later stated:  “On questioning the wounded man, [a bandit] he said that the foreigner had refused to eat any food for three or four days and was unable to keep up with the bandits.  On arrival near Meng Chia Ying Tse he had refused to mount his horse and had therefore been shot.  The wounded bandit was unable to answer any more questions and died within a few hours.”[xvii]

I contend that Japan, with a desire for colonial expansion, engineered a thinly veiled 'incident', in order to implicate the Chinese in a demilitarised zone that they wished to acquire by stealth.  Through the auspices of Major General Doihara, Japan was pressing to make North China independent of Nanking and the local governments to become autonomous.  Doihara was known to have engineered other incidents in China and was present in the area at about the time Gareth and Mueller were captured. Is there a possibility that he also was implicated in the scheme of things.

The innkeeper in the town of Dolonor had informed Gareth that the Japanese intended to occupy Kalgan by about 15'' August   The unanswered question is whether the incident and Gareth's subsequent death, which had worldwide press coverage, curtailed a planned offensive in the next Japanese 'drive for Asia'. Historically, it is a fact that by 6 December 1935, the Japanese had merely occupied the border areas of Eastern Chahar.xviii

Behind closed doors, unusual for the Chinese, Lieutenant Millar interviewed Mr. Yang, Chief Representative of the Chahar Government in Kalgan, who stated that: “the evidence we have received that this outrage was instigated by the Japanese is conclusive” and that “we fear that such assistance [Japanese] would be granted only at a price which we could ill afford to pay e.g. in return for some political concession.” Dr Mueller was released because he was a German and the relations of the Germans and the Japanese were very friendly.[xviii]

In the Hong Critic, Gareth’s friend, R.T Barrett wrote:

“And yet the Chahar government, while the negotiations were in progress, informed Nanking that it’s Treasury empty, and nothing could be sent to the Central Government of China. Reuters gives a final "explanation of the crime". The district magistrate, who was conducting the negotiations in their final stage, did not inform his next door colleague of what was going on and so, very dutifully, he sent his troops to attack them. Reuter of course knows that this is all arrant nonsense as a Chinese official keeps his post by knowing exactly what is happening all round him, and playing the correct moves on the complicated chessboard of Chinese political intrigue.”

Barrett continued in his article:

 “The story of one hand of brigands handing the captive over to another group is yet another curious feature. This second group is promptly extirpated except for one wounded man, who produces just the story needed to give verisimilitude to this bald and unconvincing narrative.”

 “It may all have been genuine, the efforts of the Chahar Government and the good offices of the Japanese, but intrigue is so much part and parcel of the East that no one believes that it was suddenly suspended, and replaced by clear wells of sincerity.”[xix]

And so it may be that for one reason or another Gareth’s death was a convenient expedient.  How it was that militia was assembled when the army had been disbanded? Marshall Chang Hsueh-liang, deputy Commander-in-chief in Chang Kai-shek’s army was certainly in a position to do so and had a vehement wish to prevent an invasion of northern China?  Did he order the summary execution of Gareth to prevent the invasion of Chahar? Was there any Soviet involvement or collusion knowing their dread of a border dispute with Japan?  Alternatively, was it just a simple act of fear by the bandits of being captured by the pursuing soldiers. For whatever grounds, the Japanese covert ruse to invade Inner Mongolia was thwarted by Gareth’s untimely death.

Gareth’s capture was a certainly politically motivated affair and not a simple act of banditry for the demands of a heavy ransom and financial gain.

  To quote Barrett:

 “It is quite obvious that efforts were made to create another international incident. The life of a gallant young Englishman, who had already dared to expose the hell-black villainy of the Russian government in concealing a famine, and dooming millions to death, rather than cease export of grain, and call for foreign aid, was nothing to ‘commercial interests at Home’.

“He was pursuing that task out East, as he had pursued it in Russia, and he was one of those who knew too much”.

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1] " Gareth asked Takahashi about the roads planned by the South ***Manchu Commission at Kalgan. Takahashi answered: "When the trouble comes we will need the roads for strategic purposes. The two systems, 'Bolshoi' and Japanese cannot live side by side. There will be trouble, the negotiations over the Outer Mongolian-Manchukuo frontier will fail and there will be frontier incidents. We may demand in Chahar that there shall be no Chinese colonisation. We must have control over Inner Mongolia for the purposes of defence.”

From Gareth's notes, Captain Waktsugi stated that: "We wish to increase the economic prosperity of North China, Manchukuo and Japan and to stop the barriers that have been put up between countries. Our aim is to improve communications; it is only recently that the telephone service has been renewed. For our own reasons we want cotton to be grown here, especially in Shantung and we wish to set up Japanese factories in Tient-sin and Tsing-tao. We want to raise the standard of living, and also develop the raw materials. In the interest of defence we must maintain influence in Mongolia. It is against the Communist menace from the north. We want to help the Mongols in their autonomy. If the Chinese could defend themselves against the northern influence there would not be any need for us to do anything, but the Chinese are weak and therefore we must take measures of self-defence